Trip to CA Day 4

Friday morning we woke up in Ensenada. I exercised on the track on the upper deck and we were still cruising so we really did follow the schedule of not getting into port until around 8am. After breakfast we got off the ship and got on a shuttle to downtown to get our tour lined up. The excursions that the cruise offered were kind of lame. Not too many things that the kids could do. So I did some research and found a highly recommended zip line place. Everyone else liked the idea. I do think my kids were the most excited. They are normally too small to go (well, just Dylan is too small).

Here are James and Shannon. Robert and Sarah stayed on the ship that day. They missed out big time because it was awesome.

Me and my folks. My dad found a deal with transportation that also included a stop to La Bufadora. Why not. Aaron and I had done La Bufadora before and enjoyed it, but didn't want that to be our only thing we did in Ensenada.

This is a picture of the place. Las Canadas. Look it up if you go to Ensenada..you won't regret it. For about $20 a person you get 5 zips and 5 hanging bridges. These are awesome zip lines too....some are really long...so long that you have to do tandem to  make sure you get all the way across. Dylan had to go tandem with me on all the zips because he didn't weigh quit enough. But it was totally fine. We all really really enjoyed it. It took about an hour.

Dylan tells everyone 2 things about the cruise: the zip line and the fact that he could eat so much ice cream. 

Aaron and I did a zip line in Austin last fall. It was fun, but we enjoyed the one in Mexico a lot more and it was soooo much cheaper and way cooler.

This is La Bufadora. It is a blowhole. It is pretty fascinating.

It is a far drop.

The water comes up really high.

After that we headed back to the ship and found another towel creation. The boys each got a small guitar, I got a really pretty bowl and Aaron got a backpack with BYU on it. All these were small enough to fit in our luggage to make it back to Texas.

We ate dinner and bumble bee came through. They were promoting the new Transformers movie. The boys went and played some games and earned some transformer toys.

Trip to CA Day 3

Thursday morning we packed, ate lunch and then headed up to Long Beach to board our cruise. My parents really wanted to do a family trip with all the kids and  their families and we all (well, most of us) all thought a cruise would be the best. No one had to clean up, cook and or plan entertainment. My parents were very generous and paid for all the family cruise tickets. THANK YOU!

My brother David and his family didn't want to go on a cruise...something about international waters, so they weren't there. They lost out on a lot of fun. So, it was my mom and dad, us, brother Robert and his wife Sarah and my brother James and his wife Shannon. 

Blake is completely my son when it comes to packing for a trip. He starts plenty in advance. I told him that we didn't need to start packing until Monday, which was one day before we left. So, Monday morning I heard  them upstairs making noise, so I went to check it out. They had all their clothes laid out..starting to pack because well, it was now Monday morning. They were a little concerned because the cruise was 4 days and they each only had 3 Hawaiian shirts...or as they call them Grandpa shirts. 

Anyway, here they are once we got onto the cruise ship.

We immediately went and got ice cream....Dylan was very excited about being able to eat as much ice cream as he wanted. The ice cream and pizza place stayed open 24 hours a day. He kept track of his ice cream...he had 13 ice cream cones during the cruise. He might have had some even during breakfast.

We went to check out the ship. We were on Carnival Imagination. Very fun!

It was docked right next to the Queen Mary. I tried to tell the boys the history of the Queen Mary, but they didn't really care. They just wanted to go swimming.

We went swimming. Blake lost his tooth after he went swimming and eating ice cream cone #2. The tooth fairy did find him that night even. He was pretty excited.

The boys loved the creations the housekeepers made with towels.

We got the kids ready for bed, but they loved looking out the window as we went out of the port and headed off to Mexico.

Trip to CA Day 2

The kids might have woken up a little early. Trying to adjust to the time change is tough. So, I took the boys to the park while Grandma and Grandpa slept and Aaron worked.

After breakfast we went to the beach. The Watts family lived in Texas with us and then moved to Minnesota for about 6 months then moved about an hour from my parents. Cohen and Blake were best buddies (along with Kenny) and Robyn and I are good friends. We wanted to get together with them, but had a pretty busy schedule on our trip, so they met up with us at the beach.

We all really wanted to go to the beach--don't you love Blake's reaction?

Here are Cohen and Blake. They are the same age. They had fun playing together and I had fun catching up with Robyn. I miss her and her family so it was nice to catch up with her.

The boys went boogie boarding.

The Watts--Robyn with sons Issac and Cohen.

Aaron was our photographer so he took several....

and even captured.....

this lovely picture. Hilarious...and not. It was her own son, Cohen who doesn't have the best aim. He might have laughed a whole lot about it, although he did apologize.

We went to the same beach as last year and Grandma and Grandpa were there too, but I didn't get pictures with them. We all had fun, but then it was time to say goodbye and head to see my Grandma.

Here are the boys with their Great-Grandma. She fell and broke her hip a couple months ago and is still recovering. She is 93 years old. Doesn't she look great? She is slowing down, but she is still fully alert and has her great personality.

We are so happy that she is healing. Blake does an amazing job at praying for her every day. My kids are really good at taking silly pictures, but not always awesome at taking not silly pictures.