Our Vacation

After a long stressful time on the dairy for Justin we decided we needed a break! We decided to spend a week on the island of St. Maarten and visit a couple of other islands while we were there. I couldn't have been more happy to see some sun after a long winter. We spent a lot of time laying on the beach and it was sooooo nice! We didn't arrive til late afternoon so the first day we just ate dinner then went to bed. We were so tired! The next day we just hung out on the beach right outside our hotel. The water was so clear it was awesome!

This is our hotel from the beach. The hotel was pretty nice and we couldn't have asked for a better location! Right where we stayed is where the cruise ships would dock so there was always lots of people and lots going on.
I think my favorite part of the trip was no cell phones! Justin hasn't been off of his phone much in the last 6 months so it was really nice having no interruptions. And after our days at the beach we would go back to the hotel and skype with the kids so it worked out perfect.
On our 3rd day we took a boat over to a little island called Prickly Pear. Its close to Anguilla which was another island I really wanted to visit but we didn't get the chance. But Prickly Pear was gorgeous and we had tons of fun snorkeling here.

The only thing on this island is this little shack/restaurant. People take boats over here every day to work at this little place and the food was so so good!
I think my favorite part of the trip was the day we went to St. Barts. I got a little sea sick on the boat ride there, but once we got there I was fine. This is definitely the island of the rich and famous. I was hoping to see some celebrities but no such luck. If I could I'd vacation here only! Another cool thing is it's owned by France so my passport now has a French stamp so ya for me!
We spent most of the day right here under these (expensive) umbrellas. We had lunch here and just laid on the beach and swam in the ocean. So relaxing!
After a while we decided to walk around the island a little. We found this cool old church and looked around in some shops. Too bad I didn't bring a few thousand extra dollars with me or I would have bought something. We also found a fun little ice cream shop where we had yummy gelato and did some people watching, my favorite!
We knew we were close to shell beach so we decided to check it out. It was exactly that....shell beach. There were small patches of sand but pretty much all the ground was covered with these little shells. They were so neat and made for some easy cheap souveniers!
Leaving beautiful St. Barts at sunset.
The traffic on the island was so insane! It took us a couple of days to get brave enough to actually drive anywhere. But we were glad we did, other than when we got to our car someone had thrown a rock through the back window. We drove around and saw tons of beaches we loved. This is orient beach and was one of our favorites. We ended up coming back a second time.
We had to find the beach where the planes came in. The runway was literally right next to the beach and when the planes landed you could almost reach up and touch them. It was crazy, and a little scary!
We had heard that there was a night club called Bliss but since we're not really the clubbing type we never went in, but we thought we better at least get a picture, too bad I closed my eyes!

We had such a great time and when the time came, we were ready to head back home. Another highlight of the trip was seeing our good friends Tom and Leigh Anne in Atlanta. They live about an hour from the airport and drove in to see us. I thought it was the perfect way to end such a great trip. But it was too good to be true.....when we got back to SLC around midnight not only was it a blizzard outside but our car battery was dead! After about an hour of waiting and working on the car we were headed home....going 30 mph! I didn't think we'd ever get home but we finally did. And now, we can't wait to do it again!