Beach Story

Since returning from our cruise, Danny has been requesting "a beach story" nearly every night. I don't know exactly how it started, but now he chooses to replace any songs with a beach story. His favorite scenarios are scuba diving or playing ping pong with Grandpa, neither of which he actually did at Paradise Beach in Cozumel, Mexico. However, you can see from the pictures that it was a very fun, sunny beach day worth reliving every night during "beach story" time. Water trampolines, giant slides, fresh fruit slushies, parrots (didn't get a picture though), snorkeling, kayaking, sunscreen mustaches, and lots of splashing in the water.

Key West, Florida

This quick afternoon stop on the cruise was beautiful. We just strolled the streets, window shopped, and enjoyed the sunny weather and scenery.
A few treasures we found along the way . . .

Boa Constrictor Man - so named not only because of his snake,
but also the enormity of his biceps.

It's great having a grandma who's a biologist.

The boa was cool, but Danny preferred this cool treat -
frozen key lime pie dipped in chocolate. YUM!

After aimlessy wandering we were happy to make it all the way across the island to the southern most point of the continental USA. Hawaii is farther south, but otherwise this is it. While I consider living in TX living in the south, now I can say I've been to the true "deep south" of the United States.

60th Cruise Highlights

My grandparents will be celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary this June. Last year, when I realized it was also my Grandmother's 80th birthday in January, I knew we had to do something big to celebrate. When we were all younger it was much easier to get together for reunions every couple years. Now there are many more spouses & great grandkids and we are spread even further across the country. However, with early planning and saving, 28/30 of us were able to celebrate my grandparents milestones together. We had cruised on Royal Caribbean for their 50th anniversary with 17 of us and decided it would be great to do again. Everyone flew in to Tampa and then we enjoyed a 4 night sailing aboard Grandeur of the Seas. Here are some favorite pictures, but the real highlight was having almost the entire family together to celebrate and thank Grandmother and Papa for their influence and love to each of us.

Florida Bound! Hooray for Southwest Airlines and no checked baggage fees. Boo for Danny not sleeping on the flight at all despite waking up at 5 AM.



Who knew life jackets could be so much fun! And the mandatory Muster Drill wasn't too bad thanks to Grandma, Grandpa, Leah, and Alex being so close.

This was our first cruise with a rock climbing wall and Matt certainly got his climb on. I was a cautious mama and didn't. By the end of the cruise Matt has successfully climbed every route.












We had lots of hangout time in Grandmother and Papa's rooms, on the decks, and throughout the ship.


I love these two shots of Uncle Aaron with Alex and Danny with cousin Ariana. They are all smiles. It amazes me how even when you haven't seen each other in over a year, family is still family. The bonds are reformed so quickly!

One thing that is pretty fun about cruising is that there is really something for everyone.

Ice carving for Stacey

Kisses for Papa

Pirate fun for cousins

Dancing (I only got a photo of Mom and Dad, not the wild cousin dancing)

Karaoke for Chris

Danny really had fun with the towel animals, but they had to be put away before bedtime because they were a little scary. One of the highlights of his cruise was formal dinner night. The waiter politely checked with mom and dad first.
"Would the little gentleman like some ice cream or a cookie?"
"That would be fine," I replied, picturing a child-sized scoop of ice cream and one cookie. Then the waiter showed up with this.

I've never seen such excited eyes. He knew they were all for him too. If Matt tried to take one he was quickly reprimanded, "Swiper, no swiping!" He did share a crumb with Uncle Aaron, but the rest was his. Don't worry . . . he only ate about 1 1/2 cookies total.

Congratulations on 60 years and thanks to everyone for a great time and another memory to add to the collection! We love you all!

One Stop Shopping

I have to say I'm always amazed at what can be found on a trip to Las Vegas - for good and bad. You can see the entire world in one stop shopping. You want wild animals? Got 'em!

G-Pops showing Danny the giant Koi.
Flamingos - and boys pretending to be flamingos. More huge fish.Even dinosaurs! Don't worry, Olivia survived the attack. :)You want a little culture? Some international flair perhaps? Got it!

Chinese New Year with Kaya & Olivia.Luke, Danny, and Olivia pose with Caesar. I forgot to take pictures of our Venetian gondola ride, but did get some of the volcano.
Danny found it almost as scary as the real "cano" in Costa Rica.And in case animals or foreign countries aren't really your thing, the giant piano is a winner.

It is pretty cool when you can walk from country to country without ever getting a passport and enjoy some fantastic wildlife without going on a safari. I can't say I'd highly recommend jetting off to Vegas as a family trip though - as mentioned before there are plenty of things you come across you may not want to see - but we managed to have a pretty fantastic trip anyway.
Thanks again g-pops!!

Love II

My family had a tradition growing up that we'd make Valentine Bags a week or so before Valentine's Day. Danny had fun doing it this year, and Matt was quite the artist himself. It's fun and frightening allowing Danny to practice his fine motor skills. He's still working on the appropriate amount of glue. On Valentine's Day we had fun opening the bags and seeing what Valentine's we had gotten each other.

LOVE

So I'm sure I fooled some of you into thinking this was a Valentine's blog . . .not so. :) A couple weeks ago we got to go to Las Vegas with Matt's family. One highlight was getting to see Cirque du Soleil's tribute to the Beatles - LOVE. It was phenomenol - familiar usic, incredible acrobatics, fun dancing. Dad Hong had gotten us some pretty spectacular seats up front so we could really see everything from facial expressions to rippling muscles during the rope acrobatics. AWESOME!

Wow!!

Though Danny didn't make it to the actual performance (which started at 9 PM - thanks for watching him Lance!!) Danny did enjoy some of the hype around the theatre and gave a nice show of his own.

Needless to say, all the action wore our little man out. Thanks again for a fantastic trip Jerry!!!

And by the way, if you made it through reading this whole blog . . .
ultrasound says . . .
WE'RE HAVING A GIRL!!

Bad Guy

So, when Danny was a sweet innocent baby boy, I remember imagining that he would always be so kind and angelic. Though I knew he was a boy, I thought with careful parenting I could be sure he never got obsessed with swords and guns and "Hi-ya!" kicks. I still remember, however, the first time he found a toy laser gun at his cousin's house. They don't even have a lot of toy weapons and have pretty strict rules about how to use the light sabers and stuff. But down the stairs comes Danny, shooting up a storm with the one laser gun in the house. Where did he learn that!?

Not too many weeks after that I became a little more concerned when we were eating waffles and he bit a piece into the shape of a gun. "Look - gun!" Followed by gun sounds. I explained I didn't like him shooting his waffle at the dogs. That's a conversation I never planned for.

We also try to read the picture scriptures every night before bed, but again I started to feel a little nervous about this routine when instead of requests for the stories of bravery and righteousness Danny just got excited to read about, "Sticks mommy. Bad Guys!" I've continued to try and explain that although it's generally not good to cut off arms or murder people with swords, that Ammon and Nephi were really good guys. Not sure how much of this is sinking in with my two-year-old.

Matt has continued to reassure me that none of this means our son will be the next unabomber or grow into an overly violent teen. It's just typical boy stuff. I try to reassure myself that I'm not a bad mom while continuing to teach Danny the difference between good guys and bad guys and the danger of the weapons he's so keenly drawn to.

I had to laugh the other day though when my precious, innocent, angelic two-year-old pulled out this one. I had been cleaning out my closet (the joyous swapping of regular clothes and maternity clothes) when out of the back comes this guy. "Look mom. I a bad guy."


My little thug. Can anyone relate?

Snuggling