"Bahamas Vacations are Awesome!" (tm Jamie)

Despite promises that I would write daily posts from the Bahamas, this is my first post from the island and it is also my final day in Man O’ War Cay, Bahamas. The days have been too full of swimming/relaxing/snorkeling/board gaming/laughing for me to write. But, I will try to make up for it with pictures.

The trip was “TREMENDOUS” (as Drew would say).

Let me preface this with the statement that I am blessed to have the friends that I do. I should also state that I am marrying a pretty incredible trip planner. Jamie made sure that we had at least one adventure a day and because of his impeccable planning we had so much fun doing it. I will not deny that there were moments that I giggled at his campiness, but I can safely say that we were so lucky to have him there with us.

A few (little) things that I learned on our trip:

1) I am bad at all board/card games. I will lose lose lose if anyone plays me.

2) 82 degrees is the ideal water temperature in which to swim.

3) Peanut butter and jelly tastes better in the Bahamas. Even on the fifth day.

4) It takes approximately 3.66 swats to kill a cicada.

5) Boys are a lot like Golden Retrievers when it comes to fetching playing Frisbee on the beach.

Enough talk. Here are some pictures from our trip:

A little peek at what was outside our bedroom -- we stayed at "The Bayhouse" portion of the property which meant that we had a great view of the bayside. (Also, we had central AC -- but I swear we only used it a few nights).

The weather was pretty moody while we were there. It rained a bunch on one or two days, but cleared up enough for us to get out on the water every day.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out the best way to put up pictures from our trip without the formatting getting all wonked out. I'm thinking I won't be able to get all of my pictures up in one post -- but I'll put up a bunch now and as the week progresses and I continue telling stories from our trip I will put up a few more pictures each time. For now, how about this series called: Man O' War Cay By The Hour.

This picture was actually taken around 5:20am before the sun came up. It's of a lightning storm over Marsh Harbor (it bypassed Man O' War). I spent a good amount of time futzing with the camera trying to figure out how to leave the shutter open so I could catch a fork of lightning. Unfortunately, I don't think it had the option (or at least I couldn't figure it out without turning on some lights), so I just sat around and took pictures whenever I thought that maybe lightning was approaching. Surprisingly, I actually caught one. Yes, that big glow of white light in the center is the bolt of lightning. It's kind of hard to see, but it's the most clear on the middle-to-left side of the picture. It's pretty amazing to look at when you zoom in a lot.

Of course, I also had to include a picture of our beach -- there are a lot of these. This is from the path leading from the Main House to the beach in front of the house. We also learned that this path was the choice litter box for the cat that adopted us while we were there. A lot of my pictures from the trip look like this one.

And of course, the obligatory "sunset at Man O' War" picture. In the lower-left corner you can see the boat that we rented for the week. It was a nice boat and I worried for its inanimate life. However, thanks to Jamie's savvy navigating and patient instruction it survived the week with nary a scratch.

I have plenty more pictures to share, but like I said, I'll do it in parts. There is only so much uploading of pictures through Blogger that one can endure at a time. But, I'm so excited about sharing my pictures that you can be sure that I'll be posting again really soon. Like, now.