Life Is Just So Daily: Bahama Mama! (Part I)

Soooo.....2013 has been a long year with very little travel for this little mama!
I was pregnant for almost the first 1/2 of the year, and then we had a newborn....but, in November, we took a trip! Who? Well, 3 out the 4 family members went. Memaw, Darnin & Pawpaw all took turns caring for Eliette while we took Gage to.....drum roll, please......ATLANTIS!

We flew out of Dallas into Miami, and then to Nassau.
Gage was excited to fly....On the first leg of our flight, Gage thought that the lay-flat seating was cool.

The second leg of the flight was on a much smaller plane...
:)

And then we arrived.... ahhhhh..... Atlantis: until you go there, you can't really understand how GINORMOUS the resort is, or even the pillars and building blocks....everything there is just HUGE.

There were issues upon check in, of course. We killed some time by walking through the aquarium and grabbing some lunch...

We finally got into our room...

The view from our balcony....

We couldn't wait to hit the pools, and slides, and beach! We had no idea that everything pretty much closes down at 5. Mind you---check in time is 3pm. How screwed up is that? But anyway.... we did as much as we could in a little less than 2 hours!

(We saw this sign....Gage posed with it, looking pitiful. No, he wasn't really lost!)

My view, as I was the one with the camera:

We headed in as it grew darker...
And back in the room, this was the scene on the bathroom floor as Gage and Daddy readied for their showers:

...and this was AFTER the beach-side rinse-off showers.
{See? The ocean and beach are just a sandy mess. I look at the ocean as a force to be reckoned with. Don't get me wrong...I LOVE going to the beach and beachy resorts. Why? So that I can lounge by the pool while I see, hear, and smell the ocean. Ahhh.....now, THAT's a vacation!}

Anyway! Back to the blog post about our trip... I was called into the bathroom to hand someone a towel. Um....towels? The ONLY towels that were stocked in our bathroom on Day 1 were this size:

Clearly, my husband had a situation to rectify. Seriously, this resort was not impressive to us on Day 1. Delays in getting into our room, we weren't given a map from the get-go, weren't initially told that everything shuts down at 5pm, no bath towels, and I won't even go into our rant about dinner the first night. I can't really say that this resort makes up for it in other ways.... But, I suppose I can keep the bulk of my complaints for another day. There were certainly some great memories made, and some fun activities for kids that I haven't seen anywhere else...

The best activity we did while there was the dolphin adventure at Dolphin Cay....
It was fun for all of us!

Also surprisingly, it was the most reasonably priced activity. Go figure...

Another organized activity we paid for was "Snorkeling the Ruins of Atlantis." This is a closed environment, man-made ruins of the lost city of Atlantis, that you can snorkel in. We thought this would be a great first experience for Gage and snorkeling. He's said that he wants to do it. He's practiced with his equipment in our backyard pool. He watches shows on tv about marine life and snorkeling.
Then, when it came down to it, he was in the water for about 3 or 4 minutes before he was climbing up my body and crying to get out. I am NOT about to make that baby do anything that he's that afraid of, and I had no problem hopping right out of there. We walked around from up above and watched Daddy do it with the others in the group. Gage just continued to cry and I repeatedly tried to reassure him that it was okay that he wasn't doing it, and he didn't ruin it for me... and then he was just bawling and I could barely understand his words. He was TERRIFIED that something was going to happen to Daddy. He's seen these River Monsters shows and 'shark week' shows, and there's his Daddy, 6 feet away from him, swimming in a tank with sharks with sting rays. Bless his little terrified heart! I tried to verbally reassure him on that as well, telling him that Daddy would be safe...but until his father got out of the water, he wasn't buying into any of it. Poor baby....

At this point, I really need to add in a statement about the camera situation on this trip. Right before we left, I ran to Target and got a waterproof point-and-shoot camera. Why-oh-why didn't I take my Nikon too!? I don't know... So there are pictures from Daddy snorkeling that he took of the fish. But, they're not great clarity, and there are no pictures of Daddy actually doing the snorkeling.