Just for Fun!

We have about 1 more month to go before we find out if Eckley Baby #2 is a boy or girl so I thought we could have a little fun with this. I put a poll up on the right side of the blog for all you loyal blog readers to vote if you think it is a boy or girl. It is up to you if you want to skew the results and vote more than once but know that you have to sleep at night if you do that! I think it will be fun to see what everyone thinks.

And for the Eckley family votes. Ben is voting for a girl for sure. Everyday I ask him if he wants a girl baby or a boy baby and every time the answer is "girl." Matt and I really don't care. Everyone says that we know but we really don't. We know what to do with boys and think they are lots of fun. It would also be great for Ben to have a little brother. But it would also be great to have a little girl! Everyone knows how I like to dress Ben up in girly boy clothes so it would be fun to have a girl to dress up. So really we don't care. With Ben I had dreams that it was a boy so I just knew it was a boy but I have had no dreams this time. No gut feeling at this time.

We will see if this scientific poll is right in about a month!!

6 Years & Counting...

I thought I would take a quick break from the cruise posts to post about our anniversary. We celebrated our 6th anniversary yesterday. We actually did the celebrating on Friday night since yesterday was Sunday and that is always a busy day. We enjoyed a great dinner out at The Melting Pot. Ben spent the night at Mema & Opa's house so it was nice to wake up to a quiet house on Saturday morning (it was the 3rd Saturday in a row that mommy woke up with no Ben!!!) We had a great time just catching up and talking about the past 6 years. 6 years sounds like a long time to me (although my brother pointed out that in just 2 more years we will have been married for as long as we dated). It has been a wonderful 6 years. I could not imagine my life without Matt! He is a wonderful husband and father!!


We have made it a rule that we will go to a different restaurant every year for our anniversary so that I won't forget here is the list so far...


Year 1 - Pauli's Chophouse (Huntsville, AL)
Year 2 - Baker's Peters Jazz Club (Knoxville, TN)
Year 3 - Cafe Ciao (Birmingham, AL)
Year 4 - Elway's (Denver, CO)
Year 5 - Grille 29 (Huntsville, AL)
Year 6 - The Melting Pot (Huntsville, AL)

Here we are on Friday night!

Days 3 & 4

Since this process of reviewing the cruise is going so slow (my fault - don't blame me I am 15 weeks pregnant and still throwing up everyday), I thought I would do 2 days instead of just one. Hopefully this will get it done quicker so I can go back to what is actually going on with us at the moment because we are still doing things!

So Day 3 we were in Barbados. It was our first chance to experience the beautiful water. We took a catamaran sailing tour out to go snorkeling with the turtles. All 7 of us went and had a blast!!

The weather was perfect! Ben loved being on the water!

Ben loved sailing so much that he got in the front of the boat and laid on the netting over the water. This freaked me out!!!
We then got to the place where the sea turtles were and all got in the water. We were very nervous about how Ben would do but he did awesome!! He loved the water. Who wouldn't?? It was beautiful and warm! There were sea turtles everywhere. It was great to get to be so close to them. Some even came to the surface so that Ben got to see them! I love this picture of all of us in the water!

Kelly & I breaking it down on the way back in!

The whole family at dinner!

After dinner we went to the ice show which was awesome. It is amazing to think about watching an ice show in the middle of the Caribbean Sea!

Day 4 we found our way to St. Lucia. Since Ben did so well on the excursion the day before we all booked a sightseeing trip around the island. We were on a mini bus and got to drive all over the island and see the sights. Here we are in front of the famous Pitons.

St. Lucia is a beautiful island. It has tropical rainforests and lots of hills. It had some of the prettiest vegetation that we saw!


We then went to an old plantation where we saw them processing coconuts and cocoa beans. Here Ben is trying out so fresh coconut juice.

And Matt!
Then the tour continued at a waterfall that was beautiful!

We made our way back to the ship where Ben and I spent the afternoon at the pool! This is the little boy who wouldn't even go in the water last year. He was like a fish!! He loved swimming!!
And sliding!!

More to come...

Day 2

Monday (day 2) was our only day at sea for the whole cruise so we had to do everything on the boat that we wanted to!!!

Of course Ben had to play some golf and basketball.

They have a great program for toddlers on board where each day for 1 hour they get to play with Little People and since they are Ben's favorite he had a blast. Each time we went there were other toddlers there and most of them were from other countries and did not speak English. It was fun to watch the kids play even though they couldn't speak the same language.

We loved hanging out with Andrew and Kelly!!! Ben took great naps during the whole cruise so in the afternoons we took turns resting with Ben or doing other fun things like laying out by the pool.

Ben enjoying one of his many cookies on the cruise!!

It was the first formal night which was lots of fun. Everyone else in the family was eating at a different restaurant so it was just the 3 of us at dinner. Don't we look nice!

We finished off the evening with a show. Ben loved watching them sing and dance! He did great through the whole thing. It was at this point 10:30 and time for bed!!!!