Easter

We started out the morning with Easter baskets and church! He is Risen!! 

Afterward we headed to my parents house for an amazing lunch, egg scavenger hunt and a lot of dessert! We were so happy to be joined by my Grandma (GeeGee) and Aunt Mar!

Jade is ELEVEN!

 We had a great (and busy) day celebrating Jade! She was completely shocked when she opened her new iPhone 13 as she had NO idea she was getting it!! ;)

We had lunch at Portillo's and then did a Harry Potter themed escape room. We unfortunately did not escape. We got pretty close though! :)

We headed straight from there to Jade's first Premier soccer game of the season. They won!!

Dinner and dessert were Jade's choice, Culver's and Dairy Queen! 

We definitely had a great day of eating!

We celebrated Jade's birthday the following weekend with family!

Jade's gift from Aunt Nancy and Uncle Paul was an outing to do Bicycle Spin Art! Nancy, Jade and I all went and had the best time! I'll post a few pictures at the end of this post!

Here are the pictures from the Bicycle Spin Art!

Spring Break - The Bahamas

The girls and I kicked off Spring Break with a pre vacation pedicure! It was their first one and have been begging to go back!

 Our trip got off to a bit of a rocky start! I woke up the morning we were supposed to leave, only to find that our flight out of Chicago was over 3 hours delayed! This would then result in us missing our connecting flight in New York to the Bahamas! We weren't quite sure what to do, so we headed to the airport as planned in hopes that they could rebook us!

We ended up getting rebooked on two connecting flights, one of which being an overnight connection in Miami. Although missing our first night in the Bahamas was not ideal, we all kept positive attitudes and rolled with the punches! We ended up having a late dinner that night in Miami at a food truck set up in a neighboring hotel's parking lot! We all enjoyed the food so much!

We all slept in our clothes (haha) and rolled out early the next morning for our flight! Things immediately perked up once we landed in Nassau and found out our shared bus ride to Atlantis had been upgraded to a private limo! 

Another positive was that by the time we arrived at the resort (around 11 am) we were already checked in and our room was ready for us! We checked out the view and then immediately changed clothes and headed out to find lunch and explore!

We spent the next 6 hours riding water slides, the rapid river, swimming in the pool and checking out the beach!

Nate and Jade raced on the Challenger slide. Jemma and I passed on this one! :)

We walked over to the Marina for a late pizza dinner! We were all completely wiped out from the day so after a little bit we headed back to the hotel and crashed. 

The next morning we woke up bright and early, grabbed breakfast at Starbucks and headed to meet Captain Hue down by the Mariana for a 4 hour boat adventure! We snorkeled, stopped at the beach, saw giant sea turtles, went to Gilligan's Island and got to feed pigs!   

You used to be able to get into the water with the turtles, but due to shark activity in the area they now make you stay on the boats. This was completely fine with us! ;)

We spent the rest of the day by the beach and at the waterpark before heading back to the room to freshen up for dinner at Burger Shack. We walked around the Marina, grabbed dessert and headed back to our hotel.

The next morning we walked to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and coffee and explored some more of the property before heading to the waterpark for the day.

I'm not the biggest fan of body slides, but knew I had to do this one! Nate and Jade went first and then Jade was brave enough to go again with me! Jemma cheered us on from the viewing platform!

That afternoon we did a really fun encounter with Sea Lions! We got to play with them, feed them and swim with them! It was so cool!

For our last night we went to Carmine's and had a huge family style Italian dinner. Afterward we got ice cream and walked around the marina. The girls each chose a souvenir from little shops.

We had some time the next morning before our flight home, so we went snorkeling at the lagoon and then explored even more of the resort that we hadn't seen yet!

We had lunch at Murray's Deli and then headed to the airport! We had an overnight connection in Boston and arrived home in Chicago the next morning! Such a fun and special trip!