The Cruise!

WARNING...LOTS OF PICTURES...HOW CAN I NOT??? Monday morning, Dec. 8th we boarded the Carnival cruise ship out of San Diego. It was so exciting to get on this huge boat with restaurants, pools, water slides, our rooms, a theatre and much more. Isabella wasted no time, as we got some food, she stripped down right there on the deck and put on her swimsuit and jumped in the hot tub! By dinner time, we were all very exhausted! Some even fell asleep right at the dinner table! The next day was a fun day at sea as we sailed south to warmer weather. We spent the day by the pool, working out, walking on the track, sliding down the waterslide, eating...eating oh and more eating, making new friends (as Jaxson says, "SHE's in love with ME...") a couple of us hung out yonder in the shade...camp carnival for the kids and a few body paintings! Tuesday night was the Captains Dinner so we all got to dress up! Kids ate upstairs with the other kids and camp carnival staff, and we ate in the fancy restaurant. Little Maisy usually ended up joining us sometime during the meal...not to fond of camp carnival! There are no pictures of Matt on the fancy night because I think he was gone at the time getting Maisy! Sorry Matt:(. We always ended our nights in the theatre watching the shows, some nights better and more wake than others! Wednesday we got off the ship early and spent the day in warm Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Franzi and Sophi went horseback riding and the rest of us rented a van and drove to the beach to hang out for the day. It was beautiful, some of us layed out on the sand, others in the shaded restaurant under umbrellas, and others played in the ocean all day. Someone handed my kids some lizards to hold and then after tried to make us pay...almost took all mom's money. After the first wave attacked Grace, she decided she was done with the gross salt water and decided to hang out on the beach and get her hair braided. We built sand castles and burried the kids in the sand. A few friends from camp carnival, Nathan and Lacie were there to play with the kids too! It was a great and relaxing day! We even had our own stores come right to us ALL DAY LONG...we did find a few good finds however! We didn't get enough, becuase Jan, Mom, Jax and I decided to spend a little more time after going down the pier to shop some more, while others washed off in the shower and headed back to the ship on the ferry. After another fun day at sea, in which we discovered the sauna:)...we spent Friday in Ensenada, Mexico. Dad, Bell and Jaxson decided to stay on the ship and the rest of us walked through the city doing some sight seeing and shopping. We even found mom's paper mache' nativity she's been looking for every time we are in Mexico!! YEA! Again, just Mom, Jan and I were left to finish up the day while the rest headed back to the ship. After searching for golf balls all day, I finally convinced Jan to go to a place I knew had them and sure enough we found the last three golf balls in all of Ensenada. Jan also found a perfect little girl, reading to put in her home to remember our trip. After shopping, we decided to take a tour of the city by horse and carriage and saw the movie theatre and the fish market and then headed back to the ship. Sat. we got off the boat in the morning and all went our own way. It was a great time and it will be a long lasting memory we will have forever! A few of the highlights from the trip are: The claustrophobic rooms that were 150 sq. ft and slept 5 The food...that kept coming and coming. Especially the midnight Mexican Buffet, the chocolate cake that was saved in a napkin, the expensive but unlimited coke dates, the french fries, the 4 hour old burger sitting by the pool Jaxson couldn't resist, the hot chocolate, the black and white pudding, the crab cakes, the sushi..I could go on and on! The animal towel that mom even learned how to make! The sauna, discovered much too late. The dancing at dinner and dance contest Gracie won! I never knew Stacie and Grandma were no fun in the clubs!


Kids club available from 9am-10pm free of charge. This picture was the kids in the dance club. Grace having fun out on the floor and Jaxson sitting at the bar watching! How typical, just like their mom and dad and my mom and dad! Bella had clown day and they did face paintings!



Meeting Sophi's sister, Frazi, who flew in from Washington D.C. where she works as a Nanny! It was so fun to have her there and get to know them both better. They are both just like family and we are glad to have them be a part of our life for a year! We hope to see you again Franzi, thanks for joining us!

Celebrating Jibby's and Jess' B-days! We hardly ever get to be with family on birthday's anymore so it was fun to celebrate with them!

Most importantly, the memories with family and learning the small details about them I didn't know before...
My kids love getting to know their extended family and even snuggle with them!
Matt actually grew up to be quite responsible!
Dad doesn't like people;)...but he's ok with it!
Jess and Stacie are still in love and so loyal to one another!
Jan and I can loose track of time just talking:)
Jenny and Maisy sleep with their arms above their head, but have a complex with a part of the body I never even noticed before!!LOL
Mom will never say no when invited out...even if it is after midnight and she's already in her jammies!
Jess wants to watch a television show based on the life of Derek and his sayings!(i told him, it's already out there, called King of Queens)
Derek is quite funny! and he doesn't mind taking the kids to bed early so his wife can enjoy the night life!
Derek was really dissapointed to see how fun our night life is when he joined us on the last night and said, "I can't believe I didn't know about all this food and have missed out on the night fun all week"
Stacie STILL gets whatever she wants!;)
Grace can REALLY dance!
Jaxson realized it's true that if a girl's mean, it really means she likes you!
Bella is a good cousin...Maisy actually likes her!
Sophi and Franzi were always meant to be a part of our family!
And Mom, Jan and I are still the life of the party...ok, I already knew that part!

Trip to San Diego!

There were so many great memories and pictures, that this will be a long blog, I just can't leave anything out! It started last Saturday, December 6th at 6am we left for our cruise to Mexico. We flew to San Diego and pulled everyone out of bed really early. We decided to leave Brock at home so everyone could enjoy this week, including him. We are so blessed to have Aunt Robbin here and she came over to the house to watch him for the week! THANKS ROBBIN!! So these first pictures are us in the Wichita airport and then the Denver airport. Frontier charges to check bags so much to Derek's dissapointment, I made everyone squeeze a weeks worth of clothes into a small under 30 lb. bag and we all pulled that with a backpack on our backs throughout our vacation! We were quite the specticle everywhere we went!



When we arrived in San Diego we rented a van and met our great friends the Helmers, who used to live in Wichita. Brigette and I have always had similar hair cuts and colors and so I was excited to show off my dark hair and see if she would recognize me, to my surprise...I didn't recognize her, she too had gone dark about a week before I had! We are still soul sisters! We took our families to Ocean Beach and what a culture shock it is there! It's a tiny little surfer town with all kinds of funny and strange people! We got some great food and ate right by the ocean! we then let the kids run in the water and on the sand. It was actually a pretty nice day, although the water was cold, that didn't stop the kids from getting in the water! Jaxson and Braden even dragged what they thought was a Christmas tree (really large sea weed)
out of the ocean onto the beach! Jaxson is meant to live on the beach...it was so natural for him! Garrett left his food to come and talk to us by the water and within 2 mintues, the seagulls had attacked his food...it was pretty funny and he ran after them trying to save his food and scare away the birds! It was too late. Upon leaving, we also noticed a sign and we had been swimming in the surf only zone..opps! We had a great afternoon and all loved playing there and being back with the Helmers again! It was like we had never been apart!









My Mom, Dad, Jan, Matt, Jenny and Maisey all drove in from Utah and Idaho and picked up Stacie and Jess at the airport and met us at our timeshare where we were all staying at in San Diego. We then decided to go to a festival celebrating Christmas that brings in 300,000 people over the two days. It was about 2 miles away and took us over an hour just to drive there, we then waited in a very long line just to get a shuttle to take us to the park! It was definately worth the wait! Ok, maybe not... but had we stayed a little longer, I'm sure we wouldn't have found something great there! Here is our picture standing in line for the shuttle(we had already lost most of our enthusiasm by this point however...). Grace did get a picture with Cinderella!


Then on Sunday, we found a sacrament to attend, it was a small singles ward and others stayed back and watched the Broncos beat the Chiefs...it was not a happy day for Jaxson! Then we drove to my cousin, Afton's house to see her and her daughter Maddie and reunite Grace with Oreo, who moved out of our house when Brock was born and went to live in Cali. with Beach! It was a lot of fun, Grace and Maddie did dress ups with the dog and we took lots of pictures! Then we all went to Moonlight beach. It was as the sun was setting and getting a little cool. There were lots of bon fires with people sitting around and we just let the waves hit our feet and took some pictures.








Then we went to visit the San Diego temple grounds! It was beautiful! It was a great sabbath day! We ended the night with some good ol' In and Out Burger!






Ok, this took all morning, and we haven't even started the cruise...I'll have to finish posting later!! Just wait...it starts to get really good!

Bella sings again!

For one of my personal project goals, I have been learning a song on the piano. Isabella now knows the song by heart and LOVES to sing it with her cute little nasally voice and head flips! Love it!

All for Grandpa!

Ok, have you ever tried to take the perfect portrait of a 1 year old? My dad called up saying that on the "grandchild wall of fame" they have lining their hall....Brock's picture is a little outdated(um...ya, he was 4 months old-first and last professional picture). So today Brock and I had an agreement that we were going to take a really nice picture to send to Grandpa and then we would play with his fisher-price nativity set as a reward for good behavior! Well, first few pictures he was happy, but the shot just wansn't right...from there on out, it got worse. He wouldn't still still, he would scream and growl, jump up and slide down the couch, hide his face, cry, but finally we were done and got to play! Maybe not the "perfect" picture..but they capture his real soul! Love you Brockie!
Just getting started...

getting bored...

so not into it any more...

but...sliding down the couch is pretty fun!

please don't cry Brockie...just a few more...

few more tries...



AND...the winners...help me pick the best one for Grandpa

Like I said!

Here is cute little Bella...loves her outfit she picked out today! I am such a good mom to let her out of the house like this and let her explore her independance! Right?