We're back! The cruise was amazing. Soooo much fun. It'd take way to long to talk about all the awesome stuff, so I'll just pick a few of our favorites:

Favorite stop: St. Maarten
We went on a 6 hour snorkeling/island excursion and got to snorkel with giant sea turtles and sting rays. It was way cool. Plus, we got back to the dock really really really late so our awesome tour guide gave us a really speedy ride in his personal car back to the cruise ship. Ha. I was slightly scared we were going to miss the ship buuuuuuut also riding in his car made me feel like we should just move to the island because I kind of dig the island life.

Favorite food: Roasted duck with a red wine reduction
Ridiculous. Also, on the subject of food--Chris ordered 3-4 appetizers and 2-3 entrees at every single dinner. I do not understand how he can put down this amount of food.

Favorite show: Drew Thomas' Magic Show, "Now You See It."
I've never seen a magic show live..and whenever I see them on TV I'm super skeptical and think that everyone's sort of in on it. We had seats in the front row but to the side and literally I can not figure out how he did these tricks. I'm pretty sure you can see part of, if not this whole show somewhere on youtube. Here's a picture that he actually took from on stage at the cruise ship:



Favorite Game Event: The Quest
This ridiculous game. Chris and I were two of the four team captains that got to play in front of everyone and we each had a section of the audience to play with. It's like a crazy scavenger hunt sorta. Our team won second place out of 12! We got silver medals and shirts. Hahahaha.

Most embarrassing moment for Jordan (of course there would be at least one of these):
Getting pulled up in front of multiple hundreds of people in the middle of the broadway type production (I totally didn't volunteer) and forced to do various dance moves and sing. Into the microphone. Why me. Why. See the picture above for what I had to see while I did all of this.

Most embarrassing moment for Chris:
I have not yet gotten permission to talk about this via the blog. It involves the Quest game and also very little clothing. Haahhhahahaha. Also. I am so mad I don't have pictures because of the fact that my phone was up in my purse in the audience since we were playing on the floor.

Lastly: I did take a cruise video!
But I accidentally took all of them vertical because I don't know why. Ooops. But it's better than nothing. I'll get better at the vlog thing eventually. :)


We arrived back home on Ellie's two month.  I was so happy that our friends were the ones to pick us up from the port and drive all the way back to SC with us because it really just helps to be around awesome people, especially during the hardest days. Two months seems like such a short while ago...but it feels so much longer that we've been going through all of this. I can see that we're making progress in healing and moving forward, it's just such a process. Before leaving for the cruise, I totally underestimated how healing it was going to be. It can be easy to feel guilty, like we were running from the issues or forcing ourselves to be distracted.....but in the end it was absolutely what we needed. It totally inspires us to want to do this for others in the future. I hope we never have to see any friends or family walk through things like this..but if so, it helps so much to know the things that have really made a difference for us so that we can pass them along. Whether that's a cooked meal, just being held by friends and family, or sending them on vacation.......it just makes a world of difference. Literally--all of you have taken this business of bearing our burdens to a level that is beyond comprehension and that is so full of Jesus. It's so so so inspiring. So although I can't express it in a way that matches the gratitude in our hearts........thank you.