ten year annivesary trip, part 3 {final}

happy monday friends. :)

first of all... i have to say that it is a bit hard for me to think about something as lighthearted as our vacation when joplin, mo, {a town not far from us} was so devastated by tornadoes last night. 
my mind and heart are having trouble wrapping around it all.
the boys and i have been praying today for the people of joplin.
this has been a rough spring for so many southerners.

that being said....i do want to share about our wonderful trip so maybe this will be a good diversion.

okay get comfortable...it's time for some more vacation slides. :)

we stopped at two ports on our cruise.
the first one was jamaica.

so, we did not love jamaica.

that was disapointing.
i think we would have if we had been able to do one of the fun excursions.
however, being in my special condition, we didn't think it wise to be climbing up to a waterfall or riding a sky lift through the jungle.
instead, we thought we'd just venture out, do a little shopping, and maybe relax on the beach.
well....we lasted about 30 minutes.
basically it was just really uncomfortable.
the pier led us out on this street with no shops.
you had to walk a bit to find them and about every 3 steps or so a really agressive jamaican tried to sell you something, get you in their cab, hand you something they wanted you to buy, etc.
it seemed like there were about 5 of us from the boat and about 200 of them.
it just felt weird.
not like tijuana pushy.... i can handle that....this was just weirder for some reason.
i guess you had to be there. 

 

so we headed back and decided to spend the day relaxing on a nice, quiet boat. :)

we enjoyed another wonderful day of eating, reading, swimming & relaxing. 

our second port was grand caymen.

we really enjoyed grand caymen. 

first thing in the morning, we took a tender boat over to the island.

we had a little time to shop around and find some treasures for the boys before we took our bus to the beach. 

there were many neat little shops and things to look at. 

we spent several hours at tikki beach. 

i was so excited to get my toes in the sand. 

i  love being at the beach. 

i collected a bunch of shells for the boys and did a lot of this:

we ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant right on the beach. 

aj and i shared that strawberry smoothie. yummmmm.

once we left the beach we went back to catch our tender boat. 

aj waited in the long line while i got myself a fresh coconut. 

the coconut milk was not nearly as good as i had hoped.

maybe i got a bad coconut?

 

the next day was our last day at sea. 

we did more of the same....eating, reading, relaxing, enjoying being alone together. :)

that night we took one last stroll around the deck and watched the sunset over the water. 

we had such a great time soaking in our last moments....but we were also ready to get home and see our boys.

our cruise was 5 days. 

with travel we were away from the boys for almost 6 full days. 

we decided that was the perfect amount of time...not too long, not too short. 

we are both so thankful that it worked out for us to go.

it was such a blessing and so good for our relationship.

it was great to focus on each other without all the demands of normal life.

i'm also really thankful that it worked out for us to have a big, fun trip before a new little one joins our clan in august. :)

**don't forget to enter to win my dayspring giveaway!!**

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