Ahhh... Paradise!

This year we spent Thanksgiving with just the 4 of us in the BAHAMAS!!  The first day we arrived, we asked our taxi cab driver where he lives on the island.  His response was "about 1 mile from Paradise".  We weren't exactly sure what he meant, but after arriving at our hotel, we quickly found out!!

Our trip started out a little rocky {just like every other trip we've had this year... thanks to these wonderful airlines!} and we found out 2 days before our flight that it had been cancelled for no reason.  Luckily with this flight, Josh had done everything through his firm travel agent.  Because of that, she notified us of the cancellation and quickly started working on alternative flights for us to take.  I guess Nassau is not the most popular Thanksgiving destination, so we didn't have many options. We decided to take a flight a day earlier and arrive in the Bahamas at 5pm the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  We saved a little money by staying at a different hotel that night, but were able to spend the entire next day at the resort.  It was WELL worth it!  We had a wonderful time!

The weather was great and the views were just amazing!  

My little Diva was thrilled to be wearing her swimming suit and Minnie Mouse cover up.  Here she is posing in the lobby anxiously awaiting to go out to the pools!

This was definitely a KID resort {however not very stroller friendly!}. Life jackets were available everywhere and quite a few of the pools were pretty shallow.  

Cooper loved riding the slides with Daddy and brave Caroline conquered the bigger ones all by herself!  She was quite the dare devil!

Atlantis has an amazing aquarium which you can view from all angles.  We visited down below quite frequently and Caroline was convinced that all of the fish just loved her!  

The eels were one of her favorites!  There were probably 20 in this small tank and they all hid in the jars.  They would stick their heads out and were so long when stretched all the way out.  I would definitely say they were CREEPY!

One of our favorite places was on a lagoon that was off of the ocean, so there were slight waves and a sandy beach.  The kids loved playing with their plastic cups {like usual} and made sandcastles and drinks out of "strawberry" sand!

The best part of this trip was just relaxing!!  I think we went to bed by 8:30 every night and were always up early.

There was an amazing shark tank that had a tube ride going right through it!  Because the kids were too little, we weren't able to ride it, but you actually went through the tunnel on your tube and had sharks swimming all around you.  Cooper was just fascinated by them!!  We were able to ride the "lazy" river as a family and the kids thought it was the greatest thing ever!  It really wasn't quite so lazy and did have some big rapids.  They laughed and laughed as Josh and I held on tight to make sure we didn't let go!  It got a little scary at times!

And Santa even made an appearance towards the end!  There was an entire Christmas craft event where the kids made special Christmas items, got their faces painted and were even able to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas!

We had a wonderful time and could not have had a better vacation!  With so much going on at home, it was nice to forget about it for a little while and just not HAVE to do anything!  We originally planned to take this trip with Caroline before we got pregnant with a second child.  Well, that all came too quickly and before we knew it, Cooper was here with us!  We decided not to postpone it any longer and go while he was still free to fly.  Although we missed spending Thanksgiving with our extended families and we never quite felt like it was a holiday, this was a much needed vacation for just our family and one we will never forget!