Cruise part two

The Norwegian Epic had fantastic entertainment. Fantastic, I tell you! We saw Blue Man group one night, which was amazingly crazy. Then we went to The Second City comedy troupe the next night, and keep in mind on a cruise this is all for free. We loved The Second City so much, we went to 3 more of their improv/sketch shows during the week. I laughed so hard my cheek spasmed.

The Epic had Nickelodeon characters and activities on board for kids, so I thought my boys might like knowing I met a very large Dora. Hola!


JB played basketball a lot at the ship's court. One day a game was put together, shirts versus skins, and JB went up against a guy who was pretty tough -- serious about basketball, fought with JB over every rebound, etc.

Then, that night or the next night, we went to the show on board called "Legends," featuring a Steven Tyler, Lady Gaga, and Elvis impersonator. Guess who was the Elvis impersonator? Mr Basketball!



He recognized JB and said, "Hey, you're the guy I fouled the hell out of!"


Besides the fun on the ship, we also had ports. The ship went to St Martin, St Thomas, and Nassau Bahamas. In St Thomas JB and I took the ferry over to St John, one of our favorite places ever.


In St Martin we took the public bus for $2 (really a minivan) and went to Caho Beach, which is right by the airport. How close? Those are my knees, there's a plane coming in over the water.




And there's the plane overhead.




Here's JB in the ocean with a sailboat behind him.


I don't think we took any pictures in Nassau, but we had a nice time. We took the bus for $1.25 instead of an expensive taxi, went to the beach again, looked around the Straw Market, things like that.

Next post -- seeing our boys again, and how on earth could they grow so much in just a week?!

Cruise!

JB and I went on a cruise last week out of Miami to the Eastern Caribbean.

It was awesome: Eat, sleep, repeat.




This was one of the chandeliers on the ship. It was a huge ship -- the Norwegian Epic, with around 4,000 passengers I think.


We only packed carry-ons and backpacks, which was much cheaper on the plane and easier getting on and off the ship -- but you may notice some repeat clothing in the pictures.


Look at that sunset!


It was the view outside our window one day at dinner.


Here we are in the cabin, where I spent such glorious dark, Air-Conditioned times reading, watching "Keeping Up with the Khardasians (we had only a few channels, ok?) and sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. You see, our 13-month-old Andrew had only slept through the night probably 6 or 7 times at that point.


Beyond JB's feet is the sink to the left, the shower behind the curtain, and the toilet to the left. Cozy!


Next post, what we did -- including a run-in with Elvis, Dora, and planes over our heads on the beach!

Max's video diary

Max found my phone, found out you can reverse the camera function so it points at you, and I found this video he made.

Enjoy a cameo by me, Benny's voice, and my sweet Andrew's face.

Notes

-Ever since our trip to the Dinosaur museum, Benny has been obsessed with dinosaurs. Oh don't worry, he still loves sports -- I spent most of last Sunday in church drawing footballs and the block U for him. But he also wants us to draw dinosaurs for him, too. I bring this all up because the other night at bedtime he said, "Momma, when you die, you see Jesus in a chair. And I will ask him to send me back to the time of the dinosaurs!"


-I think I'm sending Max mixed messages. One minute it's, "don't carry the baby around!" and the next it's, "could you bring the baby to me?" Or it's, "turn the other cheek" in regards to Benny's pokes, and the next day it's "don't let him do that to you, fight back!" Hopefully he sees through my muddled parenting.


-Andrew is such a funny, funny baby. He just hoists that chubby cankle up almost to his nose to try and get over the edge of the bathtub or onto the couch. If JB or I sit on the couch with a snack, he speed-crawls over to beg for some. He is also taking more steps on his own, and I am always reminded of a bear cub up on its two hind legs.


-Speaking of animals, why is Andrew always surprised/angry/sad about naptime and bedtime?


-Everybody's raving about Downton Abbey. Why/how did I miss the first season?? Oh yea, I'm on the radio early in the morning and have exactly 15 minutes to watch any TV. Also, I'm becoming addicted to Pinterest on my iphone and spend my spare time getting stress knots in my shoulders trying to craft and sew. Now I'm scrambling to find the time to watch the first few episodes of Downton Abbey online before it goes away from pbs.org tomorrow.


-I'm on The Browser again this afternoon on KSL. One of the times I co-hosted they had me blind taste test Coke products for the first time. Here's the video if you were dying to watch it again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1S3jtKjwcM&feature=share


-Since I'm bringing attention to myself, if you didn't see this on Facebook here it is again, aw shucks (it's the professional video they did that I talked about in this post)
http://www.ldsphilanthropies.org/byu/news-features/mary-richards-byu-graduate.html


-JB and I are going on a cruise soon. I just hope and pray the captain doesn't hit rocks and run the ship aground and leave. That's all. Oh, and I want endless shrimp.

Benny the baseball player

At church last Sunday the primary leaders took pictures of each child to start the new year. They told me when they went to take a picture of Benny, he said that he wanted to pose like a baseball player and he posed himself.




My sweetheart. My sweet, sweet boy.


He saw the picture in my email and wants me to print it out. I think it would be great to make it look like an actual baseball card. There's got to be a way online or in Photoshop to do that, right?

Working hard and looking cute

We've been back at Lowe's making stuff at their kids clinics. Andrew came along one Saturday, and liked to drive the cart.


Then he wanted to get out. As in NOW.



He wanted to help Max and Ben with those hammers.


Look at Benny's side eyes looking at Andrew -- "Keep him awayyyyyy....."


All Andrew wanted to do was put those tiny nails in his mouth. Is that too much to ask?

So sleepy

Benny is such a goofball. He wakes up before the whole house every morning. By the afternoon he can get grumpy. But at 4 years old, he doesn't nap every day. He does a quiet time where sometimes he falls asleep. Like so:



Then there's our other stubborn son, Andrew, the-baby-who-still-doesn't-want-to-fall-asleep-by-himself. After he howled and howled from his crib, JB got him out and held him on the couch. Behold:

Ahhhhhh.