Day 7: Key West, Florida Keys

Finally, day 7! It's taken me longer than I expected it would to get through this on my blog, but here it is! Key West turned out to be one of my favorite destinations on the cruise. I wish we had more time to spend here. This place was one of the cutest places I have ever seen. The flowers were gorgeous, and the homes were adorable. This place had such charm.

View of one of the small islands from on the ship

I found this awesome bright red door and we used it to get some fun shots. I have a ton more. I love this door!

Beautiful



Gotta love this color outside of a key lime pie shop. I really wanted to try the famous key lime pie here but we never had the chance! Next time!



After a long walk, we finally made it to the beach.




Crazy tree


After we returned to the ship I indulged in more yumminess
I love you caribbean

The End!

Day 6: Day at sea

The evening of our excursion to the Grand Cayman, the captain came on the intercom to make an announcement. I could tell immediately in his voice that it wasn't going to be happy news. He talkeded about the Swine flu and announced that they had decided it was best that we don't go to Cozumel, Mexico.

We were pretty bummed. But I supported their decision 100%. I mean the likelihood of catching something being so far away from Mexico City seems low, but I certainly don't want to even take a chance of exposing my pregnant self or my family members to any kind of danger whatsoever. So I was ok with the decision as soon as I heard it. Later, they announced that we'de be going to Key West in the Florida Keys instead. (After the cruise my doctor told me that she preffered the Keys to Cozumel anyways, so that made me feel even better about it;)

So therefore, instead of day 6 being Cozumel, it was a day at sea. However, this morning is when I began to start really feeling sick. I decided to try to spend as much time as possible resting so I could enjoy the last excursion. I pretty much laid in bed for a majority of the day. Mom and Natalie brought me some lunch. Later on I pushed myself to get ready and went to dinner. I didn't start taking pictures until after dinner.

This night was a monkey for the towel animal.
Our favorite for sure. So cute!

Here's where the craziness began
Don't ask;)

Then we got serious for a minute

Oh, there we go

Our Lovely room

We ended up making ourselves laugh so hard. We were laughing uncontrollably. Not sure why exactly but I have not laughed this much in a long time. This is what girly vacations are for!

After we gained composure of ourselves, we went out for the Mexican Party on the outside deck. We had some nachoes at the buffet and some amazing desserts and watched people dance and be crazy.

Hello Monkey

Day 5: Belize

Belize was quite the eye opener for me. We took a tour of Belize City. It was full of poverty. This city was extrememly overpopulated and it was obvious. The homes were usually pretty close together, there were people everywhere, and junk was everywhere! I hadn't seen poverty like this before, and to think that there is still even worse poverty in other places in the world! Hard to believe! I didn't get any pictures, but I got lots of video. Maybe I'll have to make a video compilation someday.

After the city tour we took an almost hour drive to the Belizian country to see some Mayan Ruins. This was well worth the drive. Once you walk into the area with all the ruins, it was kind of breath taking. I couldn't help but try to picture how life was back when these ruins were daily life for some people. This place was so cool!

Face in the stone

Awesome Tree

Our tour guide (of Mayan descent herself)

The Sun God Temple

We climed to the top of the Sun God Temple
Awesome View

Ok, now all day long I had noticed some swelling in my ankles. I wasn't sure if it was a reaction from my sunburn, which in reality didn't seem bad enough to do that, or the humidity, or if it was pregnancy. I came to the conclusion that it may have been a mix of all or most of those things of those because mom had swollen ankles as well. And no you can't really tell in the pictures, thank goodness, but it was obvious up close!

So they were swollen all day, but I didn't really stop to look at them until we were back on the ship, in our room. I put my feet up on the bed and panicked! I had never seen my ankles like that before! And of course thanks to my hormones, I cried. My mom was trying to be sympathetic but mostly laughed while I looked horrifiedly towards my feet.

And of course I'll end with some soothing sea pictures.

Close your eyes and listen

We have a sister who recently moved from the ward, but she came back on Sunday to treat us, in relief society, to a little musical heaven. She sings in the tabernacle. I love to point her our whenever I see her. She has bright blond hair so it's not too hard. On Sunday she brought her mom with her to publicly thank her for pushing her to play the piano and for being so supportive. She asked her very old mom if she wanted to say anything. She shied away but then said "don't let 'em quite if they start!." Funny coming from such a small, brittle woman. We then had the privileged of listening to sister Olsen play this gorgeous song on the grand piano in our relief society.

I knew it was going to be awesome so I closed my eyes and just listened. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to benefit from others' talents such as this. Here is the song I found someone playing on youtube.

Day 4: Roatan, Honduras

Be prepared for some serious color. The colors painted on so many of the buildings and the color of the water was exactly what I pictured the Caribbean to be. I hope my pictures give you a small taste of just how awesome and colorful Honduras is. Honduras was also pretty much exactly how I pictured it; though I didn't really know what to expect.

We took a guided tour of Roatan. We packed into a small van and drove around on some, for the most part, well paved roads through the populated city/town, whatever you want to call it, and through the more naturey parts to the Garifuna center.

We watched some traditional dances performed by the descendants of African slaves. They even pulled me up there to dance with them. Rather embarrassing because it looked so easy but it wasn't when you actually try it; for me anyways! I'm sure I just looked ridiculous! My mom has video of it. We'll definitely have to keep that locked up in a vault somewhere.

We tasted their cassava bread that was made from a root of some kind; I can't remember. Quite good.

This place was fun, but definitely not even close to as authentic as I was expecting. Not even close. It was seriously so catered to tourists!

A cashew from the cashew tree. Lots of Cashew trees here. apparently it's quite the process to harvest and get cashews to the point that we find them in the stores. Now I know why they're so expensive!

Loved this blue wall! I wish I could have taken some of these colorful walls home with me!

Cute monkey on a leash

I wished Skyler was here to see these. He would have loved to see these. He likes beautiful birds like this, especially the ones that talk.

We boarded a motorized dory for a ride over to and through the mangrove tunnel. This was so simple but one of my favorite things/memories from any of the excursions. I thought the mangroves were awesome. I was just like a kid. I thought these trees with their crazy roots in the water were just the coolest thing.

A video of the mangrove tunnel

In the small dory, on the way back to land, it started pooring rain. It was coming down pretty hard. I thought it was pretty funny because we had no where to hide. It only rained for what seemed like 2 minutes or less and we came off the boat drenched!