New and Improved!

My Cherisie fixed some of the darker cruise pics for me, so here they are again! Plus a few more just for fun.

Cabo

Glass elevators

A couple of towel animals . . . it was fun to find a new one in our room every night.


This is back in San Diego. They said one of these ships was in a movie . . . Master and Commander or something like that.
The End!

Our Cruise!

We've been trying to go on a cruise for years, and last week we finally did it! Jason and I took a 7-night cruise aboard the Carnival Spirit to the Mexican Riviera. My wonderful fabulous mom stayed with the kids while we were gone.

The cruise went out of San Diego, so we drove the night before to Jason's parents' house and stayed the night there. Here we are in the morning, ready to go!

And here's our ship! (this one was actually taken in Mexico)

A view from the top deck

Our room-- it was little, but it was very nice. Next time we're definitely splurging on a balcony room!Here's the dining room
Eating on the ship was really fun! Amazing food and awesome service, I loved it! (plus a differently folded napkin every evening, what more could you want?)
This is the theater. A lot of the shows were singing and dancing-- not all that interesting. But there was a good comedian, and our favorite was the hypnotist. Hilarious!

Playing miniature golf -- kinda funny to try on a moving boat!

We got to our first port on the third day-- Cabo San Lucas

We went on a sail & snorkel excursion to Santa Maria bay in Cabo. Here we are on the boat that took us to the bay.

And here's some other people on the boat. They had snacks and drinks and music, it was really fun!

Snorkeling was pretty cool, but a little cold. I took pics of the fish with a waterproof camera, but they aren't developed yet.

These are the guys who took us on the boat, doing a killer dance to YMCA.

The Cabo Arch

Next stop: La Paz! Since it's not a usual cruise stop, La Paz is pretty un-touristy. It has a pretty beach (all of the beaches we visited were on the Sea of Cortez) and it's a nice little town.

Funny story: La Paz was the first place we went to a store with actual price tags. We'd done some shopping in Cabo but it was at a market where they just told us the prices. So we go into a gift shop in La Paz and we were outraged at the prices! $25.00 for a little toy, $16.00 for one of those tiny jars of sand?! So we left that shop and walked a little further and pondered getting ice cream cones. Price of ice cream? $27. Oh wait . . . . I guess since we're in Mexico . . . the prices might be in . . . . Pesos? Ha! We were so dumb! I think I was confused because they still used a dollar sign. I would have thought it'd be something else. Luckily someone on the ship had mentioned the exchange rate or I still would have been clueless. So yeah, the toy was $2.50. We went back to that store and bought some stuff.

The last port of call was Mazatlan. We had booked an excursion there that took up most of the day. We got off the giant boat(cruise ship), onto a medium-sized boat (catamaran) with our group, and went out to this island:

It's called Deer Island. When we got there we got onto little speed boat to get from the catamaran to the land, then we had some snacks and boarded the littlest boats of the day: kayaks.

Kayaking was pretty cool! We went for about an hour's paddle around the side of the island.

After that we played on the beach, then sat relaxing in the shade watching parasailors over on the mainland while one of the 2 dogs that lives there (it's not inhabited by people) slept at our feet, proving that we were the most lovable people there.

On one of the last nights they did the grand buffet, with lots of fun food art.
I missed the kids like CRAZY! It was so wonderful to come home to their sweet faces.

Firsts

Jessica lost her first tooth!! It was really loose the other evening before we went out back to roast hot dogs and marshmallows. Then when we came back inside, it was gone! So it might be outside, but I think she swallowed it! Don't worry, we wrote the tooth fairy a note and Jessie still got some money.

And Melissa had her first realy play date. She plays with friends once in a while, but so far they've always been relatives or kids we were babysitting. The other day I told her to go play outside and she said, "there's only Sammy (the cat) out there, and I want to play with someone who talks." So I called Paige's mom and she came over. They had lots of fun together. Paige is the only other girl in Missy's sunbeam class of 10, and she's moving in a couple months! I guess it wouldn't kill us to have some boys over to play sometimes . . . .

And here's some random pics. Missy wearing the play-doh beads that we made:

And this is a ladybug that Josh was playing with the other day.

I was excited that I got such a good picture of it!

Easter Weekend

I haven't been feeling very blogerific lately, so I'm playing catch-up a little now. Mostly these are of Easter weekend, but we'll start off with some Mandieness.

The Friday before Easter we went out to Three Peaks, which is just outside of town. It's a cool big area with lots of fun rocks to hike on.

Here's Jess and the snazzy view

Nat and Josh being expert rock climbers. Climbing is Natalie's fave.

Nat found this cool little chair in a rock

Mandie loooooooves her dad.

The Easter Bunny comes to our house on Saturday morning, so when we got back from hiking it was egg dying time. Mandie thought the eggs were fabulous toys. I let her play with a couple and she cracked 'em good.

"So Big!"

Morning . . . .

We do our egg hunt first thing in the morning. It just occured to me this year that this means no cute dressed-up kids in my egg hunt pictures! I might have to re-think this whole thing . . .