The Journey of Parenthood…

Jamaica: Tues & Wed

Day 3 of the trip was really pretty much our last day since we had to be packing and all on Wednesday before flying out. I wish we could have stayed longer! Everyone who was at the wedding knew I wasn’t too pumped for this Jamaica trip. I just had SO much on my plate (or at least it felt like it…turns out it didn’t even COMPARE to all the craziness I’ve been dealing with since I got home!) and kept picturing that not-so-great Cancun resort we stayed at on the last State Aflac trip so I just had a hard time getting excited. Once I got there though I REALLY did love it!!!

Something I especially loved is that I felt like it was our honeymoon. Leaving a wedding, having my nails all pretty, it just felt more romantic for some reason. It didn’t hurt that SO many people asked us if we were honeymooners too. I wanted to play along and pretend, but Zach wouldn’t. Ugh, he’s so lame.

Being in the honeymoon vibe I did something I typically would never do. When the entertainment staff starting rounding up people for Beach Olympics I joined in. Yes, ME. Zach wanted to play and he didn’t even bother asking me but I volunteered to play too. RANDOM!

We had two teams and had 5 events. Five were a bit much and something I thought would be over in 20-30 minutes actually lasted over 2 hours. But it was pretty fun. We were the yellow team with a couple of the Aflac people on our team too!

This is the race I did the best at! Had to jump with a basketball between our legs while attached to our partner

My partner and I (and we did the BEST during the basketball/leg/race thing out of everyone there! Made me feel athletic for a change!)

One of the races was one where we all had to sit in a line and toss flower over our heads to each other then fill up a bowl with it. We were a MESS after but we balled out (we quickly realized you could sneak lots of sand in with the flower to fill the bowl faster…)

My least favorite race was where we had to run down, put one hand on our ear, then circle around a basketball 5 times. I practically walked. I mean I’m not about to make a fool of myself and fall ya know?

For the final competition we had to cover a team member in sand and create something. Our team was the Sharks so we made a big shark. It turned out pretty good (it’s hard to see in the picture) but we lost that event to the other team, they did a mermaid. Seriously? SO not creative!

Overall Yellow Team WON

While the Beach Olympics were pretty fun they also caused us to get very sunburned. And…I’m not gonna lie…they also caused me to be SORE the next day. How embarrassing is that?

The rest of the afternoon we just layed out by the ocean and enjoyed the beautiful view and the sand between our toes!

That night we wanted to have a “date night” since every other night we had spent with Aflac people (we are typically stick to ourselves on these types of trips but this resort was pretty small and pretty empty so we did meet up with Aflac people everywhere we turned). We had reservations at the Hibachi grill and were pretty excited about it! We headed back up to the room early so we could take our time getting ready and get some pictures around the property.

We LOVED the robes!

Some pre-dinner pictures

We saw more than one couple getting married there – again made me feel all honeymoonish 😉

While we were taking pictures we ended up running into the couple from Columbus and some other Aflac friends of ours so we all took pictures of each other by the water. Good timing to get some couples shots huh? Mrs. Becky used her good camera again then too so I’ll be doing another post of those pictures someday!

classic.

This is Mike and Whitney, the couple we met the 2nd night there and I’m excited they are going on the cruise too so we’ll probably be seated with them!

These are our other Aflac friends (who are ALSO going cruisin’): Mr. Dean and Mrs. Becky

We broke from the group to go eat dinner and I was kinda nervous about it. We LOVE our Japanese place here (Aligatu is waaaaaaay better than Mori people!) and I knew nothing would compare to it. I was right – the food wasn’t that great. Plus none of the restaurants are air conditioned and those stoves were SO hot so I was melting. BUT I’m still glad we went. Our chef was awesome. He cracked us up the whole time (here’s a video of his mad skills) and he and the other chefs interacted a lot which made it fun. They broke into song on the reg!

While it was a very nice resort, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. We decided to spend $1 at the slot machines just for fun. We put the dollar in and we were so clueless. We hit one button and then it said it was done! We didn’t even know what button we hit or what anything meant haha. We had to hit a help thing and some lady came over and explained to us that we won a dime. Wow, awesome. Zach’s showing his dime here next to the sign that advertises how much the slot machines payed out the week prior.

I liked these guys because even Zach felt short for a change 😉

Aflac crew for some dessert at the Italian place (because the night before the service was WAY too slow so we skipped dessert) then walked along the beach as part of our date night.

A random guy offered to take our picture – I LOVE when that happens don’t you?

Had to top off our great trip with a bubble bath together (I always use entirely too many bubbles and this time was no different)

Can you tell how sunburn I was? We only lasted about 10 min in the tub b/c I got way too hot and claustrophobic feeling.

Wednesday morning we slept in again then headed down to enjoy a casual breakfast (they had English muffins with peanut butter on them and egg and bacon yummmmm) then got packed and ready to go! We hit up the bar one last time for some pina coladas before saying goodbye to Jamaica!

of course Zach’s picture has the beautiful ocean behind him and mine has a wash bucket

a little better?

Even though we arrived on our own we were able to go back with the Aflac group. We had to be in the lobby at a certain time and we kept waiting and waiting and waiting for one missing couple. We actually ended up leaving them!!! I felt bad but at the same time several people had seen them in the beach like 30 min before we were supposed to meet up. Lucky for them they were able to get a taxi and met us at the airport. We did some shopping in the airport before heading home. We got our ornament, got Mrs. Charlotte some coffee to thank her for watching Kye, and we spent $16 on one of those dread lock hats for Kye. I thought he’d LOVE it but guess what? He’s TERRIFIED of it! Which I guess makes sense as random hair can be scary. Hopefully someday he’ll let me put it on him for some pictures 😉

Emily Parker
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