Aruba

The reason we were all in Aruba together was to celebrate my mother-in-law, Candy's, 60th birthday. She is the kind of lady that it is impossible to buy anything for, so we agreed with Steven's sister and her husband that we would all take Mom out for a really nice dinner and that Mom was not allowed to pay! Easier said than done. When the check came, Mom tried to get it before we did. Nice try, but this is our treat!




We had taken them to Ruinas del Mar at the Hyatt hotel. The pool and surrounding gardens area are just gorgeous.













The weather was not the best all week and we only had one really nice sunset to photograph. So here are a couple of different views of that lovely evening.














Like I said, our birthday girl is a hard person to buy anything for. My father-in-law, David, arranged for a nice surprise. The national newspapers of Aruba love to do human interest stories. So David arranged for The News to come and interview the whole family. This is a picture of all of us that was on the front page of the paper. Back row, left to right, Me, Steven, David, brother-in-law Pablo. Front row, Jonathan, Candy, sister-in-law (Steven's only and younger sister) Sue who is holding her daughter Sophia.






Grandpa and Jonathan early one morning. Both of them were early risers while the rest of us were lay-abouts!











Grammy bought Jonathan this very cool t-shirt. Indoors it is just a black & white shirt. Once exposed to the UV outside, it turns fun colors. So here is our little scurvy dog pirate. We had brought his pirate eye patch with us, but he had forgotten to bring it outside with us when we took this picture of him!
















Footprints: Mine, Jonathan & Steven












On the Monday, we abandoned the family to go out exploring on our own. Here we are at the California Lighthouse. After that, we drove out to where the Natural Bridge used to be before it collapsed.














We were also fascinated as we drove out to the Natural Bridge that there were little rocks stacked on the ones that Mother Nature had left behind. So I made Steven stop so Jonathan and I could find our own rocks to stack.






One of the things that we worked on while on vacation was teaching our 11-month-old niece, Sophia the concept of SO BIG! She looked at us like we were insane early in the week, but by mid-week she had it down pat. The day after this photo was taken she was looking around, noticing that no one was paying attention to her. So she threw her hands up in the air and of course, several of us responded with "Sophia is SO BIG!" I'm wondering who got trained with this accomplishment.









Here we are, somewhere under the rainbow.













Our little sweet pea!















Me and a Tree Nymph butterfly. This freshly hatched little lady was placed on my hand by Anna from The Butterfly Farm. She took her very first flight off my fingers after Anna was kind enough to take "our" photo.











Jonathan took advantage of a sleeping Daddy to store his toys so that Sophia wouldn't get them while they were on the floor.








The last time we were in Aruba, the lizards, geckos and iguanas totally freaked me out. This time I approached them with a photographers eye. Steven teased me that I finally embraced my inner iguana. Either way, this guy was way cool.








Like sands through the hourglass, these were the days of my life for a whole week.