Natabug and Thayners: January 2016

10 year anniversary - Grand Turks

Our cruise ship in the background.

Selfies

Our last port day was on the island of Grand Turks. It was not much! Super flat, filled with tourists, but had a beach. The beach was great but quite crowded.

Sunset on the beach

Grand Turks in the background - flat, flat, flat! Our ship had a medical emergency an hour or two after we took off and we had to turn around and go back to Grand Turks so we got to see the island again.

Fish lips

We learned how to make the towels into a dog and elephant one afternoon.

Chocolate Bar :) Sadly, I didn't love a lot of the food but especially the desserts. Next time we are going to branch out and not go for the cheapest cruise in hopes of slightly better food.

The ice sculpture guy was a dentist. Maybe there is a place for us on a cruise ship!

10 year anniversary - St. Thomas and Puerto Rico

One night at dinner, I ordered peach soup. This is what they brought me. Thayne started cracking up. The did come pour some soupy stuff over the top later. And it was delicious. I ordered it for dessert again.

Our next stop was St. Thomas. This was my favorite port. St. Thomas had a lot to do and was beautiful. We had fun walking around and went on an excursion through the cruise ship to the other side of the island to a private beach to snorkel. The private beach was just so so but the adventure of driving in the open air cabs all through St. Thomas was great.

We walked to some shopping first thing in the morning.

Snorkeling

The private beach

They had these gigantic lizards on St. Thomas. They weren't very afraid of humans and could climb trees super fast.

The view from a look out on top of the island.

Puerto Rico

We did a city tour. Puerto Rico was an interesting place. Lots of people. Not enough jobs. Our tour guide gave us the low down on politics and who wants to be a state and who doesn't. It seems as if most of the country doesn't want to be a state because they don't have to pay federal taxes but they still get all the benefits of food stamps, insurance, and social security.

Upside down in the capitol

Capitol building

An old pirate ship

Puerto Rico has these cool fortresses and castles that you can explore.

10 year anniversary - the cruise

Thayne and I had our 10 year anniversary this past December. We decided it was time we took some time for just us and left the kids with my sister and took off on a 7 day cruise. The first 5 days were heaven and then I started to miss the kids. I loved the time with Thayne. It's so easy with the two of us. Less to pack, less complaining, and just constant fun. He really does make me so happy and it makes me excited to grow old with him. It was really nice to turn off our phones and put everything business related out of our heads for a week.
We took a red-eye flight to Florida. The first flight was our long flight and we were put next to a very obese lady so we had a seat and a half to share between two of us and no leg room. We didn't sleep. It was pretty miserable. We got to the cruise terminal early and tried to get some shut eye. Thayne rocks his eye cover.

The first day was at sea and the second day was on Carnival's private island. The sand was AMAZING! Better than anything I've ever seen in Hawaii or Florida. I'm thinking now it was probably imported in. It was nice to hang out on the beach, swim, eat, and do nothing. The water had been kind of rocky leading up to this day so it was nice to get on ground that didn't move. I got pretty sick one afternoon on board the ship but felt better after I threw up. It was probably just as much pregnancy related as anything. It was perfect timing in the pregnancy to get away though. I was around 16 weeks along and still somewhat slim.

We loved the 80 degree weather all week. Meanwhile in Utah, it was snowing and cold. It was hard to come back to.

Weird chairs. A lot of the decor was weird.

The wind would make shuffle board difficult.

Sunday night they had a Hanukkah service that we joined in on. It's fun to experience other cultures.

Love the maid service!

The cruise ship had these weird pictures all over it. I started nicknaming them as the week progressed.

Christmas Day 2015

Christmas was once again magical with little kids.

Kenzie got her beloved Elsa doll. She saw it at Costco one day in December and talked about it all month and how Santa was bringing her that. I'm pretty sure she would have been completely satisfied with just her $9 doll.

Forget the other toys!

She seriously LOVES her.

Lexi saw a My Little Pony toy at DI one day and insisted that's what Kenz wanted for Christmas. She was so excited to give it to her.

We had a sleep over in front of the Christmas tree a few nights before Christmas.

Close up of Tyson sleeping with a book under his arm. This is so him.

Uncle Adam threw a great Christmas party.

Kids playing a game

Thayne's highlight of the Christmas party at Adam's is the shotgun shooting. They were playing around at the end trying to shoot some barbed wire. He says the fence was probably already this way but he'll take the credit for that piece of wire hanging down.