6 years!

May 20, 2012 marked our 6 year anniversary! We celebrated on our cruise! Looking forward to many more! I have a serving tray with areas for pictures. I decided 6 years ago I would put a picture of us each year on May 20 so we can see how much we have changed!

Freedom on the Carnival Freedom

Mark and I had a wonderful trip to celebrate our 6th anniversary! We took an eight day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Freedom! My quote was "Eight days and not a sippy cup or diaper in sight! Nice!!" Our itinerary included days at sea, St Thomas, Antigua, Tortola and the Bahamas. It was so nice to read, relax and hang out with my fabulous husband. We missed the little one but it was wonderful! Thank you to our parents for splitting Madeline duty for the week!

May 20, 2012- our 6th anniversary and it was formal night on the ship

Here we are before a show in the theatre

On the beaches of St. Thomas. We then headed to our traditional drinking place for nachos and bushwackers, as we have for the last 4 times we have been to St. Thomas. It is our fun tradition!

On the ship, there was an adults-only retreat called Serenity. I loved these hammocks.

Antigua (locals pronounce it antiga, which goes against my spanish pronunciation of the word meaning "old" but I like to sound like a local)

We took a catamaran sail around the entire island of Antigua. The crew was awesome and lively, we snorkelled and also sailed quite fast through rough waters. It was fun!!

Devil's Bridge in Antigua

In Tortola, Mark headed off on a fishing charter and I took a boat to Jost Van Dyke. Here is a beautiful picture: a bushwacker on the Caribbean beach. I read and relaxed while soaking up the rays.

I took a walk and found this coconut!!

Ahhh, warm chocolate melting cake. My absolute favorite dessert and what I had every night of the cruise along with a glass of milk!

Fun with towel pals!

Here are our towel animals from our cruise! I love coming in from dinner and seeing what awaits us! Sometimes it is a little hard to decipher what the animal is. When I was hinting to Mark that I wanted to take a cruise, I made a stingray towel animal on his side of the bed. It worked!!

A bat
 
A rabbit
 
A seal

A frog

Mark thinks it is a swan, I think it is a scorpion. Maybe an anteater??

A pig

An elephant


Thanks, Ian (our room steward) for leaving these works of art for us! I love them!!!!

Final day of school

Here is Madeline on her last day of mothers morning out. It has been a wonderful year with Miss Mary and Miss Kim! If you look closely at her chin you can see her "tinkbell bam bam" which is a Tinkerbell bandaid. She scraped her chin at the gymnastics Jubilee (pics to come when I acquire them). Looking at this sweet angelic face, it is hard to believe the ruckus she caused a couple of weeks ago right before Mark and I left for vacation. She started climbing out of her crib the day before we left and continued to do it all week at the grandparents' houses. Sorry, grandparents!! Since we have been back we have been reminding her not to climb out and she is doing better. We are exploring our options. These little people are tough! They lull you into thinking all is well and then they pull an antic and you have to adapt! I am sure this will continue her whole life...

Make Your Own Pizza

One of our dinner nights is pizza night! Madeline has the best time making the pizza but doesn't really care for it once it is cooked. She likes to eat the cheese and turkey pepperoni during preparation. Someday she'll make it to Bertucci's...

River Trip

Mark finally got his wish! He's been wanting to take his ladies out in the boat for a long time. I am not into fishing so I have been resisting this idea but one morning I surprised him and asked him to take us out. We picked up a picnic lunch and we had a really good time! Madeline did great in the confined area.

Madeline didn't want to touch the fish Mark caught.

He is risen!

We had a wonderful day celebrating Easter!

Madeline's new Easter dress.

On the shuttle to church...

On the church stairs

My crazy monkey. She seriously is everywhere, all the time!