So Rob and I celebrated our 10 YEAR Wedding Anniversary this year! So crazy! We knew we wanted to go on a vacation together for it since it had been about four years since we'd gone on a trip alone together. We got a lovely tax return so decided we could use some of that to help pay for our Anniversary trip. We tossed around a few ideas and went back and forth a lot. We decided to go during Spring Break because then Diana and Anisten would both be out of school and they wouldn't have to worry about working around that. We finally decided on another cruise. (Cruises are our favorite!!!) But just a short 3 night one this time since we'd only be gone about five days. We decided to leave out of Miami, Florida since that is a place neither one of us had been before and thought it would be cool to see. We ended up booking about a month before we were set to leave...that's how long it took for us to decide. But...we made a Great choice!
Now, I'm one of those crazy stay at home Moms who finds it hard to be away from her children. Maybe I'm alone in this, but it was really difficult for me to leave my girls. Especially because when we told them we were going away for five days on a vacation they started crying. Even though we told them they'd get to go to Grandma's house and have lots of fun, they still cried and had several breakdowns about it in the weeks leading up to our departure. So I was feeling lots of guilt and also sadness because I knew I'd miss my girls too. We had to explain to them that it's a good thing for mommies and daddies to go away together and that it benefits the whole family not just mom and dad. I explained to them that it is a blessing that Rob and I love each other and going on a trip together will help keep our marriage strong and that will work out for the best for our whole family in the end. We ended up having Rob give them a blessing before we left and they did amazing. They were going to be staying at Gma and Gpa Stevenson's for Wednesday night (we put them to bed there) through Saturday and then my parents would take them to the Rollins and they'd stay there until we got home on Tuesday. I had a harder time saying goodbye than they did, but I made sure they didn't see me cry.
Rob and I got up early (about 3:30 am) on Thursday morning to head to the airport so we'd be there in time for our flight to leave at 6:20 am. There were some lines, but we made it in time and got on our flight to Texas. After that we had to run to our next flight because our layover was only 30 minutes, but we actually landed about 20 minutes early so we had enough time without having to worry about missing it. It worked out perfectly for us to go to the bathroom and then get loaded on the next flight. The flights were pretty turbulent and I got kind of nauseous on the second one, but it was okay. I had a hard time sleeping, but I always do on airplanes. I don't fly often enough to own one of those wonderful neck pillows that would've been so nice to have. Once we landed in Miami I called home and got to talk to my girls for a minute. They were doing fine and I cried again when I got off the phone. (Come on Brianne, pull it together!!)
Early morning airport picture (maybe that's why its so fuzzy..?)
Early morning airport picture (maybe that's why its so fuzzy..?)
Here is Rob waiting at the car rental place. I know it seems like I was a sad wreck, but I was seriously so happy and excited to be spending some one on one time with my best friend. It doesn't happen often and it was very much appreciated.
We found our hotel and then decided to do some sight seeing. Driving in Miami was one of the most terrifying things I have done. I was sure we weren't gonna make it without some kind of casualty, but miraculously we did. The people there drive like it is every man for himself so you had to constantly be watching for someone to cut you off. It was nuts and the fact that I was in the passenger's seat made me even more nervous because I had absolutely no control over it. But it was nice to look at beautiful Miami. Here is a picture of us crossing the bridge looking back at the huge city.
We tried to find the famous Miami Beach, but could not find a parking place anywhere and after driving around for almost an hour, I was starving and getting a headache, so we headed off in a different direction hoping to make it to the beach on Monday. We found The Cheesecake Factory in a cute side of town called Coconut Grove. Rob thinks I'm so funny that when we go on vacation I always look for things that are familiar, whereas he likes to eat places we've never been before and can't go to back at home. I totally get his point, but this night I was so hungry and tired of driving around that we just went with comfort. And honestly, there are about a million things on the Cheesecake Factory menu, I could eat there a thousand times and it would always be different. :) It was delicious of course and we loved walking around this cute little shopping area. We asked the waitress how to get to the beach and she gave us some directions to get to A beach although it wasn't the big main beach that you see in the movies.
It was good enough for us at the time though and we were excited to take a walk together on the beach and watch the sunset. It was amazing.
There was this little strip near the beach by the bridge that all these people were fishing off of, so we went and checked it out. There were so many people with tents and little kids out there fishing. It was crazy for a Thursday night in March, but apparently normal in Miami.
The view of the city was incredible. One of the buildings kept changing color
So cool. We headed back to the hotel (although we did get kind of lost on the way because we got stuck in a carpool lane with barriers so you couldn't get out of it for like 10 minutes. I thought we were gonna end up in Fort Lauderdale!) and called the girls and said goodnight (no more tears this time. The girls were having a great time.) Then we went to bed and slept good that night after not getting much sleep the night before.
Day 2
The next morning we got up and returned our rental car and then caught a shuttle to our Cruise ship! Boarding began at 11, so we got there shortly after that and checked out our ship for the next few days.
Gorgeous
Miami in the background on the deck of our ship
Here is the pool area. People were already lounging and swimming. I loved it.
We went and enjoyed the buffet for lunch and then relaxed out on the deck and took some pictures of Miami. One of the first things I noticed when we were driving around Miami was that there were all these airplanes in the sky with these signs behind them and then I realized they were advertisements! You can't really put a billboard on the beach or in the ocean, so they had planes flying around with them. It looks pretty cloudy, but we honestly had the most perfect weather the whole trip because of the clouds. It was breezy most of the time and stayed in the 70's and never got hot. It was pretty much always the perfect temperature. Especially because I was super worried about getting fried with my pale Utah skin, so it was nice that the sun wasn't beating down on us all the time and I looked perfectly normal wearing my cardigan.
My view from the lawn chair
And we got our first glimpse of the elusive beach we'd had such a hard time finding the other day. Doesn't it look awesome? So much beach
I swear I was a beach bum in another life or something...maybe someday ;)
And we're cruisin...
We went inside and went to a class that I thought was going to give us some info about Nassau, but it actually just turned out to be a sales pitch about diamonds. I did win us a bunch of free stuff though because I was very vocal (hey, everyone just assumes everyone is drunk so if you act that way, no one finds it strange) and sat up front. We got a bunch of free Del Sol stuff and Cariloha necklaces. I knew the girls would love them so it worked out great. After that we freshened up and headed to dinner. I got the salmon the first night. So good. We also met our "Dinner buddies." The people we'd be dining with every night and we had the cutest black couple from Philadelphia sit by us. Her name was Josie and she talked my ear off all night long and I loved it. Man, they were great people and we lucked out because no one at our table drank alcohol, so we were in pretty mellow company the whole time which is how we like it (for the most part).
I told Rob he had to get the creme brulee for dessert and he thought I was crazy because he didn't even know what it was. Yeah, he liked it. Good call Bri
After dinner we went to a comedy show which was pretty funny and then walked around the ship watching all the dancing and drunk people and dancing. It was seriously so fun to just people watch. Rob had to order himself a virgin Miami Vice. It was yummy.
Here is some of the dancing that went on. I was itching to join in, but Rob isn't one to dance and I wasn't really wanting to jump in all alone. We did join in the train at one point, but I actually felt a little out of place dancing in the nightclub so we headed off to bed. There was always something to do though on this ship. It was a blast.
Day 3
The next morning we got up and ate breakfast and then headed to COCOCAY!! Here we are on the ferry boat.
The next morning we got up and ate breakfast and then headed to COCOCAY!! Here we are on the ferry boat.
A look back at our ship
Our first glimpses of CocoCay...
Cococay is a private Royal Caribbean Island and so the people from our cruise ship were the only people there. It was amazing and by far my favorite part of the trip.
The Island King
How incredible is this?? I could get used to this for sure
Cococay is a private Royal Caribbean Island and so the people from our cruise ship were the only people there. It was amazing and by far my favorite part of the trip.
The Island King
We watched a YouTube video of CocoCay before we came and someone tipped us off saying that if you keep walking past the first couple of beaches around the island you will get to Barefoot Beach where the sand is so soft and it's much less crowded. Rob and I headed straight there and found it and we were so glad we did.
The sand felt amazing on your feet and there were hardly any people. We had our pick of the lawn chairs and felt totally comfortable leaving our stuff to go explore the ocean.
It was like we had our own private island. :) You can see how light it is for quite a ways out in the water and that's because the water was so shallow all the way out there. We walked all the way out to the edge of it and even beyond (which was just dark seaweed mostly). We saw 2 or 3 stingrays not 2 feet away from us and we even saw some big fish!! It was so cool! We loved just walking around in the water exploring and finding seashells for the girls.
We went and ate lunch on the island which was burgers and hot dogs and all kinds of good food and then headed back to Barefoot Beach and found that our beach had grown! The tide had gone out and all the water that we had walked in before was gone leaving an incredibly long beach. So we walked out again (easier this time) and were still able to see some amazing sea life. The place I'm sitting in this picture was covered in three feet of water an hour earlier. So crazy. Just me, the beach and the ocean in this picture. I love it.
We still had some time before we had to head back to the ship, so we decided to walk around the island. Like literally, walk around the entire island. For the most part at least, there were some places that we couldn't walk because they were closed off for the workers living there (best job ever!), but it was a pretty good and beautiful and fun walk. I loved it. This was from a little lookout point.
There's our ship!
This activity was...Climb the tree (not really, but we did anyway)
Here were some interesting things we saw on our walk
Not sure what these were exactly...some old ruins of some kind
Black Beard's grave...Now we know
Not sure what these were exactly...some old ruins of some kind
How cool was this with the low hanging trees? So pretty
After our walk we went back in the ocean a little bit and hung out in a hammock together. It was seriously the perfect day in the perfect place with the perfect person. I did not want it to end.
But...end it must. We went back to the ship to get ready for dinner.
We went up on deck before we had to be to dinner and watched our wonderful CocoCay drifting away. Such a fun place
Here is a picture of me and our fun dinner buddy Josie
Rob all snazzied up eating his yummy dessert (cheesecake tonight)
We were gonna go to the
comedy show again, but it didn't start for awhile and I honestly could
not keep my eyes open any longer so I told Rob I needed to go back to
the room for a "little nap." This was there to greet us :)
Well I zonked out almost immediately and
Rob ended up falling asleep too. We just can't party like the
youngsters anymore. ;) It was okay though. We woke up and changed and
watched Parks and Rec and then went to bed. Still a perfect day.
Day 4
The next morning we woke up in Nassau, Bahamas!! It was beautiful. We ate breakfast and then headed down to go on our excursion which was snorkeling. We got on this fun party yacht and rode about 20 minutes or so to our snorkeling spot.
A picture of our ship as well as some others
A view from our boat of the Bahamian city
Me all ready to go in my snorkel gear
This is our snorkeling spot. It was so much fun! I haven't snorkeled in a very long time and
actually don't remember liking it that much, but this was amazing. I
loved looking at all the beautiful fish swimming right by me. The only
complaint I might have is the salt water that would get in my mouth
every once in awhile. Yuck.
Rob getting back on the boat after snorkeling. He was one of the last ones to get back on. He just couldn't get enough. My Adventurer
Part of the fun was the boat ride back and forth. They had music playing (think Bob Marley) and there was so much to see.
Atlantis
Rockin the windblown look (yikes!)
We went inside and changed and then went to do some shopping in the Bahamas. We got the girls some Del Sol shirts and some little purses in these markets with their names stitched in them.
Ani got Hello Kitty, Aivree got Elsa, and Alivia got Minnie Mouse
We saw this guy in the market carving this fish. It was amazing!
We decided to head back to the boat for lunch and I thought I'd take a picture of mine. It was different everyday, but here is a sampling of what they had. It was good and I really enjoyed that I could take however much I wanted of whatever I wanted and I didn't have to make it or do the dishes! Gotta love vacations.
Here are some pictures of the beautiful Island of Nassau
We loved to watch our ship as it sailed away from wherever we were. We got a good view of Atlantis, the enormous fancy hotel with the giant waterpark. We could've gone there for an excursion, but didn't feel it necessary to drop $400 on a waterpark.
Our snorkeling guide told us that the arch between the buildings is not a bridge, but actually a hotel room that cost $30,000 a night to stay in!! I guess Michael Jackson stayed there once. So pretty
Can't forget the King of the World pictures off the front of the ship. It was super windy
Here is the sign with the name of our ship "Majesty of the Seas"
I had to get a picture of this...we had all the ice cream we could want. :)
There wasn't a lot going on that night that we wanted to participate in so we just went up and sat a table, looked at the view and talked. Just me and my babe. It was wonderful. And kind of sad, because we were on our way back to Florida now and that meant our trip was almost over.
Day 5
Day 5
The next morning we got up and ate breakfast and cleaned up and then headed off the boat. It was honestly the easiest disembarkation we've ever had on a cruise. Usually you have times and colors and you can only leave at a certain time and place, but when we were ready to leave they said..go ahead! The only bad part was the customs line was incredibly long, but that's a given.
After leaving our wonderful ship we got a shuttle back to the car rental place to get our rental car. We then headed back to find Miami Beach. I had looked up parking and there were a bunch of parking garages that had cheap parking, we just didn't know about them before. We found one quickly and then I headed off in the direction that I was certain the beach was, but Rob wasn't sure so we asked some guy. He didn't seem sure (really, you work here and you don't know how to get to the beach? That's a shame) but looked at the GPS on his phone and told us to go in a different direction than I thought. So, for some reason, we listened to the stranger. We walked and walked and enjoyed the beautiful homes and imagined what it might be like to live a short distance from the beach. There were lizards crawling on the sidewalk everywhere. We finally asked a cop that was sitting in his car and he gave us some directions to get there. Turns out my instincts were right and we just took a VERY round about way to get to the beach. But hey, we were on vacation and didn't really have anywhere to be so we weren't that disappointed that we got a nice walk in together. We did eventually make it to that darn beach. I mean, it's miles and miles long you wouldn't think it would be so hard.
It was amazing though. Not quite the seclusion of our amazing CocoCay beach, but still pretty cool. It was fun to listen to the waves here and see the miles and miles of beach and ocean.
Here I am taking a dip in the ocean...very refreshing
And then Rob went. We didn't trust this beach as much as CocoCay, so we didn't want to leave our stuff (money) unattended
Postcard Picture:
My babe and I at Miami Beach
We did happen to see a topless woman as well, so there ya go. Miami for ya.
After the beach and some sun (which I did happen to get a little sunburned on the last day of our trip, of course, but it wasn't bad) we went and ate lunch and this delicious little Italian place just walking distance from the beach. I think it was just called Pizzafiore.
We then walked back to our car in about five minutes and realized how close we'd actually been to the beach before listening to Mr. GPS.
We then drove to our hotel, a Marriott this time, which we loved. We relaxed there for a little while and found a restaurant to go to for dinner. It was back in Coconut Grove and it was called Scotty's Landing. It was nice because we got to sit right by the ocean for dinner.
Rob finally got his ceviche that he'd been wanting to try the whole time
And a nice big seafood platter.
We walked to a little market near the restaurant and found my favorite...Skinny Pop! And they had a white cheddar kind too, something we hadn't seen yet back in Utah. Score!
We had to retire early to bed that night because it was gonna be another early morning for us. Our plane left at 6:30am so we had to be up at 3:30ish again. Everything went well with our flights except that during our layover in Texas we waited at the wrong gate until almost boarding time. The sign said our gate was B81B, so we saw that and found B8-1B, when in reality it was B81-B. We were pretty much all alone waiting for our next flight, we got a yummy donut at Shipleys and then at about 15 minutes to departure time, Rob figured it out and we started running through the airport to get to the right gate. Luckily we made it there in plenty of time and due to a delay, they hadn't even started boarding yet (tender mercy right there). It was an adventure. You gotta run through the airport at least once in your life. Our flight from Texas to Utah seemed extra long and I think it was because he couldn't land right away or something because of all the SNOW! Yeah...we left Florida to come home to a big lovely April snowstorm in Utah. I'm not gonna lie, I was not happy.
But I was looking forward to seeing my girls (and I'm sure Grandma and Grandpa were looking forward to seeing US!). This sign was up in the Rollins garage for us to see. There was a cute Anniversary card on it for us. When we walked in I picked up Alivia from Grandma's lap and she just kept smiling this big smile and giving me hugs. It was so cute. The girls were excited we were home and even more excited for us to give them their presents. ;) Not surprising.
This was in our garage when we pulled in at home. So cute
And once the snow decided to leave and the sun came back out, I got a picture of the girls in their new Del Sol shirts. Cutie bugs.
Looking back, I think that I could probably go on a vacation without the girls again and it would be easier. I knew they were in good hands and I had an absolute blast. In fact, it was super hard coming back to reality. The problem is, it will probably be another four or five years before we go on a trip again so it probably will be hard on me by then.
I am so grateful for the time Rob and I had to spend together. It was the perfect way to celebrate our 10 years of marriage. It's been a fun and exciting and sometimes difficult road, and I wouldn't want it any other way than having him by my side.
Our Happily Forever
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