Brad and I have finally gone through and organized all of our cruise pictures.
Yahoo!
I sorta have mixed feelings, though. I love looking through them and thinking about all we did, but it's so hard to come back to reality! Plus I am an avid scrapbooker, and I am so far behind with my kid's albums that it's going to be 5 years until I actually get to scrapbook our adventure. Oh well! Thank God I can make our favorites my desktop and screensaver pictures!
So, in continuation, after we spent the day on St. Thomas and St. Johns in the U.S. Virgin Islands, we next headed to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. The islands are really just a hop, skip, and jump away from each other.
Here is a picture of the sunrise as we entered Tortola.
We only spent a short while on Tortola because we decided to find a way to independently get to the Baths and Gords on the island of Virgin Gorda...our national park stop #2!
The Gords are these HUGE boulders right on the beach. You could crawl through them and over them and there were even places to swim between them. We spent most of the day there.
That evening we went to a show in the theater before a late dinner. One of the shows we walked out of...wasn't the most appropriate show for my husband's eyes... but the rest of them were pretty good.
One other disappointment was the final island. Most, if not all, cruise lines now own their very own private island. So after 1 full day at sea, 3 island stops (in which we actually saw 5 total islands because of additional ferries we took), then 1 more day at sea...our last full day was going to be spent in the Bahamas on Norwegians private island. We had decided not to do beach or snorkeling days at the other islands because were were supposed to spend the whole day swimming and snorkeling on the private island. So we were SO BUMMED when we woke up early and heard over the speaker that we were going to be unable to take tenders onto the island because the swells were so large. It was such a huge disappointment! We had borrowed snorkeling equipment and practiced in the swimming pools on the ship. But we tried to make the best of it. There were additional activities on the ship that day, and we did a variety of things...but were still sad as we sailed right by the islands in the Bahamas!
One thing we learned that day was that we ARE not meant to be shuffleboard players!
Brad also played soccer with some other passengers and crew members. (Which is quite hard to do on a moving ship!)
This was our final sunset picture the last night. Isn't it sweet that our clothes matched the sunset!
Here I am in one of my beautiful (and borrowed) maternity dresses. I'm standing in the atrium...a few of the restaurants were located here, plus some shops, bars, a HUGE screen TV, the "front desk", etc. It was a very pretty part of the ship.
I couldn't help but take a picture of one of the most beautiful restaurants, the Summer Palace. Seriously, this room has luxury written all over it!
This was the LAST picture we took...it was down by the pools and it was taken just moments before the final...and I mean final disembarking announcement was made. And we were literally two of the last passengers to leave the ship!
All in all, it was an amazing trip. It was worth every penny we spent, and it did wonders for each of us personally and for our marriage. We probably won't do it again for many years, but I think we eventually will do it again.
And, in this season of thankfulness and as we look toward celebrating our Savior's birth, I am just so grateful for the time to be refreshed and to spend quality time with my husband. I love my children so much, but I have to keep reminding myself (well, Brad is actually the one who has to keep reminding me) that I am a daughter of the King first, a wife to my husband second, and a mother third. It's very easy for me to be a mother first. But I've learned (and am still learning) that when I keep that order, my life is much, much easier.
And I hope I can continue to be faithful to that order.
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