Friday, March 20, 2009

We LOVE Spring

Today was such a nice, warm spring day. We spent all afternoon outside enjoying the nice weather. Zack loves being outside and since it has been cold he just stands at the door when I open it and watches everything going on outside and yells to anyone or anything he sees. So today when I took him outside and put him down he was so excited. He took off walking down the sidewalk and after he got about 5 houses down I yelled at him to come back, he probably had no idea what to do with so much freedom so he just took off! It was so fun watching him play on all the toys in the backyard. This was his first time playing back there and walking around and climbing on things. He thought everything was so funny it was so cute. He would hear other kids playing in their yards or the church parking lot so he'd yell to them like he was trying to communicate with them. It is so fun to see the excitement and magic in little kids eyes!



Thursday, March 19, 2009

One year older and wiser too!

Yesterday I got to celebrate my birthday with most of my sisters and brother! We ordered take out sushi ate cake and watched Bride Wars at my sister Heidi's house. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. My sister surprised me with a Raspberry/Lemon cupcake from The Cocoa Bean. It was great!

When I got home my neighbor brought me a huge cupcake - it looked so pretty.

and my mother-in-law had left me a basket of her homemade rolls and jam - YUM!!

A bunch of my friends showed up at 5pm to surprise me and take me out to dinner, but I had already made arrangements to babysit my sisters kids so I wasn't able to go. I told them all to go anyways and think of me while they ate! :) It is a good thing I didn't go - Kade ended up getting sick and throwing up all night.
I had a great day which started off with my kids running in my room to tell me happy birthday and remind me I am now 31. Soon after we got up I got a phone call from my parents which is always a great way to start the day and then spent most of my day on the phone having friends and family wish me Happy Birthday or answering the door to find someone else bringing me treats. Thank you all for you thoughtfulness and kindness - you all made turning 31 not so bad :)






10 Year Anniversary

A while ago we realized that all our friends, including us got married the same year. So to all celebrate our 10 year anniversaries we went on a cruise together. I don't think I could dream of a better way to celebrate - we had SO much fun! This was our first cruise and we LOVED it! We went on the 7 day Exotic Western Caribbean on the Carnival Glory. This is a picture of our ship. It was huge. It had about 13 levels and was the length of 3 football fields. After being on the ship for a week I could still get turned around and confused about where we were at on the boat.
Our cruise had 4 stops and the first one was in Cozumel, Mexico. We went on a caverns and jeep tour. We got to drive jeeps through town and out to these caverns.

We hiked through these caverns until we came to the cenote (underground water/river). We got to jump in and swim through the caves and play around in the water. It was really neat.

After swimming in the cenote we drove the jeeps about 1/2 hour more down to a beach where they served us a Mexican lunch and we got to play on the beach and in the ocean. This beach was so beautiful with white sand and the water was pretty warm here.

Our Second stop was in Belize. One of our friends was scared of heights and pregnant so they went on a different adventure at this stop. We went zipling through the jungle! I was so excited for this one. We rode an old school bus for and hour and 1/2 on crazy bumpy dirt roads to get here - but it was worth it. We walked back through these trees and ended up in a cave where they hooked us all up in our gear.


We hiked up the mountain which was an added bonus to our adventure - it was so pretty. At the top they hooked us up and off we went! We did 4 zipline traverses then repelled down and did one more zipline traverse and one more repell down back into the cave. The highest traverse was 300ft. high and the longest was 200 ft. long. It was really neat and not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

Standing on a ledge waiting to repell down to the next zipline traverse.

Our third stop was in Costa Maya, Mexico. This is a port created just for cruise ships to stop at. It is not really a town. So we spent the day playing on the beach and eatting yummy food.
Two of our friends and I got a massage on the beach. $20.00 for a one hour massage. I am pretty sure the lady/man?? who massaged me wasn't trained like they are here - but it still felt so good to lay in the hot sun and hear the ocean while getting rubbed down with oil.

On the days we were on the ship cruising all day we'd play games with our friends, try our luck in the casino, lay out, read books, run on the treadmills, enjoy the steam room and sauna and EAT, EAT, EAT!

Our last stop was in Nassau, Bahamas on Friday the 13th, which was also our 10th anniversary. Rich and I had signed up to do snuba, which is like scuba diving but the tanks stay up on the boat and you stay attached with a cord. It sounded really fun and exciting to do. An hour before we were suppose to go we got a message saying the adventure had been cancelled because not enough people signed up. So we signed up for a catamaran ride and snorkeling.

There were lots of fish and the water was crystal clear.

That night at dinner our friends bought us drinks to celebrate our anniversary

and surprised me by having our waiter bring out a plate of chocolate covered strawberries (my favorite) and everyone singing Happy Birthday to me! I LOVE surprises - I have the greatest friends in the whole world.
Our trip home from Orlando was another adventure in itself. Due to plane delays we missed our connecting flight in Washington DC and no other flights were leaving until the next morning.
What do you do when you are stranded in Washington DC without any luggage?
You rent a mini van and drive around and see the sites!
It was getting dark and was raining and we were all in shorts/capris, sandals and light jackets. But we all braved the weather and wondered around the sites. Thankfully Rich forget to take off his coat and winter hat when we flew out and so he had those in his carryon.

After touring around DC for about 6 hours we went to the airport and slept on the chairs in the airport chapel for about 3 hours while we waited for our flight at 5:30am. Rich was setting the alarm on the cell phone so we wouldn't miss this flight as well. We made our flight and got into SLC at 9:40am only to find our luggage was NOT there. We had to file a baggage claim and went home with no luggage. Our luggage was flown up to Idaho Falls and we got in Mon. afternoon. It turned into quite an adventure just getting home. We had such a great time and are missing having people clean our room twice a day, or serve us dinner or having a constant supply of food anytime you want it. We loved going on the cruise and will definetely be going on other one.