Last Night in Miami

 For our last night in Miami we met up with some friends (Andrea and Donell with their daughter Natalie) that we met on our cruise. They lived just a couple miles from the hotel we were staying at so they picked us up for dinner. Afterwards we went bowling at a mall that they had there. The mall was huge!!! I would get lost if I was on my own, and not to mention getting there with all the crazy roads and traffic would be a hastle! The bowling was fun though and the pins were neon glow in the dark!

 After dinner and bowling they took us around Miami to show us some cool places. We saw a couple of stadiums including the Miami Heat and a lot of head-quarter buildings and universities.

 They also took us to the Ocean drive on south beach which has a lot of famous scenes in movies. I couldn't believe how many people were there and some of the cars that were parked on the side of the road. We saw some that were worth probably more money than we'll ever have! haha

 This is the famous sidewalk that runs along the beach

(the ocean is just to the left of the pic)

Thank you Donell and Andrea for the tour and great night! We had a lot of fun and wouldn't have been able to see a lot of this if it wasn't for you :)

Miami Marlins

On Friday, we arrived at the Miami port where our cruise ship stopped and we got off... Dang, our cruise went by so fast! It seems to always be that way when you're having fun! We got our luggage and found a taxi to take us to our hotel and then used the hotel computer to reserve tickets to a Miami Marlins game at their new stadium! This is their first season with this stadium that has a retractable roof! The team is also new to be called the Miami Marlins instead of the Florida Marlins and their colors changed to orange, yellow, blue, and black. Anyways, we found some good seats down the 3rd baseline for cheap so we printed out the tickets and got ready for the game. When we were leaving the hotel, we met some people in the elevators who were headed to the game as well.They offered to give us a ride there with them so we took their offer and it worked out perfect! Once we were at the staduim we bought some shirts for the game and then went down to the bull pen where they tossed us a couple of game balls! It was awesome! Oh, and by the way, this was my first 'real' major league baseball game so I was stoked about it!

 The game started out very exciting! The New York Mets were up to bat first but didn't get too far. The Marlins came out on fire and after the first inning they had 3 runs in with one of the hits being a triple and the other was a home run! 

 The mascot named Bill came close to us to wish this man a happy birthday!

It was pretty cool

 The scoreboard was pretty intense!

 Between one of the innings these sea creatures had a race around the field. Their costumes were pretty good but I can't imagine them being very easy to run in!

All of the innings were really close throughout the game and a lot of great plays were made! The teams battled back and forth between offense and defense before it became a really close game in the 8th inning. The Mets came back with a single home run and a couple of good hits scoring 5 runs for the team. That put them ahead of the Marlins 5-3. The Marlins made a couple adjustments and were able to pull out of the inning without any more runs being scored agianst them.

In the bottom of the 9th inning it was a tied ball game and the Marlins had two outs against them.

It was up to #29 to win the game who had one of the lowest batting averages on the team. All he needed was just one base hit to get the runner on 2nd base to home to win the game... 

....And he did it! He was able to get a hit right over 2nd base into center field and won the game for the Marlins! It was such an exciting game!

(These pictures were taken off the big screen)

Final Score! 5-6 for the Miami Marlins! 

After the baseball game LL Cool-J performed a concert. Neither Dallen or I knew his music and it was hard to hear him singing so we left after a couple songs and went back to the hotel. It was a great night though and we are super glad we decided to go to the game!

Our Cruise (Day 4)

Today was a day at sea on the ship. We had breakfast in bed which was great and this was the view that we woke up to! The ocean was as smooth as glass! I never thought that the ocean could ever be this calm. It was awesome! We didn't have anything that we needed to be to for the day so we slept for a while longer and then went to the top deck for some lunch later in the afternoon.

 There weren't any clouds out today and it was super hot! We stayed outside for a while but that didn't last too long because we were sun burnt from yesterday and it was too hot for comfort. After it cooled down a little, we went outside again and played a couple games of minerature golf and went swimming. It was one of the first times the pool wasn't super crouded. In fact, we had it to ourselves and I think its because everyone was at dinner. It was nice to cool off! When we went back to our room this was the towell for the day :)

I think we must have just been exhausted from all the late nights and playing in the water and sun because we crashed out again after dinner and slept until the next morning :)

Our Cruise! (Day 3)

Today was the best day of the entire cruise!!! We started off with an order of breakfast which was brought to our room and then we went back to sleep until our ship arrived at COZUMEL MEXICO!!! I don't think words could describe how beautiful the beaches are here. I'm going to give a shot at describing it but the pictures say more than words for this place. The water was crystal clear and light blue. The weather was amazing while we were there. Light breeze and high 80's.

Shops and touring places in Mexico...

We purchased an adventure for the day and it was well worth it! We took this "Twister" speed boat out to Passion Island which was about a 20 minute boat ride from where the cruise ship docked. The Twister held 22 people (including drivers) and it was a blast! We sped out to the island and then spun in circles and played in the ocean. The boat had a lot of power and when we spun we would get drenched with super SALTY ocean water! Some of the people on board with us were quite funny to watch when we got dumped on haha. However, while we were spinning and having a great time, Dallen's glasses fell off and slid to the very end of the boat (we were sitting in the back seats). Luckily a little crack in the plastic saved them from going into the ocean and we were able to retrieve them afterwards. By the time we made it to the island, everyone was soaked from head to toe! It was super fun!

...And this is what I'm talking about! Pure white, clean, hot, sandy beaches with a beautiful ocean view and palm trees (not really shown in this shot lol)

The first thing we did was drop our bags, take off our shoes, put our toes in the sand, and run into the ocean towards these fun toys! We were one of the first to get to the beach and the first to make it to all they toys! haha I don't know if anyone else was excited to get there but we sure were!

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

We decided to rent out some snorkels and we played like little kids in a sand box! The water was awesome! I was surprised at how warm the water was and how clear everything seemed with goggles under water.

All we needed was a couple toys and a pair of goggles and we were set for the entire day!

Dallen found this little starfish really close to the beach. It was small but very cool! And the sand was FILLED with little sea shells! Just by picking up a handful of sand we were able to see all kinds of shells. We had fun carving things into the sand too :)

Another highlight of the day was this..... a STINGRAY!!

While we were snorkeling along the beach we saw a couple schools of really small fish and one big albino fish. We thought they were really awesome until Dallen spotted this stingray making its way across the sandy ocean floor! We swam around it for probably 20 minutes and watched as it made its way to the beach. We were able to get it out of the water and take a closer look. It did look a lot bigger under the water but it was still awesome! I was really surprised we found it so close to the beach! It's a good thing I had Dallen along with me because so far he has spotted all the cool "animal action" first :) He has a good eye for things like that.

All too soon our time at Passion Island came and went too quickly. We LOVED it there! We got a lot of sun, ate tons of fresh pineapple (which was delicious), saw some exciting sea animals, found sea shells to bring home, and made fun memories together. Our "Twister" speedboat left the island and spun around a couple more times before dropping us off at the dock in Cozumel.

In cozumel we shopped around a little and found a Myan carved plaque for Dallen. Dallen was on the lookout for one of these ever since we got here to match the one he brought home from his mission in Guatemala. We found a lot of them ranging from $20-100 depending on size. Dallen wanted a bigger one but didn't want to pay the price they were asking. We went around to different tiendas and would bargain and haggle with the workers to see if they would go down on their prices. Dallen, through his great Spanish, was able to talk the guy down from $80 to $30 including a modification of the plaque. The worker agreed to burn in the words "Cozumel, Mexico" with the date "2012". Dallen jokingly said, "As long as you know how to spell, I will pay for it". The guy agreed and so he went to work burning the words into the wood. As he was working, Dallen continued to talk to him and he accidently wrote "202" instead of "2012". It was quite funny that he messed up especially since Dallen had joked with him about his spelling beforehand. Luckily were able to get a plaque with the correct spelling in the end! :)

For the remainder of the night we took a couple of fun pictures with props that they had there and then watched the beautiful sunset from Cozumel.

It was Gorgeous!

Our cruiseship....

This was our towel creature for today :) We weren't sure what it was but it was fun to come back to after a day on the island