Day Four, which is actually Day 5

I realize that I didn't post anything about our actual day one. Day one was a half day on the ship.

It consisted of getting on the ship and running around ecstatically saying, "I can't believe we're here!"

Then there was some ice cream and some food and some sleeping and swimming that occurred, but I'm sorry that I left out our first day.

Day Four was another day at sea, and more relaxation. We ate, swam, ate, got facials, ate, sunbathed, ate and read books.

It was a rough last day on the boat.

We ended up spending our last evening on the ship walking around discovering all the places that we hadn't visited before and trying not to shed tears that it was almost over.

It was such a fun and relaxing week. The next day we docked in Tampa and headed back home.
I'm really glad we went, and I'm hoping there will be a repeat in the future.
Thanks for the good times Angie.
Thanks for taking care of the boys Kyle.
And thanks for the extra 2 lbs Royal Caribbean.

Day Three

 

Cozumel. 

We headed out early for some shopping and to look around the town. It was beautiful. We shopped for several hours during which I became a master at haggling. But haggling gets old, and I got really tired of it, really quick. 

So then we headed to the water.

To play with these guys.

This is Jack and Simba, and we had the amazing experience of swimming around with them. 

(Lots of photos, I'll let them do most of the talking)

This is Angie doing a foot push with the dolphins, both dolphins get behind you and push you up out of the water by your feet. It was an amazing feeling. The dolphins got a little more excited with Angie and shoved her completely out of the water.

 

  

 Then it was my turn.

 

It was awesome. We were also able to have them pull us along while we held onto their dorsal fins.

 

Amy is the lady right next to me in these next photos.

I'm not quite sure how much she enjoyed this next part.

 

We also went snorkeling afterwards, and found some interesting fish along the way.

 

This is a freaky looking fish. Eyes on the same side of his head and his mouth sideways...

It was a busy day, but we had a blast. We also forgot to eat while we were swimming with dolphins and shopping, but don't worry... we made up for it when we got back on the ship. 

We ended up going to the 24 hour cafe and ordering just about everything on their menu. It was literally plate to plate (like 8-9 plates) on our table. And we finished every last bite. The waitress told us that they had bets going on as to whether we would finish it or not. She said that everyone lost.

Everyone but us... it was really good food.

When we got back to our room we had a visitor that our amazing stateroom attendant Marcello left for us.

And I'm happy to say that our pig/chicken friend stayed for the remainder of our trip.

Day three was fun.

Day Two

We hopped off the ship at Costa Maya and climbed aboard a bus for a 2 1/2 hour ride into the Mexican jungle to get to the Dzibanche ruins.

 

This is our tour guide, Jesus. We were part of his Mexican family... we called him "Papa"

As we were driving, Papa told us that all the mounds of dirt we were seeing were actually ruins that were buried, just waiting to be excavated. I didn't fully understand what he meant until we got to Dzibanche.

All of these ruins had been completely buried under dirt and had enormous trees growing out of them before they were excavated. The excavation started in 1992 and stopped last year when the archeologist in that particular area, passed away.  So many of the ruins are only partially excavated and some aren't excavated at all.

It was absolutely beautiful.

 

Angie practicing her excavation skills. She wants the job as the next archeologist for the site.

 

Me in front of Temple #1.

 

Temple #2

I love that the trees are growing right out of the temple here.There are several tombs in this temple that have been opened and excavated. The trees are growing over the entrances to the tombs yet to be unearthed.

This was my particular favorite. This is the Temple of the Owl.

 

We got to climb to the top of this one, and the view was well worth the steep climb.

Angie climbing the Temple of the Owl. I tell you, the picture doesn't do justice to how steep it really was.

Me and Angie at the top of the Temple of the Owl. 

The ruins of Dzibanche were stunning.

We climbed back into our bus and headed to the Kohunlich ruins. Kohunlich is well known for the Temple of the masks. They were covered in red stucco at the time that people lived here, and that red stucco is fairly well preserved. Papa told us that soon they would be enclosed in glass casing for their preservation.

It was a beautiful day, 80 degree weather and 90ish percent humidity. We headed back on the bus for our 2.5 hour drive back to the boat.

We stopped at a little shop near the pier and haggled for some beautiful little necklaces and then climbed back aboard the ship for some dinner and an early bedtime. 

After all, day 3 was going to be busy.

(I always love asking people to take a picture... it's kind of like a box of chocolates...)

Day One

Our first day at sea. Our first and very relaxing day at sea.

 Morning sunbathing was a little colder than we had expected. A little too much wind and not enough sun. So it included towels and jackets and not so much the sunscreen that Angie has sitting on her lap. 

But the afternoon made up for it.

It was nice and warm and our first day mainly consisted of  lounging on the deck, looking at the pretty ocean and eating lots of good food.

The remains of our pile of nachos. Nachos were a must on most days. 

As was pizza. 

And Mongolian BBQ. 

And at least 5 desserts to trail each of our 4-5 meals daily meals. You know, first and second breakfast, lunch, dinner and second dinner.

I told you we ate a lot.

You would be surprised at how much the two of us can put away.

And that, in a nutshell, was day one.

Angie and Michelle take a trip

Meet Angie. Angie is funny, athletic, laid back, and likes to eat good food.

Angie and I started working together a while ago, and quickly became friends. We decided to take a trip together and started planning for a trip to Oregon to go whale watching and enjoy the beach. But it was difficult to get money/timing/work to work, so the trip was put on the back burner.

Skip forward 18 months to where Kyle is telling me that after he graduates it would be very difficult to take a trip like this. However, right now could be a good time, cause he could stay home and watch the boys. He offered to stay home while I left for a vacation.What a good man.

After very little arm-twisting, I called up Angie and we set out to plan a trip to Oregon.
But it's cold in Oregon. And we were already done with the cold. We wanted to go someplace warm. So we settled for a week on this...

...in the Caribbean.
We ate and swam and read books and ate and lounged and ate and stayed busy relaxing for a whole week.
It was exactly what I needed. Some girl time away from home.
More photos coming soon....

The photo above is Angie eating our very first Chicago deep dish pizza in the Chicago airport. We had a stop in Chicago and had to try the pizza, even though it was 4:30 in the morning.
And it was worth every bite.
Best pizza ever.

The second photo is of our gorgeous ship the Radiance of the Seas.

Porter or Bridger

I got into a disagreement with Bridger the other day.

It went something like this.

"I'm Porter Kyle."

"No, you're Bridger Dime."

"No, I Porter Kyle, Momma."

"No, you're Bridger Dime... he's Porter Kyle"

"No, dats Bidger, Momma, dats Bidger." (pointing to Porter)

"No, you are Bridger Dime."

"No, you Momma Shel Dime"

"No, I'm Momma Michelle Leah"

"NO! Not Momma Shel Leah, you Momma Shell Dime Momma, you Dime Momma!! Right NOW!!" 

(Whenever he says RIGHT NOW he says it with a growl and drops his voice a couple octaves... it's pretty funny.)

I have no idea how he's gotten the two of them mixed up. For quite a while he's been calling Porter Bridger,  but we just kind of assumed "Bidger" was his way of saying Porter.

Nope... he can say Porter, but only when he's talking about himself.

And apparently my middle name is Dime now....

Go figure.

This kids a hoot.

practicing for primary

This little guy doesn't like Primary. He hasn't liked it since day one. It was a challenge to get him to go to nursery, until he realized that all he had to do was go, not cry and play with toys.
But now the challenge is that he is expected to sit still, listen to a lesson, sit still, not cry, sit still, fold his arms and sit still.
He has trouble with sitting still. A lot of trouble sitting still. In fact, when you go to his primary class (Kyle and I know because one of us is in there every week) Porter is all over the place. He likes to crawl on the floor and under the chairs and especially doesn't want to sit still when the teacher pulls out stickers for the kids who were good and folding their arms the whole time. He wants a sticker.
But his teacher is good. Really good. Maggie takes her time with Porter and adjusts a lot of what they are doing in class to include him. She doesn't rush and ask us to come sit with them unless he's crying. She tries to encourage instead of yelling or getting upset or flustered. She's really REALLY good with little kids. I was praying that he would get into her class (our ward is huge so there's two sunbeam classes).
But still, it's an adjustment. I was talking to one of my good friends at work the other day and Janeen suggested that I do a mini primary everyday of the week leading up to Sunday.
Couldn't hurt, right?
So we started our primary class. They are very short classes, and I'll lengthen them as he gets used to it.
It's also a very big class.
 Almost 25 members.
 Porter lines up all his stuffed animals for nursery and he's the big example of what to do.

We fold our arms.
We sit in our chair.
We don't cry.
We sit in our chair.
We listen to the lesson.
We sit in our chair.

Today our lesson was very short, about 2 minutes, and we sat on the ground. But he sat still and listened to what I was telling him. And he even corrected his animals when they were getting out of line/falling over on the ground.

At least he knows what's expected of him. Now it's just getting him to do it when I'm not watching.

I know I'm not the only one, I've had multiple people stop me and tell me so.  But I just don't know what to do about it. I hope this daily primary thing will help, but any other suggestions would be welcome.

the decluttering continues

We have a lot of movies. I mean a LOT of movies, and a lot of seasons of our favorite TV series on DVD.

And it takes up a lot of space. A LOT of space; and I've decided I don't want all that space taken by our movies.

So now all of this... 

is all in here.

 I'm getting rid of all the DVD cases and the second DVD's that come with bonuses that I'll never watch. 

The really sad part is that this case doesn't hold all of our TV series... I'm going to have to figure out something to do with those.

Slowly but surely this house is getting an overhaul.

under the weather

It's been a rough couple of weeks in our home. 

Porter just got over a nasty strep infection after a 10 day course of antibiotics. 

During that time Bridger started getting a bad cough. Bridger's cough got worse, he's got really bad congestion and a fever. So he is getting breathing treatments at home (thank you Papa's for the nebulizer) as well as an antibiotic. 

Porter finished his antibiotic 3 days ago and about 2 days ago he started getting a cough. And now, this morning, Porter woke up with a temp of 103.

It's going to be a long weekend.

Momma's are the best.

My day started out a little like this...

It was a rough day. The boys were just trying to help/stay entertained/destroy everything in their wake. And Momma was tired.

That combination lost me my eggs, a drinking glass and part of my sanity.

But, as Kyle came home, he brought the mail with him.

And my sweet Momma had sent me a package. I think she knew that I would need a pick-me-up.

(Flash back to December of this past year)

I was looking for a book. A book that I remember reading every Christmas. A book that solidified my belief in Santa Claus. Yes... it's that good.

I wanted to read it to Porter and Bridger every night and explain things like why Santa lives so long, and what happens to those who don't believe. I wanted to teach him how to speak Elvish and about the Gnuf who lives in Santa's beard.Why people get coal and how reindeer fly and what the north pole looks like.

So I started out my search. I have found many books that I read when I was little on Ebay and Amazon, and so that's where my search started, and that's where it ended. It was listed at $100. Apparently the book was a favorite for many people. Enough people to make it a bit of a collectors item (not to mention I was trying to find a book about Santa 2 weeks before Christmas).

So I decided to give up and maybe look for it again around June, maybe the price would come down. And if all else failed I would borrow the book from my sister who has the one we grew up with.
 
But today I opened up my mail and my Momma sent me this. In perfect pristine condition.

I frantically called my mother, "Where did you find it? Please tell me that it didn't cost $100!"
She assured me that it was quite a bit less than that (under $10) and that she had found it through Amazon Canada. (Canada has their own Amazon... who knew?)

Thank you Momma, you made my day.

And this next Christmas my boys will be all prepared knowing everything about Santa Claus, thanks to you.