Happy Birthday Uncle Justin

Happy Birthday....

Happy Birthday....Take Two

Back to Reality

It has been back to reality since returning from our vacation.  So much monotony, there has been nothing to blog about.  We are looking forward to our Halloween party this weekend.  At least I'll have something to blog about.

The most exciting news since we've been back from our trip is that Cameron got his dictee correct!  He gets a dictee at the beginning of the week, and on Friday his teacher dictates the sentence and the students have to write it.  Each week he has been making a little silly mistake.  Not last week!  Check this out!

This is what was sent home today for the new dictee.  Wish us luck on Vendredi!

We finally decided to take out Emmersyn's braids.  It was just as painful taking them out as it was putting them in.  It took 1 1/2 hours to put in the braids, and it took us nearly this long to take them out.  Mohamed started the process and I finished it while he was at swimming with Cameron.  I'm not sure if Emmersyn was crying because her cute braids were coming out, or because we were pulling her hair causing her pain.

And since we are back home, this means that Mohamed is back to cooking.  I found this picture on the camera....This was the beginning of a veggie dish he made the other day.  Mushrooms and onions...yum, yum.

And I put this picture up of Emmersyn playing at the computer because I think it really shows off her big, beautiful, brown eyes!

Here Emmersyn and I are just hanging out before school this morning.

Is she not the cutest and stylish pre-preschooler you know?  I could eat her up!

Here she was soooo happy that I gave her a bag of cookies.

She was not so happy that I wouldn't open them up.  Look at the attitude she is giving me.  Regardless, she still looks darling in this sweater dress!  

She gave up on the bag of cookies and refused to talk to me!

I bought her two new hats today and she LOVED them.  She was wearing them all day.  She'll probably wear one to bed.

And here is Cameron's new hat.  Isn't he such a handsome boy?

What a face!

Trying to be silly, of course.

And, not sure what he was attempting here!

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!

Atlantis Day 4

After this post, there is only one more day of Atlantis pictures.  Going on vacation makes blogging so easy because there are so many pictures.  We are already discussing where Family Vacation 2012 will be.  Anyone have any good suggestions?  The only criteria is that it can't be in the United States.  There is a lot of world out there to see.

The first few pictures are of Mohamed and Cameron having some swimming fun.  Emmersyn had fallen asleep in her stroller and I was sunbathing next to her.

It gets hot quick sitting out in the sun.  Before you knew it Mohamed and I had to change shifts.

We bribed Cameron to get out of the water with my camera.  He loves taking pictures with it.  So, he was happy and Mohamed and I got a picture of the two of us together which is a rare finding!  We were all happy campers!

Sleeping beauty finally woke up!

Once again this picture is thanks to Cameron.  We were waiting for Mohamed to finish showering before heading down for dinner.  A little off center, but I'll take it.

This is one of my FAVORITE pictures.  This time Cameron got a bit closer to us.  We were still waiting for Mohamed.  I love Emmersyn's expression!

So, Mohamed was ready and we were on our way to dinner.  We made a few stops along the way for a few photos.

And here are the after dinner pictures.  Once again, we headed downstairs to see the fish.  This is one of my favorite photos of Cameron.

After bothering the fish, we decided to take a stroll outside.

Cameron cracks me up in this picture!

I'm so annoyed that you can't see the beautiful waterfall in the background.  Like I mentioned earlier, I wasn't able to figure out how to work my camera at night to capture the background!  What a bummer!

Once again, no waterfalls.

No waterfall.

No beautiful palm trees.

I love this picture of Emmersyn trying to call Gabby back in the States!

These pictures were the following morning.  This is what the waterfalls look like during the day!

I was waiting for the kids to finish eating their apples and decided to take a seat on the beach.

Now it was Mohamed's time to get a solo picture while we waited for the kids.

Cameron is always wanting to be like his dad.  Check out his pose as he tried to copy Mohamed.

Isn't the blue sky and blue water absolutely beautiful?

Just a few final pictures of Cameron going down a water slide.

Not sure if you can really see us, but this is Emmersyn and me going down.  This pool allowed parents to accompany their children.  We were going down this slide while Mohamed was going down a big people slide.

Going down like Superman.

That's it for today.  One more day of vacation photos and we're done!