Hopetown Lighthouse!

Okay, last post about the Bahamas; sorry I've been so behind. The last couple days of our trip were excellent. We spent one of the days going out on a boat to Hopetown, which you can only get to by boat. Cool, right? Anyway, there is this really great (supposedly famous) lighthouse there that looks like a candy cane. But, before I get to that, I must share the story of the golf cart that must be remembered (like we could ever forget it ha). So, we were leaving the house to go into town, where we were going to catch the boat (the resort only allowed golf carts to be driven inside, so cars had to be left at the front). One cart was leaving to go up, while the other was going to be along in another half hour. So, it was Gary driving, with my mom and Katie in the front, Betsy and Jamie in the middle and I was in the back, with the backwards-facing seat. Gary being the crazy driver he is, goes off tearing down the driveway at top speed. Just then another golf cart, also going full speed, turns around the blind corner at the driveway entrance, which was not wide enough for two carts. We all braced ourselves for impact, as we crashed almost head on. Exciting, no? The poor guy in the other cart (who was part of maintenance at the resort) felt so bad and kept apologizing. No one was severely hurt, which was the important thing, so we all tried to tell him that it was okay. It was as much Gary's fault as it was his. Katie did bump her lip, Gary banged his arm, Jamie her knee and I, both a leg and an arm. It was a good thing I had been looking forward an braced myself, or I would have been out of the cart. So great, having to go back inside and tell the rest of our family we had, had a golf cart accident. Maybe someday we will actually manage to no damage any property of these vacation places...probably not. haha
Anyway, here are some pics of our trip to Hopetown, which was really neat, since it is basically a little town built on the water. on the boat...yeah i make weird faces Katie and my Aunt Julie...such a cute picturethe lighthouse! isn't it awesome!?family picture, trying to get the lighthouse in the background.going on up......and looking downBets, Jus and I at the top. After, the boat took us out to this great snorkeling spot, where you could dive and swim through the breaks in the reef. Emphasis on the word "could"; I'm not sure we were supposed to. Our little heads in the distance. We saw an awesome lobster! It was purpleAfter snorkeling, the Jib Room was recommended for dinner, so we all had just brought a change of clothes with us and used some random public showers at the boat docks and went. The dinner was great and it was right in the harbor. Jamie and I at dinner.
After dinner the Jib Room was having Limbo and Dance competitions. My mom and Gary took Katie back with their car and the rest of us stayed. Limboing was so fun! I haven't done that in forever. The guy that was running it was amazing as well. He set the bar at about 3.5 ft off the ground and then looked at my Aunt, gesturing for her to come over to where he was. She immediately grabs my arm and pushes me towards him. He then picked me up and limbo-ed under the bar... haha crazy. Justin and Jenna ended up tying for the winning spot. After, the Cha cha slide came on and somehow I got tricked into leading it for the entire restaurant. During the next song, which was the eclectic slide, everyone left the dance floor except Jamie, Betsy and I, which was really embarrassing, but totally fun. It was a pretty awesome last night in the Bahamas.
When we returned to the house, Jamie, Betsy, Justin and I sat up in the observation room (it had glass walls) talking for a bit. Lots of good conversations in that room. Another night Justin, Betsy and I stayed up until 3am just talking about everything from school to relationship advice and crushes...pretty different topics haha. Anyway, Justin and I had heard about this thing on youtube where a guy was making a movie from all these different people's lives on the date of July 24th. So, on that day, people were just supposed to film whatever it was they were doing and then upload it to youtube, answering the questions "What do you love? What do you fear? What's in your pockets? What makes you laugh?". It was a bummer we hadn't heard about it earlier, but we decided it would be cool to make a video telling what we had done, even if it was just for us. We talked a bit about our day and then decided to go down to the beach, since we had wanted to go every night that week. Jamie and Betsy weren't interested and stayed behind. It was a full moon when we walked down there, so everything was so bright. After we captured that on film, I walked down to the water and stood there in the water, moonlight and soft warm breeze, wishing I could simply capture that moment and how extremely peaceful, yet empowered I felt. It was totally one of those moments that leaves a lasting impact simply because of the amazing picture that is painted around you. Eventually we started our walk back up to the house, making it into a dance rather by turning some music on from Justin's computer. Have I mentioned how much I love the randomness of my family? It works so well for us all haha. Here's getting ready to leave...can't wait to see them again! Skiing this winter probably

Hooray for one room airports! :)

So blessed to have been able to travel so much this summer!

hurricane watch? i wish

again, the beach was spectacular!

justin and betsy buried me and made me a mermaid... :)

the house was very open and spacious and, like last year, we had a play some rounds of sardines. we got everyone to play this time and managed to sustain only minor injuries. we played in the pitch dark, which made things super hard and super scary. justin kept following me around, saying my name in what was one of the creepiest voices i've ever witnessed, hence naming it his "creepy munchkin voice". seriously, it is terrifying he can even make this voice. anyway, it wasn't me that got injured this time. betsy, jamie, justin and i had gone in my aunt and uncle's room to search and justin thought it would be hilarious to get in the closet and jump out at us as we walked out. he jumped out and betsy, who was in front, grabbed the door as a reaction and tried to slam it closed, hitting justin's head...pretty great backfire. jamie and i just screamed, laughed and then ran into my aunt, coming to see what had happened. i told her that justin had come out of the closet. her response was "Oh finally." haha poor justy...not like he doesn't deserve it.

at another point in the game, we were all smashed under the couch cushions in the couch and were there for about a good minute and a half before we realized we were all there and no one was left looking. another round jamie was hiding in the service closet, which was in the main room. just as i was opening the door to look, justin comes out of nowhere and shoves me in, causing me to fall into jenna, who fell into a bucket and then as he is scrambling to close the door quickly, he falls on top of both of us.

through this game we also discovered that eight fully grown adults can fit into a single shower stall...the resort should put that on their brochures. kidding.

i love my family!

jamer and i

we went down to the clubhouse for karaoke one afternoon. the man in front started dancing with me...he was the sweaty-est person i've ever seen. i was cringing as he grabbed my arm, while jamie cheered and laughed. hahafamily picture...i think i had just played tennis. the bay with the trampoline and sail boat! dinner on the ocean was amazing, although while we were there, we were watching on the tv a tropical storm warning for tropical storm bonnie. we all started discussing what would happen if it became hurricane status and hit Abaco. we let our imaginations run a little wild, saying it could be made into a movie: a family on vacation, a storm hits and leaves one alive. somehow i was the one who would live because the title "the last little blond girl" was such a terrific title according to aunt julie. then we began talking about who would survive in a horror film.

bonnie did hit, but it was just with lots of lightning, thunder and rain...nothing too major. fun though

Oh, Abaco

Where to even begin about my trip to the Bahamas? Well, it started of with a red eye from LA to Miami, where we arrived at bright and early 6am (which was actually 3am CA time). After 6 hrs. in the ice box of an airport, we hopped on a plane that was taking us to Marsh Harbor, located on the Island of Abaco. When we arrived, we waited for the rest of our family to arrive, who were coming in on a later flight. I had a very relaxing afternoon; I took a walk down to the beach, laid in the hammock and read a book. What beats that? The rest of our family finally arrived and we spent the evening out by the pool catching up, though it had only been what 3 weeks since we last saw them. The rest of the evening Betsy, Justin and I flipped through the tv channels, trying to find a movie to watch. We ended up watching Planet of the Apes...weird movie. Totally entertaining though.

The next day we just hung around the resort and walked down to the beach, where we decided it would be fun to take some kayaks out to this small island a little ways away. Jamie and Betsy take off towards the island, Justin and I follow and then my Uncle Jeff brings up the rear by himself. We got about half way out when Justin goes "Um, Danielley, we are takin' on a lot of water back here". I turned around and saw that he was almost up to his waist in water and that it was slowly filling up the front of the kayak as well. "Start bailing!" I yelled, and we began frantically bailing, but we were taking on water faster than we could bail it out. Eventually we were just sitting in the filled kayak with the top of the kayak just under the surface of the water. Justin hopped (or rather, swam) out, hoping it would float again, but by that time it was too full of water so his weight didn't even effect it. So, I got out too and we tried tipping it over and then flipping it back, but we couldn't get it to drain. The whole time we were laughing hysterically, while his dad was paddling around us, yelling directions at us and freaking out...just a little. We just thought it was hilarious. We began trying to swim in with it, Justin pulling it in front and me pushing it from behind, but the current was pretty strong. Finally some guy on a paddle board came out and took it from us, giving us his paddle board to get out to the island. However, we only had kayak paddles, so that made it interesting. Justin tried swimming behind it, "pushing it" (he was slowing it down more than anything), while I sat on top and paddled. Finally he let go and I just took off, leaving him to swim the last of the stretch. Quite a funny memory...I didn't even know it was possible to sink a kayak. haha



here are some pictures of us hanging out in town the third day we were there.

what can i say? we're hardcore

aw, see we do like each other

oh, kaite...

Izzy was our waitress at a restaurant called Mangos. She was hilarious! So great, in fact that we took a picture with her before leaving.

On the fourth morning, we went out to the fake clay tennis courts and played some pretty good tennis. We met some other people staying at the resort and got a few games going with them. It was really fun. While we were playing against Gary and my Aunt Julie, I missed a ball and Justin jokingly goes "damn it danielle". My aunt goes "Those two words are never to be used in the same sentence!" So, to spite my aunt for standing up for the person who gets made of the most in the family, for the rest of the trip, the ongoing joke was damn it danielle since it had such a nice ring to it. For example, I was in the other room and Jamie dropped something in the kitchen and expresses her frustration by saying "damn it danielle". Then Gary had to chime in and say that saying "damn it" was only okay if my name was after it. So i guess my name is the new family expletive...great haha.

After tennis, we returned to the house and since it was ridiculously hot outside, we wanted to get in the water. Justin and I went down to the beach and swam a bit. Have I talked at all about the beach yet? Well, I think it just might have been the most spectacular beach I have ever been to. There was no one else around (I think the entire week we were there we may have seen 10 people total on the beach...crazy!)

katie's model shotplaying in the sand...it was super soft!

Aunt Julie, Justin and my Mom

We also played croquet! I was terrible at it...Jamie kept laughing at how bad I was.

Here is Justin, Gary, Katie and I down to the clubhouse beach, where, as you can see in the background, there was a giant floating trampoline! One afternoon when Justin and I were jumping on it, he told me to try and do a flip off of it into the water. I did, but completely over-rotated and smacked on the water. So great haha. We eventually came back and played in the pool for a while.Then everyone thought it would be fun to drown me...yes, that shape under the water with legs sticking out is me.

I have such caring family members. :)

Well, that's all for now...more to come

Repelling!

Anyway, the other really fun thing we did in Zion was repelling. But, before I talk about that, I'll tell a little about my Aunt Julie's birthday, which was on Saturday.
We went out to dinner in town and then came back to where my parent's were staying to play cards for a bit. When it got dark, we decided we should head back to the campsite (also because Uncle Jeff was riding his bike back and when he left, Jamie realized she had forgotten to lock the car when she had gone to the campsite to get something. So, my mom was coming back with us to hang out for a while and so 6 of us piled in Jamie's 5 seater car (my Aunt and Jamie in the front and my mom, Betsy, Justin and I crammed in the back). We drive through the park entrance and try to pull over to the side of the road, having Justin lean out the window, trying to lock the car through the trees before Uncle Jeff gets back. As we pull back out on to the road, we see blue and red lights flashing behind us (great time to get pulled over when you have an illegal number of people in the back seat). Betsy immediately starts spazzing out saying "Oh my gosh! What are we going to do? Danielle, get down." Justin, my mom and I just gave her a look and I told her "that won't help. Maybe I should just push Justin out of the car and he can make a break for it through the woods." I think she honestly thought about it for a second haha...she doesn't do well under pressure. Anyway, the cop comes over to the car and begins flashing a light in at us, looking to see what Justin was doing hanging out the car window, probably. He showed him that all he had were keys and the cop proceeded to say that he pulled us over because the speed limit at the entrance to Zion is 15mph and we were going 25. He also commented on the fact that we were all squished in the back and after a while of him being back in his car, he let us go, giving us a warning. We had a few other infractions so this was pretty awesome. We all drove off cheering at the fact we didn't get any tickets. Of all the places for us to get pulled over...Zion. Pretty great.
After staying up late the night before, playing cards, we woke up and rode bikes down to the swimming hole. On the way over, we were ridding along the path, when all of the sudden Justin comes to a complete halt, causing me, Betsy and Jamie to crash into him and each other. Why he did this. "There was a lizard."
"Okay, but the path is wide enough for you to go around the lizard."
"I didn't know which way he was going to run though."
Wow...i cut my finger because he didn't swerve around the lizard. haha Anyway, swimming in the swimming hole was quite fun. It was a bit chilly, but it was a blast to jump off the rocks into the rapids and you were dry in minutes when you got out. After coming back from the swimming hole, we all got ready to go repelling in the canyon.

hiking up to the top so we could start the repel back down.

Love these guys! I guess that's a good thing, cause I kinda can't get rid of them even if i wanted to.

Betsy going around the rock face.

I'm ready to go! :)

and the repelling begins

Katie was not a big fan of it. But, Jamie was really good to her and once they got going she did fine.

Go Mamma, go!

Uncle Jeff is afraid of heights, so he wasn't a fan of this either...poor guy.

Aunt Julie's a natural

Into the cavern we go!

Looking up out of the canyon. At the end we could choose to climb through the walls of the canyon, where they came close together to get out...Justin, Gary and I tried it. It was not as easy as it looks. You have to kind of wedge yourself between the rocks to keep from having your shoes slip. Totally fun though.

Such a great trip! :)