Dylan had his golden birthday this year - 6 on the 6th! And such an important birthday deserved a day of special surprises!
Surprise #1 - A Decorated Door
Surprise #2 - A Donut Breakfast!
Surprise #3 - A Pirate Ship!
WHAT?!?!?
This awesome new play structure was ordered a couple of months ago.
Delivery just happened to get scheduled on Dylan's birthday.
The boys were excited to watch it get set up.
The adults were equally excited about it. It is SO awesome!
Surprise #4 - Legoland with Nana, Bumpa and Emily
Cutest Ninja Ever
Boston In Legos
And Underground - Where Everyone Knows Your Name
Dylan and Emily at Fenway Park
Dylan and Nana
Fenway Was Filled With A Crowd
Lego Dragon
Pizza and Ice Cream After Legoland
Cade, Nana, Dylan and Bumpa
Cade, Dylan and Emily
Dylan did a FANTASTIC job assembling his lego sets from Nana and Bumpa.
Returned home to a completely set up and ready to play on pirate ship.
Guess what we did for the rest of the day?
Arghhhh Matey!
Woohoo!
Dylan had a great day of birthday surprises and we were glad to make the day really special for him. In all honesty, I had more surprises lined up for him but in his words he'd "had enough surprises for a day." But, his party was still to come so the week would still be all about Dylan's b'day. Next up, how my boy has grown up in the last year.
Last Saturday, Cade was my little sidekick. He went with me to the gym and "helped me exercise," we had lunch together and then he ran some errands with me. As you can see from the following 2 videos, he was a great companion and brought me lots of smiles. I hope this gives you some smiles too.
In case you can't hear him, he's saying "Go Mommy Go!"
Alright! Here is goes, our LAST day of our vacation...and it's a doozy. Lots of excitement, lots of adventure, super high highs and 1 super low low. Let's get started.
Our day started early. (The kids were up the earliest they had been all week, at 6am.) And really not good. Extremely not good. Actually very, very bad\sad. Due to our cat Luci's quickly declining condition and our plans for the day to be out of phone availability, we had made a date to call our cat sitter first thing to make a decision. Despite everyone's best effort to care for Luci in our absence, her condition had deteriorated to where she couldn't breath. It was time. Time to say goodbye. Thanks to technology, we were able to say goodbye to Luci as in person as we could, via Skype. It was hard and emotional. By 8am that morning, we were all completely emotionally drained. Mike and I because we understood and were dealing with the sadness of the situation. The boys, well, frankly they were just freaked out to see us crying like we were. It was hard on all of us. Poor Luci. Our wonderful vet made a house call and Luci was out of pain a short time thereafter.
After that, it was extremely surreal to "go on as planned" with the biggest plans of our week - a charter boat cruise with the whole gang. Rachel's kids, Payton and Ainsley, were out of school for Good Friday so got to come too. While excited about every aspect of this trip, I was most excited for this event and had been looking forward to it for weeks. After some texts to Rachel to tell her of the morning's events and warn her of our bloodshot eyes, she and the kids picked us up and took us to the docks. Of course this was the time my phone decided to stop checking email (the only point of contact I had with our captain) and it started to rain. We hung out in the car and waited. Then got out of the car and waited. Finally, 30 minutes after our planned pick up time, our boat arrived. Our Captain had been sending emails to let us know they were monitoring the weather and stuck behind a ferry boat and would be late but I didn't get those emails until late in the day. Rocky start to the day to say the least.
Waiting For the Rain to Pass
Around 10:30, we loaded on the boat and set out. Now, I'm not a big boater. But I know enough to know a little spray happens. I didn't expect to stay dry. However, the seas were a bit rough due to the passing storm and it was a rough ride out to our first stop to the uninhabited Buck Island. We were mostly huddled under towels to keep from getting completely drenched. Once at the island, we pulled into the calm waters of the bay for a little snorkeling.
Heading Out
And another pic since you can't get everyone smiling with eyes open in one shot.
When we got there, Captain Jimbo first lured some fish over to the boat so the kids could see them. Apparently, popcorn is a desirable fish snack because there weren't too many popped kernels thrown into before they were chomping them down around the boat.
Here Fishy Fishy!
The dark blue spots are fish. The white is popcorn.
Our View of Buck Island
And here's where I brag. Because BOTH of my brave little boys got geared up, off the boat and did some snorkeling. I was so amazed at them! And proud! While snorkeling around, we got some great views of those beautiful dark blue fish, saw some really cool smaller fish with long blue neon snouts (can't find online so no clue what it's called) and a couple of huge sea cucumbers. Cade and Dylan both seemed to enjoy it, though Cade was back on the boat long before the rest of us.
It looks like I'm picking my nose, but I'm really just explaining the snorkeling gear to Dylan.
Rachel with Cade
Dylan and I, faces in water, snorkeling.
Family Snorkel Pic
Me, Mike, Dylan and Cade
Hi Rachel!
Back on the Boat - Cutie Cade
And Cool Payton
Stop 2 of snorkeling was in the rougher waters of the channel. This is where the green turtles hung out. One of my top life memories is following and swimming behind a sea turtle near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia on a trip with this guy I was newly dating (hint, it went well, his name was Mike). I told Captain Jimbo that and he said, "get ready because you're about to have another wonderful life experience like that today!" And he was right! Right near our boat, we followed 4 turtles around for a while. Now, both of my boys were willing to give it a shot but the water was just too rough for them. They didn't feel comfortable at all so they were back on the boat quickly and watched the turtles from there. They were stunning!
There's Rachel, the motors of our boat and the turtle in between.
Stunning!
Such Beautiful Creatures!
I could have watched them swim around a lot longer, but the rough water was starting to have ill affects for those back on the boat. So, eventually, we got back on for our next stop. Now, if we thought the ride was rough out, it was about 10 times worse on the way back. Our Captain kept his cool, but I could tell he was very focused and it was obviously not easy waters. The spray at the front was too much for Cade so we hung out on the Captain's bench, behind the glass. We still both had to hide under towels and hold on tightly to not get knocked about by the extreme rise and big crashes of the boat. At some point, poor Payton got forced off his bench and he was unable to peel himself off the floor until we arrived out our stop. It was quite the roller coaster ride! Somehow, though, Cade was able to take a nap through some of it.
My Sleepy Boy (After Getting to Calmer Waters)
The Crew in the Front Survived the Trek Too
After all that adventure, it was time for some grub. And we went to just about the coolest place for lunch that could ever exist - a pizza boat! We had called in our order before our rough ride over. Once we arrived in the bay, we just pulled up, attached ourselves to the boat already having lunch, and walked over to get our Pizza Pi! (Misspelling intentional, that was the name of the place.)
Some of the unwanted crusts were thrown into the water to be quickly consumed by fish. I'm pretty sure if I was a fish I would live by the Pizza Pi boat. Yum!
Remember that treasure map Dylan found earlier in the week? Well, we got our Captain and First Mate in on the hunt. They helped us determine that it was back in Cruz Bay on St. John. So, we headed back there.
Sting Ray by the Shore
Our Boat and Captain Jimbo Behind
The crew off to find treasure!
X Marks the Spot!
Treasure!
Showing Off His Treasure
Dylan Showing His Treasure to The First Mate
It had been an awesome adventure! And, on the way home, we had another adventure like we had on every other car trip - the roller coaster of the road! Here are some stills of our best roller coaster screams. Cade was absolutely hysterical with his laughing and screaming so, of course, I had to include the video here too.
But our last day was not over yet. Once home and cleaned up, Payton and Ainsley stayed with Dylan and Cade, the the 3 adults went out for dinner and a bit of souvenir shopping. I wish I could say it was super exciting to be out with the 3 of us, but it had truly been a long and exhausting day. We weren't the best conversationalists at that point. But it was pretty cool that Rachel's kids were able to babysit my kids for a while.
And of course, being our last day, Mike and I still had to pack up when we got back. It wasn't hard to fall asleep after all that.
I know this post has been long...stay with me another minute. The next day we got up, finished packing, dropped off our jeep rental and started out on our long trek home (ferry broken, had to wait and change to another ferry, ride to airport on St Thomas, quick stop for fuel in Puerto Rico...can't fully fuel in St Thomas because of length of runway, fly to Boston, shuttle to car, car ride home). The boys are such awesome travelers now. It's so refreshing! I was POSITIVE they would sleep the entire plane trip because they were so exhausted. But they didn't. At all. It wasn't until the car ride home from the airport in Boston late that night that they both relaxed enough to catch some zzz's.
BUT, despite their exhaustion and the long day of travel, something miraculous happened. I watched a movie. An entire movie. On the plane. Sitting next to a 3 year old. If you don't know what an impossible feat that is, you haven't been traveling with young kids for the last (almost) 6 years. You know what you call that? Light. Light at the end of the tunnel my friends. Seems like the complete and utter torture of traveling with young kids might be (mostly) behind us. They know the drill and are mostly well behaved, even when tired. I'm not naive enough to think there won't be issues in the future, but seeing that it won't ALL be issues is pretty great. Exciting stuff. Broadening our scope of travel is going to be happening...very soon. Later this summer perhaps. So fun!
