Welcome to Miami!

We were lucky enough to go on a family trip October 18-25 with the Richards side of my family. This was no small task...My parents organized a trip for all 9 of their grandchildren, and 12 adults. We went on a luxurious cruise out of Miami to Saint Maartan, Puerto Rico and the

 Grand Turk island for 7 days! It was pure heaven. 

Kate is the only one out to the 9 grandchildren that doesn't live in Salt Lake. All those little ones are best friends, so I was so excited for her to get to know her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents better. She loved it and I knew she was so sad when we got home, and really missed having all the others around.  We would say her cousins names and she would look for them in our house. Sad...

Our journey started late on a Friday night where we all jumped on a red eye flight, and arrived in Miami at 6 in the morning. Our cruise didn't leave until that evening so we were able to spend most of the day in Miami exploring. (Yes we did blast "Miami" by Will Smith a lot before leaving!)

I didn't sleep at all on the red-eye, maybe I was too excited about the cruise, maybe I had a little bundle of joy on my lap. I think I look pretty good in this picture for not having any sleep.

When we arrived at the airport we all decided to take the metro instead of jumping in a cab and going to the port. It was an adventure to pack all of us around. We had lots of strollers, roller-board suitcases, and lots of kids. The babies all looked so tired, but were such good troops.  

The Richards circus, buying tickets for the Metro

I like that Kate could "kick it" on the metro

 I'm sad we didn't get more pictures in Miami, I don't know what we were thinking. Kate enjoyed exploring, I enjoyed shopping, and I'm not sure what Joe enjoyed. The funny thing is I bought Kate the cutest winter coat at the Gap in Miami for cheap. I never would have thought that I would be doing my winter shopping in Miami, but I did.

The weather in Miami was amazing! I could have partied all night till the break of dawn there.

 We sailed away on the MSC Divina pictured below. It is an Italian cruise ship, so as you can imagine we ate well on the trip. (6 lbs for me, 9 lbs for Joe ) I would highly recommend this ship to anyone. I hope I can get back on it again some day.

More pictures to come!