St. Lucia!!

On Friday February 21st Brandon and I got up early in the morning to head to the airport for our long awaited trip to St. Lucia. Sadly, I had caught a cold that week of us leaving and was not sleeping good and just didn't feel very good. I was pretty bummed that I felt so awful but I was hopeful that I would feel better with a good nights sleep and soaking in the sun on a tropical Island. Anyways, so we headed off to the airport and crazy enough we didn't end up having enough time to grab any breakfast. Security took longer than it normally does and by the time we made it through and got to our gate it was getting close to boarding time. Thankfully we had packed some snacks and protein bars in Brandon's backpack. So that was good. I was so tired and so excited to be getting away with just Brandon that I was a little loopy that morning. Then it was finally time to board the plane and head to Florida. We had a layover in Florida and were staying the night there. Which we were ok with. We figured it would be our introduction into warm weather and we could do whatever we wanted for the day. Brandon had rented a car from Turro and so we figured we would go grab some Dominican Food and then go walk around a mall and maybe see a movie. We figured we wouldn't be out too late because we had an early morning flight the next morning. But, we were excited to have some fun in the mean time. Our flight went by quick because we had movies to watch. So between movies and snacks we were in Florida before we knew it. We arrived in Florida and it seem like it was going to be nice weather but it was pretty windy. Sadly, the sun never peaked through the clouds and the wind was surprisingly cold. I was glad I had brought my pink jacket with me because I was freezing. haha The humid cold is so different then dry cold. So that was a bummer. Then as we waited for our Turro car that never showed up we grabbed a shuttle that was going to our hotel. The car never ever showed and Brandon had to call and cancel it because he couldn't even get ahold of the guy. So while he did that I got a hold of an Uber car.

Here is the view from our Hotel room! Not too shabby! 

Driving around Florida in an Uber. What is funny is that with all of the Uber drivers we got that day all of them seemed to speak more Spanish than English. I kept having to remind myself that we were still in the States and not Mexico or the Dominican Republic or something. haha Even when we went to the mall I was surprised that they had a Johny Rockets for just a second and then remembered, "Oh  ya.. this is Florida!" haha It was so weird! 

Anyways, our first Uber ride took us to a Dominican Food restaurant. 

Brandon was super excited and it was tasty. Then at the end he got a passion fruit drink and he was in heaven. haha 

We then took an Uber back to the hotel. I was beat and could have taken a nap but Brandon was ready to do something else with our time. It was pretty early in the day and I figured it wouldn't be very fun to sit in the hotel room and just watch tv the rest of the day. We were going to try to enjoy the hot tub at the hotel but it was so windy that I had no real desire to go sit in it and then freeze when we got out. So we decided to take an Uber to the mall. We ended up walking the mall for quite a while and then going to go see the new Jumanji movie.

We were excited to see the movie and were a little disappointed. It was not as good as the first. Still funny but not half as funny. I was just glad to be sitting down. I was not feeling well at all. So it was nice to sit and enjoy a movie. Then we called it a night. We headed back to the hotel and got ready for bed and relaxed for a little bit before going to sleep. 

The next morning was another bright and early morning. We didn't mind though. We were off to a tropical Island!!! It was finally happening and we were super excited. I finally got a good nights sleep which helped a ton with how I was feeling. When we got up that morning I was pretty awake. We got ready and then headed out. We just barely missed the shuttle that was taking people back to the airport and since we had no idea when the next shuttle was coming we decided to call another Uber after waiting a few minutes. The shuttle showed up like a minute before our Uber did but, the shuttle was waiting another 10 minutes or so for people to show up. So we were glad that we had called for an Uber so that we could get to the airport. We were not wanting to be late for this flight. Thankfully we made it in great timing and ate a nasty breakfast sandwich before boarding our flight. haha

Then we were off!!! We enjoyed some more movies we had not seen before and the time went by quickly again!

The view was pretty flying over the ocean.

Then I saw it....

The Island was in view!

Hello... St. Lucia!!

We had arrived!!!

It felt so good walking off that plane into the humid heat!! I just wanted to bask in it for hours. But, we had to go stand in a massive line to get through Immigration. It took like 45 minutes to an hour. It was so long!! We were glad to finally get through the line and get on a shuttle to our resort. As we grabbed our bag and headed to find our shuttle some guys came over and grabbed out bags to take us to where we needed to go. He took us through some doors and then parked our bag and then asked for a tip. Ya.... I totally forgot about stuff like that on Islands. haha Brandon didn't have any small dollar bills so we couldn't tip him. Which I was fine with. We could have easily taken our own bag through that door. haha So we got on our shuttle and were off to our destination. 

When we arrived we got all checked in and then went and explored. It was a nice resort and we were so excited to be there. The weather was PERFECT that Saturday afternoon. Barely any breeze and just gorgeous. It felt so nice to just be in the heat and be able to relax.

Then we stopped in at the buffet for some lunch. We were pretty excited to try some authentic Caribbean food.

Some of it was pretty good. Some of it was not good! haha

The bread had this weird taste to it but it was bread. haha We were so hungry from not eating very much for breakfast. So after lunch we had to get some tasty fruity drinks.

It was so nice walking on the beach and enjoying the warm water on our feet.

Here is some fancy towel work that was on our bed. haha

After getting something to eat we got ourselves a Pina colada and changed into our swim suits to go enjoy the lazy river and the hot tub or whatever we wanted to. They even had water slides. Naturally we had to go down the water slides a few times. haha We are such kids at heart!

The rest of our first day in St. Lucia was really spend drinking lots of Pina coladas and going around the lazy river and walking down the shoreline. That night dinner was under the stars. It was fun eating outside by the pool and they had live music going on. The food was about the same as lunch but it was still pretty tasty. One of the desserts we got that night were really tasty and sadly we never saw them again. haha

The next day was filled we ended up asking the front desk if we could change rooms. There was a family next to our room that was really loud and yelling at their kids a lot. All of the rooms had doors that joined the 2 rooms so everything was really loud. That morning we were woken up at like 6 to their alarm going off because they were going on an excursion. I was a little bummed to be woken up early. It was our vacation. I finally didn't have kids around to wake me up and we were getting woken up by someone elses kids and family. haha So with that and our bathroom light leaking we were hoping to get out of that room. They had no available rooms so they told us to check back the next day. So we went on with our morning and got some breakfast which was actually pretty good .They had an omelet station which was tasty and fresh fruit, French toast station, pancakes and some Caribbean type breakfast foods. After breakfast it was time to go down to the ocean an walk around some more. Most of our days were spent either walking the shoreline, going in the lazy river or the hot tub, falling asleep in a hammock or eating and relaxing on a chair in the sun. It was pretty nice. Sunday nights dinner at the buffet was family night and they had some more American type foods. They actually did a really good job. I had a Turkey pot pie that was super tasty. I went back for seconds because of how good it was. That and they had really yummy mashed potatoes. What is also great is the earlier that day Brandon had asked the lady at the front of the buffet if they did green plantains. She said they didn't but that the cook could do some specifically for him. In St. Lucia they do fried ripe plantains. Which are sweet and squishy! Not very tasty! So when she said that the chef could do some for us and asked what time we were planning on coming for dinner and our room number Brandon was pretty excited.

This was Brandon's coconut ice cream that night at dinner. haha

It was more like coconut soup. haha So many people were getting ice cream that the ice cream was not very cold and the coconut one completely melted. haha I was super excited for some chocolate gelato but it was not very good. We decided after that night that they were not very good at dessert in St. Lucia. So we figured we would stick to our tropical drinks. haha 

They delivered on Brandon's wishes and brought him a plate of fried green plantains. He was super excited!!

We had so much fun walking around and drinking Pina coladas multiple times a day. We decided after a few days of being lazy that we were not the best at being lazy. It was nice being lazy for like 2 days. After that we were ready to do something else with our time away from the kids. So we got signed up with a tour guide company and were set to go explore some of what St. Lucia had to offer. Before we went on the tour we enjoyed some more lazy river time and hot tub time. We also tried some chicken from the Jerk Tree House they had. It was pretty tasty but the Jerk taste got tiring after a while. After our second day of eating foods with that jerk taste to it I felt like my mouth tasted constantly like jerk sauce. Even Brandon's gum he got out of his backpack tasted like Jerk. haha It was not good!! We were ready for some different tasting food and not to have that taste in our mouths all the time. haha

But on a positive note... look at that view!!!

They had a balcony that was nice to sit on in the evenings.

On Tuesday we were off on our excursion.

We were excited to go see some of St. Lucia outside of the resort. As the tour guide drove us and a few other people around a lot of St. Lucia reminded us of the Dominican Republic. It was crazy seeing some of the schools and how tiny they were. We stopped at some scenic areas and then went to the mud springs. Then it was time for lunch at a place that looked like we were going to be mugged or poisoned or both and then went snorkeling to end the day. It was a pretty fun outing and we were glad that we decided to do it and get away from the Resort for one day. 

The only time we will ever go "mudding" haha

Our muddy warm painted bodies! haha It was pretty fun to do and I'm sure very sanitary 😜

It was a fun experience. The hot springs were nice and hot. What was gross was stepping down in that muddy water. The ground was so mushy and gross. It felt like either grass or hair and mud mixed together on the floor of these hot springs. haha

Pretty cool area though.

Some of the city.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of our lunch and the place we were eating at but I didn't. The food was actually pretty good. I actually ate fish and it didn't taste fishy. I am not sure what kind of fish it was but hey I ate it. haha After we ate our lunch though we kind of worried that we may have some issues later on that day. haha Thankfully we didn't.

Next stop was snorkeling at the blank sand beach "Anse Chastenet". They had a specific area to walk over to for snorkeling and it was really fun.

This is what our faces looked like a after snorkeling for quite a while with our full face masks on. haha

We were in the water for a while but since we didn't have a watch on or a clock anywhere we had no idea how long we were really out in the water. At one point as I was swimming there were these little red dots in the water and all of a sudden I had a pin pricking feeling all over me. So I swam away from that area super fast and headed back to the shore to get out and take a break. After a few minute break we headed back in for one more snorkel before calling it quits. We swam out a little farther than we had the first time and after not seeing too many different things we headed back in. When we got out of the water we tried to see if any of the other people in our group were on the sand or shoreline. We didn't see anyone. So we started to walk back to the bus and everyone was already there. We felt bad for keeping them longer than they had wanted to stay. We didn't even know they had headed back to the bus. However, we did pay for it too and it was the only time we were going to get in some good snorkeling so that is exactly what we did.

On our way back to the resort one of the ladies needed to go to the bathroom really badly and the tour guide stopped at a market area that he said was the only place he could think of that would be safe to take them. Before they went in he said he couldn't guarantee the cleanliness of the bathrooms. haha I thought to myself, I would rather hold it then try to go in a public bathroom out there. When the lady came back with her son her son was saying that there were chickens down the ally. haha

They must have needed to go really bad to want to stop somewhere like that to go to the bathroom. And that was a place the tour guide felt ok about stopping at. haha

Anyways, we then were headed back to our resort and when we got back we enjoyed some lazy river and hot tub time and of course another fruity drink before cleaning up for some dinner.

Speaking of fruity drinks. The first 2 days we were at the resort we were drinking Pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris. They were yummy but not the best I have ever had. We tried a different drink that was a mix of strawberry and Pina colada down at the bar on the beach. That one was really tasty too. However, our all time favorites came from the kid swim up bar in the big pool. They had a drink called "King Loui" and the "Power Puff" They were by far the best drink we had had there. The King Loui drink was coconut cream, banana and chocolate syrup with a bunch of ice. It was super tasty!! Since their chocolate ice cream wasn't very good this was a good alternative for my chocolate sweet tooth. haha The Power Puff was a mix of banana with Pina colada and cherry syrup. It was also super yummy!!! Once we discovered these 2 drinks we didn't go back to the regular Pina coladas again. haha

This was a massive map on the wall heading up to the balcony and the fancy restaurants. 

The view from the balcony.

Just waiting for some dinner and enjoying the scenery.

And of course we had to take some weird pictures while we waited too. haha There was a couple sitting across the way from us that saw us taking our goofy pictures and the guy said, "Those are keepers." haha We then told them that we had to take some funny pictures to show our kids. When we told them that we had 4 boys they were pretty shocked and told us that we deserved this vacation. haha Which we completely agreed!

After waiting for a awhile it was finally time for us to head into our dinner at the restaurant called "Callabash". All I can say it DELISH!!! The food was super tasty. I had coconut shrimp and a salad and some rice and veggies. The rolls at the restaurant were super tasty and we wished we had asked for more. The server only gave us one each and after tasting it we were really wanting another one. Sadly, we never asked her for more. Although, we had enough food with our salad and our meal that we didn't need another roll but it was so good we were wishing to have some more. haha Brandon had a steak and said it was the best steak he had had in a long time. He said that he has paid big bucks to get a steak that good. So it was a winner. My coconut shrimp was super tasty and so were my veggies. By the time we were done we were stuffed. Sadly, the dessert was not good at all. We each got a different dessert and both didn't eat much of it. I love a good dessert and I was pretty bummed that even the nice restaurants  didn't even have good desserts. So we had to resort to just drinking our desserts. Which we were ok with. haha After leaving dinner we headed over to the pool area where they were having some live music again. It was a county night which was kind of silly. So we hung out just a little bit and then they started to play some fun dance music. We were so full though that we could barely move. haha We ended up just going back to our room and plopped on the bed and watched some tv for the evening. haha We were so lame going back to our room so early when we were on vacation with no kids around but every evening we were so stuffed from dinner that we just wanted to relax and watch something. Plus we had already gotten showered up before dinner that we didn't really want to get back in our suits for just a few minutes just to have to shower up again. We didn't really care that we were ending our evenings so early. There was not much to do unless we were drinkers. haha We did hang out late one evening and ate some fries but they were not very tasty. haha Since the only thing we felt like we could do late in the evening was eat it seemed pointless to stay out and eat because we were so full from a yummy dinner. haha 

Wednesday was pretty windy. The sun kept going behind the clouds and it made it actually pretty chilly with the wind. We didn't really want to hangout in the pool since it was cold. So we ate some yummy pizza from the outside grill area and relaxed looking at the ocean. 

The pizza was actually really tasty and reminded me of MOD pizza. It wasn't as good as MOD but for pizza in St. Lucia it was really good. I had wished we had done pizza sooner than we had. haha After eating our pizza we headed off to the hot tub. Man was I so glad that there was a hot tub at our resort. When we went to the DR there were no hot tubs. I would have been super bummed if there wasn't a hot tub at our resort with the cooler wind that was blowing while we were in St. Lucia. 

Wednesday was our last full day in St. Lucia. We were pretty bummed that our vacation was ending and at the same time I missed my boys, especially Kayden and I was ready for some American food. haha Our last day was pretty windy but we still enjoyed the lazy river and the hot tub. We also snorkeled around the ocean a little bit which was fun. The water was warmer than the pool water at the resort. So that was nice. The only problem with the water by the resort was that there was a ton of sea grass. I mean a TON!!! They were always having to clean it up off the shoreline and in while we swam around in the water there were lots of times where the grass was super high and I swam past those parts really quick. Especially the parts where the grass was black. I didn't like the black grass at all. Plus who knows what was lurking in the grass. haha We did see some cool fish even with all of the grass around and the water being pretty murky at points. Our resort was on the Atlantic side of the Island so the water was a lot more choppy then the Caribbean side of the Island. At least the water was warm and we were able to enjoy it some. We also played some bacci ball that evening before dinner. We should have played bacci ball more times that week but we didn't know they had it. So it was a good way to end our trip. 

Tuesday night we went to "silk" which was their Asian restaurant. Our last dinner in St. Lucia was at "The Veranda" on Wednesday night. It was just as good as Calibash. I got a steak that time and it was cooked just the way I wanted it to be and it was the most tender piece of meat I have ever had. It was super tasty. Brandon had some shrimp and something else and he said it was super tasty too. 

So we were super pleased with the fancy restaurants that we went to. We were glad that we got reservations for all of them. The Asian restaurant was not my favorite but for a Caribbean Island doing Asian they did a fantastic job. We were happy to end our dinners on the balcony eating outside with a lovely dinner. It was a great end to our vacation. 

Thursday morning we woke up to rain. We were hoping that the rain would go away quickly so we could enjoy some time on the beach again and or hit the hot tub again before having to pack up but by the time it cleared up we figured we would just walk the beach and enjoy another drink. haha 

Thankfully the sun did peak through the cloud and we had a break from the rain. It drizzled on us a couple of times on our walk but it was just nice to walk down the beach hand in hand one last time. 

We sure enjoyed the views, walking the beach and drinking too many "King Louis" and "Power Puffs". 

As we waited for our shuttle to arrive to take us to the airport we played a round of pool and then got another drink. 

The only sea turtle we saw. haha I guess in April and May they get a ton of sea turtles. They have signs up in the resort talking about the sea grass that we thought was seaweed. It mentioned how they get lots of turtles because of all the sea grass. It would have been cool if we had seen sea turtles but I don't know that I would have enjoyed swimming with them. haha So naturally I had to take a picture with this painted one. 

We were officially leaving. We were lightly bronzed, refreshed and slightly ready to head back home. 

I took this picture of the banana tree as we waited for the shuttle to show our boys. I figured they would think it was cool to see where bananas grow. When I showed them after getting home they did think it was pretty cool. So it was a success. 

So sad that we have to go back to reality. haha It was sure nice to enjoy time just the two of us for 7 days. 

Goodbye St. Lucia!!! 

We sure had a great time. We went and exercised at the resort gym one time and I ended up feeling like I was going to pass out after. So we really didn't go do it again. We got our exercise by walking the shoreline and swimming in the ocean. It was enough exercise for us since it was vacation after all. 

We flew out and landed in Florida for our layover. When we arrived in Florida it took a while to figure out where we were supposed to go. We had to do a lot of different things to get through immigration and then we had to stand in line for a long time waiting to get through immigration. After finally getting through the line we went to go find out luggage. We got our bag and then Brandon tore the tag off thinking we would get another one. Then we found out that we were supposed to keep it on because it had our connecting flight on it. If we had left the tag on we would have been able to just drop off our bag at this little connecting flight area and headed on through. Since we tore off the tag we had to go to a different area and get our tag printed out again. Then we had to go back and stand in line for security. Thankfully we didn't have to stand in the long line for security since we had already been through security once on our other flight. Thankfully that didn't take very long and we were finally able to go find something to eat for dinner. We ended up going to TGI Fridays. It was pretty tasty but the service was terrible. We saw our server once and never got a refill on our drinks and we sat around waiting for our server to come back so we could get the check. We ended up just walking up to a server and asking if we could get our check since we needed to get to our gate to get on our next flight. She apologized and said that our server had gone to the bathroom. Which seemed a little odd. He must have had a major bathroom emergency to be gone that long. haha We then found a place to grab a soda and then we were headed to our gate to get on our last plane ride home. We watched some more movies and before we knew it we were back in Denver. We grabbed our bag and were off to get shuttled to Brandon's car. It was pretty late when we finally arrived home. We were tired and ready to get some sleep in our own bed. 

When we walked in the door we saw these notes from our kids. It always feels good to be home and to know that the kids were excited to see us. 

The next morning we got up in time to see the kids off to school. They were super excited to see us. Kayden seemed like he wasn't quite sure what to think when he saw me. He just kind of starred at me. haha After seeing me for a little bit he kept wanting me. Which felt pretty good! :-) The other boys were so excited to see us. Emmett seemed grumpy and was telling us the bad things that happened and Wyatt gave me a big hug and told me through teary eyes that he cried every night I was gone because he missed me. That was super cute to hear! Ethan said he really missed us and was super happy we were home again. So even though it was nice to get away for about a week it was sure good to get home and see our boys. There is no place like home!!