seafoamandsunshine: July 2015

Here's the video action from Jamaica! As Mike would say, "You know you're in a cool place if it is the location of a James Bond movie."

The Hotel - Normally we don't ever mention the hotel we stay at, because we spend so little time there. We usually just book the cheapest thing we can find. The Franklyn D. Resort (not named after the U.S President), however, blew our minds! First off, each room comes with a FREE vacation nanny for the duration of your stay. How awesome is that? This allowed us to go do the more adventurous things during Coral's nap time, yet still get plenty of fun family time in too. Best of both worlds.

View from the master bedroom

Dinner on the pier. Highchairs are always accessible

Daddy/Daughter playtime

Hanging in the treehouse

The 100ft. waterslide that we went on probably 50+ times (including w/ baby). Her name is Big Blue and she is fun.

This night the hotel put on a beach party with dinner on the beach, live music, dancing and a fire show. Pretty epic.

Coral playing with her nanny while we went kayaking. Our nanny was SO good with our girl.

The Blue Hole - Our favorite! We went with Marks Tours. Mark is the man. He is a local who gives you a local experience and caters to what you want to see. He hooked us up big time and his tour was very reasonably priced. I would highly recommend him over the large companies that run most of the tours. You will not regret using him. He provided a much more local feeling to our trip than if we would have gone with one of the tours that the cruise ship company provides. We ate mango from his backyard, bread pudding from a street vendor and learned a lot of Jamaican history.

Blue Hole has crystal clear water, lots of cliffs to jump off of, rope swings to jump off of and waterfalls to jump off of. Basically, if you like to jump off of things into water, this is your kind of place. There is a rock slide that you can go down into a mini waterfall that is the entrance to an underwater cave. There are so many cool things about this place and words cannot describe how awesome and beautiful it is. If you go to Jamaica, this is a must see.

One of the many waterfalls at Blue Hole.

That underwater cave with the waterfall curtain that was mentioned early.

Hanging out at Laughing Waters, the beach where the first James Bond movie was filmed. It is a private beach, so we had to do a lot of asking until we were able to get a local to take us in there. It was incredibly beautiful. An isolated beach with two waterfalls cascading into the ocean with white sand and caribbean blue water. Plus, one of the most iconic scenes in film history was filmed here.

Right in front of the iconic waterfall from Dr. No

Miles of deserted beach in both directions. Idyllic and peaceful (except for the security guard who was mad dogging us the whole time)

Dunn's Falls

Making our way up Dunn's Falls

Like Laughing Waters, the waterfall cascades into the ocean

At the foot of the waterfalls and at the beginning of the beach

River Tubing

Tubing down the White River. It was a nice, relaxing way to end the day filled with adventure.

We didn't know this until after the fact, but Dr. No was also filmed in the White River.

Glass Bottom Boat Ride

We had a bit of a party pooper on the boat ride - she fell asleep instantly!
It was her loss. She missed hundreds of fish swimming around in ultra clear water.

Beach Time

That's one happy baby!

Swimming out the floating mats in the ocean. These were conveniently anchored to the ocean floor just off the beach right in front of our hotel suite.

End of a great family vacation

Over the last several months, we have visited family in Utah several times. Mike's maternal grandparents had a family reunion in the mountains where the entire family got together for a few days. We hiked to waterfalls and across snow patches. We hung out with Mike's cousins and reminisced on our youth. We ate lots of food and got to hear stories from grandma and grandpa about their lives. The oldest 6 grandchildren also recreated a classic photo from about 1989 and Coral went on an adult waterslide for the first time.