Up North Date Night

Dad and Lin offered to watch the kids so we could have a date night—so we took them to The Fitz! It was sooooo delicious… And then after dinner we sat on the deck and enjoyed the weather and the view.

And on the way home, I might have stopped by a HUUUGE lilac bush and made David jump out and grab us some. (They were ALLLL over the place and I hadn’t gotten any fresh lilacs this year so I was kind of going crazy.)

And then…as Anna and I were enjoying the small bouquet…we realized that David was still cutting…and then he thrust a huge branch at us through the window!

Which we thought was absolutely hilarious.

Then we stopped at the Eagle Harbor Inn to see their bar (per Linda’s directive, so we could see their bar rails for ideas) and of course had to have a drink. My pretty one was Mermaid Water.

Then they wanted to go up Brockway Mountain Drive—and since I was the only sober one, I got to drive Dave’s truck!

And when we finally got home and went to get the ice… Ooops! With the crazy drive up and down the mountain and the bags Nott being tied tightly…

The date night continued when we got home—the weather was so nice that we went out and watched the sunset then had a fire!

And this is what happens when you tell drunk Tom we need more wood and there’s brush handy from when he cut branches earlier in the day.

Allure Day 4: St. Thomas

This morning we ate breakfast at Johnny Rockets! Normally it has an extra fee—but not for breakfast! I kind of missed all the choices available in the Windjammer buffet, but it’s also nice to have limited choices.

Don’t ask why I didn’t take many pics—I have no idea. None of the ship, none of the wildlife, none of the excursion line or the catamaran we were on. Maybe because it was HOT and I hate hot. 🙂

We got on the boat and everyone had a seat with snorkeling gear on it. We traveled about 20 minutes to the bay where we were going to be swimming with the sea turtles. We got our instructions, safety briefs, and enjoyed the breezes. Then it was time to get in the water. And it was…not what we expected. The short version is that it was too exhausting and too short.

The longer version? It was described as

Cruise in comfort aboard a power catamaran to the waters off Buck Island, where you’ll snorkel amidst colorful fish, vibrant coral and maybe some sea turtles!” with the typical warning “Guests must consider their physical fitness level and medical history when determining whether this tour is appropriate.”

Which kind of sounds like you’ll hop off the boat and leisurely swim around looking at turtles and sea life, right? Well I am a healthy 46yo woman who is not a peak swimmer but I know how to swim and I’m not going to drown…and this was EXHAUSTING. We had to swim A LONG WAYS to see the turtles. They are protected, so the boat has to drop anchor way away from where the turtles are so you have to swim over to them. They did warn us that there was a long trip and a short trip…but if you wanted to see the turtles you had to do the long trip. They also offered the use of fins, but strongly warned against using them if you were not used to them (citing the possibility of leg cramps). But if you don’t use them, you are likely going to struggle in the water since you have SUCH a long distance to swim (but they don’t tell you that). And you are swimming with snorkel gear (that you are likely mostly unfamiliar with) and maybe a waterproof camera…and there are like 50 other people swimming along with you and you are dodging 3-4 other boats and excursion groups. Egads.

So some people are faster and get there right away (with the guide) and you’re left dragging behind, struggling to catch up. My dad had to turn around and go back (and Tom had to help him, so he had to double back) and thankfully Katie opted to stay behind—she never would have made it and there is no way I could have helped her as I was barely making it. Tom and Linda had fins and didn’t have as many issues (but they were familiar with fins) but Tom was still tired. So by the time we all made it to the sea turtle area…we had about 3 minutes before they were moving on to the reef…which, you guessed it…was another longish swim away. And I was already exhausted. So my plan of a leisurely snorkel off the boat to check out some sea life and take some pics was not happening and I was frustrated and exhausted—not exactly best case scenario for a Caribbean vacation excursion.

Oh, and did I mention that Katie had refused to get off the boat? Yes it ended up okay because the swim would have been too hard, but still. That’s not what you expect after you’ve paid a bunch of money for a snorkeling excursion. She said she didn’t like saltwater and didn’t want any fish to touch her. I kinda wanted to strangle her to be honest. She wouldn’t even hop off the boat and swim for a few minutes.

And then we were back on the boat. And it was time for unlimited rum punch. I don’t generally like rum but this stuff was delicious.

Then it was off to “enjoy an hour of swimming, sunning, and relaxing at this idyllic spot.” If by idyllic you mean having to jump off a boat into neck-deep water to get to shore and then share the beach with a ton of other people from other boats…and that hour was over WAY too quickly. We barely had time to grab a quick lunch and some more rum drinks… And I practically had to BEG Katie to get in the water and Papa totally refused saying he didn’t like getting wet (or didn’t want to get wet?) which was silly because he was already wet from getting off the boat! But we had fun just relaxing in the water!

All that said, the excursion staff was amazing. They were all witty, helpful, and nice. I felt safe the entire time, they were good with our kids, and you could tell they knew what they were doing. I just wish Royal Caribbean would have more than a boilerplate description on their site because this was NOT the relaxing experience I wanted.

Once back on shore, we split up. I took Katie and Papa back to the ship and Tom, Owen, and Linda walked around St. Thomas. Katie and I dug into the frosting dog. The other group shopped and ate lunch.

Then Katie and I headed to the pool—I stayed in the hot (warm) tub and chatted with a bunch of people. Katie was running around in the pools and eating ice cream and visiting me in the hot tub. I don’t remember what all we did the rest of the night…but I know we called it an earlyish night again since we had another early morning planned for San Juan.

One funny story: the kids came home and said they had photobombed a video. So we had to watch it on the room TV…and sure enough… wait until the end. 🙂

Owen’s bucket list: the raft!

Owen really wanted to go out to the raft in the middle of the harbor but Grannie and Papa were afraid to let him do it on his own because they wouldn’t be able to help him at all. I wouldn’t have had a problem with him going but they wanted to wait until Tom was there. Tom did agree to go out with him…even knowing full well that it was freezing cold water. So here is their experience.

Tom was ready to stop right here—that water is COLD—but he agreed, so…

We had one happy boy!!

And one cold daddy.

Who deserved a beer!

Day 6 — Labadee, Haiti

Good morning from our balcony!

The morning started a little later than I’d have preferred (we didn’t dock until 9:30)—we had a full day of excitement (half mile zip line) and relaxation (private cabanas over the water) planned and I wanted to GET TO IT!! Royal Caribbean has their own private section of the island (a secluded spot on the north coast of Haiti) and they have Nellie’s cabanas, which is a set of 10 private cabanas overlooking the bay. Our group had rented seven of them…which meant about 40 of our group members were going to be there!

While waiting to get off the ship with our group, we realized Keens were the shoe of the day! 🙂

Just gorgeous views walking down the pier…

After walking across the island to get to the cabanas to drop our stuff off (and taking a few quick pics)…

…Six of us thrill-seekers pretty much had to leave right away to head to the Dragon’s Breath zip line, which is the longest over-the-water zipline in the world.

Here we are after getting suited up and getting some brief instructions. We then had to walk across the street for a short practice run. You may laugh, but one person in our group decided it wasn’t for her after her 10-second trip. (I have video of our practice run but it’s not terribly exciting!)

It was fun, but we all felt the process could have been streamlined a bit as it took us about two hours! Thankfully, one of the “beach monitors” took us under his wing toward the start and got us out of there as quickly as he could—he somehow managed to get us to the front of the line so we didn’t then have to wait for 25 people to zip line ahead of us. He also volunteered to take photos and videos of us (with our cameras) so we had him do that. Of course I am not used to that kind of thing and realized a bit too late that he was obviously angling for a tip…so we thankfully ran into him again and were able to tip him. It was hard to see the screen in the bright sun so I was just crossing my fingers he actually took some pics and we didn’t just waste our money…but I was able to look later and he did get some so that’s cool. The ride was really fun and was over waaay too soon—it only takes like 45 seconds to travel the half mile but it felt like 20 seconds. The only bad thing is that you can’t really take pictures on the way down (which I had been hoping to do) so I set it to video and the resulting video isn’t terribly exciting…

To get our entire group up to the top at the same time, Tom and I rode in the cab with the driver!!

Walking out the catwalk to get to the drop zone!

Here’s what it looked like:

I’m next!

I didn’t have a GoPro and couldn’t hold my camera in my hand, so I just wrapped it tightly on my wrist and tried to angle it enough to see something. This might make you seasick. 🙂

I don’t know how they knew to assign this pic to our onboard photo account, but I like the magic! (Usually they had people asking for room numbers, but this pic just appeared in our account! We searched and found mine, but long story short we had two logins and we saved it under the wrong one, and when I went to pick pics to buy, it wasn’t saved in my account and I forgot about it.)

Awesome group shot! The good thing about going with other people is being able to share the group photos without having to buy each one separately!

Then it was back to the cabanas to hang out with the group where we spent the rest of our day floating in the water and enjoying tropical drinks. We all had floating mats and pretty much just floated around in a big group (or a few smaller groups) the entire time. I could have stayed at the cabanas another few hours (or days) and been totally content…

All too soon it was time to head back to the ship. This is when I decided this should have been a super long port day—docking at 6:30a and leaving at 8p. On the way back, we realized we hadn’t gotten a drink in a pineapple!! The guy was just closing up but got us one…aaaaand we should have skipped it. It was waaaay too strong, plus it started leaking almost immediately (we tossed it before we even got back to the ship). And it was $14! And not included in our alcohol package! But we got the photo op so I guess it was worth it? 🙂

And why not stop by a bar on the way to our room? We’d only had a few drinks all day…

Then it was time to get showered and dressed for dinner.

We actually ate with eight other friends at a different table because all of our regular tablemates were off eating elsewhere so Tom and I would have been eating alone (not the worst thing ever—we did it one other night and had a blast!). They happened to have two open seats so it was perfect. It was also nice because we hadn’t actually gotten to visit too much with them. Of course we also then got to hear some stories about other people which was fun.

After dinner I sat at the bar for awhile with two girlfriends and then Tom came down and we all went shopping! (Towards the end of the cruise they really bring out the souvenirs and have deals on alcohol.) I bought a neat dress clutch and bow ties for Owen…and Tom and I bought a few bottles of cheap liquor. Then he went back up to the room and us girls walked around for a bit. I might have shopped more.

Unfortunately, the one bad thing about the day is that we missed a show that was supposed to be super hilarious and we’d been looking forward to…but it didn’t start until 11:15 and honestly that’s just too late for us (we’ve been in bed by 11 every night). We thought about trying to stay up and make it but I started feeling really yucky about 9:30 and just needed to go to bed. I hadn’t had that much to drink—there were days I’d had more and never felt bad—so I think it was just a combination of drinks (mixing alcohols) and being in the sun all day (it was HOT and we were all sunburned). I felt fine when I rolled over in the middle of the night (thankfully).

First ever grandparent camp!!

Since we live so close to family now…and the kids are getting older and more self-sufficient, we thought it was time to let them stay for a long visit with the grandparents! As scheduling happened to work out, we went to Michigan for our family Christmas and then left the kids there…and then Gramma Jean and Grandpa David would drive up to meet Papa and Grannie Lin to hand off the kids…and then we’d eventually drive up to the UP to pick them up. They would be gone a total of 19 days, 12 of which they were completely without us. Needless to say we were all looking forward to it…the grandparents were excited about having the kids, the kids were excited about fun with the grandparents, and we were excited to have some alone time and general peace and quiet.

Here are the pics from some of the adventures they had with Gramma Jean and Grandpa David!

Lake Margarethe – of course they made fast friends with other kids who where there!

Roscommon Zoo

Another day, another trip the ocean!

Today was a beach day in the morning as it was in the 60s by 9am! Owen LOVES playing in the waves and he won’t come to shore until you call him in! Katie would rather dig in the sand than be tossed around by waves. The water is fairly cold—to the adults! (Tom came down for a bit and jumped in with Owen but then came right back out!!) Gramma made Katie into a mermaid and then made a lobster for herself! 

Our first trip down to the ocean…

Our first trip down to the ocean—just to look—ended up with two totally soaked kids! We weren’t surprised. 🙂

Me and Gramma Jean could NOT get the twirly sticks to fly. Tom was easily able to.

I looked up and Owen was just standing the ocean with his hands in his pockets. LOL

Gramma Jean took this awesome picture of Katie. I think I’ll be hard pressed to take a better one this week.

Yet another trip to the Eagle Harbor beach!

Papa and Grannie took the kids back to the beach (leaving us home to relax and get ready for our dinner out) and Grannie sent these pics.

2016-07-19vacationUP102

And added this commentary:

Katie found a puddle and added to it. (I confirmed she added water to it and not pee.) 🙂

Now it is a bubble bath she says.

Handstand Owen

 

We found them on the beach!

We pulled into Eagle Harbor and immediately saw them on the beach!

Then it was off to dinner! We showed Katie the marks on her forehead from her swim goggles! Grannie Lin and I shared a lobster pizza—yum!

Then it was off to the playground…

…while daddy, Owen, and Papa went hunting Pokemon at the Eagle Harbor lighthouse.

Then they met us back at the playground.

Beach, grandparents, stones, and sand!

One of the two things* I wanted to do on this vacation was look for Petoskey stones in a target-rich environment…so we headed to Petoskey State Park! The kids were super excited to go to the beach and Grannie and Papa met us there! Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures because I forgot the waterproof camera and didn’t want my expensive phone out in the sand and water!

Eating lunch after the grandparents left:

The stone hunting was fairly pathetic as we were obviously in a well-populated and well-picked-over area right on the main beach…plus we were in knee-deep wavy water trying to dredge stones from the bottom. This was all we found after about four combined hours of searching:

But the kids were having fun!

So we talked to a park ranger who told us where there was better stone hunting…so Tom went to scope it out. He came back about a half hour later with full pockets…so we packed stuff in the car then took off walking down the beach. It was quite a walk but it was the place to be—we filled about 2-3″ of a 5-gallon bucket in another two hours!

Unfortunately, Owen lost his goggles (even after I specifically told him to put them around his neck) and we hadn’t thought we’d be gone that long so we didn’t reapply sunscreen…so Owen’s face was pretty red and both kids had a little too much pink. 🙁

But! Both kids were amazing while we were out there—they stayed close, Owen mostly played in the water and Katie mostly played in the sand running between me and Tom (we were about 20-30 yards apart), and they listened well and weren’t cranky!

Of course, I’d forgotten how much I hate the beach—sand, sand, and more sand in every crevice of the kids’ bodies. Ugh. I pulled Katie’s bottoms off and literally a half cup of sand fell out (in addition to what was stuck to her). We were all done at that point (we’d been in the sun for six hours!) and had just trudged (guessing) 1/4 mile back along the beach to the car (with me carrying 20# of stones and Tom carrying Katie on his shoulders) and we just didn’t have the energy to go get them showered.

Within two minutes of starting the car:

Within 25 minutes:

So overall it was a good day…even though we can already tell we’ll be sore tomorrow. 🙂

*The other was to see the start of the canoe marathon.

Last trip to the beach!

2015-03-19FWBkids277

2015-03-19FWBkids278

2015-03-19FWBkids279

2015-03-19FWBkids280

2015-03-19FWBkids281

Looking up at a plane going by. We saw lots of jets and planes and helicopters the whole week!

2015-03-19FWBkids282

She didn’t go in the water much, but when she did, she did some STOMPING and SPLASHING!

2015-03-19FWBkids283

The one thing she liked to do? Throw shovels full of sand into the water. Yes, kids are strange.

2015-03-19FWBkids284

2015-03-19FWBkids286

And a fun screenshot I saw while I was editing the video:

2015-03-19katiejumpcrop

It was impressive watching the beach guys carrying in the chairs in the evening.

2015-03-19FWBkids287

2015-03-19FWBkids288

2015-03-19FWBkids289

2015-03-19FWBkids290

2015-03-19FWBkids291

2015-03-19FWBkids292

2015-03-19FWBkids293

2015-03-19FWBkids294

More grandparents!

My dad and stepmom are also in Florida for a few months—about six hours away. Since we couldn’t take enough time to stay with both sets of parents, my dad and Linda came over to stay for the week. After they arrived and came to our room, we decided to head down to the beach…

2015-03-16FWBkids074

2015-03-16FWBkids075

Katie building her castle. Yes, it’s just a bucket of sand, but to her it was a castle!

2015-03-16FWBkids076

This is one of her favorite things to do—fling sand. 😐

2015-03-16FWBkids077

Katie was so excited to see them coming she had to run to meet them!

2015-03-15FWBkids078

Owen was a bit tired so he tried to rest. 🙂

2015-03-16FWBkids080

I forgot the dolphins!

As we were packing up to leave the beach we spotted dolphins! I forgot about it until someone mentioned dolphins elsewhere and I thought “Hey, wait, I took pictures of the dolphins, why didn’t I see them?” Yeah, I had to REALLY zoom in…I had deleted the pics because I thought there was nothing in the pictures! 🙂

2014-05-26-dolphins

Our day at the beach!

We are not beach people. Yes, we live somewhat close (45 minutes) so maybe we should be, but we just never go. Things get busy at home on the weekend and it’s a bit of work to go (toys, towels, snacks, drinks, diapers, wipes, yada yada yada) so we end up just staying home. But since we’re moving soon and we know the kids love the beach, we thought we’d treat them! Unfortunately, most of our beach toys were packed away, so we made do with some bath and pool toys, a big bucket, and a kids garden rake and shovel.

Getting dressed in the restrooms.

2014-05-26-kids001

2014-05-26-kids002

2014-05-26-kids003

2014-05-26-kids004

2014-05-26-kids005

2014-05-26-kids006

2014-05-26-kids007

2014-05-26-kids008

Tom dug a small hole for Owen and Katie immediately got in it.

2014-05-26-kids009

2014-05-26-kids010

2014-05-26-kids011

Friends of ours happened to be there, too!

2014-05-26-kids012

2014-05-26-kids013

2014-05-26-kids014

2014-05-26-kids015

Then we took a break and had lunch!

2014-05-26-kids016

2014-05-26-kids017

2014-05-26-kids018

2014-05-26-kids019

2014-05-26-kids020

It took a few hours but she was FINALLY super comfortable in the water!

2014-05-26-kids021

Owen made friends with some kids who were building this.

2014-05-26-kids022

2014-05-26-kids023

2014-05-26-kids024

2014-05-26-kids025

The kids Owen was with had nets and caught some minnows—and he was holding one!

2014-05-26-kids026