Nassau

Our second port-of-call was Nassau.  It was much much more crowded and touristy than Coco Cay.  You have to go through a whole series of shops and vendors just to get onto the island.  People are selling stuff and offering their services everywhere.  Want a taxi?  How about some expensive jewelry (duty and tax free!) or maybe just a tour of something?  Boat ride? Shuttle? Carriage ride? There are people in your face constantly.  We had planned to go on a walking tour, see some of the city landmarks and go to the pirate museum.  We wanted to find a nice beach somewhere and swim but that part didn't happen. After walking around for several hours and being bombarded by people we decided just to go back to the ship, have lunch and relax.  It was very beautiful there but also very busy and very touristy.  There were 3 other ships there at port that day plus all the regular tourists who stay at the Atlantis resort.  This is definitely a big tourist trap.

 This guy's job was to stand outside the pirate museum, take pictures with tourists and then convince them to go inside the pirate museum. We were easy targets because we had been planning on going to the museum all along.  Isn't he nice to hold my hair out of my eyes for the picture?  Bahamians are very "hands on" types of people.

In the picture on the left you can see the Queen's staircase behind Kent's head.   It was carved into the rock by slaves.  We had an impromptu tour by a very helpful "non-tour guide" who stopped us as we were walking and started giving us info (and then asked for tips at the end of course).  On the right is the statue of Queen Victoria.

Fort Fincastle

Arrr!

National Geograpic Part II

Yes, we are nerds but we had a lot of fun looking at and taking pictures of all the interesting and different wildlife we saw:

 Ok, so chickens aren't really wildlife.  We thought the egret was pretty cool (but we didn't know what it was.  Emilia told us what it was when we showed her the picture. It is nice to have kids who are smarter than us.  And she's just in 5th grade.)  The Wild Dilly sign is pointing out a tree and the other picture is a pelican.

The alligator was in Florida.  We saw a sting ray, snaily things, barnacles and other things that I can only describe as looking like trilobites.  (Which I might point out was readily noticed by Ian, Elise and Emilia all independently.  That is what you get when your kids have an uncle who is really into fossils and teaches them about trilobites. Maybe he will know what that  thing is.)

Coco Cay

When people ask me my favorite part of the trip I tell them "Coco Cay".  Coco Cay is a private island owned by Royal Caribbean.  It has lounge chairs and hammocks everywhere and it is as close to an island paradise as I have ever seen. It wasn't crowded, there was beautiful water, coconut trees and all sorts of sea shells and interesting stuff to look at.  I am not sure where the chickens came from but there were chickens.  Not so tropical but amusing.  We had a great time walking up the beach looking for shells and sea creatures, lounging in the hammocks and hiking on a nature trail.  Unfortunately for me my little toesies were not used to wearing flip flops and I had some blistering going on between my toes.  Add some sand and a little salt water and you have some pretty uncomfy sores.

Kent took a picture of me sleeping in the hammock with the chickens running all over the place.   It was funny because I heard the chickens before I saw them and at first I thought the clucking was just a lady with a terribly annoying laugh.  That is what happens when you are only semi-conscious and you hear strange and unfamiliar noises.

That is our ship in the distance.

I could have stayed at this tropical paradise for a very long time.

The Cruise

Here are some pictures from the cruise ship. 

 Playing with the life jackets we found in the closet.

 Here are some pictures of our stateroom.  Elise wanted us to take lots of pictures of all the hotel rooms and the cabin on the boat.  She even specifically asked for pictures of the bathroom.  She is very interested in taking pictures right now because she got a camera for her birthday and all things must be documented.  The kids got a kick out of the toilet and thought it was so weird that you had to push a button (about 100 times in our case) to get the toilet to flush.  Don't be fooled by the sort of spacious look of our room.  There are mirrors and it looks bigger in the pictures than it did in real life.

 Random pictures of the ship.

(Anyone else think Kent looks like "Pirate Dwight" just a little in this one?)

We didn't even see any towel animals until the day before we left the cruise.  It was very disappointing.  We actually saw that monkey hanging in someone's room when we walked by and I quickly grabbed my camera and took a picture of it.  They did have a "towel folding" class on one of the decks one day but we missed it.  Now we will never know how to make monkey-towels for our guests. 

I didn't get a picture of our waiters but now I wish I would have. They were absolutely delightful and we enjoyed seeing them at dinner everyday. Our head waiter, Amit from India asked us where we were from and was so excited to hear that we were from Utah.  He asked us if we were Mormons and told us that he loved Mormons.  He used to see them all the time when he worked on a cruise out of California but hadn't seen any Mormons (assuming that Utah residency=Mormons) for 2 years.   He came to our table every night asking how his "lovely Mormons" were.  It was interesting that he said that he loved meeting Mormons and that there was something different in the feeling he got from interacting with them.   

On our last day on the ship Amit sent chocolate covered strawberries to our stateroom.  We were talking to him at dinner and thanked him for the strawberries and we asked him if he was Hindu.  He was and we told him about the Krishna temple in Payson and how they have the festival where they throw colored powder on each other.  He thought that was pretty surprising that they had a Hindu temple in Utah.  Then he mentioned that a bunch of his "lovely Mormon friends" had given him copies of the Book of Mormon and he joked that he didn't have any more room in his cabin because he had 11 copies of the Book of Mormon taking up all the space everywhere. It was pretty funny and we really enjoyed talking to him.  I was glad that other Mormons had made a good impression on him. 

Cocoa Beach and Port Canaveral

Ok, I am finally ready to blog about this trip!  There have been lots of photos to edit and resize etc. so it has taken forever.  Plus, once you get back from a tropical vacation and have been away from your home for a week there is laundry to do, people to cook for (dang, I guess I have to do that again don't I?) and SICK kids to take care of.

After arriving in Orlando we rented a car and made our way to Cocoa Beach.  We brought our new GPS with us on our trip, thinking it would come in handy. We were headed out of the airport garage when she started telling us directions that did not correspond to what the rental car guys had told us. We had a decision to make: Follow the map and the signs on the freeway or listen to "Susan". Kent decided to listen to Susan.  (I tried to tell him... FOLLOW THE MAP!)  He was driving so he got to make the decisions. We listened as Susan kept telling us to go North when the OCEAN and our destination was clearly East. I finally convinced Kent to ignore Susan and listen to ME (and the signs and the maps). We turned around and backtracked the way we were supposed to go. We assumed that as we did this Susan would reconfigure the directions and pick up the route as we were driving it. No such luck. Here's what our trip from the Orlando airport to the hotel sounded like after we got back on the freeway headed EAST:

"Prepare to turn around in 200 feet."
"Sorry, we are not turning around."
..."Route recalculation"
"Exit freeway at exit 16"
"Do you think she will figure out that we are going a different way and reconfigure it with the new route?"
"Turn back at next left"
..."Route recalculation"
"Turn back at next sharp left"

...
"Route recalculation"

"Is she for real?"

"You are over the speed limit!"
"Shut up."
"Turn back!"
..."Route recalculation"
"Susan, you have no clue what you are talking about."
"Turn left in 200 feet."
"We are going the right way."
"Turn left at next turn."
..."Route recalculation"  and on and on. She kept telling us what to do, we kept ignoring her and she kept recalculating the route.  We thought that eventually she would reconfigure the route to actually be the right route. She never did. This went on and on until we were less than 5 miles from our hotel. She told us to turn back and the GPS said that we were an hour from our destination.

We ate dinner at this cute little seafood restaurant. I don't really love seafood but for some reason I wanted to eat seafood since we were by the sea.  I ended up getting clam chowder.   Does clam chowder really count as seafood?  The guy at the hotel said they were famous for their clam chowder.  It was good, but I have to say it wasn't as good as the clam chowder at Mo's at Canon Beach in Oregon.

We had several hours to kill in the morning before we had to get on the ship so we went a beach shop and got some souvenirs for the kids.  After that we decided to play some mini-golf.  Kent beat me by 2 points.  We both got 1 hole in 1.  The course was pretty cool and they had live alligators in a fenced area in the middle.

We boarded our ship at Port Canaveral and saw the Kennedy Space Center in the distance. Kent had been interested in going there until he heard that the admission charge is $40.00. 

The ocean was beautiful there even if it did smell a bit fishy. I actually noticed the "salt air" for the first time. People always talk about the "salt air" and I couldn't really figure out how you can smell salt since that is one of the only 4 things that we actually taste instead of smell. But, at last, I smelled the salt air (or maybe I just inhaled it and then tasted it.)  Being by the ocean made me want to live in a place where there is water.

Dear Kids

In case you are missing us and wish you could see us smooching (on the lips) here is a picture to remind you:

Muah!

National Geographic

Here's the National Geograpic portion of our trip:

 Jellyfish

Seagull  (So rare, so beautiful)



A vulture having some breakfast.  This was the critter we saw at our hotel THIS morning.  Thank goodness it wasn't in our bathroom.

Competing for the meal.

Photos for the Kiddos

We talked to our kiddos last night and told them we'd post some pictures today.  As soon as we get on the boat this afternoon we will be unattached from the world so we can call or use the internet. 

 Kent surfs sitting down.



Love you kids!  Keep checking the blog because I have some posts scheduled to show up in the next couple of days!

Adventure

The time has come for us to go on our great adventure.  Kent was able to rope his parents into staying with our kids, and I decided to enlist the help of my parents as well.  So right now Kent's parents are watching the kids and they will pass the torch along to my parents later in the week. 

Getting ready for a week long vacation is quite the stressful task. I have been doing laundry pretty much nonstop for several days and was trying to stock up on food, make babysitting arrangements for the kids, get school projects and assignments under control, make some dinners for the freezer and anticipate anything and everything that my kids would need for the week while I am gone.  (Impossible, yes, I know.)  So, after all this planning and running around all crazy I definitely NEEDED a vaction. 

So, the time FINALLY came for us to leave.  We left after lunch and made the first leg of the journey to Las Vegas.  We had an early flight out (7:00 am) and didn't want to have to get up at 2:00 in the morning to catch our flight.  We stayed in the Palace Station Hotel and were debating on whether we should go to In n Out fordinner or try the buffet.  We made the (wrong) choice to go to the buffet.  Normally I quite like buffets:  lots of choices, some good salads, some yummy food, sometimes some mediocre food.  This buffet was seriously the grossest restaruant I have ever eaten at.  Well, a close tie with the to the Carl's Jr. in Fillmore Utah.  Even the desserts were gross. Really.  How you do you ruin chocolate eclairs?  Answer: you keep them in the freezer until they taste like a freezer.  I nicknamed this place the "School Lunch Buffet" because that is what it reminded me of.

This morning, we woke up around 3:30 (thanks to the people upstairs who were clearly awake and "walking" around up there).  We were supposed to wake up at 4:30 but since we were awake and freezing (because we had the a/c turned down to 68 degrees we decided to get up.  Kent made sure to mention to me that I kept pushing him off the bed (that was kind of like the black hole in the middle) and that I rammed my back into him while he was sleeping. I couldn't help it:  the gravitational pull of the bed kept pulling me into it.

 Good Morning, it's 4am.  Are you ready to go?

Here's our little friend that we found in our hotel bathroom in the morning. EWW.

So, we got up, ate our "Food 4 Less" breakfast (chocolate milk, yogurt and donut holes) and headed to the airport.   After making several wrong turns (thanks to the shuttle driver who misdirected us) we finally made it through security and onto the terminal.  It was the first plane trip that Kent and I have ever gone on.  Here are some picts of the journey thus far:

Here we are in our seats on the plane.

Out the window of the plane.

Ok, I am not totally done with this post and I have more to say but I am blogging on (my new) laptop and blogger is being totally impossible with centering the wrong things and not letting me put the pictures where I want them. I wanted to get a few pictures up so my kiddos could look on my blog and see some pics. 

New Pool!

The new pool opened last weekend, a month after its original "supposed to open" date.  We have been driving by it looking at the progress and practically drooling over it for months.  It was free all weekend to celebrate the grand opening.  We had planned to go right when it opened Saturday morning.  Until Adele starting throwing up at 11:00 Friday night.  And KEPT throwing up all night until 5:00 am.  We made a second attempt this week.

January Update

Most of my posts have been photos lately and I haven't really posted any updates.  (Not that anyone cares or even reads it but I AM going to get this blog printed someday dangit and I like to have records.)

Soooo...

• It was brutal torture for all parties involved getting the kids (and me) back in the swing of school. We had developed quite a habit of staying up late and sleeping in late. That doesn't really work with the school thing so the first few days we had some really grumpy people around here when it was time to get up and get ready for school.
• Having a break from all our normal life stuff was really nice. I didn't have to run kids all around or run myself around.  Cleaning was pretty much optional, and even more pointless (which isn't a good thing necessarily).  It was great to be able to just stay home if we wanted to, or go out if we wanted to.  I really enjoyed the relaxed schedule. I didn't enjoy the fighting though.
• We are still doing piano and art lessons for the big girls and I am deciding whether to sign Ian up for soccer or T-ball in the spring.  (Do they have T-ball in the spring?) I am still not totally "up" on all the sports schedules.  My older girls have had no desire to play sports even though I have encouraged them to TRY it over and over. They would much rather write stories and draw pictures. They actually loathe P.E.  Partially because their teacher is really "strict" (SHE'S SO MEAN MOM!), and partially because they inherited their mother's lack of sports ability.  My cousins are all good at sports. I think they got all the sports genes.
• I have a few things I am hoping to accomplish this year. I hesitate to call them resolutions because I stopped making New Year's resolutions a long time ago... I think they are actually kind of pointless because we all know that we just cross out the year and put the new year in the old year's place anyway. 
• This year I AM going to print out my blog posts from 2007-2010.  I have to upload and edit them and then have them printed. I have never done it before so I don't know how long it will take. I have just kept putting it off. 
•  I am going to work on my real paper scrapbooks this year. I need to add lots of pages to Adele's and Ian's and some to Emilia's and Elise's.
• I want to read lots of books this year.  Right now I am working on the 3rd Fablehaven book.  I hope to finish Fablenhaven, and read The Immortal Life of Heniretta Lacks, maybe Bitter is the New Black , The FitzOsbornes in Exile, which is the sequel to A Brief History of Montmaray.  Emilia wants me to read Gregor the Overlander and if that is good I will read the whole series.  Some friends of mine are starting a book club this year (probably) so I might have to give another book club a go.  My last book club fizzled and died.  * If you have any book recommendations please leave me a comment.
•  There a few are other things I need to do this year, and goals I have but they aren't really the "post it to your blog" types of things so you will just have to wonder. 
• Kent and I are getting really excited for our cruise.  We are leaving in just a few weeks and we are SO excited to escape this freezing land and go to the BAHAMAS where it will be 80 degrees and kid-free.

And Ian will take us out of this post with a little "Eye of the Tiger" on the spoonguitar.

Fashion Queen

This is what Adele was wearing when she got up this morning. 

It was actually pretty funny because when she got up I said, "You are wearing some AWESOME clothes" and I grabbed my camera.  I took a picture of the front of her and she immediately turned around and posed with her back toward me.  Somehow she knew I would want to take a picture of the back too.  What a little diva.

...The Darndedst Things

Adele: That bagel is scrumptious.  Those {vitamins} are too.  SCRUMPTIOUS!

Ian:  Mom, you are the master of the house.  (*pause*).  And you sit in a princess wheelchair.  And it's your throne and you can use it to drive around.

Adele:  Cha cha cha, Charmin OPERA SAW!*

*For those who don't have school aged kids (or if it's a regional thing) here's the explanation:  After kids sing the Happy Birthday song it is customary to say:  Cha cha cha, Charmin Ultra Soft!  Don't know why.  One of those things...

Some Christmas Pics

 We weren't as camera happy this year. I am not sure whether that is a good thing or not. Probably not. I think it is because our camera is defective and always tells us that it is out of batteries even if we have only used it once since we replaced them. It is either malfunctioning and lying to us or it is sucking the juice out of our batteries practically daily.  Here are a few pics from Christmas 2010.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Day

Notes:

• We had a very difficult time getting a picture where everyone was looking at the camera and making a nice, or even normal face.
• The gal with the brown hair in the pictures is my BFF and former roommate of 2 years, Amy.  She stayed with us for a week during Christmas.
• The bike things are called "plasma cars" and they you wiggle the steering wheel to make them move.
• I got some red shoes for Christmas.  I have always wanted a pair of red shoes. Unfortunately they did not fit. In fact I felt like one of the wicked stepsisters trying to squeeze my feet into them.  I could get them on... but whatever happened after that would NOT be pretty.
• All the kids got their very own box of Trix cereal for Christmas.
• Ian's favorite Christmas present was gum.
• Adele's favorite present was Emilia's gum and consumed (and probably swallowed) at least half of the 15 piece pack.  She was pretty much walking around all day eating everyone's treats.  And her own. And the ones Santa left out.  Needless to say, she was way too hyper to go to bed when the time came.
• Yes, Emilia and Elise really are kissing in that picture.  At least I THINK they are. Eww.

The best stocking stuffer

Mmm, makes your water really nasty shade of orange (or blue, or green or brown if you mix them together).  You should get some.

Best Husband Ever

Ok, I know I don't even need to say it, but I will. I have the best husband ever. I think he definitely wins the "best anniversary gift award" for what he did for me on our anniversary.  He is so thoughtful and really tries to do nice things for me.  On our anniversary he surprised me with a "spa night", created and administered by him.  He gave me some new jammies (woo, woo!  Pictures below!), a whirlpool foot massager thingee, a foot massage, a facial complete with cucumbers and a relaxing bath with aromatherapy GALORE (candles, bath salts, oils, bubble baths etc.)  Oh, and a goodie basket with some bottled water, nuts and chocolate.  What spa experience could be complete without chocolate?  AND, if that wasn't enough he wrote me a very sweet letter about how much he loves me.  Thanks honey for making our 13th anniversary very special.  We are going on a cruise 29 days and hopefully I'll be able to do something special for him to return the favor. 

During the facial I told Kent that he had to put a masqe on too and he told me he was going to... He really was going to because he knew that I was going to ask him to do it too.  But somehow, he had to go get the bath ready or something and he didn't end up doing it.  Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to take him up on that when we go on our cruise.  We can even steal some cucumbers from the salad bar.  :)    Like my hot new jammies??? Yeah, they kind of look like long underwear, but they are comfy!

When your 3 year old gets the camera

Here's what you get: