The Wedding Cruise

As many of you know, we spent last week celebrating the marriage of my youngest brother-in-law John and his new wife Caroline on a 4 day cruise to Key West & Cozumel, Mexico.  I started to type out the summary of our trip while waiting in the airport (as my kids flung their flip-flops at each other out of sheer boredom), then didn't get to finish.  Then I got home & had to unpack & never got to it.  Then I've been dealing with this crazy constant dizziness thing & never really felt like sitting in front of a computer (which I totally still have by the way.  Ugh, it's awful feeling like you have a constant
hangover! :S)  So anyway, blogging about our trip has been looming over my head and I really wanted to do it justice, but at the same time not bore you to tears with the mundane play-by-play.  (Who knew blogging could be so stressful? lol ;))

So I will direct your attention to facebook for a bit more comprehensive collection of pictures.  (I took over 500 and pared it down to 66.  You're welcome! lol)  And like I said, I won't bore you
too much with the day to day details.  But I've gotta say how incredible it was to see so much of our family!!  We've gone from living essentially up the street from everyone in St. Louis, to just a day trip away from everyone in KC with some fairly frequent visits, to living 1500 miles away.  Plane tickets are expensive for a family of five, and frankly I don't think Matt or I could survive another 30+
hour drive one way! lol  So needless to say we haven't seen everyone in nearly a year & that was worth every penny in and of itself.  There are still a few members of our family that weren't able to come & that really sucks.  We hope to see them soon too!



John & Caroline's wedding was simple, personal, and absolutely beautiful.  Their love for each other exudes from them and it was such a priviledge to be part of their day.  Caroline is perfect for John,
and I'm so excited for her to be a part of our crazy family!  John was just a kid when Matt & I got married (twelve I think), so now I feel super old that he's a married man ;), but we are so very happy for them!

The happy couple

The cruise was great.  We visited Key West & went on a trolley ride of the island, and then we stopped in Cozumel where our family chose to visit some Mayan ruins & hang out on the beach for a bit.  On the boat we ate (and ate and ate...) some great food, swam & played on water slides, played minigolf, and had lots of fun-in-the-sun family time.  Plus it's great that the ship has a kids club.  Kids have fun getting away from us, we have a built-in babysitter for some grown-up time:
win win! :)  (See there?  Four day trip scaled down to one easy paragraph.  I can be concise when I want to! lol)
Here are just a few highlight pictures in case you're not a facebook friend.  (Or in case you didn't feel like flipping through all 66 of my pics! lol)



Sunset on the ship



Sloppy Joe's in Key West





Checking out the ruins of San Gervasio

Beach Fun! :)





Mayan god Henna Tattoo's for the boys



John & Caroline playing the Newlywed Game with the captain.  So hilarious!



Mathew's other brother Martin celebrating his 30th Birthday!



So, as you can see, we had a great time!  Of course we had some drama trying to get home.  But that's just par for the course with our family! lol  It's always something.  I think Florida hates us, frankly, because something always seems to go wrong there (car accidents, etc).  But after Delta Airlines bent over backwards to get us home safely, it was no big deal.  Now it's back to work & back to reality.  Thankfully, we now live in a place that we're happy to come home to! :)