Baptism Picture day

I twisted Alex's arm to do one last photo shoot for me before she retired because I HAD to have the same pictures for Rylee as I did the rest of my girls. She is so great and fun and talented. She agreed and so we set a day to take pics at the Draper temple. It was magical!

All the trees and flowers were in bloom and it was so pretty!

*GASP* Take my breath away!

Are you kidding me?! SO SO PRETTY!!!!!

Alex doing the work, always getting the perfect shot!

<3<3<3<3<3

New photos coming up next!
 

Day 4 at Sea & disembarking

We surprised our kids with a special Cat in the Hat Breakfast! It was decorated so cute and the food was actually my best meal on the ship!

We met thing 1 and thing 2 and took pics with them and it was fun....and kind of weird.....haha. All for the experience I guess!

The foods were very creative. 

I loved these Cat in the Had stacked pancakes!

Ice sculpture of the cat. 

Then the rest of the day was more food, more shows, more fun and more ice cream.  Here is our cruise director. He really made this ship fun. We all left saying his famous tag line of "Hey yall! I said heeeeey!" Fun guy, flaming gay and loves to perform. But he was good at it! 

We took Ry to story time. 

And then someone needed a nap while dad played ball. 

Couldn't leave without a pina colada!

I was glad this kid let loose and had fun. He was running around and eating like a kid should do. He sometimes gets caught up in being too grown up. It made me happy to see him being a kid. 

That night we watched a big game from the comfort of our patio chairs on the big screen. 

We let the kids stay out late. All the big parties were the last night. So it was nice and quiet for Chad and I! In the morning no one wanted to move, but since we had a 12 hour drive ahead of us, we opted for early check out and hit the road!

Goodbye sweet ship! I hope we can do this one again soon!

The ride home, temps were much cooler out. We didn't even  have to roll windows down. I was grateful! The kids slept alot and the road really wasn't too bad! Chad may have a different opinion since he had to drive it!

 I'm so glad we did this with our kids! Yes it takes alot of extra planning and packing and effort. But it is so worth it to watch them make memories and have fun. I would do it every summer if we could!

Ensenada Day 3

We awoke to lots of fun towel critters by the pool! The minons were a fav!

We had arrived in MEXICO! So we disembarked and hopped a bus to go see La Bufadora in Ensenada. Some of us were very tired from our late nights of partying!

It really was cool to watch the blow hole explode every few minutes. God's earth is magical. 

We then shopped our way back to the bus. The poverty here is astounding. You can bet that these shop owners will do anything to make a sale. It is their livelyhood. Even send a small girl chasing you down asking, "Dolla for me?" Dolla for me?" How can you not giver her one?

The kids walked away with small trinket and chad found a sweater that he swindled the price down for. I didn't find much.. But I did enjoy fresh churros over and over again that I ate as I shopped. 

We ate some yummy tacos before we hopped back on the bus to head back. We took a detour and our bus guide was a super nice and funny lady that made it enjoyable. Here are some lavender fields that we passed. 

More cute animals on our beds. We got 2 rooms next to each other and it really worked out well to have 3 in one room and 3 in another. 

The kids snapped this cute pic of Chad and I trying to sunbathe. The sun would come out and it was nice and warm. Then it would hid behind a cloud and we would be cold. So we used every pool towel we could to cover up. It still felt lovely and relaxing!

No adults were in the pool because it was too cold, but you can bet it was full of kids! Rylee and Bri were 2 of them! And they were loving it!

We ate more food, lots of ice cream cones, went to shows, played bingo, took a nap and just enjoyed our care free lives! 
 

Catalina Island Day 2

We woke up bright and early in Catalina! The cutest little island ever. We had to ride a ferry over since the big ships can't port there. 

It's basically this little island owned by the Wrigly (gum) family. It was so fun cruising the island, shopping and finding little gems of excitement! with amazing views! 

We rented a golf cart (probably my favorite thing we did) and just cruised the island! We went all over the town within an afternoon and really enjoyed it! The look outs were beautiful!

We stumbled upon a donut shop that had giant donuts! And they were cheap and SO good. We scarfed them down, then found some pizza for lunch. 

Of course the girls loved shopping for all of the accessories. 

On the way out we found a little crevis in a rock so we climbed up to it to investigate. 

When we returned back to the ship, we were all delighted to find the towel animals. They were so cute and really made the girls excited every day. 

That afternoon, we just lounged, and enjoyed the sun. By this time, our teens had found the teen club and had made a friend gang who all hung out together and roamed the ship as they wished. I was happy they were making friends and being adventurous! We didn't see much of them. Walkie talkie helped tremendously on this trip!

Carter helped Ry across!

Chad was pumped there was a shooting tournament. They played lightning and he was the last one to win!!! It was intense and lots of people were cheering him on. He beat out a really tall guy and a couple of big black guys you could tell were athletes. He was thrilled to death! He went back another to day to play and was beat out in the last few people. 

That night we took our kids to the family comedy show. We had our fancy dinner that night so we all dressed up in our sparkly attire and laughed our bums off at the comedy show. I don't know if the younger girls appreciated it or not, but we had a good time. 

I found all our sparkly clothes at DI and I just had to get them and it was so fun to be sparkly and dressed up!

Here's our fancy dinner. It was good....not amazing, but a fun experience to have a 5 course meal. 

Pasta and steak were among the favorites. 

On the fancy night the teen club had a prom! They even voted for a prom king and queen! Well guess who won....of course Mollie. And this other kid named Jamie. We won't talk much about him...turned out to be a reallll loser. But they had fun for the time being. He even held her hand during a show. Carter even made some friends and had fun hanging out. 

Radiance Prom king and queen 

I spied the whole teen group in one of the elevators across the way. 

And at the dance party boogying up on the balcony. THIS was my favorite thing. I loved letting loose and dancing to fun songs with a fun crowd! One guy even told me he knew I was a fitness teacher or something because I had moves! HA! I didn't even care what I looked like, I was just busting a move. Most of the people are drunk and look dumb anyway, so I didn't care!

My pretty little gal. 

We were exhausted at the nights end waiting for our kids to get back to the room but it was nice that I felt like I could just let them roam and have fun and be kids.