Monday, May 16, 2011

All Aboard!!

Get ready for a lot of pictures!! We decided to go on a cruise with our friends after graduation and we had a blast! We were gone for a week and stopped at Coco Cay (island owned by the cruise line), St. Thomas, and St. Martin. The whole cruise thing was new for me. There are definitely pros and cons to going on cruises but overall I loved it! It was nice to get away and eat meals without kids pulling on me, get dressed up each night, enjoy entertainment every night, go dancing, eat ice cream whenever I wanted, read books, laugh a lot, and well the list could go on!

Excursions


Our first stop was at Coco Cay. We loved it here. We went Kayaking with Jen and Logan out in the ocean. It was a great tour. The water was BEAUTIFUL and we saw some cool things out in the ocean and got to get out of our Kayaks to swim around with the sting rays. I loved it!
On St. Martin we all took a fairy out to a tiny island where we were driven up to the top of it and mountain biked down to the beach. I was nervous at first because I've never done mountain biking. I like to bike but mountain biking I realized is different (and this was not anything extreme) However, once we got down our first hill I enjoyed it a lot more. It was a beautiful ride and we ended up at Honeymoon beach which was pretty secluded and beautiful.








We had fun experiencing something very new to us on St. Thomas. We went snuba diving. It is kind of like scuba diving but you don't carry the oxygen on you. We could dive as deep as 20 feet. It was a strange thing to get use to at first but once I got the hang of it it was awesome. Here is Jen getting ready to try it out.
Here is the first of our group to go. This is Bryan, Mindi, Logan, and Jen. Here they are learning how to breath with the oxygen.


Islands
After Kayaking we all had fun relaxing on the beach and swimming in the nice warm beautiful water. One of my favorite things was swimming out to some docks in the middle of the water with Bryan and Mindi. We loved hanging out there for a while. Here are Jen and Amber attempting to snorkel.
St. Martin



This was Honeymoon beach just off of St. Marin.
The sun never really showed in St. Thomas but we still had fun. It was a really nice place.
We ate at a local place and I loved it. The view was so pretty. We all enjoyed looking out at the palm trees and beach.
This was our view for lunch and right down there is where I got a back massage on the beach. I was super happy about this! I wanted one so bad but the boat charged $120 for one and I got 45 minutes for $20! It was heaven!! Andy was smart not to leave me with any extra money because I would have gladly given her $20 more for another 45 minutes!! It really was a highlight of the trip!



Jen, Amy, Mindi, and Amber


Fun on the Boat
There was sooooo much to do on the boat! We only did a fraction of what it offered. They had swimming pools, hot tubs, dancing, ice skating rink, shopping, movies, live shows each night, formal dinners, Karaoke, arcades, rock climbing, basketball tournaments, work out room, running track, flowrider.....pretty much if you are board on a cruise it is your own fault.

This is looking down to the promonade which we passed all the time in the evening.


We found we liked being at the back of the boat away from a lot of the people. We'd hang out here relaxing and reading. People would come and go as they wanted. It was so beautiful looking out at the pretty blue water.



We had ice cream at least once a day and sometimes more.



This is the track I'd run on. It was pretty cool looking out at the water while I was running.

The evenings were fun. We'd get dressed up and go to a show dinner and then usually some other form of entertainment. It was nice staying out as late as we wanted knowing we could sleep in the next morning.

Here we are with out waiters. They were so nice.


We had fun dancing...ok so some of us had more fun than others!


The guys competed in a dodgeball tournament. To determine which teams played first they had to do this competition. It was pretty funny to watch!

This trip would not have been possible without my mom who not only took on taking care of 4 kids but also giving Ethan his shots and calculating how many carbs he is eating and how much insulin he should get. She did a fabulous job and I am very very grateful for her!!

Half Marathon

Jen and I ran the mini marathon in Indy the day ofter graduation and the day before we left on the cruise. It is the best race! It's so much fun and the largest race I have ever been in or ever will be in. I believe there are about 35,000 runners! It's crazy. I loved training with Jen (once I got here back on board to train with me and stop with P90X) Unfortunately the race wasn't as fun this year. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep the night before due to sick kids. I was definitely running on LOW energy but we managed to finish in the time we were hoping for - I just didn't love it like I usually do!
We also had a slight problem finding our ride at the end. We were running a tad late getting to the race. We took off to use the bathroom thinking Julianna (the girl who drove us there) was going to meet up with us. Unfortunately we never saw her again and it is really hard to find someone at the end of the race if you don't have a meeting spot. Let's just say it took us an hour wandering around the city trying to remember the streets we parked at before we finally found her!! My legs were really happy to sit all the way home!

Celebration Time!!

After graduation we had our last (OK maybe not quite last) hurrah in the cul-da-sac with desert. We figured it was a good way to celebrate and to let the parents get to know each other given many of them were staying behind to babysit kids. It was of course fun. The only thing missing were some scooter rides from Bryan and Logan!

Sara, Anna, Amber, Mindi, Amy, and Jen (hard to believe we all ended up as neighbors!)
Libby, Lucy, Kamryn, Eliza
Joe, Sara, Anna, Mike, John, Amber, Mindi, Bryan, Amy, Andy, Logan, Jen
Joe, Mike, John, Bryan, Andy, Logan

Graduation

This day has been almost 2 years in the making! It is hard to believe that we are already done!!! I am proud of Andy and his hard work and happy to say that we all survived and are grateful to have a job to go to!! We are excited to move but so sad to leave all of our friends behind. We have LOVED Bloomington! We were happy to have my mom and Andy's mom here to celebrate Andy's graduation.





We ran into the Joe and Sara's family after graduation so couldn't resist a few pictures with the kids. Ethan, Lucas and Jenna
Libby and Lucy

Monday, May 02, 2011

Week of parties

Last week was an especially busy week of parties and fun. Our week looked something like this:

MBA Easter Egg hunt at Kelley
Photography classes for me at IU
Andy's birthday
1 big Easter dinner with our friends (which had to be moved to the church because of LOTS and LOTS of rain)
Easter egg hunt/dinner for Kelley Kids
Farewell Party/dinner for the MBA's and families (to be honest we stayed for all of 20 minutes. It was supposedly for families but it was not very kid friendly - from the food to the china the kids didn't seem to fit into the evening so we ended up back at our house eating Wendy's with the Powells)
Royal Wedding party!!
Dinner with Jenner and the girls
Ward Arts night
Soccer games (which ended up being canceled once again because of rain!)
Piano Recital

As you can see we have been a little bit busy but mostly having fun!! I managed to leave my camera at home for most of these events but fortunately I had it for a couple of things!!

Lucy and Ethan have both made a lot of progress in their piano playing this year. I was so proud of them when they played in the recital!! Nice job kiddos!!


How could we not have a Royal wedding party?!??! Sara was all for meeting at her house at 4am the morning of the Royal wedding but given the early hour she got a veto on the time! So, instead we got the kids on the bus and went to Mindi's house at 9:00 to watch the wedding and eat waffles (provided by Sara). It was so much fun!! Good idea Sara!!

Guess who came to town?!?!?


We loved having Jenner in town over the weekend! She braved the trip with three kids all by herself. I am very impressed!! It was so fun to see her. We all enjoyed going out to dinner Friday night and had fun hanging out in the cul-da-sac - just like old times!! Thanks for making the trip Jenner!!