THE FRICKES: Bahama Mama

For months Jason and I had been planning this trip to the Bahamas. Jason's nights were consumed with long hours on the ipad cruising through TripAdvisor and the Sandals Resort booklets. While I anxiously awaited the arrival of our passports. Because everyone knows that without those babies you are stuck in the US and not going to reach the beach! Both Jason and I had not ever needed or applied for passports before. We applied for them in mid December (about 6 weeks out from our departure date) and waited anxiously for the process to begin and proceed. We kept eye on how they were progressing though the national website. This proved to be so nerve wreaking as we both knew we did not purchase insurance for our trip and although it was unlikely the chance of our passports not being processed and mailed to us in time for our trip was still a possibility. We finally received them the last week of January- (we were Bahama bound on February 3rd). The night we left we hugged our boys extra tight and said our goodbyes. We knew they were going to be well cared for, if not spoiled as they were staying with Roger and Sandy for nearly an entire week. On the evening we were set to leave Concord and the surrounding area was covered in a thick fog. We considered "waiting it out" but we were too anxious to get where we were going so we headed out anyways. We drove through some of the craziest thickest fog I've ever seen until we reached St. Louis. It was a very tense drive but nothing a little trip to the hotel bar couldn't ease. We had an early flight out of STL that morning and landed in Charlotte without incident. We were to leave Charlotte headed to our final destination at 11:30 but we got held up due to high winds and strong thunderstorms...which left us boarded and on the plane with an hour layover. What seemed like a wink of an eye (because I slept the entire wait) we were cleared for take off. We arrived in the Bahama's at a little after 3pm...to sunny skies and a long wait at customs. Once we arrived at our resort we were most anxious to get our swimsuits on and put or feet in the sand....so that's the first thing we did! It was everything I had envisioned and more! Paradise! I was ready for this! Ready for 5 days of ADULT time, SUN, BEVERAGES, and PARADISE!

The piano bar looks so boring in this picture- much more fun at night. lol

Every morning these poor workers had the tedious and awful job of raking up all the seaweed and putting it in bags.

This was "our spot" at the private island. It was nice to have the rock pile as a landmark so I could easily see where our hut was from a distance.

Seriously, these pictures do not do it justice. God's work at it's finest. Gorgeous, perfect, peaceful, and amazing.

Jason and I enjoyed the private island experience best of all and took full advantage of it.

adding to the pile

cartwheels at sunrise

We were up early everyday we were there. I'm not sure if it's because of our internal alarm clocks going of or because we knew we were in paradise and didn't want to miss or waste a single second. Either way we were up early and out late. Probably needed to take another vacation to recover from this vacation but didn't factor that into the equation.