This is it....Going Home

Happy Thanksgiving!  This is the last day of vacation pictures.  This first picture is a picture of the "Leap of Faith."  I was attempting to capture the height of this crazy slide, but didn't do a great job, obviously.  The kids and I were waiting way at the bottom for Mohamed to come out in this pool you see in the front of the picture.

I was able to zoom in to get a picture of Mohamed way at the top waiting in line waving to us way below.

That's him again with his two arms in the air...

Then I got smart and went up one level with the kids.  I was going to try to get a picture of Mohamed coming down.  I didn't know when it was Mohamed's turn, so I took a picture of every person coming down so that I wouldn't miss Mohamed.  They go down soooo fast that if you don't snap the picture right away, you miss it.  The challenge was, trying to capture a picture of each rider, AND keep an eye on the kids from running off.  Emmersyn was running back and forth, and Cameron was crying that he was hungry.  It was amazing that not only did I capture Mohamed coming down, but that I didn't lose a child in the process.

And here is Mohamed.  I got him! The Leap of Faith is a 60 ft. almost-vertical drop from the top of the Mayan Temple.  At the end of the ride you end up in a clear acrylic tunnel submerged in a shark-filled lagoon.  I wasn't able to do this ride because the kids had had enough waiting for Mohamed.  Maybe next year.  When we asked Cameron what his favorite part of the trip was, he replied, "watching daddy go down the drop slide."  Cameron was so disappointed because in his words, "I wanted to go down it."  He has no fear of these scary rides.  But, remember those bumper cars????  Those are scary!

The kids going down their little slide together.

I can't tell you (actually I'm going to calculate it in a minute) how many showers we took during this trip.  I took three showers/day.  One in the morning after my run, another one after we came in from the pools before dinner, and one before bed.  The kids and Mohamed averaged two showers/day...So that makes about 9 showers/day times 5 days.... that is 45 showers on this trip!  We spent a lot of time in the showers!  One thing was for sure...we were clean and did not smell like chlorine or sunscreen!

I love this huge fish looking at Emmersyn.  By this time, I was a bit sunburned and chilled when in the air-conditioning.  Thus, I needed a little jacket to keep me comfortable!

I loved these fish, too.

Here we were waiting for the shuttle to bring us back to the airport.  We were being picked up at 10:00 a.m. and our flight was leaving at 4:10 p.m.  Mohamed's flight was leaving at 1:00.  I decided to hitch a ride earlier rather than waiting later in the day because we all had enough of the sun, especially my lips! So, I opted to spend 6 hours in the airport waiting for our first flight.  Then we had another 3 1/2 hour wait once we got to Miami to head back to Detroit.... 

We were waving good-bye to the Bahamas....See you next year!

Mohamed travelled with the luggage, and I travelled with the kids.  Next year we will ALL be traveling together!

A face of shock when Cameron found out that we would have to wait a lot of days before we would be coming back.

This was a face when he was trying to be sad...

Here we were on the bus on our way to the airport.

Cameron was going a bit silly on the bus.  He knew what a long day we had in front of us!

More silliness.

And this is where our six hour wait began in the airport.  I tried to hop onto an earlier flight into Miami so that I could get back to Detroit sooner, but the only flight earlier than my 7:50 p.m. flight from Miami to Detroit was at 11:00 a.m.  and it was 10:45 a.m. and I was still in Nassau...I wasn't going to make it.  I was in it for the long haul!

During our first break after sitting for two hours playing with the DS, watching videos, and eating, we came across this play area in the airport....It was fabulous because Cameron and Emmersyn met a bunch of new friends and I was kept busy talking to their parents.  I wasn't even annoyed when our flight was delayed by an hour.  It didn't really make a difference seeing that I still had a layover in Miami.  As long as I didn't miss the connection, I was fine.  Mohamed had lucked out and once he arrived in Toronto, he was able to hop on an earlier flight into Windsor, so he didn't have to wait 4 hours in the airport.  He was home by 7:00 p.m. and we were still in Nassau!  

Cameron spinning in the shell.

That's it....we made it home!