Fall Activities

St. Augustine

We left Cape Canaveral and headed up the coast to St. Augustine, Florida's oldest permanent settlement.  This is not to be confused with Pensacola, Florida's oldest settlement (says the girl from Pensacola). 

We arrived just before sunset, so we parked at the hotel and let the kids run across the street to the beach.  It has been a while since they have been in the Atlantic Ocean.  We are Gulf lovers at heart.

 

After checking in and getting settled, Marc took the girls to the pool.  A color changing pool is always an added bonus for nighttime swimming. 

The next morning we spent some more time at the beach before having to shower and check out. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning. 

After checking out we headed into historic St. Augustine - another educational day for our family. We met this friendly squirrel who apparently knows which restaurant to hang out in front of.  The workers came out to give it some nuts, and it ate out of their hands. 

And being the not so smart parents, we let our girls hand feed the squirrel too. I did cringe a little each time, if that counts for anything. 

Oh my, was it hot outside. We were hopping from shady spot to shady spot as we toured downtown.

We made our way over to the fort, and walked around the grounds for as long as we could stand the heat. Although we didn't pay to go inside, we did manage to get the girls their stamp for their National Parks book.

After walking around in the heat, we headed over to a tour we had booked.  We took the girls to a chocolate factory where we were able to watch chocolate candy being made.  We had several samples to try, and Brooke was just loving this adventure.  I don't know another kid that likes dark (and super dark) chocolate as much as she does. 

We headed out after the chocolate factory tour to start making our way back to Georgia.  We didn't have any more vacation plans, but we wanted to get a head start on our journey home.  It was a wonderful, and much needed get-away after our season of building a house and moving.

Cape Canaveral

After we got off the ship we had the whole day free.  We took the girls to Cape Canaveral to explore the space center.  We all had such a great time.

This was definitely a highlight for me.  The space shuttle Atlantis is located here, and NASA did an amazing job in its reveal. 

The girls learned a lot, and played a lot too. 

As a teacher, I'm always up for a good educational day.  The space center at Cape Canaveral did not disappoint, and I highly recommend visiting if you are in the area.

Time for a VACATION!

Whew! It has been such a busy season of life as we rushed to finish our house, move in, start school, and tackle a gagillion projects. We knew we were going to go on vacation for Fall Break, and Marc was insistent he didn't want to do any work for it.  He wanted it all planned and taken care of for us. We tossed around the idea of a cruise, but one day he texted me at work saying he booked a cruise for us over the break. Say what? I was shocked that he went ahead and booked it, because that is so not like him.  I think I quite enjoy the new take charge of a vacation attitude! haha!

The girls knew what to expect this time, so they were basically pros at cruising.

For example, they headed straight for the free ice-cream once w changed into swimsuits. 

Vacation mode!

Casting off from Port Canaveral.  Bahamas, here we come!

Our first stop was Nassau.  I really didn't want to visit Nassau, but beggars can't be choosers.  We did end up getting off of the boat and walking around the city some.  I told Marc we would NOT be going to the straw market.  I don't do well in those sorts of situations, but we enjoyed walking around the shops and finding a few souvenirs.

This time we had a table all to ourselves.  We requested the same waiter every night in our reservations, and that was fun getting to know them. 

We didn't get the towel animals the first night, so they were super excited when they showed up the next night. 

 

Our second stop was at CocoCay, a private island. It was an AMAZING day.  The water was beautiful an the girls enjoyed playing and floating around on the mat. 

We had an amazing buffet lunch on the island. It was nice that the cruise line handled the food for this day too, so we didn't have to figure out what to eat while we were there. They are definitely doing this private island day up right. 

A couple of fruity beverages cooled us down a little. 

We knew we wanted to do some snorkeling on this trip, so Marc did some research and decided to purchase us these masks and snorkels.  We looked ridiculous, but there were a few other people that had brought the same masks.  I will say, they were pretty cool to use.  Macy and Brooke didn't really love snorkeling.  I think they kept getting water in their masks and were frusterated.  It's hard to adjust their masks and deal with your own at the same time.  Kayla enjoyed the adventure, though.

 

Back on the ship the girls grabbed a snack and had some quality chatting time poolside. 

Fancy fruit appetizer for dinner. 

And fancy desserts too.

This was a really neat event on the last night of the cruise.  It was called the Parade of Nations, and they have a flag for every country represented on the cruise staff.  They also had several countries that would perform a short dance native to their country.  It was so neat to think of how small the world can become on one ship.

We were completely stuffed after dinner, but we decided to take advantage of the last night on board.  We headed back for one last round of pizza and nachos. 

And then we all settled in for the night.  We actually ended up with 2 connecting rooms on this cruise.  It made it more expensive, but it was the only way since we booked so late. I will say it was super nice to have a separate room from the kids, extra space, and two bathrooms. 

We returned to Port Canaveral on Monday, and since we still had a week of our vacation left, we took the slow journey back home and made a couple more stops.