Coco Cay

Um, so I'm sorry that my posts are jumping backward and forward in time.  It's just that sometimes something significant (to me) is happening right now, and I want to write about it before I forget, you know? 

So anyway, this is back in January, as part of our cruise.  Coco Cay is this teeny little island that Royal Caribbean owns.  Therefore, it's clean and beautiful.  Ben is always taking pictures in a row, left to right, so you can get a visual of what it's like.  Like a panoramic picture that got chopped up. :)

I was using one of my church dresses as a cover-up, which was kind of dumb.  I got a proper cover-up later on.  It's better than nothing though.  Trust me on that one.

Ben had to buy a hat - he has lost his favorite hat and is really sad about it:

We went snorkeling, which I didn't get any pictures of, but it was actually fun!  I've had two snorkeling experiences before that were totally traumatizing, so I was reeeeeeeeeeally nervous to go.  1st experience - I was in Hawaii with my folks as a teenager.  My snorkel had a hole in it, so I was inhaling sea water the whole time.  2nd experience - on my honeymoon in Cancun.  We were in very deep water, and I was extremely nauseated from the boat ride to Cozumel.

But this snorkeling excursion turned out so much better for me. We saw a few tropical-looking fish and one huge grouper.  It wasn't as spectacular as the fish that I saw while snorkeling in Hawaii as a teenager, but at least I could breathe normally. :) 

At one point, we realized that we were farther in one direction than we wanted to be, so we kicked our way back against a pretty strong current.  Because of our positioning, we swam over a reef we hadn't seen when we initially went out, and there were sea urchins all over that reef.  And the water on that reef was extremely shallow.  So in my head, I was like, "Eeeek!  Think skinny!!!"  We had maybe two inches between our stomachs and the quills sticking out from the sea urchins.  Yikes.  Bikes.  My poor sis, Brianna, stepped on a sea urchin on her honeymoon, and it caused her days and days of pain.  Scary.

After we snorkeled, ate (of course), and relaxed for awhile, we decided to do some souvenir shopping.  This is what I got for my dad:

A cute little wooden golf cart.  The dude asked me if I wanted to engrave my dad's name on it, and I said heck yes.  But then he just got this little buzzy thing out and carved my dad's name in 2nd-grade handwriting.  Which kind of cheapened the golf cart.  Ben made fun of me for that.  Ah well.  It's the thought that counts.