Monday, January 26, 2009

Cruise pics!

This was our first island that we went to which was Samana in the Dominican Republic. It was absolutely gorgeous and was my favorite island. This is some of the girls on the tender ride over.

These two pics are some of the houses that the people live in. The Dominican Republic is a third world country and I have never been to such a poverty stricken place before. It was such a cultural shock for me. Its kind of hard to see how other people live especially when we are so blessed. I realize how much we take for granite. These aren't even the worst of the houses there. We drove through their town for about 40 minutes to get to the beach we were going to. And they don't have hardly anything, they sleep on the ground and none of them wear shoes. Their clothes are hanging out all over the place and kids run around naked. Dogs run wild there and they look like they haven't been fed in weeks. But over all this island is amazingly beautiful and the people are so nice and way humble.

These next ones are in St Thomas which is in the US virgin islands so it is so Americanized. Its beautiful the only weird thing is that they drive on the wrong side of the road but their steering wheels are still on the left side of the car its way weird.

We went para sailing in St. Thomas. It was so much fun and these pictures don't even do justice. We were 300 ft in the air and we were able to see a lot of the island and amazing reefs from up there. I got to go twice because we had an uneven number so I went with Brandon and my sister in law Kaitlan. It was a blast and I loved it!
Brandon lived in the water the entire trip. When we went to Tortola which is in the British Virgin islands, he snorkeled for hours and he found this hermit crab and felt like he had to bring it out to show everyone.


These pics are all from Tortola which was a gorgeous island and by far had the best snorkeling out of all the islands we went to. This picture right above is of all the kids that were on the trip. Brandon and I definately felt like teenagers again on this trip. We hung out with all of the teens which are between the ages of 13-20. It was awesome we stayed up until like 1 everynight. We would raid the buffet and order room service in the middle of the night and run down the halls and knock on peoples doors. (I know really juvenile but way fun) We also played ultimate spoons, which is just like normal spoons except we would put the spoons like two floors up or in the elevators. There were 17 total of us including adults. Also all of the surrounding islands around Tortola is where the Pirates of Caribbean was filmed. So pretty cool I think.
This picture is me in the Bahamas. This was seriously one of our favorite vacations. We had beautiful weather the whole time. We did alot of snorkeling and swimming. Brandon went deep sea fishing in miami on the last day. Brandon loves to fish and caught a massive fish but alot of my pics are on my mother in laws camera so these are just some of the fun pics that I have on my camera. We took way to many so hard to choose what to share. But I was so excited to see Paxton when I got home and dont ever want to leave him again.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow Ash I am so jealous. It looked like you guys had a ton of fun. Was it hard without Paxton. Now that you are back we need to get together soon.

Joel and Mandi said...

Oh man! That looks like so much fun! I am freaking jealous!

Glad you guys had a good time :)

Michelle Elkins AKA Mickey said...

I went to the Bahamas last year and it was like that also with the people and animals running around. Big eye opener! Looks like you guys had fun!!!

Meganps said...

it looks like you had so much fun!! i'm totally jealous!

Emalia said...

Love the pictures!! I'm glad you guys had such a fun vacation. :-) I bet you missed Paxton a ton, it's hard being away from the munchkin hu?