Vacation with the parents!

I don’t know where to start…this vacation was by far the best one I’ve had this year!

The days leading up to our departure on Wednesday were crazy and fun. So much to be done and absolutely no time to do it…Christina actually packed my stuff the night before, I was baking for the road. that’s why I love her, don’t know what I’d do without her. I wasn’t proud of how much stuff I took, but hey I had to bring all my bedding because I was sleeping on the floor in the room.

So the night before I stayed up till three in the morning with Christina…painting our nails, watched a movie and then sorted pictures together…you know getting as much time together as possible before I left. I was asleep within an hour of sitting in the car the next morning.

The smoky mountains?!?!?!? they are insane, I’ve never seen any mountains before so bare with me=) I was so amazed! But after being on Black Mountain all week, this Indiana girl was ready for the flat land and corn fields. At least be able to see something other than trees all around me.

So what was it like sharing a two bed hotel room with my two younger brothers and parents? Ummmm insane!!!! Seriously…I won’t even go into the parents side of it...don’t worry you really don’t want to know. But my brothers! Isaac isn’t so bad, but now Samuel is a different story. His suitcase was unloaded within the hour of our arrival. Not into drawers, mind you, but all over the floor. It was like this the remainder of the week. the constant “guy smell”.  okay I’ll stop. It was just hard for this girl to get used to=) Sharing one bathroom…that was the hardest. Samuel takes longer than me on just his hair…okay I promised to stop….sorry.

What was our schedule like? It was a conference - so we had a very tight schedule. For instance: breakfast was served from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m. We never got to bed before 2:00 a.m. so getting up and showering before this time was a tough one. (at least for this girl) Remember we had only one shower, for five people and thankfully only two of them were girls=) Then we would go to a session and then after lunch, the day was ours. There was organized basketball, volleyball, also hiking, swimming, etc. whatever the camp had to offer was at our disposal. Dinner. One last session.  Then we went to a gym and played games, with a ton of young adults, till about twelve. All the “night owls” would continue the night in the hotel lobby or another room till about three. I only made it to two. We would climb in bed at that 'ungodly hour' and repeat the next day=) so fun right?!?!?!

Are parents are so cool to vacation with…easy going and good with anything. Mom took a ton of pictures of us! I barely used my camera myself, I passed it off to her…I’m sad to admit it. They both got all their sleep so they were in good moods on the way home. As for the rest of us...I won't go there. I loved the 'one on one' time I got with my parents and two brothers for five days straight. I made a lot of good memories that I will hold on to for life. 

I put together a short video of our trip enjoy=)

Just loads of fun! 

Bahamas Cruise (part 1) …travel and places we stayed

Okay so here we go…the first of five post that are coming from my trip to the Bahamas. I took over two thousand pictures and sorting them is really hard. If you can imagine=)

So this is pictures all the airports, planes, hotels, places we slept etc. I had my camera around my neck for seven days straight. Definitely a first for me=) It was weird - we’d sit down to eat and I was always looking for a place to set my camera.

It was a great experience.

This was this country girls first time on a plane…I didn’t know what to expect. And Christina was of no help it was her first time as well. We felt so out of place or you could say comfort zone…you can read about my customs experience here. We had pretty small planes on three of our four flights. Our ears popped…Christina’s worse than mine.

We had a guy with “ant in his pants” sitting in front of us on the first flight…seriously this guy couldn't sit still at all. He fell asleep once for a bit, then the stuartist woke him up to ask if he wanted a something to drink….SERIOUSLY! Not him, let him sleep… 

On our second flight from Newark to Miami was three hours…and we have a baby in the back that won’t stop crying (unless he could run in the aisle.) I not particularly fond of children in this phase of my life and a crying one is definitely hard for me to handle.

We didn’t have seats together on our third flight from Miami to Cleveland…that was hard and we couldn’t even text of course. I was seated near the front and Christina was in the very back of the plane. We had a lot of turbulence on that one…I knew she was freaking out, and it made it worse for her that I wasn’t with her. I felt sorry for the person sitting next to her=)

Our fourth flight was amazing…it was over way to fast=)

 

Both of us Sunday morning before heading to the airport…scared but excited.

Our dad took us to the airport (it started to snow that morning on top of a slight thaw and the roads were super slick) He stayed with us until we had to go through security. It meant a lot to have him there. He was the last person we saw from our family leaving and the first we saw on our return. Gotta love an awesome dad=)

I think she was about as nervous as she looked…=)

That night we stayed in a hotel in Miami…we couldn’t board our ship until noon the next day

Elevator…and who doesn’t like to take pictures in an elevator?!?!

Over looking Miami from our hotel window. My first view of palm trees…they are amazing!

it was so warm=)

Okay here’s our stateroom on the ship. Yeah we shared a bed… Our temperature was always off. We had come from below zero degree weather to tropical heat. For the first couple of days whenever I was inside I was freezing from the air conditioning. The result Christina was always boiling in our room…sorry girl! Our room was really tiny feeling when we first stepped in, but after a few hours we didn’t feel that way anymore….except for the bathroom that never felt big=)

The first night we couldn’t figure out how to use the hot water…..so we both took freezing showers. Then the next morning we called and got it all figured out. Such an easy fix, we felt dumb for not figuring it out ourselves.

The precious TY. the only “electronic” we had for the four days on the cruise and half of the cannels were in Spanish.

This is kinda hard to see but that’s the bathroom door to the right of the picture and the closet on the left. And that red door is the door to the hall way. Can you start to get an idea of how tight it was?

On the way home…the airport in Cleveland Ohio had these huge paper airplanes hanging from the celling.

Our flight was canceled due to the weather so after we stood in line for several long hours at the service desk, we claimed our luggage and headed to a hotel for the night.  

It was so nice to sleep in separate beds and in a large room…we just stood there and were like our room on the ship was so small or this is huge=)

We went to the Cleveland mall for fun that night…and ate Thai food, nothing beats that!

No we didn’t buy these…

The next morning. We had service! =)

I loved Cleveland. Such a neat town…couldn’t believe I’d never been there. I think I was just glad to be surrounded with people who spoke the same language as me. In Miami and on the ship we were the minority.

The next day our 12:00 pm flight was delayed twice. I was tired of airport food by this time (more like the price of airport food..lol) So were sitting there and starting to think that this flight might be cancelled and we might have to wait one more day to get home…

and then over the airport speakers Michael Buble began to sing “Home” …perfect just what we needed. This verse of the song that I had never paid attention to took on a whole new meaning that day.

…”Another aeroplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky, I know
But I wanna go home
Mmmm, I’ve got to go home”

On our fourth and final flight=) HOMEWARD BOUND!!! This was a very short flight, we ate chocolates, talked and laughed.

Traded phones and listened to each others play list…so fun=)

From the wind window…Indy never looked so good.

Just traveling was a big part of the trip and if we’d had done nothing more than this I would have still enjoyed this trip very much! Christina is an awesome travel companion and I can’t thank her enough for taking off work to join me. As my best friend it was awesome to get to share these experiences together.