HONEYMOON/ 1ST ANNIVERSARY

THIS WAS THE LONG AWAITED VACATION FOR US. this is going to be a long post because it has a whole week with pictures and details for 7 days.

JUNE 25TH:
we were so excited we packed 3 days earlier, so we planned on leaving cedar at 5:00 PM MST, but we had to leave at 4:00 PM MST because we were going to leave the dogs with my mother-in-law. so we dropped the dogs off, sat and talked with Lydia for an hour. and left at 6:15 PM MST. we got to Las Vegas about 8:30 PM PAC and we were trying to find the parking lot was confusing and expensive. our plane didnt leave until 11:00 PM PAC... so we walked around the airport for a couple hours and i gambled my first dollar in the airport slots and lost-but the gain would have been a 500,000 dollars (sigh-wish i would have won, oh well) and we bought dinner-holy hannah is airport food expensive. We finally boarded the plane and made it to the Newark, New York aiport at 6:30 EST. we were so tired trying to sleep in an airplane is so difficult and uncomfortable. we had an hour layover and finally landed in the Norfolk airport at 9:50 AM EST.

JUNE 26TH
we werent supposed to pick our car up originally til noon but we were so tired of sitting in airports we picked our rental car up at ten instead and drove to virginia beach. check in wasnt til 3 PM EST time so we walked on the beach wondering how we were gonna kill 5 hrs til check in, we were so tired.
we walked down the beach and got sand everywhere there were little showers along the boardwalk so jake and i rinsed our sandy feet off with that.
We then walked down and found a pizza place that was barely opening up, finally a good meal. we both ate very little while talking with our waitress, very nice girl she immigrated from france, and actually feel asleep at our booth for about twenty min. by that time the restraurnt was becoming a little more crowed and we were hearing people asking about us so we got up and left. We walked through a lot of the souviener shops, and because i didnt dress for the humid wheather i was dying of heat stroke it felt like, after only walking to blocks i was flushed, so jake and i popped into a store and bought a light airy shirt, and after that oh i felt better. we then walked back to our car and drove to through a military base and stopped to tour the Cape Henry Lighthouse.
since that was the first bit of exercise jake and i had going up all those stairs and back down in the last two days our legs were a little sore and cramped for the next couple of hours.
it was up on a hill, so we had to hike up the hill to get to the base and then we had to climb the windy stair case to get to the top and its a lot of stairs to climb just to see that view.
this is us at the very top of the lighthouse and the view looking out was beautiful.
By the time we got back to the beach after touring the lighthouse we were able to check-in. it was a quaint little cottage called "Angie's Cottage", and Jake and i had the bottom room, the bed was supposed to be king size but it was just two twins pushed together so the bed was kind of lopsided. there was a small kitchen-with a stove top and a fridge, and the tiniest shower.

the room was cool and because of how tired we were we laid on the bed and slept for a few hours and when we woke up we went to walmart wanting to do some shopping, thank heavens we had a GPS, well it took us about a half an hour to find walmart and when we did it wasnt a super center, so we had to find a different grocery store and we had no idea what type of stores they had back in Virginia so we were driving along and happened to go across a farm fresh store later that night and that is where we bought our food which for what little we got was quite expensive compared to walmart prices in Cedar City.
we made dinner and because there was a cruise on a sail boat that i had looked into before hand we drove into Norfolk and took an hour ride at sunset on the American Rover. she was a very pretty boat, unfortuently we only got pictures of her inside not outside. but it was a very pretty ride, we sailed past a navy shipped that was being remodeled, we sailed past all sorts of ports and different things like that, the whole ride was enjoyable.
we originally wanted to do the moonlight cruise but the days they were going to be doing that cruise jake and i wouldnt be there so we settled for the sunset cruise which turned out to be beautiful and enjoyable.
the boat itself was quite big, these sails dont show it but they were very tall.
the last 20 min there was this guy who walked around singing songs and playing the guiter over all that was one of the more favorite things we did so peaceful and beautiful out on the water. front of the boat looking out into the sunset.






JUNE 27TH
Today was our anniversary-One year down many more to come. Happy Anniversary Baby.

any way, we slept in and it felt wonderful to do so, Today we had planned to tour Norfolk a little bit, so we drove into town and headed to the zoo.
the zoo was being remodeled while we were there but the parts that were open were pretty nice, they had a bunch of different gardens, each with a different name and theme, they had one called the butterfly garden, the rose garden i think all together there was like 9 gardens.




i wish i would have worn my hair up, it was so hot.
one cool part of the zoo is that they had this giant walkway going through one of the exhibits and the animals weren't separated, the zebra, giraffes, rhino, and antelope and a few others were all just able to walk around each other-i thought that was pretty cool.

i thought this was cool that they kept track of the food the animals ate and its a lot of food. this is an example of the flower gardens, the each had a mail box with information about that type of garden and how to grow those plants.


The zoo had a very nice reptile exhibit it had a lot of different animals in it.

After the zoo we went to see the Hampton Roads Naval Museum where we expected we could get on the USS Wisconsin for free like we read on line. well we got there and Nauticus the Muesum attached actually purchased the ship and so we couldnt get on the deck with out paying for it. well at this point in time only the deck was open, they were currently remodeling the inside of the ship and said that part would be open in September-ish, well jake and i decided we werent going to pay $12 to see the deck of the ship when we could do that from the parking garage across the way so we got our picture taken in front of the ship and toured the Naval Muesum, it was actually quite interesting and had some very good information about how the navy got started and progressed and how naval aviation came about.

this is a picture of 3 ships and the one in the middle is the USS
Wisconsin. this just shows how big the ship is cause i certianly couldnt have gotten it all in one picture.

this is a picture of a cannon ball: i shrunk the pictures to save space, but this cannon ball is about the size of a bowling ball.





this is a picture of a sidewinder missile and
im using jake as a measuring tool since he is
6 Ft tall. this missile was about double his height.

this was a bullet that is shot from the cannons that you can see in the pictures of the USS Wisconsin it shoots out shells that have a base of 16 inches.








this is jake and i in front of the ship and we are very short comparatively. we are about 30 ish feet away from the ship in the water.

this was a mine that a ship would drop
into the ocean and there was a little
plaque next to the mine stating
"that the american and british navies
wanted to keep the german u-boats out
during world war 2 and so they dropped
70,000 mines along a 230 mile
stretch of ocean floor."



After the Naval Museum we still had time to kill before we wanted to head back to the beach so we found that the Chrysler Museum was free and we had about an hour and a half before they closed so we raced over there and there was a lot to see , they had rooms dedicated to specific type of art like african, pre-columbian, and many others. there was a lot of really nice art pieces i wouldnt have minded owning. our favorite piece was a chess set that the pieces were made up of catholics and jews.

We then headed back to the beach, we walked the board walk looking for some shorts for jake and i to purchase because we packed long jeans and we both had a chance to wear long jeans on the beach front and with the humid weather it was very uncomfortable, and not thinking we each only brought one pair of shorts, so we found lots of girly clothes on Beach Street USA gift shops but not hardly any guys shorts, since we couldnt find anything good we didnt end up buying anything.

JUNE 28TH
Today was the day we had planned to go to Washington DC, about 6 months ago in December we emailed our congressman requesting some tours for different buildings in DC, we got denied for the White House, which later jake and i deduced was because it was the 4th of july weekend and so many important people wanted to get in and see the White House, also while jake and i were there we saw lots of diplomats being ushered in and out of the White House entrance so i assume something big was going on. Anyway-we got accepted to 5 different (the pic to the left is us in front of the lincoln memorial) tours but they were all on differnet days and so because of that fact, we choose to go on the tour for the Library of Congress and set the 28th as our day to tour DC. because we were trying to save on money we didnt want to pay for bus/metro fares so we walked every where we went in DC. we wanted to wake up and leave by 5:30 AM EST but we didnt even wake up til 6:30 AM EST so we didnt get into DC and parked until about 10 AM. and because all the buildings (the pic to the left is us in front of the White House-which was very far away in real life) close between 4-5 PM EST we wanted to hurry through everything. finding our way to the sites in the beginning took forever, we were so lost and the GPS wasnt much help cause we were walking, finally we found the street we could start on, we started with the Lincoln Memorial, then the Washington Monument, then the White House, then we stopped to take a picture of Fords Theater where lincoln was shot, and then we walked passed the Capitol building, and we saw all of this before 1:45 PM EST because that was the time we had to be at the Library of Congress for our tour. (us in front of the Washington Monument) when we got done with the tour an hour later it was pouring rain outside, so we bought an umberella thinking we could finish up by touring the Smithsionian Museums (because there were so many jake and i each picked one museum to tour and jake picked the air and space museum and i picked American history museum) well the air and space museum was the first on our way back to the car and by the time we got there are shoes and socks were socked and for some reason they were closing up some of the exhibits early to set up for some event later that evening so we quickly toured (us inside the Library of Congress) everything but we were both miserable due to our wet feet so we finished up there and walked to the car and drove back home. on our way to the freeway we ended up in 5 o clock traffic and because our exit was so backed up and the GPS didnt tell us to take that exit we drove passed it and drove around for ten min trying to find an on ramp and we ended up going through back country and the entrance we found was blocked by a bus at first we thought it was an accident and we sat there for about 7 min and all the sudden all these police cars and limos and a few others types of cars, and motorcycle cops came driving up onto the ramp right in front of us...it took about ten min for all the cars to pass at which time because there were so many exits and entrances to the free blocked that it had to have been the presidential convoy on there way back into DC. and boy was that convoy huge.

JUNE 29TH
Today we headed up to Williamsburg to take a tour of the Williamsburg Winery. it was a quaint little place, very rustic looking. they had a restaurant and then the gift shop and that's what you saw up front. We were there for the 2:30 PM EST tour which was supposed to last for an hour. they took us into a room and showed us a video of how the winery got started, and then they took us into the basement and showed us where they stored the wines while the fermented-they told us different things about red wines and white wines. like red wines they take the entire grape skin, seed and all and mush that together and for white wines its just the juice (which they immediately separate the skins from the juice.). then they showed us these huge metal containers which is where they originally make the wine and then depending upon what they need to make they will move it to oak barrels to finish fermenting. they then took us into a room for a tasting, where i had cider while Jake tasted 8 different wines. they passed out cheese and crackers and they had some great tasting crackers.
we got to keep the wine glasses that they gave us to do the tasting. after we were done with the tour we went over to the restaraunt for lunch, where jake had a cheese platter and i had a sandwich (this is from there lunch menu that you can view online: me:Ham & Cheese- Ham and Swiss Cheese with lettuce, tomato, guacamole, and Mayo and jake: Cheese Platter- Imported and Domestic Cheeses served with Fresh Fruit & Accompaniments.) my meal was very tasty-it came with a salad that had cranberries and a raspberry vinaigrette, and jake had some weird looking cheeses, and bread that came with the winerys mustard and jam. i used some of the mustard on my sandwich and oh my gosh that is spicy mustard, they have little mustard pearls in it so its not creamy like the kind you get in the bottle at walmart.
i also had a taste of there jam called Lingonberry Chutney and it was pretty good. over all it was a very educational day for me.
because Jake was a little toasted he let me drive the car back to the beach, we were gonna go to Busch Gardens but i just felt like lounging on the beach, well when we got back to the beach it started raining so we ended up by ribs and grilling them on the grill that the owners of our cottage had available for us to use and we ate ribs while it rained and just relaxed.
my food
jakes food.







JUNE 30TH
Today we headed back up to Williamsburg and went to Busch Gardens.
well first off we technically walked the campus of the college William and Mary. its a very large campus, jake and i were driving around and it seemed like we would never find the end, after doing that we headed to Busch Gardens. the park was fairly full but we were able to get on rides with in 5-10 Min so it wasnt too bad.
Busch Gardens is split into different sections and each of those sections is named after a country in Europe. We walked through England and up through Ireland where we went on our first ride called "Europe in the Air" where it was as if you were taking a plan ride and seeing a whole bunch of differnet sites in Europe. also in Ireland is where they have some animal sancutarys-they have bald eagels, wolves, a show called pet shenanigans where animals they saved from shelters (including cats, dogs, pig, rat, bird) perform and do tricks for the audience. we watched the show and the beginning was ok because each animal had a specific roll in the act, but the last act all the animals just ran around jumping, climbing and chasing each other and so that was the best act. in Ireland they also have a bird sancutary where you can walk in and have birds flying around you and if they decide to land on you, you can pet them. i had a bird land on me and i wasnt the least bit afraid, it was interesting. we then traveled up into France where we got on our first roller coaster ride and that was called "Griffen". this roller coaster supposedly goes up 240 feet. well we got in line and i watched several groups go up and come down that drop and i started crying i really didnt want to die on that roller coaster-i know its irrational but what goes up must come down. after the inital straight down drop i was enjoying the ride (of course i didnt tell jake that because then he would have wanted to go on the ride again.) I used to close my eyes on roller coasters and this last year at Lagoon my sister said to me that if i keep my eyes open i wont feel so sick afterwords. so i decided then at Lagoon i would try that and i did and it worked, so i think that is why i enjoyed that ride is because i wasn't as sick as i would have been having gone on a straight down ride. anyway, we then traveled up through New France and went the ride called "alpengeist." this ride you sit in a chair and you travel along a track that (to the left: Griffen) turns you upside town through loops and spins and it was my least favorite ride, however it was jakes favorite. we then headed over Scotland to ride the roller coaster called "Lochness Monster" which this ride turned out to be my favorite ride. and then we went over to "Apollos Chariot" and did that ride. afterwords i was getting really hungry and there were several shows jake wanted to see so we ate at the "Squires grill" and then went over to the "Teatro Di San Marco" theater and watched the show called "Folk Trio" (to the left, this is a pic of a couple rides: the griffen is the blue ride on the very left of the pic, and the alpengist is the white ride on the right side of the pic) where it was a bunch of people dancing in different costumes. we then headed up to a place called Oktoberfest where the ride called "Curse of DarKastle" was located, we got in line but decided in order to make it to another show we would have to come back, so we got out of line and headed (jake in 3-D glasses for the Darkastle ride) up to the Canadian Palladium theater where we watched the "Drumming LumberJacks" and they were pretty good. afterwords we went back to Darkastle (via the skyride from France to Scotland and then finished walking to the ride) and at that point when we got there, there was hardly anybody in line...so we quickly got on the ride. The ride is all in 3-D and its about a corrupt prince who kills anybody that comes to the castle. well we go to the castle and the reason why the ride was really good is (the drumming lumberjacks) because you sit in a car but the car moves backwards, spins, tilts down as if your falling with the story line, and so it was a really good haunted house ride. After that we went to a play in the Abby Stone theater called "Celtic Fyre" and it was about an irish wedding at a bar-lots of singing and dancing and overall a very enjoyable play.
We then hitched a ride on the train at the festa station in italy-by this time it was getting pretty late and come to find out it was the last train ride that night so they could set up for the firework show. after the train (the yellow coaster is lochness monster and the white one is alpengist) ride while we were in Italy we went on the "Apollos Chariot" again which was a roller coaster with a bunch of hills and valleys but no upside down turns or anything. we then headed over to Divincis Garden: which includes 3 rides: the flying machine, divincis cradle, and the battering ram-this turned out to be a favorite of jake and mine, they were like the rides you would find at Lagoon. We then watched the firework show at 9:30 PM EST which was a pretty good firework show, jake and i decided to keep riding the rides in divincis garden while the crowds dispersed and left and it would have worked except there was an accident in the parking lot when we got out of the park and so we waited about a half hour in line for a tram and decided to walk, well when we got to the crosswalk, we couldnt get across because there were so many cars backed up they had to get them out before more cars lined up, so we finally got across and walked to our parking lot and by the time we got in the exit line things were going pretty fast. we didnt get home til about 11:30 PM EST.


July 1ST
today was the first day we paid for internet, ya the place we stayed at cost $1000 for a week and we had to pay daily for internet. anyway today was the day we put on our swim suits and headed for the ocean, which turns out was pretty cold water, and it probably wouldnt have been to bad except for the fact that it wasnt humid, in fact it was a little windy and so you didnt stay warm while in the water, after splashing around in the waves for 10 min jake and i sat on the beach pushing sand into a big mound, which jake eventually turned into a fat man (it was as if his legs were in the sand and only his pot belly and head and arms werent covered)-every one that walked by complimented the creation. we didnt take anything to the beach with us cause we didnt want to lose it or get sand in it so i wasnt able to get a picture of it. after about an hour on the beach we went back to the hotel, showered up and got as much sand off us and our clothes as we could, which suprisingly sand is difficult to get off clothes. when we got back in we both realized we had been sunburned-which out of 4 days we had been outside not bad, but no we were parioned and putting sunscreen and lotion on constiantly. after that we just kind of wandered around, slept some more. it was a very lazy day.

JULY 2ND
today we decided to go to Water Country USA. we got up and ready for it and drove Williamsburg and found the water park. we got a locker for our stuff (boy that was expensive) and started walking around, Jake and i did one water slide, before we got in the wave pool and after only being at the park for little less than an hour we decided we didn't want to be there and because Busch Gardens and Water Country USA are owned by the same company you are able to use the parking pass for both parks, so we headed over to Busch Gardens were when we walked in the front gate a couple walking out passed us and gave us 2 fast passes. so we went on the Griffon, Apollos Chariot, Jake rode the Alpengeist (it was my least favorite ride so i didn't want to go on it again), we also did the Lochness Monster and by this time it was later in the evening and so Jake and i left the park to go get something to eat, and we went to the Williamsburg Winery and shared a cheese platter it was pretty good. we then headed home because it was late. this time heading home we drove through Jamestown, got on the ferry-which i have never been on a ferry it was cool, they can put a lot of cars on those things. we then got off in Surry, VA and drove through there and that is a very green part of Virginia. when we got back to the beach, we were pretty hungry and walked a block a way to Walgreens, while on our way there we decided to do the souvenir shopping and get that out of the way that way we wouldn't have to do it tomorrow before we headed back to return the car. we then purchased some food and went back to our condo and ate it. we feel asleep quite late.


JULY 3rd
today i woke up at 9:30 AM EST, i left jake asleep since i new he was going to be the one driving later that night. i started packing and putting things away, i woke him up at 10:30 AM EST so he could help me pack-he has the ability to pack things very tightly when needed, which we had so many things to pack that ability was needed. we took a shower, cleaned the dishes, and left everything that we new couldnt be taken on the plane via carry on bags which was all we took (one carry on and one purse/computer bag per person, made traveling really easy). we checked out of the cottage, and headed for Norfolk. by that time it was about 11:30 AM EST and we still had 7 hours before our plane left. so we headed over to a pet store i had seen online called "Animal Jungle." this is the best pet store i have ever been inside, they had so many fish and reptiles and little furry friends, and birds that i think overall they probably had over 100 animals in that store...there was this lizard there and his name was alex: he was huge, he was 5 feet long. this pic has more info on him.
after the pet store, because of the time we returned our rental car-which it turned out we ended up paying for an extra day anyway so we wish we would have kept it, we ended up eating at KFC in the Norfolk airport, and waiting 3 hours for our plane to leave. finially we boarded and flew to the Alanta, Georgia airport where we had a 3 hour layover, but because of the size of the airport and where the terminal we needed to be was-it took us an hour to get a slice of pizza and make it to our terminal. because this was the last leg of the journey jake and i went through our 1600 pictures to make them all facing the right direction and to just look back at what we had done through out this wonderful week. we got on the plane and because they had overbooked the plane, we left and hour later than we were supposed to. which made jake and i upset because by the time we landed in vegas we had a 3 and 1/2 hour drive home. We landed in the Vegas airport at 12:30 PM MST, got to our car in the economy parking, paid and headed home. we picked up the dogs at my mother in laws at about 4:00 AM. got home at 4:45 AM, and went to bed at about 5:30 AM MST. we didnt even wake up til 5 PM on sunday. jake had to go to work that night, we did a little bit of fireworks and then he left and i went back to bed so i could wake up in time for school the next morning.

Thanks to all who helped my our vacation possible.
The Craig's.



here are some extra pictures:

very nice sunset.

this was picture i thought was funny.