The Carribbean ARRR!

Merry Christmas to me! Jesse planned this trip for my Christmas present. Not this exact cruise, but owing to the 24 week rule we had to switch cruises 2 days before this one left... kind of a mess, kind of spontaneous, but still, a vacation! A word of advice to all pregnant ladies thinking of a cruise: most cruise lines WILL NOT let you even board the ship if you have been or will be in your 24th week by the end of the cruise, we almost lost $900 due to the lack of that knowledge! All crazy trip info aside, I needed this vacation, Jesse knew it, planned it, and took me on it... what a man :)

Here's a map of our cruise: We left out of Miami, and well, you can see where we went. Take note that Labadee is in Haiti. Yep, Haiti.

Here's me as we were pulling away from the dock in Miami. I found the spanish graffiti on the dock much more amusing than it's English counterpart.

After a day at sea (and some rather gruesome seasickness for both of us), we were glad to be in port in Puerto Rico. Our first stop was this awesome fort built by the spanish invaders in the 1600's. From the very top where Jesse is sitting we had a great view of our beautiful ship:

A security guard was eyeing us closely and started walking towards us as I took this picture, turns out you're not supposed to risk your life by perilously perching on the top of the wall:

Funny that the cannonballs were the same size as my belly!

Jesse, not to be outdone by my belly, claims that his bicep is the same size too.

As per his love of Ice Cream, Jesse snagged not only a bowl of it, but also an Ice Cream bar, and proceeded to eat them both... at the same time! That my friends, is talent!The next morning we were magically in a new location, the beautiful island of St. Maartin. St. Maartin is half occupied by the Dutch, half by the French and is known to have fabulous restaurants. Me and Jesse stayed on the beautiful beach and lamented the absence of our children :)

After another day at sea we landed in what was supposed to be another beautiful beach, that of Labadee, Haiti. Turns out the weather had a different idea and we muddled through a rainy and windy day of shopping. One bright moment came when the native man performing a fire show had me hold his stick of fire and put it down his throat. YIKES!With all the spare time I had at sea, I finished 2 books at a total of about 12oo pages :) I forget what it is like to not read only Dr. Suess all day! That said, we missed the kids terribly! We'd make each other do imitations of the funny stuff they do, like Leila's sneaky walk and Cooper saying "Where's momma, momma?". We met a family on the cruise who's 15 month old daughter was named Laila and the mom's name was Laura, so every time we saw them we had a pang of longing for our little blue-eyed baby. I think next time a shorter vacation will do. Though we did come back rested and relaxed and ready for our babies.