Little Talks

Hey everyone. I finally decided to contribute to our wonderful blog.

So I am sure that most of the people that read this (all 5 of you) know that I like to play the guitar and sing. I do not claim to be especially good at either, but I do enjoy it. Andrea, despite having more natural aptitude for music in my opinion, does not enjoy it. For the longest time, I have tried to get Andrea to sing with me to no avail. But recently she finally mustered up the courage to do a duet with me. In turn, I am showing my appreciation to her by posting our efforts on this blog (she will probably never sing with me again).

The song we did is called "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men. I love this song. With so many songs today lyrics generally fall into two categories: 1) blunt and obvious (and usually dirty) like most Pop, Rap, and Hip Hop or 2) abstract on the verge of meaningless like a lot  Indie or Alt. Rock music. Because of this emphasis on melody over meaning, I have a special appreciation for artists that put time into creating meaningful lyrics.

"Little Talks" is a love song between a couple with a twist. The husband is dead. His widowed wife is old, lonely, and delirious. The lyrics are posted below the video.

"Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men


I don't like walking around this old and empty house
So hold my hand, I'll walk with you my dear
The stairs creak as I sleep, it's keeping me awake
It's the house telling you to close your eyes
Some days I can't even trust myself
It's killing me to see you this way

'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
Our bodies safe to shore

There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back
Well tell her that I miss our little talks
Soon it will be over and buried with our past
We used to play outside when we were young,
And full of life and full of love
Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right
Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear

'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
Our bodies safe to shore

Don't listen to a word I say
The screams all sound the same

Though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
Our bodies safe to shore

You're gone gone gone away
I watched you disappear
All that's left is a ghost of you
Now we're torn torn torn apart, there's nothing we can do
Just let me go we'll meet again soon
Now wait wait wait for me
Please hang around
I'll see you when I fall asleep

Don't listen to a word I say
The screams all sound the same

Though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
Our bodies safe to shore

Grand Cayman

Day 4: Grand Cayman Island

To finish off the epic honeymoon posts, we end with our visit to Grand Cayman Island. What a beautiful place. We had such fun times there. The first part of our excursion was a stop in Hell!! I can't remember if it is an actual town or just a street, but they made a big deal of stopping at this gas station-type building so we could take pictures with little devil statues. It was ridiculous but made for some great pictures.

What in Hell? (Am I allowed to say that?)

Seriously?? Why is Grandpa dressed up as Satan? IDK!!

Colin has a better face for Hell then I do.

 After we left that strange little place we headed off to the sea turtle farm. I absolutely loved it.  At the turtle farm they raise and release sea turtles back into the wild and we got to hold some of them! They were so funny. When you pick them up they start flapping their fins so hard that it hurts your hand like crazy. In order to calm them down you gently tickle under their chin. They immediately calm down and let you hold them.

Here is one freaking out 

Just tickle their chin and then they love you. 

They had little baby sea turtles. They were so cute. 

After we played with the sea turtles we headed to a boat that would take us out to Stingray City where we would get to swim with the stingrays!! Now let me remind you that Steven Irwin was killed by a stingray so I was a little nervous about this. 

Again no pictures of this amazing adventure but here is what they look like from the boat.

Those are the huge creatures we got to swim with. Stingray City is a sandbar in the middle of the ocean where all these stingrays live. They have a billion tourist come and see them every day so they are well adapted to humans. We got off the boat and the tour guide helped us hold them. We even got to kiss them and put them on our backs. It was so scary, but really amazing. I am so sad that I didn't get any pictures with them.

I need to take a few moments to show you one of our tour guides. 

This man was crazy. I am not even sure he was a man. I swear he was part fish or something. We were in the middle of the ocean and the boat stopped. This man jumped off the boat and dove down to the coral to pick up this... thing. He then proceeded to cut it up and tried to feed it to the rest of us. He also brought up a starfish. Luckly he didn't try to feed that to us.

Look how blue that water is and how white that skin is. Oh yeah baby!

What a great adventure we had. I will never forget all the amazing experiences we had together our first week of being married. Some other notable things that happened were Colin participated in a karaoke competition. He won a medal, along with the other drunk participants, so that was pretty awesome. We saw almost every comedy show and most of them were hilarious. We went to a magic show and I was brought up to help, but I could not understand the magician's Indian accent, so I ruined his trick. We ordered room service every night so we would be sure to gain at least 5 pounds. But the most important thing was that I had the opportunity to spend time with the love of my life and start our amazing journey together!

Honduras

Day 3: Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Honduras 

What an incredible time we had in Mahogany Bay. We went snorkeling and it was by far the scariest/coolest thing I have ever done. Let me give you a little background on the whole snorkeling situation. 

I am deathly afraid of water. Despite having taken years of swimming lessons while growing up, I am sad to admit I can not swim. I secretly think I can swim, but when I get into the water my anxiety takes over and I just sink or awkwardly doggie paddle my way to the edge of the pool. So when Colin suggested that we go snorkeling, I was sure I was going to die. The other thing about me is I love fish. I love to look at fish, especially tropical fish, and I love to watch the wildlife shows about the ocean. So I knew that despite my fear I couldn't pass up this amazing opportunity. 

When we came off the cruise ship we got onto this boat with about 30 other people all going snorkeling. I looked around and the average age of the people on this excursion with us must have been around 65. It was the best sight I have ever seen. I knew that if these old people (please don't be offended if you are 65 and I am calling you old) could survive then I could. It took about an hour to get out to the reef and when we finally got there I was so scared but ready.

 Here we are in our lovely gear. (Notice my huge life jacket)

Unfortunately I didn't have a waterproof camera so I don't have any pictures of what we saw down there, but let me tell you it was awesome!!! There were so many colorful fish of all different sizes. The coral was beautiful and really deep in parts. The coolest fish we saw was a barracuda!! The only reason I know that it was a barracuda is because the tour guide told me. If you don't know what one looks like here is a picture. 

 Holy crap right!! 

Scariest thing ever. It was pretty far down but still really cool that we got to see it.

Turns out with flippers and a huge life jacket I had nothing to worry about. I did not want to come back to the boat. Colin really enjoyed it as well and he would dive down which is just too crazy for me. It was such a fun experience and I hope to go a million more times in my life. 

Remember all those old people I told you about? Talk about party animals. On the way back to our cruise ship there was an open bar which meant a bunch of drunk old crazies. They were flashing their "goods" to everyone and taking pictures and singing songs. It was seriously hilarious and so disturbing. Overall our experience in Honduras was one to remember! 

Belize

Day 2: Belize 

The second port we stopped at was in Belize. Belize was one of my favorite places. It was nothing like I expected. Most of the people there speak English and it is a nice mix of a lot of different cultures. The country has a very interesting history and I really enjoyed driving through the city listening to the tour guide as we drove out to the excursion location. 

In Belize we went kayaking. What a great experience!! We were put on this little kayak and were led out into the jungle. This is what I saw next to our kayak before we got into the water.

Sketch!!

 Don't worry, that is the only scaly friend we saw on our kayaking adventure. What we did see a lot of were bats. They would fly right over our heads and try to kill us. It was awful. Despite the evil bats this was such an amazing sight. I mean look how awesome that is!

The hardest part about kayaking was steering. It was so beautiful that both Colin and I struggled to pay attention to the river in front of us. Most of the time the river was so small and we had to dodge branches and fallen trees.  It was a great team building experience.

 

This was our tour guide. He picked a fruit off one of the bushes and let us eat it. It tasted so bad but I ate it and I am surprised I didn't die. 

After we were finished kayaking we were able to go swimming in this nice pool area. I guess the area that we went kayaking in is part of a large resort owned by a family and they offer a lot of different excursions like mountain biking and horseback riding.

 

 We had such a great time!

 

Cozumel, Mexico

Day 1: Cozumel, Mexico

Our first stop was Cozumel. My favorite part about getting off the ship was all the people from Carnival that wanted to take pictures of you. I loved posing with all the random signs and people dressed up in what were supposed to be cultural outfits. I made Colin stop at every one and take a picture. Sadly I never bought a single picture. Colin talked me out of it saying that I would put it in box and never look at it again. That is absolutely true, but I should have bought one anyways.

We decided that we wanted to go on a Carnival excursion at every port. I would recommend doing this. It is nice not having to worry about anything and having a tour guide drive you to where you want to go. The only down side is they are pricey!!

Here is a picture of me in front of the ship. Yes my hair is alive. 

The one thing I wanted to do was visit Mayan ruins. The excursion that we chose took us to the closest ruins. We were both a little disappointed in the ruins. They were pretty small and looked like a bunch of old rocks. I still enjoyed learning about the Mayan people but Colin was bored.

After the tour of the ruins the bus took us to this private beach where we ate lunch, had a mariachi band sing to us, and relaxed. This picture warms my soul. 

The hammocks were just lovely

We had a great time in Cozumel!

Honeymoon Adventures

So if anyone is wondering why I am writing about things that happened months ago, the only explanation I can give is that I am lazy. I am basically using this blog as a journal to document all the cool things Colin and I have done and will do. So the next cool thing to write about would be our honeymoon!! I had the best time on our honeymoon. It was seriously so fun!! So I will start at the beginning. Our honeymoon officially started at 11pm the night of our wedding. Colin really wanted to go on a cruise for our honeymoon and I had never been on one so I was a little nervous but excited!! We decided to go on a 7 day cruise to the Western Caribbean.  The cruise left on Sunday afternoon out of Tampa, Florida. The cheapest flight out of SLC to Tampa left at midnight Saturday night. So we left our hotel which we had only been in for a few hours and headed to the airport. My dear mother arranged for a limo to take us to the airport from our hotel. That ended up not working out so instead they sent an Escalade to come pick us up. It was way nice and a little ridiculous but I enjoyed it. We had the doorman take a picture of us in front of the car. Mom this picture is for you.  

We then flew to Atlanta for our layover. The flight was delayed so we ended up staying in Atlanta for about four hours. We found these awesome chairs that didn't have arm rests (which is a rare find in an airport) so we could lay down. We actually almost missed our flight because we slept for so long.

Finally we arrived in Tampa and took a shuttle to the ship. The show Candid Camera was playing on the shuttle which reminded me how corny yet great that show was. When we got on the ship we went straight to the buffet of course!! The food was great for a buffet. We then went to our room and slept for like 5 hours. We woke up late for our assigned dinner time and our server gave us a talk about how we needed to be on time. I'm pretty sure he hated us for the first couple of days but then at the end of the week he loved us, probably because I would wave to him whenever we saw him around the ship.

The first night and next day at sea was absolutely horrible for me. I guess we were going through a storm because the ship was rocking like crazy. I got seasick but luckily didn't throw-up or anything dramatic. Colin was just fine and probably a little annoyed that all I wanted to do was lay down. Things eventually calmed down and I was fine the rest of the week. 

The most important discovery I made the first day at sea was the 24 hour ice cream machine. I was in love with that heavenly substance. It honestly wasn't even that good but for some reason I became addicted to it. I probably had about 30 cones the whole week. 

   Please don't be disturbed by these pictures of me... I look a little scary in just about all of them.

So began our epic adventures.

Mrs. Robinson!!

I am finally motivated again to write on this thing! I thought I would share a few thoughts about our wonderful wedding day. 

Colin and I were married on April 21, 2012 in the Salt Lake City Temple. It was such a beautiful day. The Temple grounds were gorgeous and I particularly loved all the flowers. We were so blessed to have so many family members and friends attend our wedding. One of my favorite things was just seeing everyone and feeling the love and support they had to offer. The ceremony was so tender and wonderful. After the ceremony we took pictures and then headed off to our luncheon. Everything about our luncheon was amazing. 

The food was delicious (Thank you Blue Lemon). 

 The room was beautiful (A huge thank you to Nelson who is seriously the most talented person ever).

 The speeches were so thoughtful (I just love our families)

And Colin and I were super attractive (This should surprise no one).

Overall the day was unforgettable and I feel so blessed to have been sealed for eternity to the most amazing man I know! 

So I need to be honest for a few minutes here. After the wedding was over I realized something that I am sure everyone else was thinking throughout this whole wedding planning process.
I was a BRIDEZILLA!!
Seriously it is a miracle that Colin still loves me and my family still talks to me. I have always known that I am a little crazy, but something about planning a wedding really pushed me off the edge. I am sure I made the process less then enjoyable for my Mom especially. So here is my formal apology to anyone and everyone who might have seen me in a less then cheerful state on my wedding day. Unfortunately for me that is everyone. I mean look at this picture...

Scary. 

Secretly I am glad that the whole wedding business is over. It is the marriage that matters anyway!!

In all seriousness though, I really appreciate everyone that helped out on our special day and made it the best day of my life!!