Christmas Decorating

A couple weekends ago, Luke and I put up our Christmas tree.  We got a 8 foot Noble Fir (which I had never heard of before) but it looks just like the Frasier or Douglas Firs but seems to be a lot more filled out.  We were a little afraid it wouldn't fit in our living room, but you know me, I had to have the biggest tree I could find.  Luckily we have nine foot ceilings and we had the guy at Home Depot cut off about 6 inches from the bottom to make sure it would fit.  The sign said it was 8 foot, but I think it was closer to 9 before we trimmed it down.  I think it turned out pretty nice, but the picture don't do it justice. 

I love decorating for Christmas.  Why is it that I can spend an entire weekend getting stuff out of boxes just to put it back again in a month.  Oh well.  It is worth it.  But one thing for sure is I am sick of moving.  I had just enough decorations for our house in Nashville, but now they just don't seem to fit here.  I can't wait to sometime soon buy another house we want to stay in for a long time so I can perfect my christmas decorating.

Even Bradley enjoyed watching us decorate for Christmas!

Caribbean Cruise Vacation Post #4

Sorry this is taking soooo long to get all these pictures from our vacation up on the blog, but life has been pretty hectic lately.  At least I am posting more frequently than once a month, which is what I thought I might do when I started it. 

Day 6 was spent in Dominica.  There we went to see Trafalgar Falls, a pair of about 200 foot falls up in the mountains.  It is so bizarre all the different climates you can encounter in the Caribbean.  Aruba was almost desert like and Dominica is a rain forest, getting over 300 inches of rain a year.  Which by the way we also got a good taste of as it poured on us the entire day we were there.   The excursion on Dominica was pretty short so we spent time on the ship.  We played mini golf in the rain and later, after it stopped raining, we finally got to go rock climbing.   

Day 7 and the final day was spent in St. Thomas.  Actually, we spent most of the day on St. John, as that is where we booked our excursion.  But either way, St. Thomas and St. John are some of the most beautiful islands in the caribbean.  We took a boat from St. Thomas to St. John.  We went on a hike on St. John and ended up on honeymoon beach, a private beach on St. John you can only get to by hiking there.  On the way to St. John we got to see Michael Jordan's house located on St. Thomas.  We also saw Kenny Chesney's house, but I didn't get a picture of that since it was soooo far up on a mountain top I couldn't get a good picture.

Finally the last day of our trip was spent in Puerto Rico.  We decided to stay an extra day after the cruise ended and see the island since we didn't have to be back to work until Tuesday.  I am glad we did too.  We stayed on land, finally, after being on a boat for a week.  We went to a resort just a little outside of San Juan.  We pretty much just relaxed on the beach as the weather was finally really great.  We got to enjoy one more nice day before returning to the COLD Chicago weather. 

Overall, we had a lot of fun and miss it already as we have been home for only a few weeks and already have several inches of snow on the ground:(

Trafalgar Falls, Dominica

Honeymoon Beach, St. John

One of the beautiful beaches of St. John

Michael Jordan's House in St. Thomas

The last night of our cruise

The beach at our Resort in Puerto Rico

Caribbean Cruise Vacation Post #3

Day 4 was spent in Aruba.  Aruba is such a beautiful island.  It has some of the best beaches in the world but also looks like a desert in parts.  While it was probably not our favorite island of the whole cruise, it was our favorite excursion.  Luke and I rented a Jeep with another young couple and got to drive it around the island.  We stopped at several sites along the way such as a natural bridge, a beautiful outdoor church and a lighthouse, and ending the day at a beautiful beach.  It had rained for a week prior to us getting there so parts were very muddy and it was a lot of fun to go off-roading in the Jeep through the mud puddles. 

Day 5 was another Sea Day.  Not much happened that day especially because it rained all day again!!

Caribbean Cruise Vacation Post #2

The third day of our cruise was spent in Curacao.  It is in the far southern Caribbean very close to south america.  We were supposed to go snorkeling that day, but as was usual for much of the vacation it was raining and it looked like storms were coming in, so it was canceled.  We were pretty bummed about that, but we decided to just go to the beach instead.  Fortunately after about 30 minutes of hard rain, it cleared up and was sunny for most of the rest of the day.  Oh yeah and we got to see dolphins on the way back from the beach!

The afternoon we went downtown at the port and did a little shopping.  We didn't buy anything, but have some great pictures of the architecture.  The colors of all the buildings were so awesome. Then there is also a floating bridge that connects one part of the island with the other that has a motor in it and will just move out of the way when big boats come through.  They even let you stay on the bridge while it is moving, which seemed pretty crazy to me.  Here are some pictures.