Bella, Gabe and Josiah

For our last day in St Augustine, we decided to go stay in town, wandering the shops and watching the cannon demonstrations at the fort. Once again, things did not go as planned... There was a cafe downstairs from our apartment, so we decided to go down and get some breakfast. All was well. Then the food showed up and Gabe suddenly got very snuggly. He refused to eat and spent all of breakfast leaning on my arm. It was rather odd, considering the fact that he’d been perfectly fine before. Rather than going to the 10:30 cannon firing, we decided to go back upstairs and get Gabe more water and see if we could cool him off. He ended up falling asleep on my chest. Bella really wanted to go to Barnes and Noble, so she and Pat did that while Gabe slept. Eventually he woke up and I got some food and water down him. I figured that maybe he was just wiped out from the trip? Pat and Bella got home and Pat picked up Gabe to snuggle. Gabe responded by throwing up all over him.

When we decided to stay in St Augustine for the week, we started looking at things to do near us and Pat found a waterpark in Daytona Beach. We weren’t sure what the plan was for the week, but we kept it in mind. Yesterday we decided that we needed a beach day, so we decided to head down to Daytona Beach. However, we checked the weather and a thunderstorm was coming through. We did not want to repeat Atlantis, so we decided to skip Daytona Lagoon. We drove down to the Daytona Boardwalk and when we parked we realized that we were right next to the Lagoon. Instead, we headed down to the beach. Pat had to run back to the car to get something and while Gabe and I were waiting, a balloon man came by and gave Gabe a hat and a doggie on a leash. The hat didn’t last too long, but the doggie made it all day! We couldn’t find a place to change and the water was a little rough, so we decided to ask the water park about the storm situation. It was about one and we hadn’t eaten lunc

Sometimes you have days where nothing turns out the way that you plan. That was yesterday. We headed out to Fort Matanzas. We had two different people on Tuesday tell us that we definitely needed to go out there, so we did. However, there was a storm planning on coming through, so they canceled the ferry to the fort and we didn’t feel like waiting for another hour, so we left. As we were getting back to town, the storm hit. Really, it wasn’t bad, it just poured for a few minutes. Those just happened to be the few minutes that we were trying to figure out where to eat lunch and deciding if we were willing to even get out of the car.  After lunch, we went to the Pirate museum. St Augustine had a huge pirate heritage and the museum was amazing! Gabe had a great time exploring. This is one of two actual jolly rogers still in existence. They had a cannon you could fire. I fired it while Gabe was about a foot away and he jumped so far! He refused to try aft

The nice thing about staying at an AirBnB is that you can get a place with a kitchen and a second bedroom for the kids to sleep in. The bad thing is that this apartment is right above a cafe that started playing music at 7am. Luckily I think I was the only one that woke up to it... Once everyone else was up and going, we met up with Pat’s friend Loyal from high school. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly 20 years, so clearly there was a lot to catch up on. After a lovely brunch, they had to get going, so we left to explore the Castillo de San Marcos, which was built to defend St Augustine. The fort went back and forth a few times over who owned it due to politics, but it was never once defeated. (This is his current “cheese” face.) They do a live cannon firings sometimes, so we may try and see one of those later in the week. It was pretty hot and we were all wiped out, so we headed home to take a nap. Afterwards, we walked back into town where we got to ex

We’ve been asking a lot of Gabe on this trip. Naps have been short and sometimes nonexistent. Bedtime has been crazy late (we couldn’t even get in the dining room until 8:15...). We haven’t had a whole lot of snacks and his bottle before bed has basically disappeared because we haven’t had milk. It’s a lot for a little guy. But he’s done so well. That said, we may have found our limit. When you don’t have dinner until 8:15, bedtime ends up being between 10 and 10:30. As long as you can sleep in, this can be done. But when you have to be ready to be off the ship by 7:15am, this gets complicated. We picked sleep over breakfast and woke both kids up at 7 so we could throw our pjs in the suitcase and be ready to go when they called our deck.  They didn’t call our deck until 8:30, so we had time to kill while we waited. Gabe found half a bag of bunny crackers in his backpack, so he had a little snack. When they called our deck, we joined the masses of people trying to get off th

Today did not go as planned. At all... Today we stopped in Nassau, The Bahamas. We decided that we would go to Atlantis for the day. It was pretty expensive, but how could we skip the biggest water park in the world? (I think it’s the biggest. I read it on a sign down here...) Since our swim diaper explosion in Naples, I was a little concerned about having Gabe in a swim diaper all day. He and I had long chat about filling his diaper before we got to the park. Apparently he listened as he filled it while we were sitting in the theater waiting to head to Atlantis. Sweet, one less thing to worry about today! However, we didn’t have time to change his diaper before leaving. No big deal, we’ll just change it when we get there. Unfortunately, it did not smell pretty. We got off the ship and I carried him all the way down the dock to the van. As we were waiting in line for the van, I realized that his diaper was failing him. Lovely. We got on the van and I felt the need to apolog

I’ve always struggled with Caribbean cruises because you don’t actually get to enjoy the culture of the island. Often you land on the cruise line’s private island, which is nothing like actually being on the island. So when I found out that we were going to Half Moon Cay, Carnival’s private island, I was not really looking forward to it. Where is the culture? Where are the locals? What is the point of a fake island??? Now that I’ve been there, I have a different perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I still object to it as a matter of principle. However, that beach was amazing! The water was calm and clear and beautiful. It was the perfect temperature to cool off from the hot sun outside and it was pretty much the best day ever at the beach. Gabe is definitely a water boy now. I mean, he really liked playing in the sand, but he also kept telling me that he wanted to go in the deep water. After awhile, he’d tell me that “my feet want to touch the sand”. He’d let the waves bat him a

Tonight I put Gabe to bed. As I was doing that, Bella told me that she wanted to go to bed too, so I told them both good night and went back to our room. When I walked back to our room, Pat was standing on the balcony and said that he’d seen four lightning strikes. We then stood on the balcony for a long time, watching the lightning. The show is as good and all, but nothing like the first lightening show that Pat and I saw together. We were sitting together on the beach in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. We weren’t yet married, but I’d told Pat that before I could marry him, he needed to go to Nicaragua, so here he was. We’d spent some time in Port, and then decided to go to San Juan del Sur for a few days to relax before heading home. (It’s a good thing we did too, as Jacqui died a few days later, flipping our whole world upside down.) We finished dinner and walked down the beach, sitting down to watch the most incredible lightning show that I’ve ever seen across the bay. It was so a

Oh my word, my son. He was hanging on the glass separating us from the booth next to us at dinner. I told him to get down and stop hanging on the glass. Then I asked him to repeat what I said. He said “Stop being a monkey.” I don’t know what I’m going to do with this kid.

After everything fell apart with going to Nicaragua, we still had to figure out what to do with our vacation. (And to be honest, we still haven’t figured it out and we’re mid-vacation...) We looked into sitting on a Caribbean beach for awhile. We looked into Costa Rica. We looked into a trip to the Bahamas. But somehow nothing felt right. The one of Pat’s friends at work told us about a website to get discount cruise tickets. We looked into and realized that there was a cruise to the Bahamas that fit perfectly into our vacation and our budget, so we decided to go with that. On Thursday, we had a slower morning than the last few days. I even was able to go down to the fitness room and get in a run. Then when I was .75 miles into it, I got a text from Pat saying that he just realized that we had to turn the car in at 11, so my three mile run turned into a fast mile run... We got everything packed up, checked out and returned the car, then hopped a ride to the dock to board our cr

We’ve all ended up a little sunburned after all of our time at the beach in the last couple of days. Okay, Pat and I are sunburnt. Bella’s completely fine... Anyway, we decided that we should take a break from the beach and go to the zoo. Gabe loves animals, so we figured this would be perfect. However, we need to stop going to the zoo when it’s crazy hot out. We went to the San Diego Zoo before we got engaged and it was crazy hot. Then we went to the Portland Zoo with Uncle Matt and Auntie Rachael during a freak heat wave and we were dying. Bella and I went in Phoenix last Christmas and that was reasonable, so I guess we’re 1 for 4 on temperature, because today was crazy hot. 92 degrees, with humidity it feels like 103 kind of crazy. Oh well, we still had fun. We went to the mall yesterday and Gabe was eyeing the carousel. “Mommy, it stop. It going again. People on it.” So we decided to let him have his first ride. This had better be as close as he ever gets to