More Atlantis!

Here are some more Atlantis pics from the other camera. Bob got an awesome waterproof case for it just before we left, so we brought it with us quite a bit more and most of the pics turned out great. You can definitely see water drops that make the pics a little smeary on some, so here are some of the better ones!

The lovely arch over the lagoon

Bob and I in front of predator lagoon

The awesome rope bridge

Beautiful water and beaches!

We're all saving ourselves from the sun a little by this point--except Carolyn--she loves to get her color!

Makes me want to go back already!

Sea turtles in a lagoon

It was a hot day, so it was muggy in there with lots of condensation, but this is the awesome tube through the shark tank after the end of the tube ride! You can't really tell, but there are sharks swimming outside this tube all around us! So fun! Bob's obviously enjoying it!

Going up the conveyer belt on our tubes for another ride!

More tubin' fun!

It was overcast that morning and rained briefly, but it's warm now!

A little too sunny for Bob without his shades!

The view from the top of the tower for the tube rides

More tubing good times

It was so much fun to stay in the tube and ride all these rides! We floated and floated and had sooooo much fun!

Bob loved it too!

A calmer spot!

Ok, we have a lot more pics, but that's enough to give you the idea! We had such a wonderful time and would love to spend another week or 4 there! If you ever have the chance to go to Atlantis, do it! I do have a few more pics from Carolyn's camera so I may post some more later, but I'm sure you're all pretty Atlantis'd out by now! :)

I've had some questions about what/where Atlantis is, so for those who've never heard of it, it's a ridiculously opulent resort in the Bahamas on Paradise Island. http://www.atlantis.com/ is their website if you're interested. They also just built one in Dubai, so for those of you frequenting the Middle East, you've got a great option there as well! ;)

In unrelated news, we finally made it to Salt Lake! The movers came and packed everything up really quickly and loaded it all in the same day and it's all being delivered tomorrow!

The drive down went well--we stayed a day in Coeur d'Alene which was great--we saw both of our families including the Grandmas, which was especially nice since Bob's Grandma had a knee replacement and gout attack simultaneously about 10 days ago, so she was very excited to have some visitors. We got her some Circus peanuts and jelly beans as she requested, and a birdfeeder for her front window so she can stay entertained while she recovers. We loved that we even got to have lunch with our Poteets, minus Georgey who was at school still. We met their handsome new baby Gibson, who was not even 2 weeks old and super tiny and cute! We wished we could have seen everyone more, but even a short visit was wonderful!

After staying the night in CDA we woke up early and headed down to Pocatello and made it by 4:30 so we got to have dinner with Jap, Mady, Brooklyn, and Jay since Jen was out of town for the weekend (Bob's sister and her family). We played lots of games with the girls and went on a bike ride and a walk, jumped on the trampoline, and even played the Farming Game. We stayed up late and had a great time, which the girls especially thought was awesome. They've never played so much Trouble, Uno, Memory, Old Maid, etc in one 24h period! We are so excited to live closer to these nieces and nephew who we rarely see and they're excited to see more of Lilo and swim in our pool! Jap made us some delicious french toast and we played a few more games with the girls and then took off for SLC.

We had a slight hiccup with the apartment we were supposed to move into... the tenants trashed the floor somehow (despite it being concrete), so we're taking a different unit--they are cleaning it this weekend and it will be ready first thing tomorrow morning, which is great because the movers will be there at 0830! Christi and Karl were kind enough to put us up for last night and tonight, so it all worked out. We're excited to get all our stuff moved in and settled!

We're excited to have a little time before work starts--I have a 4 hour class on 25June, but then start orientation on 1 July, and Bob starts with Bath Fitter here in mid-July--they open in August, so he'll just be building displays for the showroom and setting stuff up, but he's excited to be their first employee and get to train all the new employees! He's starting at his same wage and commission he had here, so that's a nice smooth transition for him!

Last but not least, we got a renter for our house in Lacey just before we left which was AWESOME. We were a bit worried about how long it would take and having to pay our mortgage and apartment rent for a while, but it worked out just in time. They've signed the lease and will move in the next week!

Hope you all enjoyed this ridiculously long post and thanks for reading! I'll email out our new address soon, but if you don't get it, shoot me an email and I'll send it on. :)

~Cathy and Bob

Atlantis trip!

We're back! We love Atlantis so much and this time Bob's folks came for part of our trip which was great! For any of you who aren't acquainted with Atlantis, it's an amazing resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas with a HUGE waterpark and it's awesome!

Here's Atlantis from the ferry!

This pic demonstrates my sweet Atlantis rash guard, necessitated by my frenemy, the Sun. We all know I'm pasty, but despite SPF 50 applied literally 3 times a day, I was burned by day 2. My chest and shoulders were the worst, hence the rash guard really helped preserve the pastiness. :) It also shows off our sweet matching shades--Carolyn only had sunglasses that clipped onto her regular glasses and didn't want to lose them in the river, so we got a good deal on these when we were shopping in Nassau.

We had dinner at a deli with pickles at all the tables instead of bread. They were good, but we all know I'm a carbatarian and let's just accept that people want their bread!

We had some delicious chocolate cake for dessert

Bob is very proud that we finished it!

Please ignore the red arm, shiny face (MANY layers of sunscreen) and poufy hair (pretty humid this night!)

Jelly fish at the huge aquarium!

Bigger scarier jellies!

What's cooler than a seahorse?

Isn't this an impressive rope bridge and waterfalls?

There are more beach pics coming, but here's one from the last day!

Atlantis from the rope bridge side

There are pools with different sea creatures all around the resort and the hammerheads were especially impressive!

More rope bridge--last day again, hence the pants, knowing I will freeze on the plane otherwise, despite the toastiness throughout the morning and especially in the long line waiting to go through customs!

baby rays

Another view of Atlantis from the ferry

Who doesn't love a giant chair?

Pegasus fountain in front of the Royal Towers

Here's one stolen from Carolyn's blog to give you a preview of our lazy river fun!

And here's another stolen from her camera only slightly ruined by the date stamp--I spent a while roaming the beach finding little white shells to make this and it was worth it!

Last day with Bob's folks--so tough to leave the sun!

Ok, there are more pics coming from our other camera--Bob got an awesome waterproof case for it right before we left so we took it with us on the lazy river and got quite a few more pics.

Basically, this was the best vacation ever! We love Atlantis so much! We floated the lazy river a million times and enjoyed every second! We swam in the ocean, relaxed in the pools and on the beach, snorkeled, and swam with the dolphins! I wish we could have stayed another week, but life goes on. It was a great chance to relax before the chaos of our move, now only 2 weeks away, so we were so lucky to have this opportunity to go, and we were especially glad to have Bob's parents come along too! We loved showing them around Atlantis! We saw so many families and kept talking about how fun it would be to bring our kids someday, but also were grateful it's just the 2 of us right now, because it's pretty insanely pricey and we could not even fathom what the bill could be for all the huge families we saw! It would add up fast!

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend and I'll post the other pics soon!

Florida Fun!

Bob and I just went to Florida and had so much fun! Not working is a rare treat in and of itself, but we also really appreciated the sunshine since it's been so rainy here!

We packed a lot in this trip! We arrived on Monday afternoon and just checked in and played mini golf at a really cool place with a pirate theme that had impressive caves and waterfalls and a big pirate ship that shot cannonballs every so often! Then On Tuesday we went to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, which were both a lot of fun! Islands of Adventure had more coasters while Universal Studios had more shows, but both were really awesome and not too crowded so we rode the Dueling Dragons 5 or 6 times in a row because there was no line! The joys of going in the off season!

On Wednesday we went to Blizzard Beach (A Disney World water park) which was one of the most fun days! The whole waterpark is like a ski resort, so there's a ski lift that takes you up to some of the slides! One of our favorite slides was a toboggan ride where you went down the slide on a foam mat curled up at the end like a toboggan and slid down head first. It was 8 lanes wide so everyone could race! We did it over and over again and Bob won almost every time although I did beat him at least twice... I think he just didn't get a good start those times, but I'll take it! :) They also had a super-awesome lazy river that was a lot of fun too! Definitely one of the most fun waterparks we've ever been to, and great weather too--in the high 70's-80's our whole trip! Like Universal, minimal crowds as well, which added to the fun! We also saw a little British boy squeal that he saw a snake! The workers freaked out and got on their phones right away to call someone to take care of it, and on the next time we went down that slide there was a lady there with a pincher thing poking in the bushes, although she never caught the snake.

Here's the toboggan racers we loved so much

So we didn't really take pictures our first few days because we didn't want our camera to hinder our fun at the water park or Universal (where we got wet on almost every ride), but luckily, Bob's folks came to join us there on Wednesday and Carolyn is NEVER without at least 2 cameras, usually 3 for this trip!

There are a lot of pictures to post, so we'll start with one of the most fun ones! A very nice family took this one of us at the entrance of the Magic Kingdom! We had a lot of fun there!

We stayed the whole day at pretty much every park, wanting to pack everything in, but the bonus at Magic Kingdom was we got to see Cindarella's castle lit up for Christmas! There was a very cute lighting ceremony where the whole crowd had to say "Bippity boppity boo" and it lit up--very impressive!

We played mini golf again with Bob's folks Wednesday night after they got there. The place right across the street from our place had a giant volcano that erupted every 15 minutes, like the Mirage in Vegas! Pretty awesome! We had fun and I won the first game (surprisingly--Bob always beats me!) and Bob's mom won the second!

This is also from Magic Kingdom--we're on a ride through a boat in the jungle--lots of neat animatronics :)

We of course had to enjoy the teacups! Bob doesn't enjoy the spinning so much, but it's a classic!

One of the best parts as I've mentioned was the small crowds! We had heard that Space Mountain was closed and didn't expect to ride it as all the schedules for the day said it was being refurbished and closed down, but we were on our way to another ride and passed it and there were signs saying it was open for test runs! So we rode it twice in a row and it was awesome! So much fun--basically a roller coaster in the dark so you can't anticipate the twists and turns which made it a lot more fun!

We had a great time at Sea World too, although despite sitting several rows behind the "soak zone," he still got us! That Shamu is huge!

Did anyone realize that Shamu had Christmas outfits? Well, he does!

Sea World had some great rides too, including a new roller coaster called the Manta where you're lying down on your stomach for the whole ride! The track is above you, so you dangle below on your belly and go through all the twists and turns! Great fun! We did it twice and Bob's Mom eespecially loved it! :) Here's a pic I googled to show ya--on one of the turns it dips near the water and fountains squirt up at you--we didn't actually hit the water!

This is Disney Hollywood Studios which was tons of fun--this is the New York City area

This was the center of the park--pretty huge Hat!

Ok, that's enough for today!--I'm a bit frustrated with formatting issues--this is my first post on our Mac and there are just differences, like I can't drag pictures and change their order once I upload them, which is really annoying, so I have to cut and paste each time I want to move them... also for some reason it kept changing the font size randomly... And I had some videos that wouldn't work after I uploaded, and took forever to upload and never did when I tried again later! UGH!

So anyway--we had a great trip and loved spending time with Ron and Carolyn too! Sad to come back to work this week but we had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends here before I went to work that night! I hope that those of you who enjoyed the Black Friday madness have recovered enough for Cyber Monday sales! :) I was on call and got off at 7am so Bob and I went to a few stores at 8 but everything we wanted was still there! A few movies, sheets, towels, socks, and some presents for family. :) Hope you're all enjoying your weekend and that we can all remember all that we have to give thanks for throughout this holiday season!

~Cathy