The Kids Adventure

The night before we left for the cruise, Tom and I took the kids to KFC for dinner.  They were the typical kids they are, reminding us why we were not taking them with us on the cruise (Lily was good, but I told her that just because a basketball player plays well, if the team doesn’t win, they all loose.  So despite her being good, it was not a good night).

Sophie stayed at two houses.  First, she stayed with her friend Tessa.  When we dropped her off, she didn’t cry, she didn’t act excited, she gave us the silent treatment and her famous ‘death stare’.

  

Tessa’s mom, Tiffany is my good friend and babysits Sophie during preschool, so Sophie did really well at their house.

 

She stayed from Saturday morning until Tuesday morning.  Sophie and Tessa said their ‘good-byes’.

Next, Tom’s parents took her.  She would sleep at our house, but then go over to their house, where her cousin, Charlotte lives, during the day.

Here’s Sophie, Charlotte and Nana (Sophie’s demonstrating the ‘death stare’.)

Her and Charlotte had fun watching “Frozen” (although, Charlotte didn’t want her picture taken, I guess).

 

We didn’t call the kids at all the whole trip.  But the last day, as we were getting of the ship, I gave Maxine (Tom’s mom) a call.  I talked to Sophie for a brief minute too.  Maxine told me that after that phone call she was giving the pictures of us around the house a hug.  She was excited to see us!

Cedric stayed at two houses as well.  Saturday into Sunday he stayed with his good buddy, Jacob.

Then Sunday through the end of the week he was with his buddy, Charlie.

They did some fun things, like Lego night at the library,

In N Out Burger,

and the park,

Cedric LOVED Charlie’s dad, Daniel too.  That’s almost all he talked about the day he came home.

The only thing Cedric didn’t like was taking a bath at their house.  He’s at the age where he needs help, but he likes his privacy.  Alina (Charlie’s mom), couldn’t even get him to take a bath by himself with no help.  So he went a week without one.  Not the end of the world, but kind of gross.

Jeff stayed with his good buddy, Steven.

 

While on the beach in Mexico, I let my texts download (we could get free texts in, but not out) and I got this picture.  It was funny to see Jeff shivering in the snow at home, while I was sweating on the beach in Mexico.

 

The boys loved playing Pokemon, even during General Conference.

 

He had such a good time at Stevens house.

Lily stayed with her friend, Eliza.

We dropped her off Friday night, but Lily had a hard time.  She was so excited to stay at Eliza’s house, but was crying because she was going to miss us.  I think she got over it very quickly though.

 

Saturday night was the first all women’s broadcast (It used to be the young women and the Relief Society had seperate conference, one the week before October conference and one before the April conference.  But this year they started a conference for all the women and girls ages eight and up).

Lily got to go with Eliza and her mom.  I was sad I missed it, especially since it was her first time going..

Afterwards, they went to Winger’s for dinner.

Another thing I missed was the school talent show.  Lily performed with three other friends.  They had matching dresses and sang “Let it Go” from “Frozen”.

Lily also got some cute new leggings from a party that she went to with Eliza and her mom.

 

Lily also had fun with Eliza’s two little brothers too.

      

They all had fun, were good kids and safe. But when we got home, they were so excited to see each other again!     

Thanks to all our dear friends and family who helped take good care of our ragamuffins!

Cruisin’ to Mexico

Last year my older siblings, Aimee & Mike talked to us about joining them and their families on a cruise to Mexico.  Of course, when Tom hears the word “cruise” he’ll find a way to be there.  We debated on bringing our kids too (at least the older two), but then decided we’d have a much better vacation without any of the kids.  We pawned them off on several friends/family and took off. (I will do a blog post about the kids adventures after this one).

Day 1- 3/29/14

We got up early and took the kids to their various sitters, then headed to the airport.  Tom and I booked a different flight than the other families, so it was fun to be just the two of us, then we saw the others when they were arriving at the airport. 

We parted ways and met up with them again in Long Beach.  We were about an hour ahead of them, so we waited in the airport for them.  (while we were waiting, we got a call from our home security system saying the alarm had gone off.  We quickly checked with our close neighbor, where Jeff was staying, and discovered he’d gone in the garage to get his bike, but then went out the side door which triggered the alarm.)

We then took taxi’s to the pier where our ship, the Carnival Miracle was waiting.   

There were 17 of us total in our group.  Dad, Suzy, Caleb (my step-brother), Aimee, Matt and their kids, Tyler, Aubree, Marcus & Caleb, Mike, Karyn and their kids, Jessica, Michael, John & Grace.  The kids ranged in age from 6 to 18.

Tom and I were in room 6111, which was the middle of the ship, but towards the front  Mike made little signs and put them on everyone’s doors.  We also each had a post-it pad to leave notes on our door as to where we were during the day since you can’t use cell phones on the ship without it costing a pretty penny. 

We didn’t notice it until the first night, when we were completely exhausted, but for some reason we could here the band playing in our room from the theater room three floors below!  Luckily, they didn’t play too late or too early (it woke me up the first morning at 8:30, but that was the only time), but you could hear it almost all day long (there goes my quiet naps).  We liked our room otherwise, and our awesome steward, Kadek.

Of course the first thing we did after we got on the ship was eat! That’s one of the best parts of a cruise.

We checked out the ship during the day and watched us sail away (Tom and John in their rival shirts).  

Then, we ate some more.

After dinner we played games in the game room until bed time.

Each night was a different towel animal in our room.  The first night was a seal.

Day 2- 3/30/14

This was an at sea day.  Tom and I went to a sale they had that morning in one of the ship’s stores and bought several things for only $10 each.  Then we had a nice brunch in the dining room.  We shared a table with another family from California.  I love how many neat people you meet on a cruise ship.  And it’s fun to run into them later.

 

We also continued to explore the ship. 

One of our favorite things to do was play games.  You could almost always find someone in the game room or near by (these photos are in the nearby bar that was empty).

Even though we had a big, late brunch, it’s not a cruise without 3-4 meals a day.  So we had a late lunch.

Because it was Sunday, we got permission from Mike’s bishop ahead of time and held a little Sacrament Meeting in the chapel.  We even had Karyn and Matt give short talks and the four Aaronic Priesthood boys blessed and passed the sacrament.  It was a neat, spiritual afternoon.  I thought a lot about my mom during that time.

After “church” we got formal pictures taken.  It’s fun because they display everyone’s photos on one floor and you can walk through the hall and find your photos, and laugh or marvel at others.

It’s fun to get dressed up for dinner.

They had something every night on the menu called “Didja”, as in “did ya ever try it before?”

Tom of course always tried it.  This night it was alligator.

We went back in the room to change after dinner and found a pig on our bed.

We then went to the family-friendly comedy show.  They had different comedians each time, so we visited the Mad Hatter Lounge often.

Then we played games until bedtime.

Day 3- 3/31/14

Monday was our first port day.  We started out in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  Our ship was supposed to drop anchor at 9:30am, but for some reason we didn’t get there until 11am.  So we still slept in, had a late, big breakfast and then tendered into the city. 

All 17 of us crammed in the elevator (the limit was 18, so we were good).

We rode the tenders in while enjoying the scenery of pelicans, pirate ships and yahts.

We decided to walk to a good beach a couple miles away.  And right away we knew it’d be a hot day!  We saw a sea lion amid the pelicans eating scraps thrown in the water.

The walk was fun, but it started to feel really long.  In the heat, wearing flip-flops and with little kids, we were starting to wonder if walking was such a good idea.

We stopped in some shade for a water break and noticed the Hard Rock Cafe was right there!  Tom has a tradition of always getting a picture in front of different Hard Rock Cafe’s whenever we travel and buying a “souvenir” (shot) glass and sometimes a t-shirt.  Well, they were out of shot glasses, but we got our picture.

Unfortunately, we thought we could just catch up with the group, but when we were done at the HRC we didn’t know which way they went.  We asked people which way to the beach, so we were pretty sure we were going in the right direction.  However, when we asked one guy he said they way we were going would lead us to the far side of the beach and the main entrance was up the hill the other way.  So hot and exhausted we hiked up the street and finally saw the entrance to the beach!  However, it was huge (maybe a mile plus from one end to the other) and crowded.  So we took our flip flops off and walked along the surf to cool down and looked… and looked… and looked for our group.  We looked for close to a half an hour and were about to give up (it made us appreciate cell phones, which no one was using on this trip). We were tired, hot and frustrated.

There was one group way far down on the other end and I told Tom I had a strong feeling that was them.  The problem was was they were so far from the crowd, that statistically it wouldn’t be and if we walked all the way down there and it wasn’t them, it’d be a long way back.  Well, we decided to follow instinct and go check it out.  It was them!  They had entered from the side where we would’ve entered had we not asked that last guy for directions and decided to make camp there.  We were so happy.

Tom immediately got in the water (that’s our cruise ship behind him.  We’d walked almost a full circle around Cabo).  I sat in the shade for a minute.

And even though I do not like ocean water, I got in.  I didn’t see any fish (I’m terrified of fish) and it felt good to cool off.

The kids had fun playing in the sand.  My big “kid” joined in too.  I enjoyed the shade and my book. 

Pretty soon the kids started burying their cousins/siblings in the sand up to their heads.  Then some of the grownup got involved.  all nine kids were buried by the end and it looked so funny to see a row of heads and their parents pouring water in their mouths and feeding them bits of cookies like baby birds.

We decided to be smart and take a water taxi back to the dock with the tenders (it was only a couple minutes away vs. our walk that took 20-30 minutes).  I was glad since I already had blisters from my flip-flops at that point.

That night we had another good dinner in the dining room.

Our frog towel animal.

Tom and I went and watched the show in the theater room.  It was a magician/comedian/juggler guy.  He was pretty entertaining.

Then we played games with the rest of the family and some of us went up to the 24hr ice cream machines and had ice cream and hot chocolate.  Mmmmm!

Day 4- 4/1/14

This was a second day in Cabo San Lucas.  Tom and I got up bright and early so we could make it to our shore excursion on time.  One thing I’ve never done on a cruise, but have wanted to, is go zip-lining.  We decided it’d be cheaper to book it ourselves then to go through the ship.  Originally we were going to go on Monday, because it was our first day in Cabo and we didn’t want to worry about missing the ship.  However, our tour time was 11am and because the ship was in late that morning, we would’ve missed our excursion.  So the cruise let us use their phones for free and we called the “emergency” number on our zip lining information sheet.  The lady told us they’d move our time to 8:10am the next day.  It was a bit of a choppy phone call and we were nervous about it all going smoothly with the day and time rescheduled.  Anyway, we got up early and tendered into the dock, then walked about a block to where we were supposed to meet our ride to the zip lines.   

We were really nervous, because we didn’t see any tour groups, guides or other tourists anywhere.  I wondered if the lady meant “at 10” instead of 8:10.  By 8:05 we decided to ask a local guy who was nearby if he could help us.  We showed him the info we had and he called the number on the paper.  He spoke in Spanish to someone, got off his phone and said a taxi would be there in five minutes.  Lo and behold, a taxi with the same number and same color as the man described showed up when he said it would.  It was a van with a few other couples in it, so we asked them if they were going to the zip line and they were!  We were so grateful to be on our way.  After a 20-30 minute drive we arrived at the Wild Canyon Resort.

First we got all geared up and had a little training class.

They wouldn’t let us take any personal pictures of us zip lining and I wasn’t about to pay their prices for the pictures they took, so to give you an idea of what we did, here are a couple of photos of strangers doing the same thing we did…

There were always a couple of workers to help you on and off each line.  There were a total of eight lines we went on and we had to hike quite a bit from one to the other.  It was quite the work out!

You’d take your pulley with you and they would re-attach you to each track so we had to wait in line sometimes (or wait for a worker to finish at the last run and come to the next one).  We got to know the group in front of us pretty good.  It was a single dad from Chicago with his three teenage daughters and eight-year-old son.  The boy was quite nervous so we’d all cheer him on each time.  Half the runs we did as single riders and half the runs we did tandem.

 

And there was one run we had to go backwards and look upside-down!  It was my least favorite run.

 

When we were done we had to wait for our ride back to the pier so I munched on some granola bars we brought and we drank our water while we sat in the shade.

We happened to get back to the ship about the same time as the rest of our family (they’d gone to Lovers Beach) so we ate lunch and played games for a bit with them, then got ready for dinner and went to another comedian show.

At dinner we’d alternate whose table we sat at.  Half the time we were with my step-brother, Caleb and Aimee and Matt’s family.

Tom always had such decorative food.  And this night he tried the oysters.

After dinner we played some more games (can you tell that was one of our favorite past times?).  Tom and Matt tried doing one of the puzzles from the game room. 

That night our towel animal was a bear.  I thought it looked like a monkey, oops.

Day 5- 4/2/14

The next day we got up and got ready to go to our second port, Peurto Vallarta.  We ate breakfast and then I helped braid Jessica’s hair (I tried to do it like Elsa’s braid in “Frozen”).

This time our ship was able to dock at the pier so we could walk right off the ship.

We found a guy that was willing to take our whole group for a pretty good deal.  We had him and his van for six hours and he’d take us wherever we asked him to.

It was pretty funny trying to cram all 17 of us in a 14 passenger van.

First he drove us around the town and through the ‘suburbs’.  He even drove us past the local LDS church building.

He then took us down to the shore line where there were a lot of neat things to see.  There were neat statues along the walkway, professional sand-builders and performers.

This one is a famous statue and pictures of it were all over the city.

Then we stopped at a Cathedral and walked around a bit and did some shopping.  We told our kids we’d buy them some Chiclet gum, but ironically enough, we never did find any.

Our driver took us to a nice beach.  There was a restaurant there that would let us use their umbrellas, tables and chairs as long as we bought some food.  So we all ordered lunch.

I ended up getting an avocado chicken soup that was so good.  Tom got some fish tacos and we shared a virgin pina colada.

Tom and Matt also walked up to a corner convenient store and bought some Cokes.  The restaurant told us we had to hide them while we drank them though :)

The kids had fun playing on the beach again, but pretty soon three or four of them came up complaining of Jellyfish stings.  Here’s Grace getting the sting treated with some vinegar Karyn got from the restaurant.

Tom and Matt decided to venture out into the water, despite the jellyfish.

 

I opted for shade and an awesome foot and shoulder massage.

Soon our time with the rented van and driver was coming to an end, so we headed back to the ship.

That night for dinner Tom tried some shark.  Every other night we ate at Mike and Karyn’s table (we’d trade with my dad and Suzy).

After dinner we played some mini golf.  Some of the boys played basketball and some of us watched the ship get ready to leave Peurto Vallarta (there was even a couple that cut it really close and had to run to the ship, everyone watching clapped when they got on).

More games…

That night we had some sort of dinosaur/turtle towel animal.

Day 6- 4/3/14

This was another day at sea.  We slept in, then went with Aimee and Matt’s family to brunch in the dining room again.  We ordered complimentary drinks (we had coupons for them since we’d cruised with Carnival before).

That day was pretty hang loose.  We competed in the Miracle Amazing Race.  It was a scavenger hunt all over the ship. We broke off into two groups and split the questions.  Tom, Marcus and I were together, Mike, Matt, Michael and Caleb were together.  We got back and shared our answers.

It paid off, we ended up being the winning team!  We got a trophy and medals.

That night was another formal night.

Tom and I both did something the other one would hate doing.  Tom ate Escargot (snails) and I got up and danced with the waiters.

There’s the monkey!

We went to another comedy show.  We saw several different comedians, but our favorite by far was this guy, Seth.   

I think it was this night Tom and I also went to the theater for a show.  It was a tribute to the “Beatles” and was pretty good.

Day 7- 4/4/14

By the time I went to bed Thursday night, I was starting to not feel good.  I woke up Friday really not feeling good.  I thought it might be sea sickness since it was our second day in a row at sea and the boat was really rocking.  However, I found out that others were not feeling so good that day either.  Was it sea sickness, over eating or more likely, some parasite we caught in Mexico?  Either way, it was not a fun way to spend our last day. Plus, it was a lot colder that day because we were further north.  But I tried to make the best of it anyway.

We played more games (Skip-Bo and Scatigories ended up being my favorites).

Even though I had no appetite I decided to have a burger and nachos for lunch.  It sure didn’t help my tummy, but it really tasted good and I hadn’t had a chance before then to try their yummy burgers.  Matt, Tyler, Tom and I played a game with other cruisers about “Friends” trivia.  Tom and I have seen every episode of “Friends” and felt pretty knowledgeable.  However, we missed winning by one point.  The question we didn’t know was “What was Chandler Bing’s feminine middle name?”  (I’ll let you figure it out ;)

Then some more of the family  met up with us because right after that trivia game, they did a “Harry Potter” one.  Thanks to my nephew, Tyler (and having nine of us on one team), we won!

Some of the family indulged in the chocolate buffet they had that afternoon.  I chose not to participate :(

That afternoon Tom and I went to the adult spa and sat in the indoor hot tub, then went to the steam rooms.  It felt so nice!

We went to the comedy show and watched Seth again.

That night was our last night in the dining room and with our fun waiters.  I was so sad I had no appetite.

Tom had frog legs… I had Jello.

That night our towel was in the shape of a heart.

Day 8- 4/5/14

Our week was over.  I still wasn’t feeling 100%, but a little better.  Here we are at breakfast, all sad to have to leave.

Tom and I had an earlier flight than the rest of the group (we were actually back in Salt Lake before they even left Long Beach).  I was glad we could get home sooner to see our kids.  They were happy to see us and each other too.

 

We gave them all their souvenirs.  And eased back into reality with loads of laundry to do and pizza to eat.

 

Tom and I are ready for the next adventure.  Who’s in?