You're Going To Miss This...: Caribbean Christmas

This year for Christmas we decided we wanted to take a big trip with the kids. After trying to narrow our options, because it's a big world out there, we decided on a cruise. It simplified things a bit since all we had to do was plan shore excursions. The one must was somewhere warm. We decided to go to the Caribbean.

Our first stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Here we had a hair raising shuttle ride to a dolphin park. Jared's favorite animal in the whole world is dolphins. We had the opportunity to swim, touch and ride on dolphins. It was so fun to see our little boy so excited. Everyone had a good time. My only regret is not checking out and purchasing the pictures, thus a lack of cool dolphin pictures. Lesson learned!

Our next stop was Christmas Eve in Belize. The cruise ship had to do some maneuvering to get close to shore. In Belize is the second largest coral reef, Australia's is number one. Even with all the maneuvering we had to anchor about 2 miles off shore.

We had to wait for our tender to take us to shore. This fuzzy picture is the kids waiting very patiently for the boat, creepy masks in the background at no extra charge. While waiting Dale looked up the weather here in MN. It was -60 with the wind chill. In sunny Belize it was 80.

One of the things that we were told is a must if we came here was the cave tubing. The ship said Jared wasn't old enough, so we went with a local guy, Charlie Chan. It was so much better than sticking with the ship bus. We had 1 other family in our tour group. Turns out the other family was LDS too so Charlie went out of his way to show us the local chapel.

Charlie's guys carried the tubes so all we had to worry about were the life jackets.

We had a bit of a hike to get to the starting point, but we all had a good time with Charlie entertaining us with local stories and plant education.

Joe even tried the local delicacy of termites.

The tubes even had backs. We toured the cave in style.

Christmas day we woke up in Roatan, Honduras. This was my favorite view of all the stops. There were ship wrecks and the land was green and hilly. I could just imagine it a perfect pirate hideout.

We went for a sail and snorkel tour. We were all excited to see the cool fish in the coral reef.

We were so glad Tate and Elaine joined us for this trip.

Getting ready to go. Notice in the back ground, poor Joe got so sea sick on the smaller boat. He was throwing up over the side, but he didn't let that stop him. He still went snorkeling.

Jumping off.

I have a cool water proof camera, so I got a few fun pictures before the battery died.

Mark and Jared having a good time.

While we were snorkeling Jared got tired so I started taking him back to the boat. Of course he was too tired to help kick so I towed him back against the current to the boat. While I was towing a rather big 7 year old, I heard hysterical screaming coming from Joseph, then I heard Dale trying to get him to calm down. Next thing I know I look over to see one of the boat guides taking Joe back to the boat on his kayak. A few minutes later Grant and another guide passed. I later found out that Dale, Elaine, Tate, Mark, Erin, Joe and Grant found themselves in a school of jelly fish. Joe had looked to the side of him and came face to face with one. That is when the hysterical screaming started. Dale said he couldn't figure out what was wrong, if he was hurt or if a shark bit off his leg, who knew. They finally got him calmed down enough to send back with the guide. Grant at this time got pretty freaked out to so the other guide rowed his kayak next to him while he swam back. Grant's escort didn't let him get off easy, he scooped a jelly fish out of the water and made Grant touch it. Elaine said she felt very close to a panic attack trying to swim back and dodging them. She said it was kind of like the movie Finding Nemo. Mark was the only one to get stung just above the lip.

When we got back from the snorkel trip we still had hours of time before the ship left. Since we are not the kind of people to just lay in the sun, we decided to go zip-lining. It took a little convincing to get a couple of kids to be adventurous after the last outing but everyone finally agreed to go. While we were filling out wavers one of the questions asked if we had history of panic attacks or anxiety. Elaine just started laughing and said does it count if it was in the last few hours.

I learned after the dolphin trip not to bypass the photos. The kids had a blast, the zip-line course was amazing and so much fun. Everyone had huge grins on their faces the whole hour and a half.

Erin and Mark racing to the finish.

Since Jared was so young he had a guide with him. The guide was pretty impressed with Jared and let him ride a couple lines on his own.

In all, this was one of the funnest, most memorable Christmas we have ever had.

Our last day was in Costa Maya, Mexico. We were only there for a half day and it was raining. We didn't have anything planned so we rented golf carts to drive around the town. We started with 3 carts but one of them broke down a few miles into our outing. We just pushed it to the side of the road and squeezed into the other two carts.

The ruts in the road turned into huge puddles that were very tough to avoid at times.

Say cheese!

We let all the kids have a chance to drive. Joe crashed into the side of the road in a huge bush. We had to push the cart out. This picture is Jared driving. He was all over the place and up on the sidewalks.