Thanksgiving Point--Tulip Festival

The end of April we went with our good friends to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point.  It was a BEAUTIFUL day.  We loved being outside, enjoying the warm weather, and visiting with friends.

Loving the water 

and Daddy

Looking for fish

Beautiful Flowers

To be a child...

Aliyah's got it made...

She gets to drink the milk out of cereal bowls that are bigger than her head

and wear a dress day and night...always, no matter what...because she is a princess.

This is her singing Cinderella's "A Dream is a Wish"...but it's just snips not the sounds but I think it's still cute to watch her mannerisms.

While We Were Away

Aliyah got to play with cousins ALL WEEK long.  Here are some pictures of her on Easter.

 

The Easter Bunny left her Cinderella slippers and necklaces.

  And the girls of the house

We were so excited to see Aliyah after being gone for 6 days.  The journey home was rough--delayed flight which made us almost miss the second flight--but we eventually made it.  When we picked her up I think she was pretty excited, but she wasn't excited to come home with us.  She was perfectly content staying and playing with cousins.  At least we knew that she had fun and was well taken care of!

It was a wonderful vacation-much needed. But there's nothing like being home.

Cruising--Day at Sea

It was nice that we had our Sea Day on Sunday and that it was Easter.  The cruise only does a religious gathering on holidays, so we were able to have a inter-denomination meeting.  The cruise director said a prayer and spoke first then opened it for others to come up and share.  It was cool to see who went up and what they had to say: there was an LDS woman, a Catholic woman who shared a prayer, 2 women sang, a big tall African American, and Dave.  He was amazing.  He started out by talking about leaving Aliyah and apologized if he cried while talking about her.  One woman behind me said, "that's okay baby!"  He went on to talk about how it is through Jesus Christ that we will be able to return to live with our Heavenly Father and connected it to our returning to Aliyah.  There were a lot of people "amen"-ing the things Dave said.  He even shared a scripture from 3 Nephi.  He was the only one to get people crying.  The Spirit was strong.  It was such a great way to feel the truth of the gospel.  So proud of Dave...I guess he couldn't resist a pulpit!

We actually had a number of opportunities to talk about the church throughout our vacation: a man sitting next to us on one of our flights, our dinner table friends who were Jehovah Witnesses and the inter-denomination meeting.  We love those opportunities!

The rest of the day we slept, relaxed, and ate.  We enjoyed our last dinner with our dinner table friends and then decided to go do Karaoke with them.  Dave was a good sport and went up to sing with me...to keep with the spirit of the day we sang...Don't Stop Believin'...see the religious connection!?

You have to admit that Dave and I have some mad dancing skills....

 and that we are really good at looking...cool!

This trip was just what we needed to stay sane!  We were grateful for the time to be able to focus on each other, catch up on sleep, eat lots of food, meet wonderful people, and see incredible places.  

Cruising-Cozumel, Mexico

 We debated for a good long while what to do while in Cozumel.  We ended up doing a cruise excursion that took us to the Mayan ruin of Tulum.  We loved it.  We were able to see a little bit of the culture and history but also got to go to the beach.  We were AMAZED at the water--so clear and incredible blues.  We had a quick ferry ride over to the mainland and a 45 minute bus ride before getting to Tulum...so a bit of traveling but well worth it!

Tulum was built on a cliff and the main building acted as a light house.  

Here's looking to the beach below...

 and looking up at the "light house" building from the beach...

Look at the different blues in the water...seriously so beautiful!

Tulum!

Cruising-Key West

Our first port was at Key West.  Dave and I did some research and found that we could save $140 by not doing a cruise excursion to go parasailing, but by going directly to the company. We were glad we did it!

Here we are waiting for our turn.  You can see our cruise ships "tail" in the far distant background.  

Please note our AWESOME burns on our arms...we are really cool.

And going up...

...getting dunked...

 ...enjoying the BEAUTIFUl view...

 ...the landing...

Seriously, so fun.  It was even better that we got to go up together. It was cool to see where we were and the beautiful water that surrounded us.

After parasailing we walked around Key West.  We debated going on a number of tours, but after looking at lines and price decided to just enjoy the town.

Here we are at the southern most point of the United States.

Then on to get some Key Lime pie.  Dave and I are big fans of Key Lime pie (it was served at our wedding luncheon).  So we were looking forward to it.  Dave got the classic pie, which was pretty darn good.

 And I got the Key Lime pie on a stick dipped in chocolate...it was amazing.  

We walked back to our ship, had lunch and enjoyed the afternoon basking in the sun reading books.  

Before dinner we went to change and found the "housekeeper" dude had left us this little towel creature...wearing my sun glasses.   

Growing Up and Getting Away

It is so sad to see Aliyah grow up.  She is not a baby, at all, by any means, whatsoever, and yet...we still call her baby.  Here she is eating an apple like a big girl--just picked it up from the fruit bowl and started eating--and she loved it.  (and she'll pick up a new one without getting very far on the other, so I have to watch her!)

Here's Aliyah playing with Dave.  She told them where they were supposed to hide and then just laid their and snuggled together.

The Monday before Easter we had our Easter FHE lesson (Dave and I would be gone on Easter so we wanted to make sure we taught Aliyah a little something!)  I filled some plastic easter eggs with scriptures and candy and then "hid" them around the living room for Aliyah to find.  After explaining just once she knew what she was supposed to do and found all of the eggs (except one that even I had forgotten where I had hid).  She loved finding the eggs and putting them in the basket.

                    

                    

After she found the basket we opened all the eggs and read through the scriptures and talked about Christ's last week before His Resurrection.  At the end I asked Aliyah if she would follow Jesus and she said, "No."  We asked her why.  She said, "Because Jesus was crucified."  Uhhh, what! That's a pretty good reason.  We then explained about how Christ was resurrected, perfect, and all better, then asked once again if she would follow Jesus example so she could live with Heavenly Father again.  She said yes!  Whew...

On to the Getting Away part...Dave and I had to get away.  So over Dave's short spring break and in celebration of our 5 year anniversary, Dave and I went on a west Caribbean cruise.  We left Aliyah with Dave's sisters family. We were so sick to our stomach that morning we dropped her off!  We knew she would be fine, but she was out of our control...terrible feeling!  We got over it soon enough.  The 8 hours of flying/layover was even a welcome retreat as were able to relax, read, talk, watch a movie.  The hotel we stayed in not so welcoming.  The room was tiny, had tile floors (so we could hear people rolling their luggage down the hall at 3 and 4 and 5 pm) and thin enough walls to hear people talking on the other side! It was a rough night...but made the cruise itself even that more wonderful!

Here we are on the cruise ship with the Miami skyline in the background.  Do you see how happy we were!  We didn't even leave the port for another 4 hours after this...we just were on the ship, eating food, reading books, and getting burned...it was awesome!