This February the girls had their very first international meet in Orlando Florida! And since the meet happened to be only 10 minutes from Universal Studios, we decided to add a day of Family Fun at Universal Studios before heading home from Florida. Our oldest son has read the entire Harry Potter series more than once as well as some of the “bonus books” like Fantastical Beasts and Quidditch Through the Ages… child number two got into the Harry Potter phase this fall and is currently reading book 5.

Our final port of call was St Kitts. . We didn’t really have a game plan for St Kitts. All we knew was we wanted to find monkeys and a beach with some shells and snorkeling. We found a taxi driver who could take us to both! After getting a chance to hold the monkeys, we set off for the beach. Here we enjoyed several hours of sand, sun, swimming, sea shells, and snorkeling.

When we found out the itinerary for the family cruise, Scott and I were super excited to see that the ship would be stopping at St Thomas… this meant that we could take an excursion to St John and visit US Virgin Island National Park!!! That’s right, another vacation with a sign pic for the circus crew!! National parks rarely disappoint and St. John was no exception. St John was our family’s favorite day of the vacation (and there were a lot of good days)!

Our youngest daughter turned 10 during our vacation. It was the second year in a row that her birthday fell during our vacation. At first she wasn’t very excited about having to celebrate her birthday away from home….but turns out a Caribbean cruise isn’t too bad a place to celebrate ones birthday. She has told me in the past that SOMEDAY, she would like to have an ice skating party. Um, Ice skating parties in July can be a tad tricky….

Once we had our clothing situation resolved, a weight was lifted from our shoulders and were ready to show the kids the Caribbean. We were thankful we were able to get our errand running out of the way early and get the kids so we could hit the beach. We were off the ship for round 2 before 9 am! We had decided ahead of time that our plan for Nassau was to walk to nearby Junkanoo Beach.

The day before we left for vacation, I had commented to a friend that I found packing for our cruise to be more challenging than any other vacation because this was the first vacation we’d gone on where if we forgot something we couldn’t just run to Wal-mart to pick up what we needed… Turns out I was worried for good reason, b/c when we arrived at the curb of the airport, we realized we had left behind one of our larger suitcases… the one with all of my and Scott’s underclothes and shorts and every day type clothing (it also had some decorations for our daughters 10th birthday that I was really excited about :-(.

I LOVE hosting Christmas. And I am so thankful that my extended family allows me that privilege. I am thankful that they all have been willing and able to come year after year so we could share the day together. I don’t take it for granted. I know my parents won’t always be able to travel. I know my BIL and SIL can get stationed so far away that it just doesn’t make a trip to MD possible.

About a month ago my youngest asked when we would see the Statue of Liberty again. We visited it a few years ago on our way to our Boston Vacation, and it has been a highlight memory of our youngest child ever since. He loves when we spot it on tv or in a picture somewhere. I replied, “Probably the next time we go to New York City.” To which he of course replied, “When can we go to New York City again?

A quick search through old posts and you will discover that I am a complete sap about gap toothed smiles. In my humble opinion, they are beyond precious and absolutely adorable. So, when our youngest lost his first tooth this week, I was completely smitten. It’s been loose for awhile, but unlike my other children he wasn’t eager to pull it. No light saber pulling, or tying the tooth the the door knob.

We’ve been home two and a half weeks and I am finally taking time to record the moments of our last day of vacation…. this is proof positive that I am glad I took the time to record our memories while on vacation b/c there is no way I could have gone back and done it once home. We woke up QUITE cold on our last full day of vacation at Great Basin National Park.