Well hello! It’s been quite some time. After my last post, we started prepping for our highly anticipated family vacation to the Bahamas! Then you know how it goes: you come back from vacation and try and get back into the swing of things and some things (like my poor little blog) get pushed to the back burner. I hope you’ve all been well and have had a great start to the holiday season. Things have been a little hectic here but we’ve been pushing forward. I am pretty much done with all my Christmas decorating and I’ll be sharing all of it with you soon. The last thing to do is the outside and with 60º weather this weekend, it will be perfect to get it done. Gotta love crazy New England weather! I’ll take warm December days over snow any day of the week!

I thought I’d share some of our vacation pictures today. We went to Paradise Island, which is part of Nassau in the Bahamas. Aside from myself, Jamie and my aunt, no one else had been to the Caribbean before. They were in for a treat. We had such an amazing trip! We went not only as a family getaway, but as a celebration for Ben’s 7th birthday. Not a bad birthday gift! It was his first time on a plane and he did such a good job. He was like an old pro!

Not only was it Ben’s birthday, it was actually right after my parent’s 36th wedding anniversary. We decided as part of their gift to surprise them with a limo to the airport. They were shocked when we pulled up in this huge Escalade! We didn’t tell Ben ahead of time because we didn’t want him to spill the beans. He couldn’t believe it when Jamie and I pulled up to pick him, Tori and Ross up.

Once we landed and got to the hotel, we didn’t waste any time getting in the beautiful blue water. The waves were insane! Our first full day there we bought day passes to Atlantis, which was right next door to our hotel (Riu Palace). 

It was a fun day full of adventures. I snapped this picture on our walk back to our hotel along the beach. How gorgeous is that?!

We spent our days lounging by the pool or on the beach, doing some shopping and even visiting the Ardastra Zoo. We were the only people there for most of our time there! I was dying to go to see their world famous flamingo show because I just love flamingos. Ben and I got to be part of the show and the flamingos came and danced all around us!

We spent our nights trying out all the great hotel restaurants and going either to the nightly entertainment show at our hotel or next door to Atlantis where we went to the casino, explored the hotel and shopped. That place is like a city!! The first picture below is with our waiter, Lynden, who made our whole trip that much more memorable. He was our waiter the first night there and every night/day after that. He was so much fun!! It was so nice to get away for a week and just relax.  The sunrises and sunsets were gorgeous!

On our last full day there, we had one (or two) more surprise for my parents. We wanted to have the whole family photographed on the beach. We’d secretly coordinated everyone’s outfits (even theirs). We ended up having to tell them that day but there was still one person about to be really surprised.

Here it comes… My sister is getting married!!!! What a perfect way to end our last night in paradise! And then the perfect way to end our trip in the morning was one last breakfast with our friend Lynden!

Thanks for letting me share! I’ll be back soon to begin my #2015christmashometour!

xo,