Vacation Memories

There is Christmas shrapnel lying shamelessly all over our living room floor, my husband is watching Christmas Day NBA, and our kids are playing with their favorite new presents.  Christian spent a good part of the afternoon digging for gold with his Smithsonian gold digging kit and is now trying to figure out how to text people on the iPod that was passed down to him.  Ellee is happily strumming on her "tar" (guitar) and giggling with delight over her Fur Real puppy, which is probably the closest thing that she will ever have to a  real dog.  All that being said, I had some time this evening to go through our vacation pictures and thought I would share our adventures from the past week.

First things first.  We Herrs love a good surprise.  Case in point, last week, we told the kids that Daddy was going away for the weekend and we were all going into the city to drop him off.  We all got up early on Saturday morning for a train ride into Manhattan.  We got to the dock, and walked all the way through the boarding process, and just before we walked on to the ship, we surprised them with the news that we were in fact all taking a week vacation on a Norwegian Cruise.  

It was a great surprise.  

A second amazing surprise of the week was when we docked in Port Canaveral and drove an hour to take them to Disney World.  I have always, always wanted to take them, but never really thought it would work out, so when we realized we had this opportunity, we couldn't let it pass by.    

We had an amazing time.  

Ellee and I scoped out the milder rides, while Daddy and C took on the more adventurous ones.  

Since it was Christmas vacation for kids in Florida, the park was incredibly busy.  Ellee and I waited in line for 45 minutes to experience the "It's a Small World" ride.  It was perfectly magical.  

We met up later in the day to experience some fun all together.  

We found some great treats and rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride all together.

My all time favorite part of the night was seeing the castle all decked out in Christmas lights.  It was breathtaking and an image that I will have forever in my mind.

This picture was taken especially for Aunt Leslie, a long time Cinderella fan.

The kids both got to pick out one special gift and Ellee chose this light up delight.  Her sheer joy was well worth the $15 I paid for this fun toy.

After a good night's sleep, we spent the next day relaxing on the beach and snorkeling.  

It was absolutely a blessing to be in warm, beautiful weather.

I loved being able to spend some great quality time with our family throughout the week.  

And doing it in the Caribbean in December was sheer icing on this year's cake of blessings.

Jer and I got to spend the final port day together, scooting around the beautiful island of Nassau, Bahamas.  It's been a tradition of ours and this time we explored some amazing new areas on the island.

When I saw this house, I decided that if I ever became a billionaire, this would be my Bahamian Christmas house, and I would send out this picture as our yearly Christmas card.  Considering the fact that the kids weren't with us at the time, I would probably just photoshop them in... no, being a billionaire, I would pay someone else to photoshop them in :)

We spent the last few days of our cruise hanging out on the ship.

We slept in, ate delicious food and just enjoyed each other's company.

Before we got too far north, we enjoyed a pool day.

We did a little hot tubbing.

And swam in a salt water pool while sailing on the great Atlantic.

Ellee dominated the water slide, and spent a good half hour going up and down it. 

And while we were a bit sad to see our wonderful vacation end, it was great to come home.  It was fantastic to come home to Christmas Eve, playing football in the afternoon and enjoying the candlelight service at church in the evening.  Waking up this morning was awesome and it's been a wonderful Christmas all around.  

Merry, Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you all have a blessed day!