My Dad picked up BBALL tickets for those children and grandchildren that he really loves. My Dad, Judy, Kevin, and I went went with Nate, Shabadu (Matthew), Andrew, Stephen, Gabe and Ben to watch MSU crush Univ of Texas Arlington.
Our seats were spread out, but we had open seats near us so we moved all of the kids over by us. Ben was pretty much focused the second half on his blue snow cone.
We had a good time and watched the Spartans crush UTA. When they were about 30 points up, MSU put their second/third string guys in, including an Okemos grad, and there were five white guys on the floor at once.
All Emily wanted for Christmas was two pet rats and Santa was thoughtful enough to get her a cage and certificate for two pet rats (apparently Santa didn't think through exactly how I was supposed to discretely redeem that certificate at the store). I talked to my friend Brad, the vet, and he told me that they are in fact supposed to be pretty cool pets. They're perfect for Emily, because the more you hold them and play with them, the better. They're pretty robust, and there's very little chance that Emily can "over love" them.
We told Emily she had to wait until Monday to get them, and she was about as excited as you can get, and equally crushed when they were out of them in our area. All of the pet stores in a 40 mile radius were sold out, so we headed over to the middle of nowhere to pick them up on Tuesday.
She named them "Sugar and Spice"
Since then, Emily has not put them down. Her Aunt Susan was kind enough to loan Emily her favorite fanny pack so that Emily could have a mouse carrier. Even her sister Maddie is not too grossed out by them.
Here's the last of my summaries from the Bahamas. Random stuff that didn't fit in anywhere else.
Ed, Cathie and I went out one night to the theater at the Casino to go see the movie "The Hangover". As we passed by, Ed couldn't help but to re-enact his favorite Beyonce song, so they both struck their poses for Single Ladies.
Cathie's parents bought Nate the game "Atlantis Monopoly". Stacy was brave/foolish enough to play a full game with them, which went on for at least five hours.
Because Madeline had a bad cough, Emily decided to let Maddie sleep on the bed, and she slept in a chair. Yes, a chair. A chair pulled up to the bed.
At one point, I was pretty sure I saw Will in the Bahamas. He has since confirmed that this is not him.
I have the chance to enjoy some cuban cigars while I was down in the Bahamas. I'm not a huge fan, but the fact that I can't have them in America ensures that I enjoy a couple down in the Bahamas. Ed, Stacy and I sat on the deck during the sunset and enjoyed them:
On the last day, I got lost during a run and stumbled across a pond filled with these big 'ol sea turtles:
I just got these pictures from my father-in-law that were from his underwater camera. This is where we snorkeled, and you could see how close the sharks were. How cool is that?
I dug this picture with the matching shirts. Maddie had her choice of shirts, and picked out a matching shirt. That says volumes about the kind of relationship that our kids have with their grandparents:
This was us just before leaving for the airport as we walked around to say goodbye:
You can see all of the pictures in Picasa here and here.
The Junkanoo
The Junkanoo was something that you just have to see for yourself. It's a parade and marching band mixed into one, where the people really are the floats. Theyhave these amazing costumes and play their instruments, drums, whistles and brass loudly as the people dance up and down the street.
The participants in the junkanoo would happily stop and take pictures with you as they played the music and danced through the streets.
The costumes were very cool. The guy on the left below is dressed as a lion fish. Don't ask me how I know this. I'm just that in with the Bahmaian culture. Or I can read.
This is the parade. It's loud. I'm pretty sure that my iPhone audio shut down at one point because it was so darn loud.
Stacy hung back with a tired Emily and we came back to find them both crashed. Cute. The Seal Encounter
I'd looked into doing the Dolphin encounter in the Bahamas. It was looking like it would cost around a grand, and you didn't even get to take a dolphin home with you. I'd talked to people who'd done it, and they said it was good, but not unbelievable, and probably worth a grand. Ed shared with me that he'd signed Stacy up for the Sea Lion encounter and I piled on and surprised Emily with the same thing.
I love this picture on the left, because it looks like Stacy ahs a picture of Emily on her black t-shirt. They all loved it - Stacy (who had done the dolphin encounter) said it was even better than the dolphin swim.
Emily was in heaven. She came back with 1000 facts, including that this sea lion, who starred in my brother Jon's favorite movie: Andre.
They got to feed the sea lion, hug, swim - but not take a sea lion, or any clippings of the sea lion home.
The 40th Anniversary/Birthday Celebration
The main reason for the trip was to celebrate Mom and Dad's 40th anniversary. If you think about it, what an awesome thing it is in this day and age to stay together for 40 years. We went out to dinner, and the waiters came and did this great song for Mom and Dad.
Scuba Diving
At one point, Scuba diving was on my bucket list. About 12 years ago, I did it for the first time in the Bahamas. I'd gone scub diving out at the sunken bomber featured in James Bonds's Thunderball movie. Nate and I took Scuba Diving lessons in the Bahamas. We both passed, but Nate decided it wasn't for him. Probably has some of his dad's claustrophobic tendencies. I went diving in the cove area of the Atlantis. We saw all sorts of cool stuff, tiger fish, fed a zillion fish which I thought were going to maul me and my dive master found a pair of oakley sunglasses, which he didn't give to me. The Mesa Grill
Ed & Stacy and Cathie and I took Cathie's Mom and Dad out for their anniversary, and to celebrate Cathie's Mom's 40th birthday (she had Cathie when she was very, very young). We went to famous chef's Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and it was awesome.
The resturant was in a beautiful part of the resort, so we went around and took pictures.
including this sexy one of my wife:
Nate and Mom's Date
Nate has always been my sushi buddy, since his Mom and sisters want nothing to do with the stuff. The Atlantis features one of the best sushi chef's (Chef Nobu) restaurants in the world. He named it, humbly, Nobu. Nate loved doing this one on one with his Grandma. She let him order for the both of them and he was in heaven. They even brought me back a few pieces.
The Straw Market
If you've ever been to the Bahamas, you've probably been to the Straw Market, right off the cruise ship dock. It's some place to go, once. It's a giant market that sells every touristy "native" bahamian thing you can imagine, and they'll bargain with you on price
We took the water taxi over, and went right by the Oasis. It's the largest cruise ship in the world, 17 stories tall and holds 6000 people and 2500 crew. Huge.
We got to the straw market and split up. Nate went with me and the Mom took the girls. The girls soon figured out that if they stopped, looked or touched anything, they would immediately hear, "Pretty lady, would you like me to make you a deal on that ?" Grandma devised a system where they would squeeze her hand if they saw something and she would slow down so they could peruse. As you can imagine, Emily loved the negotiation. She bartered one woman down from $20 to $5 on a seahorse. Nate and I were done (and feeling claustrophobic) after about 20 minutes and wandered around the area. The best scam was a guy who came up, offered us free necklaces, and then only asked for a tip, which was about the cost of the necklaces.
He's all of the stuff the kids ended up with...
Para Sailing
Maddie and Nate were brave enough to go para-sailing. The same guy who was selling drugs on the beach was also the sales guy for the para-sailing rides. They cruised around 400ft in the air for about 20 minutes, having a great time. They had the conversation about how bad it would be if they got in a fight and un-hooked one-another from 400 feet. Good point.
Here's a video of them parasailing. No fear.
If you got to this post via facebook, click the link at the top to go to the actual post and see the videos. You can see all of the pictures in Picasa here and here.
The Atlantis resort is one of the most amazing places I've ever been to. Words really can't describe it, and even at 1,000 words per picture, I don't think that really does it justice. This place continued to blow me away day after day.
To start with, it's on an island, Paradise Island. I was able to verify the maps claims to it being an island by running pretty much end-to-end and side to side, even over both of the bridges to the island. At the center of the island is the resort, a collection of a whole slew of hotels, with a giant hotel casino in the middle, a million pools, coves and beaches and aquariums and an amazing water park in the middle.
I'll start with the Atlantis Waterpark, the place we hung out most of our time. A typical day would involve us getting up, doing our mandatory jamba juice/starbucks run, and getting to the pool about 10. The place was pretty empty so we had our pick of where we would hang out - normally equidistant from the salt-water pool, the ocean and the lazy river.
One of our favorite rides was the leap of faith. It was your standard water-park, "Slide almost straight down while crossing your legs to prevent a giant wedgie" ride, with the exception that you went through a tube filled with sharks. Well, the tube itself wasn't filled with sharks. That'd be scary. The tube went through a shark tank. You were probably moving too fast to really see any sharks, but as you'd watch people go down the slide, it was great to check out, like in the picture below. That's Nate going down the slide.
Here's video of Nate and Maddie going down the slide:
There was another tube slide that ended with a slow float through the same aquarium, watching sharks inches away form you. Great effect!
This picture is the post-jubilation of us going on the slide and not getting consumed by sharks in any way.
On the other side of the leap of faith you had these two racing slides. There were no lines for anything, so the kids would go on these non-stop, checking their times and the winner on the clocks at the bottom. From there, you could take a whole bunch of mini-slides, leading you into this salt-water pool with the waterfalls on the right. This was one of Emily's favorites and she would drag us repeatedly in to just swim around like a fish and swim under the waterfalls.
The highlight for all of us was the lazy river. When you think Lazy River, you normally think of a loop where you don't have to move yourself. This lazy river was unbelievable. It would take 20-30 minutes to do a loop, during which you'd traverse 15 different pools, rapids, wave canyons that would push you forward on 5 foot+ waves, rapids and at the end a ramp up that would take you to 3 other water rides - all without getting out of your tube once!
We even figured out a way to compete in this, by having a "lazy river race", where you couldn't paddle. Nate and I won! The only real downside is that I never figured out a way to take a nap on this ride.
These were only a few of the rides. Check out the video on this link for more. There were others that actually shot you up hill in your inner-tube, another that took you through a pitch black drop and into an underwater lagoon.
The other cool thing about the Atlantis was the fact that it was all decorated to look like a lost city that had been recovered, and everything, the art, the sculptures, the aquariums, all followed this theme.
The kids and I would go exploring and continually find new things that we had no idea about. Maddie and I went exploring one day and kept finding new coves and ponds, not to mention the stuff we'd find inside the resort.
We walked by one pond across the robe bridge only to find this hammer-head shark swimming about 4 feet away from us. With each of the kids, we'd go and discover stuff that we'd see for the first time together. It was a fun part of the trip, rather than being at a place where we'd been before and just seeing it new through their eyes.
The resort was decorated up for Christmas, and it was hard to get used to hearing Caribbean Christmas songs with steel drums, all while having it be 85 degrees and sunny. The decorations were beautiful, especially if you've never seen a dolphin covered in wreaths.
The pools and aquariums were just a small piece of what made the Atlantis amazing. Probably five times a day, we'd all look around and say something to the effect of, "Can you believe we're really here, in the middle of all of this??" The place was perfect for our family because the kids could run around and do stuff while the parents chilled out by the pool. On the other hand, everyone loved going down the slides and the lazy river too. It was a perfect place for people to relax by the pool, hit the slides, go to the ocean and battle the waves, walk around and check out the aquariums and then go snorkeling in the cove. All while drinking a $12 pina colada!
If you got to this post via facebook, click the link at the top to go to the actual post and see the videos.
