Vacation Time! What a Way to Start off 2011!

I am taking advantage of Seth's naptime to blog about the Caribbean Cruise I recently went on. Clint was a great hubby (as always) and offered to stay home with Seth for 10 days while I went on vacation with my mom and sister. It was really fun (although I would have loved to have Clint with me) and I got to see a lot of great places. Here are some pictures below:

We sailed on the Carnival Valor.

Leaving Miami....

First day at sea. Kaylen snagged us a few chairs to "get our tan on!"

Actually more like "get our burn on! "

The Hairy Chest Contest. Why I wanted to watch this is beyond me. But it was pretty entertaining to see men humiliate themselves.

Sunset somewhere in the Caribbean....on our way to the Cayman Islands.

We dined in the Lincoln room every night. The dinner food was always AMAZING!

Every evening, our cabin steward came into our room and turned down our beds. And he always left us the cutest little animal creations.

At the Turtle Farm in Grand Cayman. They seriously just let you pick these turtles up whenever you want. I'm wondering how many of them die as the result of so many tourists handling them....sad.

That didn't stop us from picking up a few turtles though.

A view from our cabin of Honduras...Beautiful!

In Honduras, we went to a private island called Maya Key for a relaxing day at the beach.

My mom and I attempted to snorkel at the island but it wasn't great...

They also had a wild life reserve on the island with parrots, monkeys, crocodiles, etc. for us to see.

And we got an awesome traditional Honduran lunch. Those things on the top of my plate are banana chips. They were interesting...

This iguana was wandering around our table as we ate and so we threw it a few banana chips. He came over to us, licked one of the chips, and then darted straight for our table. We screamed so loud that everyone stopped and stared at us. I guess the little guy doesn't like banana chips!

I also had the opportunity to snorkel in this enclosed area of the bay while they fed some nurse sharks. Now don't get too excited. Nurse sharks aren't aggressive. But it was still pretty cool to be at arm's length from these 8 foot sharks!

Sunrise off the coast of Belize....

On the bus in Belize on our way to the Mayan Ruins of Xunantunich. We were told that people in Belize do not like to owe money to banks so they do not take out loans to build a nice home. Instead they purchase something small and then add to it over the years as they can afford it. So a lot of the homes were a mish mash of different materials and were very run down. It was a very different way of life than here in the US.

After a 2 hour bus ride, a ferry across a river, and a van ride up the hill, we arrived at Xunantunich.

The main castle.

At the top of the castle...Guatemala is in the background.

There are no railings...so it was pretty dangerous at the top. But I couldn't resist getting a picture from that view.

A view from below of what we just climbed.

While waiting for the ferry on our way back from the ruins, we saw this iguana/lizard thing. We were told that the more bright and vibrant the color of his skin was, the more attractive he was to the females. Poor guy...he must be the ugliest lizard in town...

We traveled back to a restaurant in Belize where we ate a traditional Belizean lunch. The rice and beans were SO good. And I really liked the fried plantain too. I have a thing for taking pictures of food, huh?

Sunset off as we left Belize and traveled to Cozumel...I loved how the rays of sun look like a crown above the clouds! The sunrises and sunsets on this cruise never got boring to me!

In Cozumel we relaxed at a local beach with some family.

The water was a little cold at first...

My cousin Mike, aunt Karen, my mom and I did some snorkeling. Despite this being such a crowded beach, there were actually quite a few cool fish to see. Mike and I would come up from the water for a moment to adjust our snorkel gear and go down again and these huge gray fish would just be swarming around us. Crazy!

They had a Christmas nativity scene set up. Kaylyn couldn't help herself. She had to go give Joseph a cuddle.

This was on the Lido deck of the ship where all the buffet food was. We would always meet up by this wall as a family to eat breakfast or lunch or play games. I love my uncle Brian. He is so entertaining!

A sting ray from our cabin steward...

In the Everglades in Miami after debarking from the ship.

Our tour guide on the air boat...I have to say...he didn't seem to know very much.

Eating some crocodile tail at the restaurant. It tasted like chicken!

And these last three pictures are of the crocodiles we saw while on the air boat tour of the Everglades. They are quite creepy!

I forgot about this!

I forgot to blog about this.

Earlier this year, Clint and I decided to put a puzzle together in an effort to keep from going insane while being housebound with Seth. Now, when we put a puzzle together in my family, there is a rule that you cannot look at the picture on the box while putting it together. Which means this puzzle was pretty hard to put together. I got to the point where I was dreaming of puzzle pieces because we would stare at them for hours at a time right before going to bed.

Anyway, we plugged away at this puzzle for weeks and finally started to finish it up. And this is how it looked finished. Yes...you can see that one piece is MISSING! We seriously searched and searched and searched for this last piece and couldn't find it anywhere. Either the dogs ate it, it was never in the box in the first place, or we vacummed it up.

Speaking of vacuums...we actually pulled the bag out of the vacuum and searched through all the dust in a desparate attempt to find the last piece. I decided to play a trick on Clint and yelled "I found it! I found it!" And he came running over only to see me laughing at him. A few minutes later I flipped through some of the dust and, what would you know, there was the last piece! I screamed to Clint again that I had found it! I was so excited I was shaking! So Clint told me since I found the missing piece that I should be the one to put it in and complete the puzzle. And when I went to put the piece in, I noticed that we were missing ANOTHER piece! To get back at me for tricking him earlier, he had hid another piece of the puzzle in the dust to make me THINK that I had found the final piece. All I can say is...he got me good!

Seth's First Big Boo-Boo

So, let me first start by apologizing for the "baby talk." I'm not a big fan of the word "boo boo" but that is the best way to describe Seth's unfortunate mishap this week.

I was working at my desk and he was sitting by my feet, happy as can be, just chewing on a rubber ducky. He still has a few wobbly moments when he is sitting on his own and in a flash he had teetered just enough to throw him off balance and he fell forward - right into a sharp edge of our bedframe.

I can't even begin to describe the scream that came out of this poor little dude's mouth. Above his right eye turned purple immediately. He stopped crying fairly quickly but I still felt so bad for him!

This picture was taken about 2 minutes after the "event" occurred. I was panicking and called Clint to see if I should take him to the doctor. (He was in Seattle for the week.) He told me to take a picture to see how bad it was. Poor little buddy is still quite upset as you can see in the picture.

And I have to also apologize for the poor picture quality. These pictures were taken on my cell phone and for some reason they wouldn't enlarge so I had to manually enhance them. This picture was taken the next day. He seems pretty happy considering he looks like he is wearing purple eyeshadow on his right eye.

Family Pictures

For Christmas we received some money from my wonderful grandparents to be used for a gift for the entire family. It was made very clear to us that the moo-lah could not be used to pay off a debt or an upcoming bill but needed to be spent on something that the entire family could enjoy.

I thought getting some family pictures done would be a good way to go. Granted, Seth can't necessarily enjoy the pictures the way Clint and I can...but really, the kid would be happy with a ball of used duct tape, so I don't think his opinion counts for much yet.

We had the pictures done at Fotofly. I was really impressed - it wasn't too pricey and the photographer did a great job.

Here are a few of our favorites:

The only problem with this picture is that you've got a couple of fair-skinned whities in front of a white background. So yes, Clint and I feel like Casper the friendly ghost. You can barely see us, we are so washed out! But I still like the picture overall.

I tried to spike Seth's little "faux hawk" here but it went flat. Still, I love his little grin in this picture.

Clint comments that it looks like I am going to eat Seth. I was planning on it.


Seth and his daddy. My two handsome boys!

Clint and I are actually standing on either side of this chair with our arms out...just waiting to catch Seth should he decide to take a dive off the chair. He does that sometimes.

The photographer had a laugh at my shoes. He thought they needed some attention in one of the pictures. Come on! Just because I'm a mom now doesn't mean my feet can't look good!

Clint was standing above him in this picture. I just see it in Seth's face. He's saying "Hi Dad! What's up?"

And this is his "chill" position.

What a cutie!

Ok. So this is my mom's favorite picture. I'm not really sure why. I think the way he has us positioned reminds me of a picture from the 70's or something. I don't know. Dang we are white though!

This picture is awesome! Our precious little Seth is giving us "the finger." Naughty!

This picture is kind of boring. I don't have much to say here...


But let me just say a big

THANK YOU

to my grandparents for being so generous and paying for these pictures and for a nice print to put in our home. They are the best!