January 2024

 January was an eventful month for us.  Not only did we have a blast on our cruise to Baja California, but we also enjoyed spending time with family down in St. George and more.  We started the month and year off with Emily's Youth Council Swearing In Ceremony.

Emily is part of the Hyrum City Youth Council.  To make the Council Membership official. each member takes an oath and is sworn in by the Mayor.  Participation in the Hyrum City Youth Council should be a very good experience for Emily.  She loves being involved in the community and helping where she can.

The Youth Council consists of about 35 youth members and 4 adult advisors.  They put on and support a variety of activities in the city like the Easter Egg Hunt, the 4th of July activities, the Candy Cabin, the Christmas celebrations, and much more.  This is a great group of kids too! I am excited for all that is in store for Emily while she is on the Youth Council.

After our cruise, we stayed in St. George for a couple days so we could attend Chelsie's Wedding!  It was perfect timing because we got off the cruise on January 19 and her wedding was on January 20.  

It was amazing to be able to attend the temple sealing with them in the newly opened St. George Temple.  It has been probably four years since the temple closed for remodeling.  It is all new and different inside but still wonderful. Chelsie's husband Paul seems like a really great guy.  This was the first time I had ever met him.  We wish them all the best!

That night was the reception at the Barn in Washington.

All of the cousins had a great time hanging out together at the reception.  Brooklyn and Fynlee especially had a ball dancing together to the music.  They were busting moves all over the dance floor and didn't want to stop.  Congratulations Chelsie and Paul!!

The end of January was a momentous time for Emily!  Russell took her to the Driver's License Division so she could test for her Driver Learner's Permit!  She was able to pass the test on the first try and received her Permit.  Look out world we have a new driver!

I don't know how to teach anyone to drive so Russell will have to take on that responsibility.  How can she already be old enough to learn how to drive?  We are not that old.

Finally, Charlotte started her final semester of the Let's Play Music program.

This semester she will continue to learn more about the piano and music composition.  For her final recital in April, she will perform a piece she composes herself.  We are looking forward to that.  

Cruise Time: Day 5: Disembark in Long Beach

Sadly when we woke up the next morning we were back in Long Beach, CA.  Our cruise was over... 

To make the most of our last breakfast on the boat, we went to the best breakfast place that served breakfast burritos, The Blue Iguana Cantina.  These breakfast burritos were so good, probably the best I have eaten. We each got one because we knew it would fill us up for a while.  This place also served great tacos during the day.  Some of our other favorite places to eat were The Big Chicken that served yummy chicken fingers and french fries.  I probably ate here once a day.  We also loved the hamburger place, Guy's Burger Joint.  There were so many good hamburgers at this place! Colby ate there everyday.  The best burger, I thought, was the Ringer.  This was made with fried onion rings and BBQ sauce and it was so good!  We were not too impressed with the Buffet on the cruise so we didn't eat there very often except for breakfast.  We did get our fill of ice cream and french fries though so that was good.

Anyway, back to the last day.  We ate breakfast and got ready to leave.  We sadly packed up our things and made our way down to the the exit.  While we waited to leave we had to stand in a long line while we pushed all of our luggage along.

You can tell we were all sad to leave but we did have a good time while we were there.  

Finally we made our way off the ship and back onto land.  It took us about a week to get out land legs back on us.  We kept swaying while we walked because we were so used to walking on the rocking ship.  The vertigo was especially bad when we would stand in the shower or anywhere that had water.  It was so weird!  

We had a great time on our cruise.  The Carnival Cruise line has not been our favorite but I think it was totally worth it in the long run.  There were things we liked and things we disliked about this cruise line but overall it was an amazing trip and we are so glad we were able to go.  Our biggest complaint about this cruise was the entertainment.  There were not any shows or game shows that were family friendly that we felt good about bringing the kids to.  This was disappointing because that is what we really liked about the Princess cruise line.  The Kids' Zone was not the greatest either.  Brooklyn and Charlotte seemed to have fun in their groups but the older kids did not like their groups at all.  In fact Emily decided to go down to Colby's group because the kids in her group were "weird" she said.  (And yeah they were.)  Colby didn't like his group because he said all they did was play video games.  Other than that we liked the cruise.

As soon as we got off the ship and back to our car, we headed for St. George to send a few more days with family before heading back home.  What a great trip!  Now when can we go again?

Cruise Time: Day 4: At Sea

Day four of our cruise was a day at sea so we got to participate in a bunch of fun activities on the ship.  The first activity of the day was towel folding.

Some of the housekeeping staff came and taught us all how to fold towels into little animals.  Each day when our rooms got cleaned we would find a new towel animal on our beds.  This was fun to see each day.  During the demonstration, the staff taught us how to fold an elephant, dog, and a monkey.  I think our elephants turned out the best.  It was kind of hard folding the towels because there were a lot of people and you needed a good sized area to fold the towels the right way.  We made it work though and the kids enjoyed learning this art.

During the night the staff must have been busy folding all the towels because when we when out on the deck that morning to get breakfast, there were folded towel animals everywhere.  There were animals on all of the lounge chairs and bar stools, all of the counter tops, and all along the edges of the pool. There were even some bigger blue and yellow towels folded to look like Minions.  We were excited to look at all of them.

I don't know when they put all of the folded towel animals out but they were not there when Emily, Russell and I went for a run that morning.  We ran around the ships track which was pretty fun except for dodging all of the people.  We had to run like 7-8 laps to get a mile and we ended up running 3 miles.  The best part was when you were running toward the back of the boat, you felt like you were going so fast because the boat was moving in the opposite direction under our feet.  When we were running toward the front of the boat in the same direction as the ship, we felt really slow because the ship was going faster than we were.  When you look at our Strava map of our running pattern, it looked really cool because it looked like we ran in a chain link pattern in the middle of the ocean.  We were running circles as the ship was moving forward so our map kept moving forward but we seemed to be staying the same.  So who knows we might not have actually ran 3 miles.  Emily and I titled our Strava workout "Running on Water."

A little later in the day, we went to the Build-A-Bear workshop activity.  We knew this would be a crowded one so we made sure to get there early.  We were still like the 20th family there even though we were early.  During the activity each of the kids got to pick a Build-A-Bear animal to stuff, dress, and give them a heart.

The process to fill the bear was interesting.  First the kids picked an animal "skin" or shell. Then they gave the shell to the workers who put it on this big gumball-like machine and stuffed it full of stuffing.  Once the animal was full of stuffing the kids moved to the next worker where the kids put in their heart and the worker "doctor" stitched the bear up.  Each of the kids then picked out a shirt for their animal and their bear was complete!  They all turned out so cute and they were the perfect souvenir for the kids.  Emily chose the white Carnival bear, Colby chose the penguin, Logan of course chose the T-Rex because it looked like a dragon, Charlotte chose the rainbow bear and named her Rainbow, and Brooklyn chose the puppy and named him Chocolate Chip. 

That afternoon, there was a kids parade throughout the ship and the kids wanted to be part of it.  The theme for the Carnival's kids area is Dr Seuss so all of the characters on the ship are Dr. Seuss characters like the Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and 2.  Because of this, the theme of the kids parade was also Dr. Seuss so each family that wanted to participate held a banner of a Dr. Seuss book as they walked.  Our family was "One Fish, Two Fish."  Colby was really enthused about carrying the banner as you can tell because he wore his sunglasses the whole time!

The parade led us to the theater room where the entertainment staff put on a fun little Seussical play for us.  They danced around, we helped Horton save the Who's by yelling "Yop!" and enjoyed the show.

Russell and Colby did not want to stay and watch the play so they took off and did their own thing.  They decided to go to the top deck and see the ice carving.  They said it was pretty amazing to watch this guy take a chunk of ice and carve it into a fish!  The guy carved it pretty quickly too; in probably less than a half hour.  Pretty impressive!

Finally it was time for the game we were waiting for all day.  The Family Scavenger Hunt!  The scavenger hunt was put on by the Kids' Zone.  Each family that wanted to participate was given a list of things they had to find or do around the ship.  To pass off each item, we had to take a selfie of us with that item. The family that could check off every task the shortest amount of time won the Big Prize!  We were going to win!  The competition was between us and about four other families.  So when the lady said "Go!" we were off.  

 

We had to do a bunch of different things like play corn hole, use the exercise equipment, eat pizza, eat ice cream, play mini golf, and take a picture of our favorite spot on the ship (the ice cream machine!).

We also had to use the glass elevator, wear sunglasses, find the Kids' Zone, the Carnival Funnel and more!  The best was when we had form a Conga line with five other people from the ship.  Russell was not scared at all to ask people for this.  We just went to the little outdoor Pub near the pool and said come on we need your help to win!  The people were more than happy to do the Conga with us because they were just having a good time a the bar.  

Outside was really foggy this day so it was hard to see anything past the ship.  Because of this, the fog horn on the ship was going off every few minutes to warn anyone out there that we were coming.  The horn was so loud!! This made it hard for Charlotte and Brooklyn because they were scared of the loud horn.  It was especially loud when we were next to the funnel and "playing" mini golf because that was where the fog horn was located.

Well we were quick!  We were running everywhere we went dragging Brooklyn and Charlotte along.  We made it back to the Kids' Zone in about 20 minutes with all of our things checked off.  When we got back to the Kids' Zone the lady in charge was a little shocked to see us.  We had to show her all of our pictures and she was impressed with how fast we had done it.  So needless to say, WE WON!!  In fact we won buy quite a bit.  The next family to come in was like 10 minutes after us.  We are #1!

The bounty of our Major Award was a bag full of Carnival swag as well as funny glasses, light sticks, and activity pages.  So okay not the best prize but still something and the bragging rights made up the difference! We are the best!

By this time it was time for dinner.  On the way to the dining area, we decided to stop for a few pictures with Thing 1 and Thing 2, Sam I Am, and the Cat in the Hat.

These pictures I actually took with my phone but I did have to do it on the sly because the photographers got mad.  So that's why no one is looking at me in the picture.  The characters were enthusiastic with the kids which was nice.

Since it was our last night on the ship, the dinner crew did a special performance during dinner.  It was awesome to watch them dance around on the tables.  They were very good and we were seated right in the middle of the show. 

The dinner was pretty good that night too.  We got to try frog legs for the first time.  They were actually not bad.  

After dinner we went to the night show called The World Rocks.  In this show there was a little parade of all of the crew members and all of the countries they were from.  There were so many international crew members from just about every country.  At the end, the kids from the Teen Zone got up and did a song.  Colby and Emily were part of the group that went up to do the song.  

For their part, they did sign language to the song "Wonderful World."  They did a great job and it was fun to watch them on stage.  For doing the performance they received a little Carnival flag.  Colby said it was not worth it.  Ha!

That night there was a big light show dance party on the upper deck to celebrate the last night on the cruise.  

Russell, Emily and Colby went out and partied it up.  They had a blast dancing and waving their light sticks around.  The other kids were tired and just wanted to go back to the room and watch a movie.  I was glad to go with them too because I had a lot of packing and repacking to do before we left in the morning.  

This had been a fun cruise and we were sad it was our last night on the ship.  We made sure to get some more ice cream before we went to bed.

Cruise Time: Day 3: Ensenada, Mexico

Day three of our cruise was spent in Ensenada , Mexico.  When we woke up in the morning, we were just pulling into the port at Ensenada.  

It was fun to watch out our window and see the ship sail into the port and watch the workers strap massive ropes from the ship to the dock to hold the ship in place.  The process was fascinating.  As we were sailing in, we noticed that all of the seagulls had changed from white to brown.  Russell mentioned that we were definitely south of the border because even the seagulls were brown.  

  

When we got off the ship, we got to take some fun pictures with the native dressed dancers.

The best was that the kids got to hold a real parrot and pose with it.  Emily liked having the bird on her head for a minute.  Once again these pictures were pirated from the cruise because we didn't want to buy them... Shh!  Hey I would have just taken my own pictures with my phone but the workers kept standing in front of my and got mad when I tried to take my phone out for a picture.  So we had to be pirates.  The pictures are pretty cool though.

Our excursion for the day was a trip to La Bufadora or the Blowhole.  La Bufadora is the second largest marine geyser in the world, capable of shooting water up to 65 feet into the air. It's located on the Punta Banda Peninsula, about 17 miles south of Ensenada. We decided to book this excursion through the cruise ship so we were guaranteed to make it there and back on time.  We boarded the bus with the other people from our cruise and drove the 17 miles or so to La Bufadora.

  

The Blowhole was really awesome to see.  If we stood close enough to the edge, we could feel the spray of the water as it shot out of the blowhole.  It was pretty cool to watch and after a while, you could tell when the big sprays were going to happen.  You could hear the rumbling in the cave and see the water levels raise and lower on the edge of the cliff sides.  You knew when the water levels lowered it was going to be a big blast.  

The geyser is formed when ocean waves force air and water into a partially submerged sea cavern. When the waves recede, the pressurized air shoots the water up into the air. 

The area was really crowded because it is a major tourist trap but we managed to get some good pictures and videos of the La Bufadora going off.  The kids thought it was worth the trip and so did we.  At one time, though, we were trying to get a picture and this Asian guy just kept backing up into Emily and pushing her out of the way with his backpack.  I told her to stand still and not let him in while we took our picture but he just kept backing up into her.  Finally we just moved out of the way and he totally took over the spot we were in.  It was so funny.  

This is a birds eye view of what the La Bufadora looks like from the other side of where we were.  We were standing near the buildings.  I also stole this picture off the Internet for our reference.

This is a picture of the opposite side of the peninsula from the La Bufadora.  I don't know what this little island is called but it was definitely eye-catching.

As we walked back to the bus, we spent some time browsing the flea market shops.  These flea market vendors are ruthless.  They see tourists coming from a mile away and can suck you into their shops like nothing.  We really had to be firm and negotiate the prices down on most of the things we purchased. 

There were some things I am sure we got taken on like these little ladybug bobble head figurines but there were some things we felt all right with the prices we paid.  We had to pay the full price for this little ladybug because Brooklyn would not let it go and the lady knew that and would not budge on the price so we had to pay or deal with the wrath of a two year old.  $3 was not worth that even though the ladybug was really only worth $1... Oh well...  We also purchased some Mexican ponchos and blankets, vanilla, a shot glass and some other little trinkets for the kids.  They each got to pick something and haggle for it.   Just before we got on the bus we saw one more vendor tent selling Mexican puppets. I had to have one because they are so cool!  We snagged one for $7 which was probably overpriced but we had talked them down from $15 so that was good.  

When we got on the bus we were still waiting for one more lady and the tour guide and the lady's friend were getting pretty nervous.  We had to leave at a certain time or the tour bus would be in trouble and the lady was nowhere to be seen.  Finally her friend ran out to go find her at the risk of being left behind herself.  As we were pulling out of the parking area we see the two ladies running toward the bus waving their arms.  The tour guide just shook her head and told them to get in.  If they had been one second later, they would have been left behind.  We made sure we were early to the bus because we did not want to be left behind.

Everyone had a good snooze on the ride back to the ship.  We also made some new friends while on the bus ride.  We met a lady named, Shauna and her 10 year old niece.  She was from Panguitch and her niece was from American Fork or somewhere like that.  Anyway they were from Utah.  They chatted with us the whole ride there and back and after that we saw them all the time on the cruise ship.  The niece and Charlotte became friends. 

Back at the port, we got to see a whole colony of sea lions on the shore next to our ship.  They were just lazily laying around without a care in the world.  When we were coming into port in the morning and as we were leaving at night, you could see groups of sea lions resting on all of the buoys with the brown seagulls as well. They were fun to watch.

From our room window on the ship we had a perfect view of this huge Ensenada, Mexico sign made out of rocks on the dock. 

That night we showed off our matching Mexican ponchos we got at the flea market.  They are actually quite warm and will be nice in the winter.  Charlotte and Emily decided to get Mexican blankets instead of a  poncho. I like the colors they chose and the blankets are warm too.  

On to day 4: a fun day at sea.

Cruise Time: Day 2: Catalina Island

When we woke up on the second day of our cruise, we were in Catalina Island.  

This was our first port and just a fun day to go sight seeing.  We quickly grabbed breakfast and got ready to head to the shuttle boats.  The shuttle boats took us from the cruise ship to the island. 

From our seats on the shuttle, we could look back and see just how massive our cruise ship was.  It definitely made you feel small.  While we were riding over to the island, someone saw a dolphin off the side of the boat.  As soon as they said "Oh look a dolphin!"  Everyone on the little boat rushed to the side to see it.  Well this rush of weight to one side of the boat really tipped the boat and we all felt the rocking.  It really felt like the boat was tipping over.  There were some screams.  And no I did not even get to see the "dolphin."

Finally we did make it safely to shore and took off walking around the island.

We did not have any plans or excursions for this day.  We really just wanted to find a little beach area and play in the water.  So first we just walked around sight seeing.  We walked around the main walkways of Avalon Bay over to the Catalina Casino.  Just passed the Casino we found a little beach that was free of people.  I really think is was a private beach of the restaurant nearby but nobody told us to leave so we just went for it.  After a while another family came and played on the beach too so we didn't feel quite as rebellious. 

It was actually really nice to have the beach to ourselves.  Russell and the kids had a blast playing in the water.  I waded in a little ways but it was way too cold for me.  I was wishing I had my wet-suit with me because that would have been much better.  Emily also only waded in to her knees but everyone else jumped right in.  The boys put on the goggles and snorkels and swam around looking for cool things under the water.  Charlotte and Brooklyn also spent the whole time looking for shells and cool rocks.  We packed a few peanut butter sandwiches and other snacks we smuggled off the boat for lunch.  While we ate, we just enjoyed being in the sunshine.  

As we walked back to the dock to get on the shuttle, we stopped at the Casino and walked through a pretty cool Scuba/Diving museum.  It was interesting to see how diving and Scuba gear has changed over the years and see some of the cool things people have found while diving.  

Before getting back on the shuttle, we also did the touristy things and browsed through all of the souvenir shops.  We bought some fun little trinkets to remember our time on Catalina Island.  One thing I did not like about Catalina Island was that the whole little town smelled so bad of Marijuana!  I finally couldn't stand it anymore and decided it was time to get back on the ship.

While in line for the shuttle we talked to this guy from our cruise.  Apparently he was a professional wrestler and had won this trophy belt.  He carried this thing everywhere he went on and off the ship.  Russell was cool enough to get a picture with him and The Belt! 

When we got back on the ship, we grabbed some ice cream, showered, and got ready for dinner.  This night was the formal dinner night so we had to look our best.

Dinner was delicious as usual.  I wish I could remember what we had but whatever it was was good.

Brooklyn's favorite part of dinner was the dessert at the end.  I thought the best dessert was the molten chocolate cake topped with ice cream but Brooklyn just liked the ice cream.  She couldn't decide which ice cream to get, Vanilla or Strawberry, so the waiter brought her one bowl of each.  So of course she had to eat them both at the same time with one spoon in each hand.  And yes, both spoons fit in her mouth at the same time.  Yum!

After dinner we were stuffed and could hardly move but we decided to get some glamour shots of us in our formal attire.

I think these pictures turned out really nicely.  However, we are too cheap to actually purchase them so we pirated them off of the display shelves by just taking pictures of them with our phones.  This is really frowned upon by the cruise ship so we had to do this very discreetly.  Don't tell...

We had a great time on Catalina Island and were excited to explore Ensenada the next day.