The Martin Family

Yesterday Ben had a birthday party to go to for his friend Ashley, who turned two. We had a fun time celebrating "Elmo style" with the birthday gal! Tyler and Samantha Kriebel were also there, in addition to Ashley's other friend Aidan and her grandmom (and of course all of us moms).

Playing hard:

Amy with Tyler and birthday girl Ashley.

Ben loved Ashley's kitchen that she got for Christmas but kept trying to eat the baby bottles and the rubber strawberries (it didn't help that there was a bowl of real strawberries to eat, too, just to confuse him!).

Amy with all of the kids on the ground. Poor Samantha seemed to be the center of attention for the older kids. What a girl needs to do for a peaceful ride on her swing these days!

Here's Tyler telling Aidan that they'll have to take this outside if he doesn't leave his baby sister alone while she tries to swing. He's such an over-protective big brother!!

Trucks are still Ben's favorites.

Eating puzzles is a close second, though!

Lunch, yum! Still Ben's favorite pastime. Yesterday was the first time he ever used a plate. He was okay with it at first...until he realized he could pick it up and turn it over, throw it on the ground. That was until we reverted to eating straight off the tablecloth :).

Ashley really enjoyed her cake!

After one year of being parents, Andrew and I were invited to go on a kid-free vacation with a few of the other couples in our Bible study. We decided to go for it and Nana and Pop even offered to come to our house to watch Ben and Barney for the week so that assured us that our little guy would be in good hands in the comfort of his own home.

So, last week we set sail on a Celebrity cruise with two other couples - Chad and Aimee Saunders and Randy and Julie Delp. Our cruise sailed out of Fort Lauderdale on March 4th and we all headed down the day before so that we wouldn't be rushed the next day. We returned on Sunday, March 11th after having been away for eight nights. All of us have one young child so we were all in the same boat (ha! no pun intended!). We missed our babies dearly but were glad for our time away together - it felt so refreshing to sleep later, do whatever we want and not have to worry about changing poopy diapers for a week!

We sailed on the Celebrity Millennium on an Eastern Caribbean itinerary that stopped in the Dominican Republic; Puerto Rico; St. Thomas/St. John, U.S.V.I.; and Bahamas. What a fabulous trip! The cruise itself exceeded our expectations - the food was excellent, the shows and lounges great, the amenities relaxing and the best part was that we got a deal for a balcony cabin at the same price as an inside room so we had our first balcony stateroom and LOVED it. We spent lots of time in the hot tubs, the heated saltwater Thalassotherapy pool, the Persian Gardens spa area with its heated stone seats and different steam rooms, went to the speciality Olympic restaurant which offered white glove service, and enjoyed four of the nightly shows. Of course we were completely gluttonous with all of the wonderful food, but who can resist? :)

Here we are in the waiting room before boarding the ship.

Here's Andrew napping on the balcony, lulled to sleep by the waves.

Some photos of our cruise ship.

Our favorite hangout on the ship, the adult-only Aqua Spa area. Below are photos of the lounge area and the heated saltwater Thalassotherapy Pool.

We had two formal nights, two informal/semi-formal nights and three casual nights onboard. Here we are our first formal night. Andrew rented a tux for the week so he looked especially debonair :).

Cool Guy look.

Our first port stop was in the Domincan Republic. We took a ship excursion to an all-inclusive resort for the day called the Coral Canoa Beach Resort. It was wonderful with the largest pool I had ever seen in my life. Actually it was two enormous free-form pools connected by a bridge but it appears to be one giant pool. We also had access to a beach at the resort so we spent some time there first.

A fun photo of the guys on board the ship after we returned from the DR and were enjoying a late "lunch" on the back veranda. We had late seating for dinner and we didn't eat until close to 9PM every night so late lunches seemed to work well to hold us over! We feel there's no other way to do a cruise than to take the late seating, though, since it gave us much more time in the sun during the day without having to worry about heading back to our rooms to start getting ready for dinner.

Our next stop was San Juan, Puerto Rico. Andrew and Randy golfed for the day so Chad and the gals spent our time walking through Old San Juan.

El Morro.

We were in St. Thomas/St. John, U.S.V.I. for the day on Thursday and this was our favorite stop hands down. It is absolutely breathtaking with the clearest water and smoothest sand we had ever seen. We all took a ship excursion to St. John for the day which included a ferry ride over from St. Thomas, some time on the beautiful Trunk Bay beach and snorkeling. Trunk Bay is among the top ten beaches in the world (as you can understand why from our postcard-like photos). The snorkeling was excellent; they have an underwater swimming trail to follow that explains some of the wildlife we were seeing.

St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.

Trunk Bay from an overlook as we were approaching.

Our ship from the Charlotte Amalie port in St. Thomas. We had to anchor in the water and be tendered to land because a few other cruise ships had beat us to the open dock spaces since they had earlier arrival times than our ship.

Friday night was our second formal night so here are all three couples dressed in our best threads.

The whole gang at dinner our last formal night.

And here we are with our waiter and assistant waitress - Engin from Turkey and Myra from Peru. They were the best wait staff on the whole ship (and we know we were their favorite table!). The best part is that we found out a few days into the cruise that they are engaged!

As if dinner in the dining room isn't enough to eat, our last formal night was also the Midnight Buffet Gala. They have a regular midnight buffet every night just in case anyone is on the verge of going hungry on an all-you-can-eat cruise, but the Gala is extremely fancy, with ice sculptures, chocolate carvings, animals made out of fruits and vegetables, etc.

Our last port stop was Nassau, Bahamas. We really weren't too impressed with Nassau since it's pretty run-down, but luckily Andrew and I decided to take a taxi to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island to look around and this made our trip worthwhile!

The Atlantis reminds us of a Las Vegas-style hotel since it's enormous, very elegant and has just about everything you could imagine to do within its walls. We only had a few hours on the Bahamas so we didn't pay admission into the hotel but we were able to walk around and get a feel of the place. There are shops, restaurants, the biggest indoor aquarium in the world, water slides, a beautiful pool area, and much more. It is someplace we'd love to bring Ben to visit in the next few years.

Atlantis from afar.

Andrew and I under the official Bahamas welcome banner.

Andrew standing next to the metal anchors that the ship was tied to on dock (yes, I'm sure there's an official name for this, but it beats me!). He was really impressed with the docking process every time our ship came in to port. I can't imagine trying to parallel park a cruise ship, that's for sure!

Finally, our last evening on board we all went to the Platinum Martini Bar after dinner. Here are the girls with our martini samplers...six mini martinis (5 of which were very weak and fruity since I don't think any of us could have handled all six otherwise!).