Slow going….

Still didn’t get Taryn’s new room painted – but will get to that tomorrow after I shampoo her carpet.  Hopefully tomorrow night we can get her bed put up and she can start moving in.  I really hope it doesn’t take us a week to move her out of her old room, like it did with the other two girls… ughhh….

I was able to finish building the new hall cabinets today, but still need to put the doors on.  I’m so excited to have all that storage space! :)  And they’re really easy to assemble – thank you IKEA!!  Still haven’t decided what to put in them, but I’m sure they’ll fill up fast.

Looking west, into the new addition toward the playroom.

 
This is looking east, from the new playroom toward the rest of the house.

Phase I is completed!

So we’re all done with the addition… but we’re still working on moving bedrooms around and building cabinets and getting everything situated.  The current task is to move Madison & Cheyenne out of their old bedroom and into the new one. It is taking FOREVER!!  I started it last week and it took me 3 days to get the old room cleaned out.  So much junk!!  Next was to put everything we didn’t throw away into the new room, and that’s a major job too.  Such a challenge to find a spot for everything and organize it!!  However, it is an adorable room with its “Whimsy” lavender walls, white trim, and hardwood floor.  I installed a white window shade this morning that lets in light but gives privacy and keeps out the heat.  NICE.  We’ll get a curtain up and rugs for them once they get their new bedding.  They don’t have beds yet, because Logan is still using one of them and we haven’t had the other one delivered yet.  It should be here in a week or two.  Today Madison stayed home from school (wasn’t feeling well this morning), so I’ve had her helping me put all her stuff away…. I’m finally starting to see light at the end of that tunnel!!  Tonight I’m going to shampoo the carpet in the old room, and tomorrow I hope to start painting it so Taryn can move into it.

Stay tuned for “Before” and “After” shots!  Here’s the first one, of the outside.  I LOVE it!!  :)

This was taken back in June:
 

And this is today!

Bahamas Cruise – AMAZING.

So we took this cruise to the Bahamas for our 25th Anniversary.  We had a really good time—I’m so glad we did it!  I’ll try to sift through 200+ pictures and just hit the highlights.

On Wednesday we flew from Tucson to Jacksonville, Florida, with a 1-hour layover in Atlanta.  It took us 6 hours altogether.  We got to Jacksonville at around 10pm and stayed in a motel there.

The next morning we took the shuttle back to the airport, where we caught a bus to the ship.

And there it is!

There’s a miniature golf course and a jogging track at the front of the boat…

A swimming pool in the middle….
 

And some water slides and play area at the back.

These guys were entertaining us at the pool area.

And… there were DOLPHINS swimming in the water around the ship!!

This is the view out our window once we got out into the open ocean… not much to see.  Lots of water.

This is our Cruise Director, Squishy.  Yep… that was his name.

This is our stateroom… see the cute “seal” on the bed? :)  Each night we had a different animal.

On Friday we docked at Freeport, on Grand Bahama Island.  We took a Jeep Tour around Freeport.  We saw lots of cool stuff, including this “pirate ship” that was actually in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Apparently all the ships were built there in the Bahamas.

Here’s us in the back of the jeep we rented with another couple.  Braden and the other guy took turns driving.  Incidentally, Bahamians drive on the left side of the street!

We ate lunch at the Garden of the Groves…

Then ended up at this beach.

Ahhhh.  Dis wot I be talkin bout, Mon! :)

Braden found a starfish!

After that we went back to the ship for dinner.  Here’s what we found on our bed that night.

We got this picture taken after dinner.

On Saturday morning we woke up in Nassau which is the capital of the Bahamas.  It’s on another island south of Grand Bahama Island.  We were docked in a massively huge harbor, and this ship was there too… next cruise we want to take the kids on this one!  (better start saving our pennies….)

We got on this boat, the Lady Savannah… which took us out of the bay and into the ocean over a beautiful coral reef, where we went snorkeling!  We took some underwater photos but haven’t gotten the film back.  I’ll post those as soon as I get them (hopefully they will turn out.)

Remember Gilligan’s Island??  That’s it! :)

After snorkeling we went to this beach… the most beautiful white sand and clearest water I’ve ever seen!!  It was beautiful. We swam around in it for a while.
 

We passed Paradise Island, which is where many celebrities own homes.  This one is Michael Jordan’s.

This one is Tiger Woods’… I’m assuming that’s his personal golf course in the back.

Later that afternoon we took a ride in a boat that had an underwater part that you could sit in like a submarine and see the fish and coral under the surface.  But we had already been swimming with the fish that morning so it was a little boring for us… and we were exhausted.  After that boat ride we took a bus tour around the city, and saw this Fort.

That’s the tour guide in the green shirt. He told us that The Bahamas have four seasons:  Early Summer, Late Summer, This Summer, and Next Summer.  He said “I came here two years ago for a suntan.  I used to be white.”  LOL

Okay… I probably shouldn’t post this, but it was there on the side of a building in plain sight and we thought it was hilarious.

We made some new friends in a gift shop in town…

 

And when we got back to our room… we found this guy. :)

That night we set sail again… this time for home.  All day Sunday we were at sea, so just relaxed and enjoyed the ship.

That night at dinner I took pictures of some of our “table mates” – five other couples were assigned to the same dinner table as us every night and we got to be friends with them.  This is Joey and Melissa from Georgia.  They’re originally from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and Melissa had the most beautiful island accent!  They were really fun to talk to. 

This is Preston and his wife (I can’t remember her name!)  They were hilarious.  I think they were from Georgia too.

This is our waiter, Darwin.  We had the same waiters every night too, and each night during dinner all the waiters would come out and entertain us with a song or dance.  It was funny.

Monday morning we woke up back at the harbor in Jacksonville… the cruise had come to an end.  We left the ship at 8:30am, got to the airport by 9:00, and had to wait until 2:15pm for our flight.  Then we flew to Dallas/Ft.Worth, and had to wait 2 hours there until our flight to Tucson.  So we spent about 12 hours in airports and on planes until we finally landed in Tucson that evening.  It was good to be home, but this was an experience I will never forget.