For our latest family reunion, we spent a week at the Iberostar Paraiso Beach resort in the Mayan Riviera. It was a very low key vacation, despite the group size of 17, including 2 toddlers. This was Hailey’s first international and longest trip and she did remarkably well on the flight and at the resort. We were all pleasantly surprised! Hailey really enjoyed herself and truly made the most of her vacation… she swam twice a day, ate more than she ever has at home, took long naps during the day, and danced the evenings away.

As for us, Eric enjoyed a lot of down time in preparation for his conference the following week and I finally got a chance to go scuba diving - what a thrill!

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We took our first road trip this fall. We visited Sal, Sophie, and Caleb in Ottawa for the weekend. We had a great time with them and even got a chance to visit Dan.

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This summer we took Hailey out for some fun day trips while Eric was on vacation. We hit the Oakville Jazz fest, which turned out to be a really relaxing afternoon with gorgeous weather. She seemed to enjoy the flowers, trees, and plants more than anything else. We also took a trip to St. Jacobs, our go to spot, and Ancaster to visit yia yia and uncle Ken.

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Eric and Bahar, along with 11 other family members, took a 7 day Alaskan Cruise on the Sapphire Princess this fall. We took a flight to Anchorage, Alaska, where we embarked the ship. From here, we cruised through the College Fjord and Glacier Bay. We then visited Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and finally disembarked in Vancouver.

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We finally decided to take the trip we had been talking about since our wedding. NCL’s Egypt and Greek Isles 12 day cruise stopped at the following ports: Istanbul, Ephesus, Santorini, Mykonos & Delos, Iraklion, Alexandria & Cairo, Corfu, Katakolon & Olympia, and Athens. We traveled from September 18th to October 3rd and had a terrific time!!!

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My mom was selected to present at the 3rd International Innovations in Nursing conference in Perth, Australia. In true mooch style, I tagged along! We managed to visit Dubai, Australia, and New Zealand in just ten days. New Zealand was by far the highlight of the trip and definitely a place I would like to return to when I have more time. It has such as a natural and simple way of life, but is still modern. In addition, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, at least while we were there.

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Eric was informed he would be sent to Japan on business for two weeks in October. We decided to take this opportunity to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary in Japan and extended the trip to three weeks. Our itinerary included Shinjuku, Tokyo, Odawara, Hakone, Kamakura, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Himeji. We had a wonderful trip in a beautiful country inhabited by the most gracious people.

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Bahar and I went to New York for Memorial Day weekend in May. We were invited to my cousin Bryhiem’s wedding and decided to make a vacation out of it. We drove to my sisters place in Kingston Wednesday evening and stayed there for the night, then in the morning the four of us packed up the little Saturn and drove to New York! My mom and Ken flew down and we met them at the hotel.

The drive down was about 6 hours, uneventful but fun. We found out just what a Saturn loaded with 4 people and luggage will do when going up a hill — lose speed! We stopped in a small fishing/hunting town called Roscoe for lunch. It was just what you’d expect from a little town, a cute little diner with old school cash registers and hand written receipts. After a good greasy meal, we stopped again in Livingston where we parked our car and took a 40 minute train into NY, then a 20 minute subway ride to our hotel just off the island in Queens. It’s MUCH cheaper and less stressful to take the train in. Some places in Manhattan were charging $500 a month just for parking!

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As mentioned before, Eric and I are planning on transferring many of our pictures and posts from our old sites to this one. I have finally transferred various vacation pictures over. My mom and I travelled to Iceland in the summer of 2004. It is so beautiful, even the fantastic pictures don’t do it justice. Eric, Mo, Sal and I took a trip to the Canary Islands in Spain in the spring of 2004 to visit my cousins Nisha and Dinesh. We had a fantastic time and can’t wait to return. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to check out the main land on our next trip over. Finally, Mo, Sal, Nisha, Dinesh, and I drove to Boston in the summer of 2003. Although we had a good time, I believe it was more due to the company than the city.

Some of the trips I have taken with my friends from Waterloo, can be found here.

Here is a random album of various pictures that were on my old site. There aren’t enough pictures in any category to justify creating separate albums. Hopefully, the captions help to make things less confusing.

The last of the India pictures! Our longest stay was in Jaipur, 7 days and it was well worth it. Jaipur is a city full of forts, palaces, temples and doesn’t have the “big city” feel like Bombay or Delhi. Jaipur is divided into the old and new city, where the old Jaipur was the original planned city before it became too big and had to expand. The old city is surrounded by a large wall, and accessible through several gates throughout the city. All the big bazaars are in the old city, and getting through the wide roads with all the rickshaws, bicycles, people and buses can be hectic. The bazaars can be rewarding, as there are many shops selling gems and beautiful stones for a fraction of what you would pay elsewhere. See the pictures here.