Our Royal Caribbean Cruise

We just got home from the best vacation we have ever been on....a 7 night cruise to the Western Caribbean. It was wonderful and we are officially cruisers now. First of all I have to throw a big thanks to my in-laws for taking my kids for the vacation. My sister-in-law Meridee and her husband Kasey took them for us and they also spent a few nights with Chelton's parents when she needed a break and Chelton's brother Parker and his wife Ashley took them for a day too. It is so nice to have all of them help us out so we could go relax in the sun!!!

My parents came on the vacation with us (they are retired now so they can go on fun trips like this now). We decided to go out of Galveston and with four drivers we thought we would save on airfare and drive to Texas. This was more fun when thought about it than actually doing it. 28 hours in a car is really not that fun. Plus we drove it all in one shot there and all in one shot back. That is a very very long time in a car. But we really truly did save a lot of money driving there. We made a stop in Roswell, New Mexico and took a picture next to an alien and sent it to the kids. They thought that was pretty cool. (Just so you know Roswell looks nothing like the TV show if you ever watched it on the CW---I was pretty disappointed!!).

After making the 28 hour drive we made it to our hotel in Webster (about 30 minutes north of Galveston) and crashed until our cruise took off the next day. We showed up for the cruise on Sunday at 11:00 only to find out that the ship couldn't come in because of fog. The people on the last cruise were stuck on the cruise ship and couldn't get off. They told us we were supposed to come back at 1:00. So we did what anyone would do...we found a Walmart and bought Texas souveniours. We then got a text saying not to come back until 6:00. Yikes. We had to kill more time by getting some lunch. We finally went back at 4:00 and just stood in line. At that time they were letting people on but it was quite the long line and big ordeal. It wasn't the cruise lines's fault but was the port authority's call. By the time we got on the cruise ship everyone was starving and just ran to the food places and most of them were full. Wasn't quite the perfect start of the cruise but they handled it great. They then had to book it to Cozumel because they were four hours behind. We made it late to Cozumel so we had to redue the timing of our excursions but they did it with perfect ease. We pretty much ate dinner and toured the ship and then turned in for bed. Kind of a hectic first day but we were just excited to be there.

We went on Royal Caribbean and the boat we were on was Mariner of the Seas. There was so much to do on our boat we could have just stayed on the boat for 7 days and been fine but we also had stops in Cozumel Mexico, Georgetown Grand Cayman and Falmouth Jamaica. The boat had a rock climbing wall, ice skating rink, mini-golf course, in-line skating, basketball course, 4 pools, 6 hot tubs and lots of shows and activities. There was always something going on and something to do or just relaxing and doing nothing at all. It was wonderful.

The first stop was in Cozumel. I had a friend who went on a cruise and stopped in Cozumel who used this LDS tour guide (Helamantours.com) and recommended him. It looked like something we were interested in so we decided to give him a try. We got it arranged a few weeks before we left. He told us to take the ferry from Cozumel over to Carmen del Playa and he would meet up with us and take us to Tulum to the Mayan ruins. Because of our late start from the fog we were two hours late getting in to Cozumel. The cruise line told us because of this we would have two hours longer to stay in Cozumel. We had no way to let our tour guide know that we would be late so we just had to hope that he would be waiting for us when we got off the ferry. We walked off the ferry and Chelton heard a guy whistle and wave at him and he looked up and saw a guy wearing a BYU hat and he realized that must be our guy. He asked him later how he knew that we were the people he was waiting for and he said that he can usually pick his LDS people out of a crowd because of the ladies wearing the long shorts. I guess it was me wearing my capri pants that set him off. He says it really throws him off when they show up in their swimsuits. I was really impressed because he got there early to make sure he didn't miss us and then he waited hours for us because our boat got in late. I was so glad we booked our excursion with Helaman (his name really is Helaman). He showed us the Mayan ruins and the minute we got in the van he was giving us the history of the Mayan's and explaining it to us from an LDS perspective. It makes so much sense when you know your scriptures. There was so much history that archeologists cannot explain but all we have to do is read the Book of Mormon and the answers are all there. The Mayan ruins were really neat and it was nice to have our own personal LDS tour guide. What a neat excursion. We made it back on the ferry and back to the boat on time.

Our second excursion was in Georgetown Grand Cayman. This was Chelton's favorite stop. We split up from my parents on this excursion but we did run into them. Our excursion didn't start until later in the day so when we got off the boat we had a few hours to kill. We ran into a tour company who was offering a tour of the city so we decided to take advantage of it since we had time to spare. We took an hour bus tour of Grand Cayman. It is such a pretty country. We saw the beach front, the governor's house (who is British as it is a British colony) and we went to Hell. There is a city in Grand Cayman called Hell so they shuttle the tourists in so they can all buy their postcards postmarked from Hell and they all buy it up. They actually have some rocks that the city it is named for that are black rocks all over. We then saw my parents on our last stop at no other than a rum factory. We went in while everyone in our bus was sampling the local rum to buy a picture frame. They were taking a city tour on their excursion. Kind of funny to be in another country and run into somebody you know. After the city tour we met our real excursion and set out on a boat and went snorkeling. As I said this was Chelton's favorite part of the vacation and it was his first time ever snorkeling before. I had been snorkeling in Hawaii once before and didn't have the greatest experience but maybe it helped me prepare for this because I really had a great time here. We got to snorkel over a reef and a shipwreck. They had the most beautiful fish. We really had a great time. My parents went in a submarine with a glass bottom and they really enjoyed that.

The last stop we had was in Falmouth, Jamaica. This was my favorite stop. We went to Dunns River Falls which was my favorite stop. It was a 600 foot waterfall that you get to climb up. It starts at the ocean and then with the help of our tour guide (which Chelton and my dad thought were no help at all) we proceeded to climb the falls. They wanted all the people in our group to hold hands and help each other up the falls but the guys did not want to do that which we really didn't need to. It was sooo much fun. I would really like to go back there and do it again. If you ever go to Jamaica I would definitely recommend going here and doing this. I thought it was a blast. This was my favorite part of the excursions by far. After that we went to a place called Dolphins Cove. It was okay. We got to see dolpins but I guess it would have been better to actually swim with the dolphins. They also did a shark show and you could have paid extra to get in with the sharks. We got to get in and swim with sting rays and that was pretty cool. They had some cool birds to see and a snake and iguana that we held and got our picture taken with. We also had a Jamaican lunch. They gave away some prizes which with the help of the staff we won a few things. This was probably the bottom of the excursions and I wouldn't recommend going here unless you were swimming with dolphins (which is funny because I was most looking forward to coming here).

So there were a lot of stuff on the boat that we did. First off all we ate and ate and ate. We had the best waiter and assistant waiter who liked to feed us a lot of food. When we were not eating in the dining room we were eating in the Cafe Promenade where they had pizza and croissant sandwiches and desserts and if that wasn't enough they had a buffet that we could eat at. It was wonderful food.

We had plenty to do to work off the food too. We ice skated and mini-golfed and swam and played scrabble (we brought our own). The hot tubs got kind of crowded during the day so we found the best time at night when they were empty so every night we would go to our favorite hot tub and have it all to ourself.

They have a many activities on the boat that you can participate in and if you participate in certain ones you will be recognized by people on the boat. They did a newlywed game and televised it to all on the boat and the poor people that participated couldn't go anywhere without people laughing at them and pointing at them. Also they do a game called The Quest where everyone in the audience participates but each team has a captain. The male captain ends up in the end dressed in a woman's bra with women's shoes on with lipstick and earrings and parading around the stage. We kept pointing to our team captain the whole cruise. They also had a belly flop competition. We went down to lay out and get some sun. The lady kept saying that no girls had signed up. I had this urge that I was just going to do it. Chelton told me I was crazy and kept asking if I was serious. We went down and I signed up. Another girl about my same size signed up too. There were 9 people total. We had to do two flops. The first one had to be water displacement (how much water came out of the pool when we jumped) which I had no hope for with these 300+ guys and the second one was how much pain we inflicted on ourselves. The first jump I made my flop and then when I was done I started splashing the crowd for my water displacement. (They were filming this for the DVD that everyone takes home and the cruise director made it clear that this was my water displacement). I was in 5th place after my first jump so I was glad that I wasn't in last. For the second jump they put a platform up. I definitely had the other girl beat in the bust department so I got up on the platform and put my hands on my girls so they knew how much pain it would inflict. This drew out some laughs. Then I made my jump with a scream. I probably would have got more points but my legs came down and my flop really wasn't much of a flop. Well....I did end up with a silver medal so I can't say I did too bad. There were some real big boys. At the end they had all nine of us do a flop together in the pool. There was another guy from Utah in the contest so that was cool. After that I was one of those people who was pointed to and talked to and asked if I was one of the "divers." One lady told me I should wear my medal the rest of the cruise and people would buy me drinks. Lets just say I took it off right after that. I hoped that after I changed out of my blue swimming suit people wouldn't recognize me but they still did. Yikes and then in the farewell show they played a blip of the DVD that you could buy and they showed the belly flop and I was in it a lot. But I would do it again. The kids thought my medal was cool.

We also did fun things like we went to Harry Potter trivia (which I was mad that we didn't win). We are Harry Potter freaks and I should have known more than I did. We also did a flip camera scavenger hunt which was a lot of fun. We had to do dumb things like sing "I'm a little Teapot" in the elevator and ask a guy named Bob to dance with me. It won us a free Royal Caribbean pen. I was always looking for dumb things like this to do. They were fun though.

We did get in some rest and relaxation too. They had some good shows too. They had a cool ice show and the skaters were amazing. They had Merrill Osmond one night which was cool and Gary Mule Deer and some comedians.

All and all it was an amazing vacation. The first thing we did when we got home was book our next vacation. This time we are taking the kids with us. We booked an Eastern Caribbean cruise out of Florida. The plan is go do a week in Florida doing Disneyworld and Universal (mainly for Harry Potter land) and then do the cruise. We are doing a slightly bigger ship too. This ship has Dreamworks characters so you get to character dine with Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar characters and do parades and stuff. It has everything our ship had plus a 3D movie theater, a flow rider, an H20 water park with wave pool and out door movie screen. We are excited. I asked the kids if they are more excited for Disneyland or the cruise and they said the cruise (me too)... We are going in Feb 2013...now I just have to wait that long. We are definitely cruisers for life.

The pictures were uploading way too long and driving me crazy so I put all of our pictures on a slideshow...so if you want to see all the pictures...push play...and have fun....

This digital slideshow created with Smilebox

Fear Factor Birthday Party

Well my Connor turns 7 today. Can't believe it. Connor is such a special guy. He definitely has his own way of doing things. Seriously everybody needs a Connor in their life. He cracks me up every single day and makes me want to pull my hair out every single day. He is the sweetest kid on earth too. He loves to get hands on with things and he loves school. He is in the 1st grade. His favorite thing is math. He is very advanced in math and there have been times I have caught him doing his older brother's (who is in 4th grade) homework. His school work is too easy for him and he will beg me to make harder math sheets for him to do at night in his bed. (Now he cannot be my kid---I know what your thinking---me and math do not get along--he is all his father's child there). He is also an excellent reader. He is sooo far advanced at his age in reading too. He loves to play with his older brother (that is when they are not fighting). They really get along great and I love having two boys together like that to keep each other entertained and do boy stuff together. They really have such a love/hate relationship. Connor is really into karate right now. He has the most flexible body you can hardly believe it. His favorite thing is to show everybody in the world how he can jump down into the splits. We will be at the store and he will just show the lady at the counter how he can go into the splits. I have to tell him all the time that not everyone is interested in seeing him do the splits. He LOVES to be the center of attention but at the same time is a very shy kid. Kind of a weird situation there. He will do very good in karate with that flexibility. He wins a lot of their competitions in karate classes for his kicks and kung fu's because he can bend real good. He also loves ocean animals. He has been obsessed with sharks and whales for many years. We really want to take the kids to Alaska in a couple years because of this. He has always loved dinosaurs too but is phasing out of this. My oldest son Garrett is the kind of kid who never really cares about stuff or doesn't have an opinion really but Connor knows what he wants and has to really have things the way he wants them. He is pretty stubborn in that way. I'm kind of glad for this because he will know what he wants and will set out to do it. He will go far with an attitude like that. I'm so grateful for him in my life. He definitely keeps it interesting.

For his birthday this year he wanted to have a Fear Factor birthday party. It is his favorite show and he is obsessed with it. He didn't want to do anything too scary or gross. Everything I suggested got shot down (maybe they were too young because Garrett thought it would be cool).

I made up these cute invitations:



and Chelton made him a Fear Factor cake and he was very specific about what he wanted. He had to have the words written on it in a specific way and he designed it himself. I think it turned out awesome and Chelton got off easy because this was a lot easier than cakes requested in the past.



We played a few games...We played a game where we would see who could balance the longest on a can of food on one foot. This was really hard for little kids. Connor won at 30 seconds but after that the kids could only get like 5 seconds. We also played a game where we could see who could suck the most M&Ms from a straw and into a cup in a minute. (Thanks to my sister-in-law Meridee for the idea of this game). I was going to get the Scooby Doo dog bone graham cracker treats that look like real dog treats and do a game with that but couldn't find them so had to come up with a game last minute. We also did an eating challenge. This was hilarious. I had the kids roll the dice to see how many "worms" they would eat. For instance Connor rolled a 5 and had to eat 5 worms. I let them choose their choice of pudding cup and then put 5 sour gummy worms into a pudding cup and they had to eat the sour gummy worms out of the pudding cup. Now that isn't that bad right? Just gummy worms and pudding...but you would think I was making them eat real worms. Some kids shoveled it down like nothing but like Garrett was dry heaving. Kylie made me take the worms out. They got a prize if they finished the challenge but I thought it was hilarious the way some of them responded. Don't think they are ready for the real Fear Factor.

The last game we played was their favorite. I boiled a BIG batch of spaghetti and put green food coloring in it and bought like 140 plastic spiders and mixed them in. They took turns and each had a minute to see how many spiders then could pull out of the spaghetti in that minute. It was slimy and gross and they loved that.



For their goody bags they took home I made a bag and put the Fear Factor logo on it and inside they had eyeball suckers, gummy body parts (like intestines, hearts, brains and lungs) and blood bag juice, eye gum and gummy worms. It turned out cute.

Here is a picture of Connor blowing out his candles



And we gave Connor his sparring gear on the day of his party. He was so excited. Once he reaches his orange belt he is required to have his own sparring gear so he keeps asking us for his own so he was very excited to get this. I also let him open up two pair of pants I got him but he wasn't as excited about that. We are giving him the rest of his present tonight as today is his real birthday. We got him a DS game to go with the new DSI we got him for Christmas and a Wii game and Garrett and Kylie got him one of those blow up jumper balls you sit on and bounce on that is Star Wars. Since we already did the cake thing he wanted to have popsicles tonight which I am glad since we are leaving for our trip tomorrow (yeah!!!)



Also I wanted to post a better picture of Kylie's dance recital. The one I took before was from my phone and it was really blurry. Here is a pic that is not so blurry and one of her up on stage doing her dance.





Only three more days and I will be relaxing on the Mariner of the Seas!!!!

Christmas Holidays

With living in Fillmore we had a few different Christmas traditions this year than we are used to. Chelton had to work the Christmas shift this year so we had to spend the Christmas holidays at home and have a quiet at home Christmas by ourselves. We went up the weekend before Christmas to spend with our families. On Friday night (which was mine and Chelton's 11th anniversary) we went to our annual friend party with Chelton's friends Brady and Emily Reeves and Nate and Brooke Mueller. We always have such a good time hanging out with our friends and letting the kids run and play together and take turns destroying each other's house. On Saturday morning we had a brunch with my family. This is a new tradition for us and they were very nice enough to pull this together since we were not able to attend for Christmas Eve. My mom wanted to have all the grandkids together to decorate gingerbread houses. We have never done this before and it was a blast for the kids. We got to enjoy some very yummy breakfast too. Later that evening we had a party with Chelton's family. We had a very yummy dinner and played some fun games. We opened Christmas gifts with cousins that drew names and with Chelton's parents since we were not going to see them on Christmas.

On Tuesday after that weekend Kylie had her first dance recital. She did such a great job. She was the youngest (and by far the littlest) girl in the whole recital and it made her that much cuter. She did a cute dance to the "Lollipop and Candy Girl" songs medley and then at the end all the girls did a finale together to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and then Santa came. It was so cute because Kylie got really scared on stage when Santa came and almost started to cry and you can see her on camera practically jump off the stage into her teacher's arms and tell her she wants her mommy. I was trying hard not to laugh but then figured I probably ought to go and get her. Then by the time I got her we were of course the last in line to see Santa and when we get up there Kylie tells Santa she wants a Kit Kat for Christmas...all the parents and Santa looked at me and had to clarify if she meant like the candy bar...and yes...that is what she wanted...a Kit Kat candy bar. That is her favorite thing in the world right now. What a goof ball. She sure looked darling. She was excited that my mom and dad were able to come down and see her for her dance recital.



After coming home from up north the boys got sick and didn't get to go back to school before Christmas but luckily they got over it before Christmas. This year as we didn't have any family around we spent Christmas Eve with some friends of ours here in Fillmore. We had a nice dinner and played a few games. After they left and Chelton had to go to work :( I played a few more games with the kids and we read the Christmas story. This year was a little hard on my kids because Chelton's shift was 5 to 5 so he had to come home and sleep until 10:30 so my kids had to wake up and wait until he woke up until we could open presents. That was a real test for them. We stayed upstairs and watched Home Alone and then played some Wii games and then a few board games until 10:30 when I just couldn't keep them under control any longer and then we woke Chelton up and opened up presents. It was kind of fun to wait that long because it made Christmas last longer. We got Garrett and Connor DSI's and Kylie inherited their old one so we got her some new games for that and we got her a strawberry shortcake dollhouse and a princess sleeping bag.

Santa brought Garrett the electric scooter he asked for:



Santa brought Connor the Air Swimmer's Extreme shark he asked for:



Santa brought Kylie the Rapunzel Sing and Glow doll she asked for:



They also got a few other things they asked for too. They had a great Christmas. It was real quiet. Kind of weird not to have to go anywhere on Christmas or see any family but it was kind of nice at the same to have a quiet family Christmas and the kids had all day to just sit and play with their presents. Chelton and I got a lot of new clothes and stuff for our cruise which is now seven days away :)