January

Oh January - you were a fun filled, busy month.  The primary president was telling the kids how they do a polar bear plunge every January 1st, so I convinced the kids it was a good tradition to start.  They fall for it every year. :)  

They have the roughest life, I tell you!! After getting back from the cabin after Chritmas, the kids spent a good portion of their time becoming best friends with Noah's 'echo dot' (amazons little radios you can boss around to say or play things).  They tell her to read them stories and play them music all day.  Here they were listening to about stories with Ava's disco ball in the back ground.  Rough life!!

My lemon tree only produced a handful of lemons this year, but luckily our friends produced 100's.  I cut them up, zest them, juice them and then freeze it all.  The best lemonade ever!!

Fresh OJ.  The benefits of living in California. 

Grandma Connie's walker has come in handy many times.  I used it when I sprained my ankle and the kids use it as roller skating aides. 

Another bishop's youth fireside at our house. Adam sang the new youth theme song at this and did a fantastic job, as usual. 

Been practicing my bread making.  Making a lot of french, ciabatta and baguettes this month. 

A bat hit the windshield while driving at the cabin and when we stopped to get gas we found him in the bed of the truck.  Weird little creatures. 

Adam and I went on a cruise with 2 other couples from our ward.  It was a lot of fun.  The ship was HUGE and had some really fun water slides.  They also had a fun ropes course (you could walk out onto a plank over the water, 15 stories up). It was a little freaky because it was so windy up there. 

The boys.  Believe it or not, I didn't take very many pictures.  Blasphemy!  

We loved playing shuffleboard.  We ate A TON of food (the food was good, but not great), played lots of games, went to shows, laughed a lot, ate some more....

Our first port was in Roatan, Honduras.   I found a scuba company that came and picked us up and took us to their shop and then took us on 2 dives.  It was awesome.  We were the only ones on the boat and the dive sites were only 5 minutes from shore.  The water was pristine (still not as good as Guam, but I'm realizing that nothing will compare to there, the best diving in the world is hard to beat) and our dive master was great.  

Adam and I with a school of Jacks behind us.  My camera isn't the best.  The other 2 couples had gopros so I'm anxious to see what they got on our trip. 

We did see some cool things (lion fish, spotted sea ray, puffer fish....)  1 couple just went snorkeling because they aren't scuba certified and they even saw awesome things (giant lobster, barracuda, shrimp..) 

We came back to the shop and had lunch at a little street taco place.  One of our friends got tricked into a massage while we waited (you can see her in the blue hat). Ha!!

Went back out for another dive.

Puffer fish.

On our way back the ship our driver took us to this little place where we got to hold all sort of animals.  The monkeys were all over us, jumping from one person to the next, so it was hard to get a good picture. 

Got to hold a sloth.  I've always wanted to see a sloth, so getting to hold one was even better.  Adam, the animal hater, didn't even want to touch them. :/

This was Alex, and they really are as slow and you think.  

Baby monkey.  

Our next stop was Belize. It was a little island off of Belize, so basically a resort for Norwegian, so technically we didn't really see real Belize.  Cruising is great when you have lots of people and you don't want to worry about logistics, but I think I prefer to go somewhere and see how the locals live and experience their culture.  Cruising definitely has it's perks too though.  In Belize we pretty much just hung out at the port.  They had shops and a giant swimming pool and the beach.  We went paddle boarding and did some snorkeling. 

View from our room - pretty rainbow as we were leaving the port. 

This ship was by far the largest we've ever gone on.  It holds 4k guests and 1600 crew members.  It was seriously like a small town floating on the water. 

Next stop was Costa Maya, Mexico. 4 of us went to this water/zip line park for most of the day.  The other 2 went on a mayan ruin tour (we've done those many times, so we didn't want to do it again).  It was surprisingly really fun.  The water slides were really fast.  Some of them hurt a little (not American standards at all), but worth it.  The zip lines were really cool.  I think we did 12+ zip lines over the trees.  There was also a zip coaster (like a mini roller coaster but on a zip line) that was really fun.  

The last port was to Cozumel, Mexico.  Here 4 of us went on a 4-wheeling excursion thru Cozumel and to the beach.  This is an old Mayan ruin that had some sort of significance, but I can't remember. :)

All the while were were off having fun, my kids were getting utterly spoiled by grandma.  

My brother and his 9 month pregnant wife spoiled them rotten too.  They went hunting, sand boarding, basketball games, more hunting, coyote calling, arts and crafts, playing with cousins.......Oh man, they love it. 

Of course Ava played with the cats as much as she could. 

They got to play with the Wilson cousins a little bit too.  

We got to play for 1 day before flying back to California, so we got to see them sand sledding.  Noah is pretty coordinated and went down standing up first try.  We said it was because he knows how to slalom.  :)