Our Cruise! (Day 2)

Key West Florida was our first stop on our cruise. All we wanted to do was to go to a beach to see and play in the ocean! We were anxious to see the never ending blue water and to put our toes in the sand. On our way to the beach we walked past U.S. Route 1 which starts here in Key West and goes all the way to Canada which is a total of 2,377 miles! After a little walking we made it to the beach! It wasn't as clean as we imagined it being but we were happy to be there!

(Ft. Zachary Beach, Key West, FL)

We found a couple of big rocks on the shore that had sea shell imprints all over them. We thought it was pretty cool so we searched around them to see what we could find....

 ....And that's when Dallen spotted this little guy! There were two crabs crawling aroung on the rocks. We were excited to see a little sea life come out of the ocean especially this close to us!

 He was bright orange and red and could move a lot faster than I expected! We watched as he went from rock to rock and then back into the ocean. I never knew that crabs could jump until today. This guy would jump over cracks and inbetween rocks. It was very entertaining and interesting to watch!

 After playing around on the beach for a while we went to a snack shack to get a bite to eat for lunch. I thought the sprite bottle was cool so I kept it :)

At the snack shack we found this pretty sweet wheel chair. It was kind of funny looking since the wheels are about 20x their normal size but I'd take it! Beats trying to push a regular wheel chair through the sand haha

This was another interesting thing on the beach in Key West. It was a big post that showed which direction certain places were located and the distances to reach them. If you take a close look at Miami it shows that we have traveled 132 miles across the ocean on our ship throughout the night :)

On our way back to the center of the island we passed by a lot of interesting looking trees. Here are just a couple that we saw....

It was kind of cool seeing this street especially since today is my brother Easton's birthday! (Oh, and by the way we weren't the ones who wrote the 'S' for Easton)

 This tree is claimed to be the end of the rainbow! The roots coming out of it were HUGE! Much taller than I am (which doesn't say a whole lot) but believe me, they were big! haha 

After our fun time at the beach we went to some shops and bought a couple of souvenirs to bring home. We then headed back to the ship and got ready for the 'dress up' dinner that night. 

Dinner was a fun one! We were seated at our own table of two and were surprised with a cake and candle in celebration of our one year anniversary! The dining crew sang to us and cheered for us in congratulations. It was really fun! We had lobster for our main dish and tried some alligator as well. We met a couple of girls from New York and Chicago who were sitting near us and they took these pics for us :) 

The cake was delicious!....

After our dinner we went to a comic show but didn't like it so we left and went to the front of the ship to watch the ocean. We could see lights of other ships on the water and a couple lights that we thought were islands. It was really warm and very relaxing! We had a fabulous day together on the beach and enjoyed blowing out the candle at dinner for our first year of marriage!

Our towels were in the shape of a crab when we got back which was cool since we had seen an acutal crab earlier today!

Our Cruise! (Day 1)

Today was a very exciting day as it was the day to board the CARNIVAL IMAGINATION!!! We took a taxi from our hotel to the port where we found our ship and waited to check in our bags and get things situated. We had to wait for a while but then were able to step foot on the ship around 1:30! The ship was HUGE!!!!! I never realized how big they were until I was actually standing on the top looking out over Miami. There were so many places to tour and see on the ship so that is one of the first things we did. Some interesting little facts about our ship is that it had 10 accessible stories open to the public, it's passenger capacity is 2052, there were 920 onboard crew members, and it is 855 ft. in length! Pretty impressive if you ask me! It's a wonder that these ships can float on water!

It was pretty cool to come to the top deck to find this water park!

Dallen and I

Just before leaving the port!...

(the sun was super bright but I liked the pic anyways)

This was the main registration area on the ship and the different levels. At the top of this it had a glass ceiling and fine details on all of the walls and floors.

Our ship also had a minerature golfing course and shops

This was our dining room! Pretty fancy!

After taking the short tour around the ship we came back to the top deck to watch as we left the port and sailed into the ocean! It was only the 4th time in my life being able to see the ocean in person so I was stoked! Having the chance to experince all of this new and exciting territory with Dallen was my highlight!

It was crazy to see all of these train cars and diesel trucks loaded up on ships. It made them look so small!

This was the Miami beach! Super beautiful and blue!

Looking back at the shoreline...

Once we were out in the ocean we decided to get our suits on and head to the pool which was also on the top deck with the water park and minerature golf. Notice the reflection in Dallen's glasses! Love it!

Just enjoying my time soaking up the sun with my better half!

What a great way to start off our vacation!!

After a couple hours of touring the ship and laying in the sun we went to our room and got ready for our dinner in the dining room (pictured above earlier). We were seated with a group of people who were from all different places. There was a couple there who told Dallen he looked like Tom Brady and that's what they called him every time we saw them. We also met Andrea and Donell who were from Miami. The dinner was great and we had an awesome server! He brought the food continually and was on the ball with the spring rolls at our table! Everyone definitely had their chance to eat more than two plates of them if they wanted to haha. Since the food was free and unlimited we decided to try just about everything on the menu. Some of the things we ate included smoked duck, spring rolls, ceasar salad, salmon, steak, rolls, strawberry cheesecake, and ice-cream. It was GREAT! 

Later that night we watched the sun set and it was BEAUTIFUL!! Watching the sun go down over the ocean is not something we have the chance to see very often so it was way fun!

We then went hot tubbing and met some people from Canada and Atlanta Georgia. They were pretty cool and kept us talking for quite a while. The hot tub was shut down at midnight so we hung out on the ship and  stared into the ocean and sky for quite a while. It was a full bright moon which was awesome. It reflected off of the water and we were able to see the water we were sailing over.

Dallen and I definitely had a great time on the ship today.... and the great news is that it's only the first day!!! So much more to come! When we got back to our room we had this little 'towell puppy' waiting for us on our bed! I guess Dallen decided to bring Xela with us all along :)

Anniversary Vacation!

Dallen and I have been looking forward to our cruise ever since we found out that I won it (Last year at a bridal fair). We decided that we'd save it for our one year anniversary and that is just what we did! Although our 'real anniversary' day is June 16th, we're celebrating one month early! We chose to go on the Florida Key West/Cozumel Mexico cruise through Carnival cruiseline. Let me just say right now that we had a blast!! It was so much fun and I'm excited to blog about what we did while we were gone!

Early, early Sunday morning we woke up at 3:00 a.m. and loaded our bags into Eddie's car (he was our taxi to the airport). The alarm clock seemed to come way to soon since we procrastonated our packing and didn't get to bed until midnight on Saturday. We were super excited though and before we knew it our plane left Salt Lake at 6:00 a.m. and we were in the air. It was the first time for Dallen and I to fly together so that was fun! The view was beautiful on our way out of utah. The sun was just peaking over the crest of the mountains and the picture definitily doesn't give justice to the colors that were in the sky.

 Both Dallen and I were super excited to be on our way to the beach in Florida and Mexico! We couldn't help but smile the whole way there :)

(and do remember we had to leave our house super early with little sleep)

We flew from SLC to the Dallas Fort Worth airport and then left on a flight from Dallas to Florida. Not only was this trip a fun experience but a learning one too. haha while we were in the airport in Texas, Dallen cleared up for me that Dallas and Fort Worth were the same thing. I, for some reason, thought that they were two different places and I gave Dallen a funny look when he combined the 'two places' together. I thought we were in Fort Worth, not Dallas. I guess it goes to show how much I pay attention sometimes because I've been to this airport probably 3 or 4 times now haha. It was a funny moment at the airport but atleast I know now :)

While we were decending into Florida the clouds were awesome! They looked like giant cottonballs floating in the sky, and the view from up there made them look like something you could walk on. I think it'd be awesome to be able to walk on clouds...

Anyways, we landed in Miami at about 4:30 p.m. where we found our luggage and called the hotel for them to send us a shuttle. They claimed the shuttle came every half-hour but we didn't find that to be true. Eventually the shuttle came and we were able to make it to our room which ended up being super nice! We moved our things in and then found a Little Caesars just down the street for dinner. The rest of our night was spent printing off our paperwork for boarding the ship and relaxing in the room. 

 (The view from our room in Miami)

Eddie's 1930 Plymouth Coupe

 After years and years of hard work and a lot of thought and dedication, Eddie was able to drive his Coupe for the first time! Dallen and I were on our way back from Oregon when Dallen received a call about the car. Just by listening to Dallen laugh and get excited on the phone I knew we would be making our way to Nephi before we spent the night at our house in Lehi. We hurried to see the action and it was awesome to actually see Eddie's car running! He has built this car from the bottom frame up and has fabricated a lot of the parts for it himself. He is amazing with the work that he does and I'm really excited to see the finished product!

I was informed by Dallen that it has a 383 stoker with a turbo 400 tranny :) 

All I know is that it definitely has a lot of power!

Dallen was able to go for a ride and I am very positive that this smile never once left his face!

It was so fun to watch the boys as they took off together. They made all the girls a little nervous "hot rodding" but they sure had fun!

Congrats Eddie! We're excited to see the progress continue!

An Answer to Our Prayers

Now that I have finished the spring semester of school I was able to travel with Dallen to Oregon for his work. YAY! I have been really excited for this because we get to see each other for 2 weeks strait! On our way to Oregon we talked and dreamed about things we'd like to do this summer and made plans for the coming months. We also brought our puppy Xela along for the ride. We made a couple stops along the way and one particular stop was to let Xela out of the car to run around and use the bathroom. Dallen took her out of the car and ran around with her on a hillside and then brought her back when she was finished.

We went along our way and a couple hours later we made a pit stop for me to use the bathroom. When I came back to the car Dallen told me he couldn't find his wallet and wanted my help to look for it. We searched and searched the car but had no luck finding it. The last place we remembered using it was at a gas station in Jerome Idaho which was about 4 hours away! We were too far to just turn around and hope the wallet was there so Dallen called the gas station to see if anything had been turned in. They said that nothing had been found......We racked our brains trying to remember where we had placed this wallet but nothing came to mind. (Might I add that it had all of our money, credit cards, forms of ID, Dallen's hotel card, his Union Pacific info, and our necessary needs for this trip as well as our upcoming cruise in it).

...So what do you do when you don't know what to do? We decided to say a prayer and then turn back around to retrace our steps. As soon as we got back on the road Dallen remembered the stop we had made to let Xela out. He said that he had a strong feeling we needed to check there, and that the hill might be our best guess. After thinking about it some more, Dallen told me when he was running down the hill to come back to the car he thought he felt something hit his leg. However, at the time he brushed away the thought as it could have easily been a stick or sage brush. It gave us some hope thinking now that it could have been his wallet.

It was starting to get dark so we stopped at a gas station and bought a flashlight. The cashier wanted to make sure the flashlight worked for us before we left, and I am thankful to him because the one we bought didn't work. He was a very kind guy and decided to let us take the store's flashlight and he said he would replace it with a new one. We were very grateful and headed back on the road.

By the time we got to the hill where we had previously stopped, it was really dark! We quickly said another prayer and then started searching with what resources we had (my laptop, and the store's flashlight). After about 15 minutes of walking all over the hillside Dallen yelled out, "I FOUND IT!!!" I couldn't believe it! He was able to find his wallet underneath a sage-brush! What an answer to our prayers! We were so happy that we were able to find his wallet, especially in the dark. We said a prayer of gratitude and thanked our family who had been praying for us as well.

Even though our 8 hour trip turned into a much longer one, we were very happy! This experience was definitely a testimony builder of prayer for Dallen and I. Our faith is stronger and we are ever more grateful for the guidence that the Holy Ghost can give to us.