Back from vacation...tanned and refreshed!

We are back from our cruise! Alex and I left on mother's day for a seven day Caribbean cruise without the little man. This was not our first vacation without him but it's always sad to leave him. He was in great hands though, and was shared between my parents for the majority of the time, my sister, and Alex's dad. Without all of you, we'd be lost...thank you for taking such good care of Charlie and sidney! So we had a great time. It didn't rain once, the temp was almost always above 85, bright sunshine, great people on the cruise, super friendly staff, just a really great time! Above is Alex in Megan's Bay on St. Thomas.
Here's us at one of many bars on the ship. We ended up becoming very friendly with the bartender at the wine/martini bar named Cheers. Katarina is from Poland and was a total sweetheart. We also spent most nights in the piano bar singing along with Lori (from Nashville) who has a great voice and learned many of our requests throughout the week. She let Alex sing along with the microphone several times, and she really made the nights a ton of fun!
From St. Thomas we then went to Dominica, then to Barbados.

Here we are in Barbados getting ready to snorkel. We ended up swimming with and touching live Hawks bill Sea Turtles. I was in HEAVEN! If some of you don't know, I am obsessed with turtles of all kinds. This was really a dream come true! From Barbados, we went to St. Lucia and then to Antigua.

This is Jolly Beach on Antigua and is really even more beautiful than the picture shows. It was such a fabulous beach. My favorite one of the whole trip. From Antigua we went to St. Kitts which was a cute little island.

Here's Alex singing in the piano lounge...

This is a point on St. Kitts where you ave the Atlantic ocean on the left and the Caribbean on the right. Very cool.

And last but not least, here's our boy. We are so happy to be back with him. I feel like he has gotten very tall and even more talkative. We got him Maracas from Barbados and he was shaking them and singing "shake it baby". So stinkin cute.

We also came home to a wonderful surprise. Richard, our dog-walker/contractor/friend was able to mostly finish the backyard that our builder never finished (for which we sued and settled also while we were gone). The fence was put up last fall but he laid the sod after dumping a ton of dirt to fill it all in, and laid brick and planted shrubs...it really looks spectacular and I am beyond pleased with the outcome! So that's it. We are happy to be home and happy to get back to reality!