You betta Belize dat!

Continuing the Cruise saga, our second stop was in Belize City, Belize. Some of you may have heard that Belize is a poor and scary place to have a stop in and that you need to be very careful. We had heard that same thing from several people and that we should only do the excursions through the cruise and that we should...blah blah blah. We didn't. We went and booked a Cave-Tubing tour with VIV tours through shoretrips.com and we don't regret it at all.

So, when we first met our guides, I was honestly just the tiniest bit judgmental. The first one we met was Rocca. He's a black dude with yellowing eyes, dreadlocks, and baggy clothes. As we left the safety of the port with him silently leading the way I was thinking: "I hope we don't die." We jumped in the van with the other guide, Kareem, driving and began our trip. Rocca sat so he could face the back of the van and all of us and just began telling us all about Belize, the city, the people, the language, and the places we past as we made our 45 minute drive to our destination. Once he got going he seemed to open up a lot and was just super friendly and knowledgeable about everything around us. It made for an interesting drive, despite Jessica and I not being able to sit next to each other and whisper sweet nothings to each other. I had to settle for the stranger in the back.

The place we went to for the Cave Tubing is a national park where a lot of different tour companies bring their people. We were lucky enough to arrive just as it began raining a little and cooled the place down a bit. Our tubes were the Cadillacs of tubing, but for the first bit of the tour we had to carry them before they could carry us. We walked with our tubes for about 40 minutes through the jungle to get to the entrance of the cave. The trek was long, but we enjoyed talking to Rocca and Kareem about the plant life and animals around us. Kareem said he used to work in an office with a never-ending stack of paper work to do. Now his job is to take people through a 2 mile cave every day. Guess which one he likes better. I have to admit I'm a bit jealous of his current job.

Although, apparently not every tour guide has it so great. As Rocca and Kareem lazily pulled our 8 person groups down the river in the caves we were passed by a few tours on a time crunch. The cruise-booked tours are so big and are so time sensitive that the guides have to go as fast as they can. We watched a few poor guides working as hard as they could to pull 8 lazily floating tourists passed us. We enjoyed being able to listen to our guides talk about the caves, but honestly it was just interesting and on the verge of boring. Most of this trips enjoyment came after we got out of the cave. We jumped off rocks, we chewed allspice leaves, we watched people get stuck in the weeds and panic in three feet of water, we skipped rocks, and we laughed with Rocca and Kareem. And when I say we laughed with them it was because it was impossible not to laugh when Rocca laughed. It sounded like this, and this is only my second rate impression of what his laugh was.

 The video is short because I think if the laugh was looped you'd all go a little bit crazy. As I was making it Jessica gave me the evil eye.

Anyway, after the caves Kareem and Rocca took us to a little restaurant with authentic food, and although it was not iguana like we wanted, the chicken, rice and beans were really good.
On the drive back to port as Rocca was telling us about the city we passed an LDS church and simultaneously we said "Hey that's our church!" and Rocca said "Hey, that's my church!" So it turns out he is a member there in Belize and we compared primary stories with him. His favorite primary song is "Popcorn Popping". Go figure. No matter where you go in the world the church is the same right down to the primary songs.
Its hard to really adequately describe how much fun we had in  Belize, but it really was - great company, great conversation, great scenery, and great helmets. Being with our friends and making new ones with Rocca and Kareem was just a great experience and a lot of fun. "Don't stop Belizen!"

Cruise = Batrageously Bumpilicious (Part 2)

Continuing on from the first post... (if you haven't read it, check it out)

Our first port on our Cruise through the Caribbean was in Cozumel, Mexico. We decided to do something wild and adventurous so we booked a tour to drive some two person dune buggies through the jungle there.

When we first arrived the tour guides brought out all these animals and told us that we were not allowed to take pictures with them, but that we could buy some from them. Uh, huh. I'm not down with that. I thought the tour might be lame because of that initial impression, but luckily I was very wrong. Turns out that a few lame animal pictures can't spoil a bumpy ride through the jungle or a trip to a bat cave.

The dune buggies were very bumpy, but a lot of fun to ride. Jessica had a headache before we even started out, so it wasn't as great for her, but I was squealing like a fat little kid at Halloween. We got to drive a lot longer than I anticipated, but if there was one time when I would have liked some rain it was during our Cozumel trip. All the reviews talked about getting super muddy, but without rain all we got was super dusty. We had to wear hankies over our faces so we didn't just make mud in our mouths. At one point they even let us gun it and take the buggies over a little jump to try and get some good air. Way cool.

Interestingly, the best part of the trip was the secondary attraction. About midway through the xrail driving we stopped at a bat cave. You know that old Batman joke? "What did batman say when he was sitting on the toilet?" "doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, Batman!!" (to the theme song) Well, it turns out that is very accurate. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to sing "guano guano guano, Batman!" So there was this big cave creating a natural water pool. Bats hang from the top of the cave. Then they poop into the water. The guides asked if we wanted to swim. Of course we said, "Heck yes." We all jumped in and felt the exuberant rush of inhaling the wonderfully delicate sent of sulfur and bat guano. Jessica gagged. Ben flopped. Cari made funny faces. Shari almost threw up. I laughed. A lot. The people who were with us but not part of our group chose not to swim and I'm positive they are regretting that decision even now. We all paddled through the murky waters to a low overhang that led into a separate cave where only a tiny sliver of light came through. We ducked under the stalactite and entered the pitch dark cave where we could see nothing, but hear the sound of hundreds of bats overhead. It was cool and creepy all at once. Nobody felt the need to spend too much time in there. We scurried out of the pool and laughed about what the slime on us might be composed of.



After our refreshing swim we hit the xrails again and drove back to where we began. I think we all drove a little bit faster in hopes we'd be able to get back on the ship and shower a few times. I make it sound a little gross, but actually it was quite fun. That is not something that we get to do every day (thankfully), but it is fun to do once in a life time. If you go to Cozumel, I highly recommend you take the tour, and take the dip too. Just try to forget that the water smells like a neglected construction site porta-potty.

Cruise = Fantasterrifically Awesmagically Perf-rad-ect (Part 1)

Warning: The reading of this blog post (and the 4 to follow) may cause severe jealousy, dry mouth, envy, heart palpitations, dry eyes or death (by laughter). You may also experience the side effect known simply as reaching-for-wallet-to-book-my-own-awesome-cruise. If you experience any of these conditions please consult a travel agent immediately. Cruises are not right for everyone (read: small kids). This is going to be long.

So, as many of you know Jessica and I had the absolute good fortune of ditching out kids for an entire week and going on a cruise to the Caribbean with three other couples. It was a long time in the planning and it was a miracle that everything came together so perfectly to allow all of us to go at the same time. Before I get in to the events I want to give a big hearty and appreciative shout-out to all the babysitters who made it possible. Eliza, without you our kids would have been extremely lost and scared while we were having fun in the Caribbean. Thanks for not making us neglectful. You're terrific.

So on Saturday morning Jessica and I leaped from bed at 4:30 am to begin the excitement! We met Jess and Cari, and Perry and Sarah and began the drive down to Port Canaveral, FL to meet up with Ben and Shari. The drive went by surprisingly quickly after we fired Perry as navigator. The fact that nobody was asking if we were there yet probably helped as well.

The Ship: Carnival Dream
So, what did we do when we were stranded on a ship in the middle of the ocean? Whatever we wanted!! We sunbathed on the deck of ship, we ate, we read books, we slept, we ate, we showered, we ate, we ate, we talked and ate at the same time, we played Cranium, we ate, we did some Karaoke, we ate, and then we had dinner.

Funny thing about dinner: our dinner seating assignment was at 6pm. When we got there it was very crowded and we were at a long table so we couldn't all talk to each other at the same time. Brave Perry asked the Maitre'd if we could get a different table. The Maitre'd, whose name was Ante and who was from Croatia, said he'd be happy to get us a circle table at 8pm with the young crowd and was surprised to find us there at all. It was only then that we noticed that, indeed, we were the youngest people in the dining room by far. Apparently only oldies-but-goodies eat at 6pm on a cruise. So we were moved to a nice spot on the second floor of the dining area at the table waited on by Jose Luis and Johnny - both from Peru. They were awesome and kept up with all of our demands: "No, foreal, nobody at this table wants coffee or alcohol." "Yes, Cari really does want to order one of each, and yes she really does plan on eating all of them." "Yes, that really is the sound of us rubbing the tops of our glasses with our fingers." The dining room food and desserts were really good and it was fun to have so much variety. They had these delectable fruit soups as appetizers that were simply delicious. Jessica even dared to try a lot of the features, including lobster (which she describes as feeling and tasting like a glob of fat). We were all very proud of her culinary bravery.

Unfortunately the food outside of the Dining room was mostly just OK. The french toast was good, the Indian food was not bad, the burrito bar was good, but the chocolate bar they had one night was....gross. I think the "chocolate" bar was collected after the burrito bar was all eaten up, if you know what I mean. The one gift that kept on giving was the soft serve ice cream machine. I think I probably had 15 cones of ice cream or frozen yogurt during the trip. Jessica probably had 15 on the first day. And hers were no joke - perfectly formed twirls of chocolatey-vanilla deliciousness piled 6 inches high on a tiny fragile cake cone. MMMmmmm.

Some things you should know about Karaoke: I sing horribly, especially with a live band behind me. At least they were so loud I did not have to hear myself. Everyone else looked like they were having a good time imagining me dead with duct tape over my mouth. But, you know who sings worse? 4 tween girls picking random songs out of the book. When we got to Karaoke one night we were excited to see that we were the only ones in the room besides these girls. That excitement ended when we a) heard them, and b) saw they occupied the next 10 slots on the line up. Where was a Mexican kidnapping cartel that night? Jessica and the other ladies with us sang some Dixie Chicks and then we bolted. Relatively they sounded like Celine Dion (the best singer in the world).

There was a family friendly comedy show each night before dinner that we enjoyed attending. The comics were hit and miss, but usually we ended up laughing quite a bit. Since it was "family friendly" there was no swearing or sex jokes...but there was also not a whole lot of material it seemed. Random kids without parents around would sit in the front row and the comedian would try to pull something funny out of them - sometimes watching them choke for material was funny enough. The downer to this part of the cruise was Jeff "the fun dude" Shaw. He was the guy who introduced the comedian each night, told the family friendly rules, and tried to tell a few jokes. The dude was a dork. He was so unfunny that the only time we laughed was when we made fun of him after the fact. When he tried to tell people to take their crying kids out of the room during the show he made it so awkwardly uncomfortable that I'm amazed everyone didn't just leave. Also awkwardly uncomfortable: his jokes about him being like Ellen Degeneres. The truth is, they are probably a lot a like, except she is funny, happy, and likes other people.

On the ship there is this wonderful quick water slide that shoots you faster than you might think into a toilet bowl type thing at the bottom where you slide in circles until your momentum finally dies. Perry won the contest between the men for the number of times around the circle. By only letting his shoulder blades and one heal touch the slide he made it around the bowl 6 times! For a trophy he got to take home wing-shaped flesh wounds on his shoulder blades. I failed miserably at this, but I did dive in once head first on my belly and another time head first on my back - both of which were very much against the rules, but also extremely fun.

One of the other really fun things we did as a group was crash the dance club in our jammies. There was no real reason for this except that we could. We danced like we were all back in high school. It was a lot of fun and we totally owned that dance floor! By owned, I mean we flopped around like hyper fish. Who knew that Jessica and I could still move that much, that fast, that fluidly? Probably nobody. But now that we know it we are going to dance a lot more often in our living room, that is fo sho.

There were also a couple of formal nights for which Jessica looked absolutely stunning. I felt like I was some kid escorting a hot actress because I won some sort of lottery. Seriously. Have you seen that blue dress? Jessica + wavy hair + blue dress = Amaaaaaaaazazing.

One of the shows we saw was this hilarious juggler named Edge. He was very entertaining to watch and Ben and I even got to go up on stage to help him out with his Chinese yo-yo tricks. He would spin this yo-yo around and then chuck it at Ben's face where he had a kite-shaped bow that would bounce it to my kite-shaped bow that would bounce it to the girl with a giant net to catch it with. I'll admit that I was a little skerd of the thing hitting me in the face, and even though I caught it with the bow it did hit me in the nose a bit. No harm done and the show was fabulous. I even got to tell my own little joke on stage!

We saw a couple of good variety shows and did some other stuff on the ship, but I won't continue to bore you. Suffice to say: the ship itself, with the shows, the mini-golf, the hot tubs, and the giant movie screen was a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday, Penny!

Our little Penny is one year old!!!  It seems like she just came to us, but at the same time, I don't really remember what life was like without her.

We celebrated last night with the Winns, whose little boy Rhett turned one on Friday.  We had dinner and then cupcakes, which the birthday babies demolished in minutes.  When they were nice and covered in frosting and cake, they held hands and smiled and tried their best to scrape as much frosting off their hands with their teeth as possible.  Then they had a coed bath (I don't have those pictures yet) to clean up.  It was a fun night with great friends.

Some things about Penny right now:
She loves to eat bread, crackers, and Nutrigrain bars, but will eat baby food jars of fruits and vegetables and yogurt if I beg.
She loves to wrestle with her dad and brothers.
Every day when Brody gets on the bus, she waves bye-bye to the bus.
She has a 6th sense of when the stairway gate is open and will bolt to the stairs and climb up before anyone notices.
She is terrified of going back down the stairs.
She is usually happy and usually a good sleeper.
We love her so bad.

 

It wouldn't be a party without the dads trying to stuff whole cupcakes into their mouths.  Oh wait- it would still be a party.  It would just be civilized.  Right guys?

Penny Learns to walk and talk and balk

So, I understand that many of those who may read our blog have not been privileged to see sweet little Penny using her new found ability to carry herself to trouble on her own to feet! This video should remedy that. Its a little long at 4 minutes, but it starts Feb 6th and finishes yesterday. It was less than a week between her first couple steps and her walking all over the place. I hope you all enjoy!

(oh, and it was filmed using our awesome Flip HD Ultra, so you can make it bigger and see her snotty nose up close and personal!)

Best. Birthday. Ever.

I turned 28 last week.  That's kind of old, right?  27 seems so much younger than 28.  I'm not afraid of getting older, though.  I think it's fun to look back on my life and see all of the experiences and choices that have brought me to where I am today.

I am so lucky to have a good husband and good friends.  It's something that is very important to me- having people around me who I can count on and trust with anything- especially since I am so far away from family.  I have met such good people in my life who have made my life richer and more enjoyable.  On my birthday, I was reminded of how blessed I am to have people who love me.

I woke up on my birthday to balloons filled with messages, streamers all over the house, and a pan of brownies, all of which Adam had woken up at 4:30 to prepare.  Then I got to go to lunch with my friends Cari and Shalynn, which was SO FUN!!  I love adult conversation!  They're so nice.  When I got home, Adam was home from work early and had cleaned the house while I was at lunch.  I was thinking what a great birthday I was having.  Then it got better!  Adam said we were running to Walmart so we loaded the kids in the car and took off.  Then we saw Cari's van going to our house so we turned around and Adam ran to "see what was going on".  He called me inside and the biggest surprise was on my couch.  My friend Hannah, who moved away 15 months ago and who I haven't seen since was in my house!  She had flown in from Texas to surprise me.  It was SOOOOOOOO COOL!

So we spent the weekend together having fun and talking and getting pedicures.  Then on Friday, my friend Rachel from Atlanta showed up at the door and surprised me.  So many fun surprises!

Adam pretty much took over household/parenting responsibilities for the weekend so I could enjoy it.  He also put together a surprise slumber party with a bunch of my friends so Friday night he took the kids to a friend's house for the night and we had the house to ourselves.  We played dance games on the Wii, talked, ate junk, laughed, and finally fell asleep around 3:30.  It was so fun!

 Just Dance 2- Rachel was such a cute little pregnant good sport.  And Megan pretended like she didn't like it but now she secretly plays in her own living room.  =)

 Kelly made me a YUMMY strawberry cheesecake that we ate at MIDNIGHT. 

 This is my favorite picture! Sarah and Harrison snuggled together sleeping.  SO CUTE!

 Cari and April- love these girls!

Hannah, me and Rachel

So pretty much what I'm saying is that my 28th birthday ended up being the best birthday I've ever had.  I have nice friends and a nice husband and a nice family who bombarded me with nice phone calls all day.  I'm telling you- I'm blessed.

A little catching up to do...

For those of you who are devout fans of our blog this is about to be very exciting for you, because we have a load of pics to show you. For those of you who aren't devout fans you must not know us - get out!
In the last few months a lot has happened that we haven't gotten around to blogging about so I'm going to try and do some catching up; mostly with pictures, but with a few choice words as well.
Below we have our first specimen. As a Christmas season tradition Jess and I hold a white elephant gift party at our house with a bunch of friends. As in times past this years (or last years now...) was a riot. Some of the great gifts included ancient cheese balls, half eaten chocolates, ladies heals, a cheese hat, a sad Santa, and this years favorite pictured below. Unknown to Cari Winn, she gave an autographed photo to Ben Davis; the reaction was hilarious.

For some stupid reason I decided to go fishing with some guys from work in the middle of December. The boat we were on drove us 50 mph across the lake and I just about turned magically into Frosty the Snowman. And to top it off, all I caught was this one lame fish.

As always we went to Lights of the South, but this year's fun was marred by a 45 minute wait to get in to the place. "Really? You're gonna have a thousand people and two registers? Really? How bout you ask Santa for a few more registers and some brains."
On the plus side, we cheered up the World as a whole by showcasing Penny in this outfit.

Our good friends the Woodwards had us and others over for a Murder Mystery dinner. It was a lot of fun. You may not be able to tell, but my character was a highly intelligent, very attractive, absolutely funny studmuffin. Jessica's character was not. She was an old maid.

The night before Christmas we dressed up with some friends and did a nativity play with the kids. It went miraculously smoothly, and the kids may have even figured out what we were doing.

My new camera has a setting that we take auto shots 10 at a time. We took advantage with quick funny faces. All below are actual funny faces, except for Bridger's - he really looks like that.

For Christmas this year the boys got a lot of good stuff and were pretty (obligatorily) grateful for all of it for about an hour. It was fun to see their excitement opening the gifts and helping us and Penny open ours as well. I think the star of the show this year was that they both got Leapsters, which have provided some very pleasant trips shopping. For those who don't have leapsters, here is what you do. 1) buy leapsters 2) go shopping with kids 3) put kids in cart with leapsters 4) enjoy shopping without crazy kids running all over the place and asking you to buy everything they see. Its awesome.

Oh, and I got an electric shaver that has converted my face to a baby face. (assuming your baby shaves very closely)

Penny is an animal; a very, very, extremely cute animal. Oh, and she is also a little "Emo" - Rockstars are jealous, Zebra's are confused.

Jess and I got some gift cards to go out to Outback steakhouse. We took advantage of them just this last friday night. We left the house with a babysitter in charge and zoomed off to eat at 5:30. It was only 3 hours later that we were finally seated and eating!! Our names were on the list for an hour and a half! What is going on here, people? Food was good, the company was awesome. I love my wife.

After Christmas we took advantage of the half off sales to get a kit for gingerbread houses and let the boys make their own. They really enjoyed it and did pretty well at putting them together. However, I think the part that Bridger liked best was putting it in his mouth. He licked that house clean.

This is the scrunchy, squinty version of Penny. We looooove her face! (and so do you of course.)

Our boys are pretty fantastic too. They are both very smart and mostly well behaved. Brody's reading skills are amazing, and Bridger's ability to make Penny laugh is too. How did we get by without these three little people to make us so happy and crazy?

We rang in the New Year with a Wii dance party. Our rad friends, the Galans, have the game "Just Dance" - and boy, did we! It was a lot of fun, and a lot of exercise. In case any of you are confused, the picture above is actually me, not just my face on a 12 year old's body. Also, I dance just as well as you might imagine a skinny white boy would. I have a video of the girls doing the dance, but I think they would all threaten my life if I were to post it for all to see! Let's just say I never knew Jess could move like that.

We also did some karaoke in which Jess and I were able to showcase our fabulous singing voices. For those who don't know, I sound like Josh Groban (in my head) and Jessica sounds like Lady GaGa (in my head).

Bridger turned 4, as noted in the previous post. We had a little birthday for him at our house. In the backyard we played "Red light, green light" and he got to be the sign holder - hence the look of pure enjoyment below. Its the power. Bridger loves to have the power! Unfortunately for Jessica, it was too much for her. The children mobbed her.

What Bridger doesn't like is... well, pretty much everything else about his party. That kid's face looked like the below depiction 95% of the time. This particular shot is right after the no-hit, lame pinata emptied its candy at his feet. Wouldn't you be upset if a bunch of candy landed on your foot?

This year we got a little snow again, only this time it quickly turned to ice. The boys learned its a little difficult to do ice angels, but that in the excited words of Bridger: "its real ice! it tastes just like what comes out of the freezer! its really real!"

And, I will leave you with this adorable shot. Penny standing, and clapping with pigtails and shoes. Seriously, I have to hand it to Jess and I - we make really, really cute kids.