Vacation Post #4

Here's the last few days of our vacation. I hope you've enjoyed reading about it. My grandma sent me an email and said that she got a sunburn just reading about it. I thought that was too cute!

This was our last day on the ship. We had a Fun Day at Sea. Here's Jason and I out on the deck.

Rhett in the hot tub.

Braden spent most of the afternoon in a ping pong tournament. Here he is in action.

There was always music going on the lido deck. Here's Jason and Gracie dancing to the music.

Here's Jason and Rhett at dinner.

Here's Braden, Gracie and me at dinner.

On the first night of the cruise, our waiter asked all of us if we were celebrating something special. We told him we were there celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary. On this, the last night, after dinner, he brought us this piece of cake with a candle in it and he and our waitress and all the surrounding tables sang "Happy Anniversary" to us. It was so sweet!


The next morning, we were up early. The ship was docked by 7am and people started debarking at 8am. We got off around 9:30. After we got to our car and got it loaded up, we drove to Jacksonville Beach and drove around looking for hotels. Preferably with an ocean view. We ended up calling several and they were all sold out. This was a Saturday. We finally found one though. It was a wonderful hotel and the people were very nice. We had an awesome ocean view from our room!!

Here's Braden relaxing on our balcony looking out at the Atlantic Ocean.

We got dressed and headed straight for the beach!

We rented an umbrella, a table, 2 chairs and 2 boogie boards. We were ready for the day!











Jason helped the kids dig a big hole in the sand. They dug down until they reached water. They made a little kiddie pool for Gracie to swim in!


Rhett decided he was going to dig a trench all the way to the ocean.




Jason had been diving down into the waves and letting them carry him back to the shore. He did this when we were there the previous Sunday and he had been doing it all day. This was after his "one last time". The wave drug him down to the bottom and he hit his head on a rock. Ouch! He said it didn't really hurt that bad, but it sure looked bad. I was so thankful he didn't hit any harder because he could've easily been knocked out before I even knew what was going on. God was watching out for us!

When we got back to the room, we all showered and then ordered Papa Johns, our favorite pizza.
Here's the boys right after they finished their pizza and root beer. They were SO tired! We had to move them and pull out the couch bed for them.

Jason got up early and took this picture of the sunrise from our balcony on Sunday morning.

Then he and the boys took one last walk on the beach.

We pulled out of the hotel parking lot at 10am and headed for home. We drove all the way to West Memphis, Arkansas before we stopped. It was close to midnight before we got there.
The next morning, we only had about 5 or 6 hours to go before we got home, so it was nice to be able to get a slow start and we still made it home by 2pm on Monday.
It sure was hard to leave the beach, but once we got home, we were glad to be home and get back to "normal". We are all still looking at the pictures from our vacation every day and talking about our trip.
We've already been talking about our next cruise. The boys vote for Mexico next time. We'll see... :)