Cruise

We had the most amazing opportunity to go on a cruise with Jareds family! It was my first cruise and Jared's second...so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was tons of fun!

Thursday Nov.21:
We left Rexburg at about 7:30 PM and dropped Raymie off at my parents house to stay there until we came home. It was so sad and hard to leave her. We then drove to Jared's parents house, dropped our car off and Greg drove all of us to Utah. We spent the night in a hotel close to the airport.

Friday Nov. 22:
We woke up early that morning and headed to the airport. Now let me just tell you that I absolutely HATE flying. It makes me nervous being that high in the air and if we go down...ugh. I hate it. But I ended up doing ok. We took our first flight to Dallas, Texas and had a three hour lay over there. Than we flew to Florida and spent the night in a hotel there. We pretty much got locked out of our room that night too. Haha. The dang card key wouldn't work and the door was pretty much jammed shut. We even had the security guard bring an actual key to unlock it, and that didn't work. Adam (my brother-in-law) really wanted to kick the door down. haha. It was really funny until Adam lied and said that he had medicine in there that he needed. haha. So than the workers finally took us a little more seriously. The hotel people were acting as if it wasn't even that bad of a problem. ALL of the rooms were being used...except for one that was a smoking room, which we did not want to stay in. And ALL OF OUR STUFF was locked in that room and I mean EVERYTHING! So I think Adam got so impatient to the point where when the security guard wasn't looking, he slid his card key between the door frame and the door...and broke in. hahaha. It was funny because when the security guard noticed, he said (in his Russian accent) "You need to teach me how to do that". haha so funny.

Saturday Nov.23:
We left the hotel at around noon and took the bus to our cruise ship. We were able to board at around 2pm. We boarded the ship, checked out our rooms, than went to eat. It's all just a giant buffet all the time. Non stop eating.

Monkey

Pig? Dog? not sure.

The rest of the cruise is kinda mushed together...so I'll go from there.

The dinners on the cruise were always amazing! I never had duck until the cruise and it was quite good. Some of my favorite foods were the appetizers. The desserts, however, were not my favorite. They always dressed them up as though they would be heavenly...but they never tasted that way. By the end of the cruise I just wanted a McDonalds hot fudge sunday. haha. Whenever we were hungry and it wasn't time until dinner yet, we would always go get a crescent roll sandwich or a delicious slice of pizza. Ice cream cones were always available on one of the top decks...but there always seemed to be a line. It was always worth it though. We all gained a few pounds for sure.

Dinner Formal Night

The excursions were awesome. On St. Marteen we power rafted around the islands and than went snorkeling. On St. Kitts we went paddle boarding and some more snorkeling. It was all a lot of fun! While snorkeling we saw a lobster. Some of the others in our group saw an octopus and a sea turtle!

Brittany and Adam

Janell, Caleb, Cully, Greg

Power Rafting. 

After paddle boarding...I was so sore. 

The rest of the islands that we visited we pretty  much just walked around and admired everything. For Thanksgiving we ended up in Puerto Rico we got caught in the rain. It was pouring on us and we were in an area where there was literally no where to find cover...so we just went with it. haha we were all completely drenched and all the men ended up stripping their shirts off.

Jared Puerto Rico 

Puerto Rico 

Storms a cummin'

Brittany and Caleb Puerto Rico 

After the rain 

Puerto Rico

After the rain...completely wet

Puerto Rico

Our last stop was Haiti. There we all played on the beach, bathed in the warm sun, played some water volleyball...with a beach ball...and bought a lot of suveniours. Jared gave in to a lot of people. haha. We ended up buying wood cups, woulds staff...kinda like Moses' I would imagine, a few paintings, a wood bowl. yeah anyways there was a lot.

Jared and his Staff

I got to hold a monkey...that was both adorable and creepy at the same time. Monkeys are weird.

After Brittany had just put the monkey on my head and it didn't like it

Monkeys!

For one of the dinner nights we all dressed up in our clothes we had bought at the DI prior to the cruise. We all looked fantastic if I do say so myself.

We rented out the wave rider on the ship and surfed and boogie boarded for two nights. That was a lot of fun and we found out that I do weird things with my hands when I am concentrating....

We participated in many activities on the ship. We played volleyball, soccer, and dodgeball and competed against others on the ship. Our family one a few and even got super awesome medals for it. haha. I suck at all of those sports so I decided to do the rock climbing competition....I won, because I'm awesome. Hahaha....nope. I was the only girl...so technically I didn't really win, but I won out of all the other girls. Haha at least I didn't get last out of the boys and girls.

We spent a lot of time in the hot tub.

We went dancing two nights of the week and I wish I would have gone more. When I say "we", I really  mean me, Brittany, Adam, Shayne, and Jenny. Jared doesn't like to participate in that kind of thing....makes me sad. But it was pretty funny.

Jared did some gambling. Haha it was fun to watch him. He is so stingy with money that he would out $5 down and than win....leave for a couple of hours and than do it again. He ended up on top.

We had a lot of fun! I really missed Raymie, but it was really enjoyable and so worth it.

Raymie 16 Months

I feel like I post about Raymie a lot...and I'm not sorry about it.
Raymie is 16 months old...it's weird that in 2 months she will be old enough to go to nursery...and that can't come soon enough. She is a crazy girl. I can never get her to sit still. Today she sat in front of the TV and watched Lelo and Stitch for 20 minutes while I cooked dinner...it was a shocker. She never ever ever does that! She is always at my legs trying to climb up me to see what I am doing. She loves to help me cook and she knows that the stove and oven mean "hot". haha she says it every time I open the oven. She loves to put the oven mitts on and help stir the food.

Eating BBQ Sauce out of the lid...she liked it...

Loves oven mitts

I love how they go all the way up to her shoulder

BBQ Sauce

Helping Grandma and Grandpa with the leaves

Raymie now has 11 teeth. Two top molars are still making their way in and her bottom right molar is trying to come in as well. She is honestly a champ about it though. She has her good and bad days of course, but overall, I didn't even know they were coming in until I was playing with her and saw some of them poking through.

Teeth

Love this cute girl

Raymie loves her stuffed animals. She loves her pink piggy...we call him Mr. Pig. We try to keep it real formal around here. haha. She also loves her two dolls...that do not have names...but they are pink and purple little stuffed dolls. She loves to play with balls and read books too. She will sit and flip through a book all day if I weren't so worried she would accidentally rip it. She also loves to be outside.

"Reading"

That's not a hat...

It's a face mask.

Playing with the balls while dad plays basketball at church

Notice she is just a blur...never stops moving

Raymie and Mr. Pig

She loves her daddy

Raymie is a smart girl. We really have to start watching what we do and say...not that we ever do or say anything horrible... She knows where her nose, eyes, teeth, ears, belly, and toes are.

Combing her hair

Putting makeup on mom

Raymie doesn't like it when we change her...still. We do it at least 6 times a day...she really needs to get over it. She doesn't like bugs. She doesn't like animals...when they get close to her...she's her mothers daughter. haha. She also still has a hard time with baths (no wonder she was a kicker in the womb...she wanted out of there asap).
Raymie loves to feed herself. She loves hotdogs, bread, cheese, applesauce, cereal, Gold fish crackers, graham crackers, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, bananas and peaches. She isn't much of a meat lover...I'm surprised when she does eat it.
We found out last week why Raymie gets really red and sometimes hives on her skin when you touch her bare skin. Raymie has a condition called Dermatographia, also known as "skin writing". When people who have dermatographia lightly scratch their skin, the scratches redden into a raised wheal similar to hives. These marks usually last 30minutes to an hour. Symptoms include: raised red lines, swelling, inflammation, hive-like welts and itching. We thought she was allergic to something at first...but we kinda narrowed it down to this. She doesn't get it often and when it does happen its gone within an hour. The doctor told us she will probably have it for the rest of her life. He said he has never seen it in children (it usually occurs in teenagers). We are hoping it will just go away because it came on so suddenly. We figure that babies often have sensitive skin anyways...and I didn't pass down the best genes either (I had super sensitive/allergic skin when I was little). So we will see how it all plays out.

Dermatographia

We think it is from her snack cup she has to reach her hands in to

Halloween

Our library here in Rexburg held a trick or treating thing inside the library. So that was the first thing we did on Halloween. Our plan was to be Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook. Jared didn't end up dressing up because he didn't have time by the time he was done with school. Darn. We will get him next year. But Raymie ended up being a fairy instead of actual Tinker Bell. I was Peter Pan.

Raymie the Fairy 

Fairy at the library

Library trick or treat

One of Raymie's friends Aria

Peter Pan and Fairy 

Peter Pan and Tink..you have to say it with a British accent or it's not fun to say

I was going for the Peter Pan chin up in the air stance. 

I decided that Halloween is just kind of uneventful unless you  have a child that actually understands the concept of Halloween. Don't get me wrong, it was fun to dress up and dress up Raymie, but she was done with that costume after the first trick or treating session and to be honest, so was I. haha. I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday. I love the costumes and the decorations. But I hate scary things and don't love trick or treating. I'll do the trick or treating...but only for the candy...and my child. Fun

Fact of the Halloween night: I found out that Raymie really really really loves candy especially suckers.