Elmo cake balls rule!

Our good buddy Kingston turned one year old last week....and his mommy was SO nice to bring us some of the leftover Elmo cake balls from his party this past weekend. These were seriously good. I would say they were so good that Paul had to make this totally silly (and somewhat creepy) face!

Admiring his Elmo cake ball.....love at first sight!

Yummo!
You lookin' at me?
Hello Paul.......
Who needs a stinkin' napkin?
What a fun Monday night treat! A girl (and her cute boy) could get used to this for sure!

Play Dough Dinner

While I was making dinner tonight, Paul decided that he needed to whip out the Play Dough and have a little fun. He decided that HE was going to make dinner too.....a special pretend kind of dinner.

Well helllllooooo there mommy!
Hard at work with lots of concentration.......

Okay mommy, just one more picture, okay?

And here is the incredibly long, but super funny video of Paul telling me what he was making for dinner. Hilarious.

Pictures by Paul...volume 1

Paul received a kids camera for Christmas and he was busy taking pictures. It's not a high resolution camera, so the quality isn't perfect.....but it is fun to see what he decides to capture on his camera.

The Polar Express was such a big hit this Christmas and there were a whole lot of pictures of the train.

Random shot of Gram and Pa's microwave.

A blurry Maya....

In addition to these and lots of other blurry pictures, there were lots and lots of pictures of the carpet.

We will continue to encourage him to take lots of pictures - it is so fun to see the world through his eyes.

What a difference a year makes....

We were a little late in getting Lillie's stocking personalized....as in it was completed the first week in January. Terrible, right? Great intentions that just didn't come to fruition. So even though I was feeling bad that it didn't get done BEFORE Christmas, it was quite exciting to get the stocking back! It just makes it seem so official and we are clearly ready for next year.


And Lillie will make four....

Fun in the sun....vacation day 4

On our last full day of vacation, we slept in and relaxed in the room before heading down to the beach for a long walk and then some relaxing. We spent a few hours on the beach and then went back up to the room for some lunch. We had yummy BBQ leftovers and some beer and ate our lunch on the balcony.....looks yummy, right?! We've enjoyed the Bahamian beer Kalik Light very much.

After lunch it was time to spend some more time in the waterpark. Our favorite part was the rapids ride. Think of it as a lazy river on drugs. You float along in an inner tube and there are patches of calm water with some current to keep you moving....and then there are some raging rapids sections. Super fun. There is a branch that takes you to a lift so you can fly down some serious twists and turns of the water slides or another branch that lets you continue down the rapids. We spent time on other rides as well, but seemed to gravitate towards this one the most on both days that we spent at the water park.

We don't have a waterproof camera, so our pictures are from dry land. This was one of our favorite parts of the loop. It's a long corridor with big waves pushing you down - I even flipped over in my tube at one point.

Check out the wave action......

The resort boasts a very impressive aquarium with fish and other sea creatures from around the world. A serious amount of fish in the underwater ruins.

The biggest manta ray I have EVERY seen. Beautiful creature.

After a great day in the sun, we headed out for our last dinner.....at Nobu. It was my favorite of the week!

Our yummy cocktails.....martini for Jason and Ketel One and cranberry for me.

After our yummy dinner.....

We took a walk to Marina Village and came upon a stilt walker.....funny guy.

We grabbed some ice cream at Ben and Jerry's and then had to take a picture on the sundae bench.

We sat in the village for a while just watching people. There is no shortage of interesting people at the resort - people from all over the world wearing all sorts of inappropriate clothing. Total riot. As we sat, there was a Bahamian performer that setup and started singing. He covered all sorts of songs including several 80's hits.....for those of you children of the 80's, enjoy the Bahamian version on this hit. We loved it! Jason even put money in his collection.

And then it was time to head back to the room and call it a night - knowing it was our last night in paradise. We spent the next morning packing before checking out and stashing our luggage with the bellman. It was off to Johnny Rockets to grab a burger before we had to catch our shuttle to the airport. They recommend leaving 3 hours before your flight and thank goodness they did....there was monster traffic and it took twice as long to get to the airport as it should have. We made it through customs in plenty of time and our travels home were smooth. It was quite a shock to the system to leave the beautiful weather in paradise and arrive home to freezing cold and a little snow on the ground.

Here's how we both felt about leaving Atlantis.....

It was a great trip but we were ready to come home. We were both missing Paul and he was missing us. It was a lot of fun to see the smile on his face this morning when he woke up to find us home. We didn't even give him his presents yet.....just wait until he sees those!

Snorkeling rocks....vacation day 3

Day 3 of vacation brought us our chartered trip to a private island for some snorkeling. This charter was recommended from a friend and it did not disappoint.

They picked us up at our hotel and dropped us at the marina so we could board the boat and start the 45 minute board ride to Rose Island. There were about 25 other people on the charter which was nice - enough people but not too many. We chose to ride to the island on the upper deck of the boat. It was a lovely day and the breeze was nice.

Slightly windblown on the boat!

I can't get enough of the blue, blue water. We have SO many pictures of the beautiful clear blue water. It is just amazing.

Pulling up to Rose Island.....

Once we were oriented to the island amenities, it was time for snorkeling. They have a reef fairly close to the island that has lots and lots of fish. It was such great snorkeling. The water was calm (albeit a bit chilly) and the fish were active. We both had so much fun! We snorkeled for about an hour and then headed back to the island to get dried off and cleaned up for some lunch.

The 3 most important things on the island.....

After lunch, we decided to find a shady hammock with a view and relax until it was time to head back to Nassau.

Views from our hammock.....

Great views from the deck before we left Rose Island.

We had no scheduled plans for the evening - we thought we might check out one of the buffets and really get our grub on....but in the end, we decided to check out a relatively new BBQ place they have on the resort. Yes, that's right, we went all the way to the Bahamas and ate BBQ. Hilarious, right? When my diet soda arrived, I couldn't get over the glass it was in. Evidently, it is Christmas all year long in this restaurant!

The menu says that you order an entree to share at the table. We ordered pulled pork and a side of baked beans with a bowl of cornbread. Check out the massive amount of food this was.....the plate in the middle is what is left of the entree AFTER we had scooped our helpings onto our plates. Seriously. The food was outstanding and a great value considering how much arrived. We had them box up the leftovers and took them back to our room for lunch the next day.

We hung out in the casino for a while and then headed to Joker's Wild for a comedy show. We haven't seen an stand-up comic in quite some time and it was fun.

What a full day.....lots of activity and a late night......loving this vacation thing.

Fabulous vacation.....day 2

The Bahamas continues to treat us well.....day 2 brought a trip via the water taxi into downtown Nassau. It was a nice boat ride with lots of beautiful scenery. This little house/shack was evidently in a James Bond movie - or so the boat tour guide and the hubs tells me. So, we snapped a pic of it since hubs is such a Bond freak. Atlantis is in the background.
Lots of beautiful sail boats.....

We walked around a bit and then hit the Straw Market....it's like a covered flea market with lots of souvenir type stuff. Lots of repetition of items but cool to walk through. We picked up a few things and had some fun bartering for goods.Then it was a stroll down Bay Street which is one of the main streets downtown.

Their police are all decked out in very cool uniforms.

As we walked up to the House of Parliament, there was a busload of Bahamian school children being dropped off for a tour. How cute are their school uniforms?A beautiful backstreet alley.....

And then things got really touristy......like eating at Senor Frogs touristy. Yeah, I know we are middle aged people headed to Senor Frogs, but sometimes you just have to jump into vacation with both feet.

We had to order cocktails - can you guess who got the monster tall mojito versus the more reasonably sized Bahama Mama (the first one of the trip mind you)?

The view from our lunch table.....on a dock over the ocean. I could do without the birds!

Classy place, right?!

Do we look warm and sun soaked? Love that we had a Senor Frog in the background....proves we were there!

Tableside guacamole rocks.

After a day of shopping, we had some downtime in the room and then got cleaned up for our fancy dinner at Cafe Martinique. This was our big, big splurge for a meal. It was a beautiful restaurant and quite fancy - they spare no expense. Jason chose the Mahi with lemon butter sauce and I opted for the lamb chops. Everything we ate was fantastic.

For dessert.....Bananas Foster! I don't think he noticed that I was snapping pictures while he was preparing our yummy dessert. Gotta love a good flambe!

Is you mouth watering?