Tortola

The #1 reason why I (Julia) wanted to take this particular cruise itenerary was because it included a port with a Dolphin Excursion. Needless to say, this was a very special day neither of us will forget. Our Dolphins name was Elektra (with a "K"). She is between the ages of 13-15. We were in a group of

Matt Dancing with Elektra. This movement for Elektra was not easy. As she stood up in the water she was ferociously peddling with her tail fins. She worked hard to stand up like this.


Julia Dancing with Elektra. Okay, this is a horrible picture of Julia, but a very honest moment captured by the photographer. While Elektra is working hard she is also slightly moving backwards and she was pulling me off the platform and out to sea (which scared me).


Julia getting a kiss...

Matt getting kissed...

St. Thomas "The Ultimate Island Tour" Excursion

The view from our boat...

This excursion took us to the very top of the island and everything in between. The views were beautiful and the shopping was fantastic! This pic is on "Mountain Top" where you can see most of the surrounding islands. While there we had our pic taken with the St. Thomas Donkey- He/she was decorated to the hilt and was quite cute!


And, the view with Megan's Bay (National Geographic top 10 beaches. Legend has it if you are married on the beach then your marriage will last the test of time. Also, the top of the beach sands is in the shape of a heart, unfortunately we were not able to get that angle but we did see the heart along the way...

The view of our boat (the one on the far right). Luckily there was only one other boat in port this day. Others before us have said St. Thomas can get VERY crowded when mulitple cruise lines are in port.

Our First stop was Samana. These cream dogs where all over town. There were a few other color dogs but mainly this dog seemed everywhere! Same color & about the same size.


For the most part, this is a typical home. Most doors where wide open & you could see straight through the house. Aside from kitchen tables, not much else appeared to be inside. The typical family in Samana are 18 children!! All, sleep & live in these homes.

To bring good luck to their home, locals decorate trees with egg shells.

During our "Safari Adventure" excursion, local children walked with us to a popular watering hole.


At the end of our unstable, rocky hike was a beautiful waterfall. One of the older children climbed the limbs of a nearby tree and jumped into the water! It was very scary to watch because the waterfall was not very big and the water certainly did not look deep enough to jump into. However, the guide assured us the depth the child was jumping into was over 8 feet deep & the children "do it all the time".

We made it home safely! What a wonderful vacation we had on MS Norwegian Dawn! We are still in the process of unpacking and uploading pictures. I thought I would share two beautiful views we enjoyed on our plane ride home yesterday.

approximately 12:30 PM, Miami


approximately 2:00 PM, Atlanta, What a beautiful site she is!

I will attempt to upload a few more pics from our trip soon.

Just a quick post from Matt. For those of you who don't know, we are going to be on vacation but, as much as possible, will be continuing to post comments on our Twitter feed (see the right margin of this blog to follow us on Twitter).

Adoption Update...

"CCAA’s cutoff date for this month was February 17, 2006.
I wanted to explain the CCAA’s cut off date. The cut off date issued by the CCAA is the date through which they were able to match referrals. For example, last month the CCAA’s cut off date was February 15, 2006, so all families with LID’s before and on February 15, 2006 were sent a referral. As for this month, the CCAA’s cut off date was February 17, 2006 so families with LID’s before and on February 17, 2006 were mailed their referral."

Wow! Good news that they are moving forward. Bad news it took 1 month to refer 2 days of LID's. Slow, slower, slowest... this is getting painful!!

Below are two videos of things we have been up to recently. The first video is Julia and Connie working on Connie's Halloween costume. The second is Julia's "pre-tea" tea party. We are still learning how to use the camcorder and the video editing software, so the videos WILL get better. Promise!