The Estes Family: Vacation, More Vacation, and a Little Bit of Luke

WARNING : Those who find A LOT, I mean A TON of pictures "annoying", "excessive", "boring", or a "nuisance", this is NOT the place for you! I will give a brief synopsis of David and I's wonderful vacation along with the pictures that follow. Although you will view many of the things we did, it will not be the same as being there.....thank goodnes cause we wouldn't have WANTED you there! Unlike all of my previous posts, Luke is only part of the final few photos. Therefore if you don't give a crap about our vacation, scroll down to the end! (As usual, the description of the photos are BELOW the photo)

The happy couple at the airport after having awoken at 3:30 am! :) CHEESE!

Not creepy at all.....flying out on UNITED on September 11! Waiting at Chicago's O'Hare airport.

Get this....the white limo picked JUST David and I up from the airport to take us to our rental car place! SWEET!

Just cause I felt like lounging in a limo that we ALL TO OURSELVES!! Too bad the car rental place was only a few minutes away :(

Still in the limo....probably the first and last time!

These were just some of the cool halogen lights over our heads as we "walked" in O'Hare. Gotta love those moving platforms!

Our hotel we stayed at for 2 nights before the cruise. A view from out by the pool.

Our bedroom area.....

The bathroom.......

The sitting room.....with another TV and a microwave and mini fridge. The balcony was right off this room.

We were on the 9th floor. This was a view straight down off the balcony.

To the right.......off the balcony of course.

For some reason I really like this picture. I think it's the sun's shadows. You can see that when the tide is in especially, there is very little "beach" space.

Sitting in the restaurant for breakfast and this was our view out the door.

A lazy river....how cool is that!

Being lazy on the river!

Trying out the underwater feature on the camera. Not fair...David can open his. Darn him and his NO CONTACTS!

More underwater.....dragging my "hooha's" along the vent.....NICE! Again, the advantage to SEEING under water.

LOVE THIS! I wanna go back. The zero entry pool with the ocean right behind!

Me in the water with David looking out at the ocean.

Our "Embarkation" (for those who have not cruised...."getting on the ship") picture :)

Miami from the ship.....

more Miami from the ship........

Our cozy little interior room! That is a luggage mat on the bed and then David ordered me a "Bon Voyage" basket full of slippers, gel and lotion, massage toy etc. THEN he had a night shirt delivered as well as a 4 pack of drink coupons! What a thoughtful guy! All I did was order some chocolate covered strawberries for him....oh well :)

The itty bitty bathroom where the toilet tries to eat you alive and there is nowhere to shave your stinking legs!

A game of cornhole in the lobby.

Sunbathers on board

Breakfast!! What a view!

This is the "Venetian Palace" where they played Bingo all the time and we watched the evening shows.

The elevators by our room....did I mention we were on the Lido deck (which is where they have ALL the food!!) MMmmm.

Spent a little bit of time in the game room, racing cars, and motorcycles, etc

My meanest racing face...yeah right! I still lost :(

Didn't see many sunsets....just the last little bit of one.

Me and my handsome hubby on the first formal night.

Of course I drug him through a few photo opportunities. He LOVED it! :)

Nothing says "Cruise" like TOWEL ANIMALS!!

A couple at our table....Amy and Dave. Spent a little bit of time together playing some Euchre. Amy didn't do too bad considering we taught her one night at 1 am!

COZUMEL

The next group of pictures are from the port of Cozumel. Most of them are actually from our excursion that we actually did on the mainland by Playa Del Carmen. We took a 30 minute ferry ride over.

Our pictures as we step off the boat onto Mexican soil!

On the Ferry we took across to the mainland.

Mariachi band in the outdoor mall.

From the second level of the mall

Same as above

We booked an excursion called "Caverns by Jeep" - We took a ratty old Jeep Wrangler (with a retired couple from Idaho) out to these Mayan caverns. Went underground where there were stalagmites and stalagtites and a clear spring river. Rented snorkel gear and underwater flashlight and got to swim around the cool cave. The water was clear all the way to the bottom (about 25 feet). From there we took the Jeeps to our own little private beach where we ate an authentic Mexican buffet and then got to swim in the beautiful water! Such a fun experience....

Our nice little Jeep....David was so excited he got to drive!

We had to wear hard hats cause there were some places you could crack your head on the rocks! Sexy huh?

Just a quick pic that David snapped. I thought the camera took a nice photo that closely. We were received our instructions on going into the caverns.

In the cavern where we swam. The only light we had was from where this plant was growing up through.

The plant :)

The cave....

Me touching a stalagtite under water

Underwater view of the "ites" :)

EVERYWHERE has a McD's!

Our little "huts" where we ate our buffet.

The BIG hut where they served the food and had other seating. Around the bar area where the food was, instead of regular seats or even bar stools, there were these really cool swings that you could sit on!

The water we swam in after filling our bellies! No one else around (other than our excursion group!) How cool is that?

The beaches in the Cozumel area are all pretty rocky, so when we encountered these spots, we would pick up whatever was under our feet......WITH our feet :)

The swan holding our "Captains Cocktail" invitation and "Past Cruisers" pins.

Grand Caymen

Grand Caymen is a beautiful place....one of the lesser destitute islands around! One I MAY consider actually visiting for a vacation. Again, we did not see very much of it, but some cool stuff. Here we swam with the stingrays at the Stingray Sandbar and then snorkeled about 5 minutes away at the "Coral Gardens". After our water adventures (and near sickness) we changed clothes near the port entrance and then went back out to do a little shopping.

Exiting the ship again

The ship had to "park" further out and we had to take a tender boat to shore.

David's funy face while shopping

Taking our boat out to the sandbar...getting a little nervous about actually swimming with the rays.

Successfully made it into the water.....As you can see, it was only about 3 1/2 ft deep. The water amazing of course. The weird thing is a couple hundred yards out we can see a significant change in the water color. We were told that at that point the depth goes from 4 feet to 6,000!! YIKES! That's over a freakin mile!

He's cute...even in snorkel gear!

One of our newly aquired friends!

Yes, I AM holding the stingray!

Coral Gardens - it was pretty good snorkeling, but I'm still waiting to go somewhere and see in person what I see in pictures with all the brightly colored coral and fish.

More Coral

No vacation is complete without a picture of Margaritaville!

Formal night number 2

Gotta love a man in a suit!!!!

Okay, don't laugh....only posting this picture because David made fun of it because it looked like I was "from the 80's" :(

Jamaica

Jamaica, Jamaica....not sure I'd want to stay there unless it was an all inclusive kinda deal. If you think they're pushy salesmen in Cozumel, go to Jamaica. They basically try to drag you by the arm to come and "look at just one thing". "Respect mon". We were excited to go here because of the excursion we chose. If any of you EVER go to Jamaica, you have to climb Dunn's River Falls! It is inside of a whole park area (which we didn't really get to see), but just even to climb the falls is like nothing you'll ever do again (probably). We went with a group of about 20 and climbed together along with our guide and a Jamaican cameraman. He had us doing chants, falling into the deeper water, and standing under smaller falls. They make a DVD (that we bought) and have it ready by the time you have to be back on the ship. Had to wear water shoes because of how slippery it was, but it was truly awesome. Over 600 feet tall. From there we went over to Dolphin Cove where we watched some captive dolphins swim around and some nurse sharks as well. Had some food and relaxed a little while on the beach. The clouds started to roll in and we called it a day a little bit early. Strolled through the nature area and then waited for the bus to take us back to port.

Our last port :(

The view out on the beach as we started climbing the falls. SOOO would've gone jet skiing if we had the time!

View after climbing up just a few minutes

"Ya mon" - As David pointed out, instead of the "ya mon" symbol, I was telling everyone to "rock on". Oops!

Dunn's River Falls

There were several different groups of people climbing at once, but plenty of room.

I could have sworn it was gonna go right up his nose!

Not quite as adventurous - my luck it WOULD have gone up my nose!

LOOK....more falls!!

YEAH.....our official pat on the back for successfully navigating our way up. I wanted to sneak back down and do it again!

Dolphin Cove

Flipper!!

Chillin in my beach chair after a mediocre hamburger and flat Mountain Dew.

They wouldn't let us go and climb on the rocks....party poopers!

Our home away from home (as seen from the beachchair that I was chillin on after a mediocre hamburger and flat Mountain Dew.)

The crazy men who got in with the sharks and then proceeded to flip them on their backs and pet their belly's. WHAT?

Polly want a cracker? Or two?

His name is Elvis......okie dokie.

They had a sign by a few webs telling you what kind of spider this was. Then I'm walking down the rest of the path and they are frickin EVERYWHERE! Beside me, above me, a scene out of "Arachniphobia"!

Back on board. The water amazed me that even as deep as it was, it was still so blue. Almost fake blue like you added some coloring. Gotta love the Caribbean!

These were our wonderful waiters! Our head waiter Charlie and his cohort in crime Haji (spelling?) Both were Philippino. They spent their days and nights serving people, yet had such pleasant attitudes.

The fun is over.....almost. This was our suite at the Hyatt Summerfield Suites. Really nice place! Recommend it to anyone visiting Miami. The only downfall is it's in the "financial" district of town. Surrounded by other nice hotels and some big company buildings. Not on the beach either :(

Time for some TV....saddly too we had to bury the red suitcase. (mine of course). I believe the cause of death was overpacking. As is typical for me, I packed everything but the kitchen sink and on the trip noticed that the fabric started tearing away from the seam....OOPS! Had to buy a new bag :( David is the official "packing inspector" for future trips.

Our cute little bedroom with the comforter that I wanted to take home.

Went to a ratty little mall that we hated with part of the day we had left. Just had to take a picture of the restaurant. A reminder of having to go home :(

I will NOT go into the awful details of trying to get home, but let's just say we had to spend the night in Chicago instead of being home to see our sweet little boy. We DID however get to see THIS sweet little boy. Our friends who THANKFULLY live in Chicago, took us refugees in for the night and we got to see their 6 week old cutie Caden. So there was definitely a plus to missing our flight!

We finally arrived home Monday evening the 22nd of Sept. and it was SOOOO WONDERFUL to see Luke!! After lots of hugs and kisses and playing, we just stayed the night at Dave and Sheree's.

This is how we found Luke sleeping when we were going to bed.

What does any 20 month old love to do....Play with tape of course!

Yes he could still breathe!

He would run around the room and then come back to daddy for an additional piece.

Coming after mommy with a plastic golf club.

My Doodlebug!

NEWS FLASH!!!

Luke has shown interest even more lately in mommy and daddy going potty. So I drug out his little potty again and sure enough he wanted to sit on it. He actually deposited about 2 tsp full into it!

Luke's potty

My goal was to get a picture of the first pee, but in the time it took me to get the camera from downstairs, the STUPID DOG licked it up :( The evidence was compromised. Oh well.

Now he sits on it for about 3 seconds, gets up, and looks down into it. Then sits back down and does the same thing about 10 times. Silly boy!