Atlantis: Part III

DOLPHINS: One of the special things we did was the shallow water dolphin encounter. Each room received 2 complimentary encounters, so that made it nice. It was me, my parents, and Elina. We got into wetsuits (Elina looked adorable) and went with our trainer, Mikel (kinda like "Miguel," but with a "k" sound). He was hilarious (more on that later). Our dolphin was Atlas and he did jumps right in front of us and "sang" to us. We also got time to hug and kiss him and take pictures with him. Mikel was so funny because he'd cheer people on to give Atlas kisses. Some people, like my mom (S), were really reluctant. So Mikel would sing, "Go, S! Go, S! Kiss him...c'mon, kiss him, S!" Then after my mom kissed the dolphin, Mikel said, "Ok, now, S, break it up. Break it up!"

Unfortunately, Elina did not have as great of a time. Since Atlas started out jumping and splashing, Elina was already scared. She didn't want to hug, kiss, or touch Atlas. SO sad since we mainly wanted to do this encounter for her. But I can understand her being frightened since this huge dolphin is jumping just about a foot away from her face. Of course, in typical Elina-fashion, she finally warmed up to the dolphin at the end for the final picture and she actually touched Atlas on the back. So I guess it was worth it.



AQUARIUMS: The aquariums at Atlantis were seriously impressive. There were so many hidden in tunnels and caves. I'm not even sure we found all of them. What was more impressive was the type of marine life within the aquariums....reef sharks, nurse sharks, sea turtles, stingrays, manta rays, barracudas, sawfish, spiny lobster, lionfish. Our favorite place was The Dig. The exhibits in there totaled 2.7 million gallons of water. That's where we found the huge manta rays. It was so cool. Elina really loved being able to stand so close like she could touch the fish.





Ok, I think I've written enough about Atlantis. Sorry I've dragged it on for so long. There was just so much to report on. Now we can return to reality, right?

Atlantis: Part II (The Food)

After doing a lot of research, we decided to bring one suitcase filled with food for the trip. Just things for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I packed small, individual boxes of cereal, oatmeal, cereal bars, fruit bars, fruit snacks, mayo, peanut butter, jam, mustard, juice boxes and much much more. I even packed a small cooler with frozen lunch meats and cheeses. My sister, A, also brought some food from Taiwan--ramen, instant coffee, and other Asian snacks. We had quite the load. The food at Atlantis is spendy, so we wanted to save our money for yummy dinners. Honestly, if it was just adults going, I wouldn't care to bring all this extra stuff because we can starve a little and be ok. Kids always need to eat, so I had to be prepared.

Most of the time we ate breakfast in the room. We made sandwiches on 2 of the days and the rest of the time we ate lunches poolside. We would order food and all share it. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't too bad since we'd all share. (In this picture to the left, we were all starving since we had spent all morning at the beach and in the pool. We were seriously eating like savages...it was quite the scene!)

For the most part, dinners were pretty yummy. The first night we made a rookie mistake and let our hunger guide us. We decided to eat at a buffet (Marketplace) that was in the resort, even though I had read bad reviews about it. But we were so hungry we just wanted to eat. (My parents had a 3 hour delay with their flight, so they just wanted to eat somewhere--anywhere!) First, the buffet was NOT cheap at $46 per person. Secondly, it looked like a lot of food when we first walked in, but after walking through there weren't that many options. Third, and most importantly, most of the stuff did not taste good--not $46-a-head good. This was unfortunate. We all left a little disappointed.

We wanted to eat some local food off-site as well. We decided to try conch. We all loved the conch fritters, which are like deep fried hush puppies with little pieces of conch in it. I even ordered conch cakes (like crab cakes but with conch) for dinner our last night, but it was too much conch. By then I was already "conch'd" out. We also had Bahamian macaroni which is a spicy baked macaroni and cheese. It was pretty yummy.

Surprisingly, our favorite place to eat was on Atlantis. See, Atlantis is comprised of several different hotels/buildings. Ranging from low-end to high-end, they are the Beach Towers, Coral Towers, Royal Towers, The Cove, and The Reef. Our favorite place to eat was actually the buffet in The Cove, called Mosaic. (Side note: The Cove is SOOO nice. Every room is a suite. The decor is modern, but warm. The minute you walk into the lobby, you know you are in a special place. Even on the walk from the Royal Towers to The Cove (which are connected), there is a distinct change in scenery once you hit The Cove. Suddenly there is more hardwood and the ambiance is warmer. Even the breeze feels nicer. We all wish we could stay at The Cove if we ever go back.) Mosaic was such a nice restaurant. There were waterfalls everywhere and you could see the beach. There was an incredible variety in the buffet and almost everything tasted delicious. A said that the lamb was the best she had ever had. We had seared tuna and salmon that melted in our mouths. It was amazing. The funny thing is that it was about $60 per person, but we thought it was so much more worth it than Marketplace was at $46 per person. I mean, it was $46 and we didn't really like anything we ate! (I know these prices sound high, but we were at a resort, so we were already expecting to pay these ridiculous prices.) Anyway, it was a night to remember. We kept joking around that we'd eat there every night. Well, we did end up going back to Mosaic, but we went for breakfast on our last morning. Again, Mosaic's food was divine. We can't get that place out of our minds.

Since you guys know that we are all about food, this trip did not disappoint. The prices were higher, but still pretty yummy. Unfortunately, we couldn't try the super-fancy places, like Nobu, because they didn't allow kids under 6! We could've gotten an in-room sitter after the kids went to bed, but my dad didn't want to do it that way. So we skipped all the fanciness and we didn't regret it.

(To be continued in another post...can you believe there is THIS much to report??)

Atlantis: Part I

I don't even know where to begin to tell you about our trip to Atlantis. It was all pretty amazing. The place was beautiful and huge. There were tons of pools, kiddie pools, water slides, aquariums, and marine animals to discover. There was an aquarium that I didn't even discover until the day before we left! There was just so much to see. I think the only way to make this less overwhelming is to break it up into sections...

FLIGHTS: For our flights, we had to leave the house super early in the morning (4 am) and get home super late (12:30 am) in order to get only one connection to/from The Bahamas. When you're traveling with kids, it's always best to have the least amount of layovers possible, no matter what the cost. It's just not worth it to tempt fate with delays. We had to get the kids out of bed a little before 4am on the day we left. That actually went better than I thought it would. Eli was already in his PJs and we had put Elina in daytime clothes when we put her to bed, so it was a pretty quick transition from the bed to the car. The kids were awake the whole time we drove and checked-in, but they weren't crabby. So that part went really well. Eli slept a little on both legs of the flight, so we can't complain.

The ride home was a different story. The first leg was ok, but Eli didn't sleep a wink so he was pretty antsy. Toward the end of the flight, he had pooped, so he couldn't fall asleep even though he was tired. Since he couldn't sleep, he figured he'd make us all miserable instead. He wouldn't sit still and he was whiny. He just wanted to be changed so he could sleep, but we were already descending, so there was nothing I could do at that point. When we got onto our 2nd leg, he was asleep before we even took off and he slept for the entire flight. Poor boy. Unfortunately, Elina was not as cooperative. She was SO tired, but would not and could not sleep. Her eyes were watering and she was acting loopy, but she couldn't sleep. It definitely didn't help that she got sick the day before we left. So she was having trouble breathing (congestion) and trouble sleeping. And you know when you reach that point where you're tired, but can't sleep...you get cranky. Toward the end of the flight, she just lost it. She was whining and crying and unhappy. We all just wanted to get off the plane. It was miserable. Therefore, we've learned that we can't have late-night or red-eye flights anymore--even if it saves us money. Elina is just no good at falling asleep anywhere. I guess she gets that from me since I'm a terrible sleeper unless I'm in my own bed. Oops.

One good thing about our flight home was that we saw a real live Backstreet Boy (BSB)! Brian Littrell was on our flight with his wife and kid. J was the first to notice him. She even walked past him a few times to get a better look. One time she used Eli as an excuse to walk past him. She let Eli walk while holding her hands. Brian saw Eli and told J, "Cute kid." And all J said was, "Thanks!" Boo. I would've told him I loved his music or that I attended one of his concerts or something. But that's me. J is just too shy when it comes to celebrity sightings. I told J she could've even said that B went to their concert. (I know, I know...the secret's out. It was back in the day when we were dating, so he wanted to impress me by going to a BSB concert with me. But it would've been a funny conversation starter to talk to a BSB, right?)

WEATHER: The weather was actually cooler than we expected. I guess March is their windiest month. The day we arrived was hot and sunny, but the next 2 days after that were breezy, cloudy, and cool. That didn't deter us (or other people) from going to the pools though. Luckily, some pools were heated. We just didn't spend ALL day at the pool because short afternoon showers would blow in. After that we had one warm, sunny day where we spent the entire day at the pools. Then it was back to breezier days again. So the weather was less than ideal, but it didn't ruin our trip.

POOLS: There were so many pools at this place we could never decide which one we wanted to go to. In the end, we discovered that the zero-entry pools were best for us because then Eli could crawl around and play in the shallow area, Elina could go as deep as she wanted, and we could also swim like real adults. These are definitely our favorite pools now. There are no stairs to get down into the pool...it's like a beach because it just gradually gets deeper without steps. Eli loved dumping water out of his little bucket and Elina liked "pretending" to swim on her belly. Some of the pools had waterfalls...some had little slides for little kids...there were so man choices. It was awesome because I'm more of a pool girl than a beach girl.

SLIDES: Then there were the water slides. Some of them were body slides (which I didn't have the guts to do, but B did) and some required inner tubes. We did all the inner tube ones and they were so much fun. The lines were never that long and seemed to move quickly. I got a nasty bruise on my bum from one of the slides because I didn't lift my bottom high enough. Ouch.

There was also a fun lazy river ride. I use the term "lazy" loosely because on some parts it was anything but lazy. It was the most fun I've ever had on a lazy river because they had all these rapids. There's this one section where a big wave comes in and there's an Atlantis worker who's in charge of just putting inner tube riders in front of that wave so that they get pushed really far. It was awesome!
One of the special slides was through a shark aquarium. The end of the water slide went through a clear acrylic tunnel through an aquarium. That part of the slide slowed down so you could really see all the sharks and fish. It was such a neat experience. In the above picture, A and B are in the tube and there's a shark resting right on top of the tunnel.

BEACHES: The beaches were absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, we couldn't really enjoy it because our children officially hate the beach. Elina used to love everything about the beach, especially playing in the sand. She was really excited about going. From the moment we got to Atlantis, she kept asking, "Are we gonna go to the beach?" We finally hit the beach and she played in the sand for a long time. The waves were kind of big that day because there was some bad weather coming in. My dad carried her out to the water (he loves the beach) and J went along with them. Suddenly this huge wave hit them and knocked my dad and J over. Luckily, my dad is a quick thinker because he started to lift Elina higher so that she wouldn't go under the water. Unfortunately, my dad and J both went under for a little. This freaked Elina out and she wouldn't go back into the ocean again. After this incident, if I ever said something about the beach, Elina would say, "Mommy, I don't want to go to the beach." I can't blame her. I don't like beaches and have a fear of waves and undertows. I remember getting pulled under when I was younger and I thought I would never get back up again. It seemed like I was under the water forever. It was really scary.

Eli never really liked the beach, but we tried to take him into the water and he still didn't like it. So we let him play in the sand and he seemed to enjoy that....digging, filling buckets. But then the tide started to come in so all this water came up and he was up to his waist in water and he freaked out. He wouldn't stop crying, so we had to just take him to the pools.

Bummer since we were on this beautiful island, right?? Oh well.

The rest of our trip report will be continued in another post. Otherwise this single post would be way too long.)

Return from Paradise

We just got back from The Bahamas late last night. I am still recovering from the entire trip. It was lots of fun, but very tiring. Give me a few days or so to post about the trip. We have about 700 pictures to go through and we're also all very sleep-deprived, so I need some time to veg out and recuperate.

But here are a few things I learned on this trip (that I will elaborate on at a later time):

1. My children officially hate the beach. This is a big bummer since we were on AN ISLAND with beautiful beaches. I guess they are like me since I'm more of a pool girl myself.

2. My children cannot handle late night flights. We had to have a late flight back to San Antonio in order to get only 1 layover (which is a blessing for those traveling with children). Things got ugly on the plane because Elina was SO tired, but would not fall asleep. It didn't help that she got sick at the end of our stay.

3. Sharing a room with your 3 year old and 1 year old is not fun at all.

4. Paradise Island is actually not that warm at this time of year. I think it was warmer here in San Antonio than it was over there. It was pretty breezy most of the time and we got random, short rain showers for a few days. There was only 1 day that was hot enough that we stayed at the pool all morning and afternoon.

5. The Atlantis is FULL of rich people. I'm talking about filthy rich people who walk around in outfits from fashion magazines. I'm talking about moms who have the money to really, really take care of themselves...with their rockin' bodies and abnormally large breasts. I'm talking about grown men who tie sweaters around their necks. You get my drift. Filthy rich.

There's more, but this is what I can give you for now. My eyelids are burning and I need to head to bed.

Taking Steps and Enjoying It

Eli's walking is finally getting better. Before this, we would always have to force him to take steps from one person to another. Not that we would literally force him, but we would have to get him to stand up and then encourage him to take a few steps. Inevitably, he'd only take a few steps and then crouch down to crawl. Now he voluntarily takes steps. It's like he enjoys practicing his walk. When I recorded this, he didn't want to stop taking steps. He would walk to me and then turn right around and start walking back to B. He's never been like that before! We also catch him taking steps on his own when he thinks we're not watching.

I think it helped that he practiced a lot with my dad while he was here. My dad would hold one of Eli's hands and literally walk him around the house in a loop over and over again. Eli had a blast. I'm glad he finally enjoys taking steps.

Pi(e) Day + Friends = Dorky Fun

Ok, so we're official dorks. We decided to celebrate Pi Day yesterday. You know, to celebrate the mathematical constant, pi (3.14). I know, I know. You're probably asking how I even came up with the notion to do this this year. Actually, KT and I were talking about it one day and we thought it would be fun. Here are the reasons we decided to celebrate Pi Day--

1. KT is a pie expert, so I will make up any excuse to eat her homemade pies.
2. KT and I both have math backgrounds, so we thought it was kinda fitting.
3. We knew the kids would have a blast eating pie.
4. It was a good reason to get together with KT and her family.

I made Fiesta Casserole, which is a quick yummy recipe from America's Test Kitchen. I didn't think a casserole was fitting for Pi Day, so I decided to make the casserole into pie dishes. So we called them Fiesta Pies. Then I cheesed out and bought a little apple pie from the grocery store. I figured I would make a small contribution to the dessert pies, but I knew I couldn't make anything nearly as tasty as KT, so I figured store-bought was the way to go for now. (It would also be impossible for me to make a real pie right now since I'm in the midst of packing for our trip!) KT made 2 vanilla cream pies. One was adult-sized and one was kid-sized. Her daughter, L, help make the kid-sized one. KT even sprinkled a little bit more dorkiness on her pie by putting a pi symbol on the top.

To spice things up a little (and to guarantee our utter dorky status), we decided to have a Pi Bee. We wanted to see who could recite the most digits in pi. The prize was a "pi-napple." (For those of you who know me, I love puns.) Well, we all basically started memorizing the morning of Pi Day. I thought I was doing pretty well, but man, B blew us out of the water. No, no, that's understating it a tad...B actually annihilated us. I don't mean he knew a few more digits than we did or that he knew 30 more digits. He knew a little over 200 digits of pi!! Who am I married to?? We were all so impressed. I tried to video tape it, but when I busted out the camera, he got nervous and couldn't remember anything. Once I put the camera away, he just busted out all the digits. It was funny because he had this slip-up on some numbers a little bit after 100 digits, so we all thought he was going to stop soon. No. Since it's B, he had to go on and on for another 100 digits. Can you believe this guy? Needless to say, B won the "pi-napple."

We also got Elina in on the action. I just told her that pi was 3.14 and she remembered it. So here is Elina telling us what we did today. Unfortunately, she didn't really appreciate all the pies we ate. She didn't like Fiesta Pie (I had to get her to eat 7 bites to earn her dessert). She didn't like the apple pie. She didn't like the pie crust on KT's vanilla cream pie. She only ate the vanilla cream part of the pie with whipped cream. Maybe next year she'll appreciate pies more.

Cheesy Cheese

We must take a lot of pics of the kids because Eli already knows how to say "cheese" to the camera. First he started giving us this cheesy smile whenever we pulled out the camera. I mean, his eyes just completely disappear, right? Then suddenly, he started saying, "cheeeeee" whenever he saw the camera. How funny!

To top it all off, he even does it with cell phones. He was playing with Elina's play cell phone in the car and he lifted it up, said "cheeeee," and pushed the camera button. I couldn't believe it!

It's funny, but it actually makes taking pictures easier these days.

Contagious Laugh

One evening Eli was playing with the recorder. He would blow one single "toot" sound through the recorder. So B started to echo his sound. Eli would blow one sound and B would say, "Oooooo." Every time B echoed him, Eli would crack up. One of those times, he was laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Unfortunately, by the time I grabbed the camera the laughter had died down a little. We couldn't get him to laugh as hard as that one time. Bummer. (That's the beauty of trying to take pics and videos of your little kids. By the time you run back with the camera, they've either moved or the moment is kinda gone.) But I still caught some laughter and thought I'd share it since Eli has such a wonderfully contagious laugh (as you can hear on the video clip, B couldn't help but laugh, too).

Eli Gets a Professional 'Do

Eli is a shaggy dog. His hair has gotten really long lately. His ears have almost disappeared and his neck has not seen the light of day in quite a while. Now that the front of his hair is getting long again, we decided it was time to seek professional help. We figured it would be better to get a professional to do the styling and then we could "try" to maintain it ourselves. (We'll see if that happens in a few months.) Anyway, we went to the same place my friend C went to and it was a great experience.

Eli sat in the little car seat and just played with the steering wheel for most of the time. (On a side note, the steering wheel would say things in 2 languages--English and Chinese! For most of the haircut, it was on Chinese, so we kept hearing "right turn" in Chinese over and over again. Random, but funny.) I think it also helped that Eli had a short nap, so he was awfully tired. But he was at that tired-but-not-cranky stage, so he was complacent not a nightmare. He let the hairdresser use her scissors and then the trimmer. I was really impressed with how still he sat.




We were really happy with how the haircut turned out. Everything looks neat and straight. We can see his cute little ears, the back of his neck, and more of his cheeks. And now Eli looks older to us. His face also looks a little chubbier. What a big boy! (Side note: he looks a little sad in the first picture because it was sunny out, so he was squinting a bit. It's probably also because he was tired.)

My Love for Research

I'm a research girl. I absolutely cannot go on vacation or buy a product (most of the time) without doing a good amount of research. I will devour every book and read every review on the topic. I can't help it. That's just who I am. I have to attempt to know everything...to see every side. Maybe that's why I was willing to get my doctorate in education.

Anyway, we're going on a big family vacation to....ATLANTIS in the Bahamas next week. Obviously, because we're going somewhere this exciting, I have to research everything. This is why I haven't posted in a long time (plus, we've had lots of family visiting). All my spare time has been devoted to reading restaurant reviews, suggestions for packing with kids, and activities worth doing. It's really exhausting, but totally worth it in the end.

We are all excited for this trip. We've been prepping Elina and everyday when I get her dressed to leave the house, she asks, "Are we going to the Bahamas right now?" Then yesterday we told her, "We're not leaving for the Bahamas until next Tuesday." So later that day she said, "Today is Monday. Tomorrow is Tuesday. That means we're going to the Bahamas tomorrow." We had to explain to her that we weren't leaving until next Tuesday. She still doesn't get it, but she's pretty excited. She doesn't even know what the Bahamas are. She just knows that we're going with family, she's going to see her Auntie A (who's living in Taiwan right now), she gets to go to the beach, and she gets to see tons of ocean wildlife. How could she not be excited, right?

Well, new posts will come soon. Sorry for the delay, folks.