Virginia Beach and Busch Gardens

We wanted to do have a little family getaway before school started.

We decided to go to Virginia Beach for the weekend.

It was a great! 

We enjoyed the waves

Tossed around the football

 We spotted some dolphins

 Buried a couple of kids

 Created things with sand

 Saw a mermaid ;)

We basically had a whole lot of fun together!

When we weren't at the beach...

we played games

watched movies

and ate good food.

When we left Virginia Beach, Mike and I surprised the kids

with a detour to Busch Gardens. 

We had never been before and with the Military deal,

we thought we'd give it a shot.

We were worried at first because it was a little rainy.

That ended up keeping the crowds away

and keeping us cool.

We had no lines for the most part

and just had a super fun day riding rides.

I think we will definitely go back.

It truly is a beautiful theme park.

Trip to St. Lucia Day 6

Our last full day on the island :(

We started it off with walking on Reduit beach (we went to a different beach every day, I don't remember the names of all of them, I'll have to have my parents remind me...hopefully I got this one right!)

I'm not particularly loving any of the pictures of me from this trip...but oh well...I guess it will just give me some incentive to diet and exercise.

My Mom and Dad are so cute

After the beach we stopped into the grocery store for a few things. Man, ice cream is expensive there!! The price is in EC but in US dollars it would be about 9 or 10 bucks.

Then we went to feed the missionaries at their district meeting. One of the sisters was from the D.C. area and happened to be in the Mount Vernon Stake. We used to live in that stake...small world.


We also stopped in the market again to buy some souvenirs.

After that we headed off to find David the snake man so we could get a picture holding his snake. My mom and dad have formed a kind of friendship with him and so they only go to him for snake pictures, they are loyal.

David was very friendly and his snake didn't kill us, so everything was good!

On the way back we stopped and took a picture of this natural bridge.
It kind of looked like a dinosaur taking a drink...to me anyway.

That night we went to a restaurant in Castries right on the water. It's called the Coal Pot. It was beautiful. There were 3 cruise ships in port that day and we watched them leave.

Our meal was delicious! I had red snapper, Mike had barracuda, Dad had a chicken dish and Mom had salmon...then we finished we a fabulous crème brûlée :)

Trip to St. Lucia Day 2

We started our day off by walking along the beach.

This is something my mom and dad do every morning. I love it!

Then we headed off for the highlight of our day.

We got a tour of a pirate ship.

We met Captain Sam and he showed us around The Unicorn.

This ship has been in some movies, most notably, the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies and it was the slave ship in Roots.
It was fun to listen to Captain Sam's stories. He wasn't with the ship when it was in Roots, but he was in both of the Pirates movies and told some fun things about that. He had great things to say about Johnny Depp and said that they still keep in touch through email.

The Captain's quarters 

It was a lot of fun. I still need to go and re-watch those movies and try to spot the ship and Captain Sam (not to mention that I like the movies anyway, ha ha!)
That night we walked down to the beach and watched the sunset.

Trip to St. Lucia Day 1

Mike and I were able to take a trip to St. Lucia to visit my parents on their mission. We were also celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary :)

We did so much and saw so much that I figured the easiest way to try and catch up here would be to go day by day.

We left here on April 4 and got there (after 2 plane changes) at around midnight. 

Getting through immigration took a little while, but we finally made it through (I got my brand spanking new passport stamped!) and we were greeted by 2 smiling missionaries...aka my mom and dad :)

Here is the little apartment (it had a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen with a dining room/living room) that we got to stay in for the week, for $15 a night...can't beat that!

The next morning we got up and had a little breakfast and got ready, then we went to the beach to take a walk. It was so beautiful.

We also went by the church

This is the chapel

then we walked around the market

We ate lunch at Salena's place in the market. 

The food was good and we tried some new things. I loved the passion fruit juice, but Dad's chicken was the best of all!
Then we went to see the lighthouse...Dad driving on the wrong side of the road took a little getting use to :)

On the way to our next destination, Pigeon Island, 

we stopped by a roadside stand and got some coconut water.

I didn't really like it, but Mike and my mom did.

Maybe it would have been better if it was cold.

Then we went to Pigeon Island and hiked up to see the ruins of the fort.

We saw a beach wedding there too...it was really pretty.

After relaxing for a bit we went to visit a wonderfully inspiring sister who was recently baptized. You can read about her baptism on my mom and dad's blog.

We had brought her The Book of Mormon on cd and seeing her reaction to receiving it was absolutely priceless. She was beyond happy! She can't read much, her eyes are very bad and so this was such a blessing to her. Our visit with her was one of my favorite things we did.