St. Martin Day 5,6 and 7

Day 5 of vacation was spent soaking up the sun and having fun at the pool! I will let the pics do the talking:

We started off with Johnny Cakes for breakfast! This is a common thing down there and they were actually very tasty:

And then we hit the pool:

Noah's dorky hat that was too big, but it was better than nothing! It was slim pickings down there!

There were beautiful butterflies all over the place!

And cows... it wasn't fun meeting them at the end of the crazy driveway because it was soo steep! It was also soo steep the cars go out on 3 wheels!

For dinner we went to a tiny little restaurant - we were actually the only ones there. The restaurant was run by a husband and wife. It was called The Gutside. 

 The owners took Noah while we ate and gave him a kitchen tour, and entertained him which was kind of nice!

Sunday we headed to Petersburg where the cruise ships come in. We did some sight seeing, had a tasty lunch with this beautiful view and we did come shopping of course!

Ron was sure to take us on all the crazy roads, granted the views are stunning! 

We did dinner at home and played our cards and headed to bed!

Monday we hung out at the pool for the last day. Right before heading out for dinner, Noah decided it would be a good time to take the plunge and become a full-time walker! This mama was pretty proud!

We decided to try to goto Lee's for dinner, but as it turns out they close on Mondays, so we went to Skip Jacks, which was actually really good too, and amazing views of the marina!  None of the ribs I had touched Lee's but I guess now we have a reason to go back! Noah enjoyed walking on the peer inbetween picnic tables. We will always remember St. Martin as the place Noah decided to become a walker!

Tuesday we enjoyed one last swim before heading to the airport!

It was a great family trip - one that we will never forget!!

St. Maarten Day 3 & 4

Thursday we headed to a beach (Friars Bay) so Noah could experience his first swim in the ocean, albeit the Carribean Sea, and it didn't disappoint!

He was interested in watching the water rush in and out so when the water touched him, he fell on his butt, fussed a bit and then was fine! Once he got the hang of it, he loved it!! 

We quickly learned that beaches are not all that fun with a toddler that puts everything in his mouth! But he enjoyed it, so we stayed for a bit, and had our picnic lunch we brought after our swim! 

Check out that sandy mit!

Noah enjoyed trying to push his stroller around in the sand and playing peek around the back of it:

Of course he got a mosquito bite on our first day right beside his eye there... It swelled something fierce, as did the ones on his hand! The Mosquitos were horrible and we used most of the bottle on Grandpa! Luckily he didn't get many more! I was covered in them as well. 

We left just as the wind got crazy! We stopped at local bakery to grab baguettes, which we were spoiled with!! They have lots of French bakeries all over the island, in fact that is all we ate when it came to bread! They were soo good! We also tried some of the ice cream there and it was soo rich and creamy! Noah enjoyed it too! 

Friday we were ready to your the town of Marigot and went to the market after nap time! Grandpa and Noah were ready to tour:

At the market we got maracas for Noah, a new hat for myself and some currie powder. It was only getting hotter out, so we grabbed a drink, fed Noah and headed back to the complex and swam the afternoon away after nap time! Noah loved being thrown up in the air:

and then of course I needed to try to get one with the ocean view:

love these two:

After our swim, we went and got ready to go out for dinner. Mike needed to get his lobster dinner in! The place we ate had another great view:

excuse the crazy wind blown hair lol!

but check out this sunset!! Amazing!

We ended the evening off with a game of cards and then off to bed we went! Noah was having a lot of issues during the middle of the night during the middle of our stay, as he would wake up and not remember where he was! So we learned to leave his lullaby music on all night and that ensured a full nights sleep!!

Today Mike's parents come home too!

That Time We LOST Our Passports

So before I get to explaining the title... I forgot to recap Noah's cockpit tour!! I was soo happy to have our cousin fly us down for Noah's first international flight and obviously first class was an excellent bonus!

I also forgot to mention the movie I watched on board - The Judge - highly recommend it, or at least the first half! I haven't seen the second half yet!

Turns out I did not hold back on taking pics on our trip... 406 pics later we have a vacation recap, although you don't get see all 406. But mission was accomplished on documenting our vacation!

Noah's cockpit pics:

There was soo much to see it was hard to get a pic of him looking at the camera - which is the story of my life anymore with a busy toddler!!

Tuesday night Noah had a great nights sleep!! On to Wednesday, we took Noah in the pool and the water was the perfect temperature! Noah loved his new float we brought down for him that he got for his birthday! It was a hit!!

After his swim it was nap time for Noah and tanning time for this mama, but let's just take a glimpse of our view with our vacay selfie: 

Absolutely beautiful views!! 

We went downstairs to get ready when Noah got up and that's when we realized we couldn't find our passport folder, which also had $1000 American cash in it. Insert heart attack!! I traced my steps and figure I left it at the car rental place, but when I called the call wouldn't go through! So we hustled back over to the car rental and sure enough after the guy gave me a hard time in a jokingly manner, he handed over our passports!! Clearly he could see through my "keep it cool" plan and could see the worry all over my face! Everything was intact! Phew!!! 

Our new car wasn't ready yet, so we went for lunch at Lee's! If you are in St. Martin, you NEED to go there and get the ribs! They will be the best ribs you have ever had!! Of course with leaving the house so fast we have no pics, because we forgot the camera, and the cell phones ones crummy! But even the view was awesome looking out in the marina! 

We went back and got our car and that is when the adventure began. The roads on the island are crazy, winding around mountains and hills and I swear it was my FIL's mission to take me on the scariest! We went to get groceries, and the drive home had a lot of slow downs and breaks being shouted out. Yup I'm a wreck in the car anymore now that I have Noah. The views were pretty good though, I will give R that much! 

We had dinner, had a family shower, since there was no tub, just a walk in shower, so we needed to team up to keep him in the shower! Turns out he enjoys showers where he can crawl around in and out of the water and he liked playing with the handheld! 

Once Noah was in bed, we played one game of cards and went right to bed! Our night was rough and Noah ended up back in bed with us, which ended up being a common occurrence, as he would wake up frightened to be in an unfamiliar place. But we worked it out and made the best of it! Later in the week we learned to leave his music playing all night and that helped with longer periods of sleep! 

Vacation 2015: St. Maarten

I am slowly getting into the swing of things around these parts and with my free time in the evening after Noah is down, and we aren't playing euchre, I have found a bit of downtime to write a quick post about Day 1!! But before we get there, let's talk about our night in Toronto!

Tuesday we were supposed to get a nasty snow/ice storm, and we thought it would make an easier travel day for Noah if we headed to Toronto the night before our flight. We stayed at the Holiday Innand did park stay and fly! After 3 different rooms, we were set with a fridge (needed to keep our milk cold). 

Noah was a fan of his crib - at first:

We decided to walk over to The Keg for dinner and Noah was soo good!! We had an awesome little date night. When we got back to the hotel, we bathed Noah and we all went to bed early! Turns out that was a good call because a rough night was ahead! I struggled with the room temperature being too hot, but was afraid it would get to cold for Noah and Noah struggled with his legs or arms getting caught in the crib. After several wake ups we decided to just put Noah in bed! 

And everyone slept much better from that point on!! 

We headed to the airport at 7:30, zoomed through baggage drop off and security! Travelling with a baby is great in that sense! Breakfast at the airport was not soo good!! But Noah managed to keep himself busy pushing his stroller around! 

My cousin is a pilot for Air Canada and was actually one of the pilots for our flight!! Soo that was super neat being able to fly with him and to start our trip out he upgraded us to first class!! None of us had flown first class before so that was a treat!! 

Noah was good for our flight for the most part - he had one fussy period where he needed to be rocked to sleep but we had turbulence and therefor the seatbelt light was on, so we couldn't get up to deal with it, but luckily we worked it out!! We totally need to work out this rocking to sleep thing and teach him to just fall asleep on us! 

We arrived early to St. Maarten, it was spitting a bit but Grandma and Grandpa were there to greet us! We gave them our luggage and then waited for out shuttle to the car rental. 

Unfortunately they didn't have a car available and we ended up with a gutless van, but we had to come back the following day for our car. More on that story to come...

We got to our condo, got settled in, and looked around. S had made spaghetti for dinner for us all and then we called it a night early, since we had a rough night the night before! 

Today we are enjoying our last full day in St. Maarten, as tomorrow is travel home day, but we are coming home to positive temps, so that's a bonus!!