This is a picture of the Oceanside beach taken off of the pier. Although my parents don't live here anymore, this is still my beach.
Monday, November 24, 2008
California Dreamin'
We are leaving tomorrow for sunny California to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. Right now I am stressing out (like I always do before we leave on a trip) and feel like I have a million things to do in the next 19 hours~ yes I am counting the hours. I hope that anyone reading this blog has a great Thanksgiving!!!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Regular Stuff
Nothing super exciting has been happening the last week or so, just a lot of regular stuff. Busy, but regular. Here we are at a UVU pre-season basketball game with Korby's dad. It was very empty which made it perfect for my boys to run around like crazy and not bug anyone.
We went up to Grandma Lee's house to help clean up all of her leaves. Shayden was a great helper~ the boys undid just about everything we tried to do. They ended up playing with grandpa instead.
Here is Tanner playing with his best friend Tanner O. The two of them together will sit and play trains for hours on end.
We went up to Grandma Lee's house to help clean up all of her leaves. Shayden was a great helper~ the boys undid just about everything we tried to do. They ended up playing with grandpa instead. 
Here is Tanner playing with his best friend Tanner O. The two of them together will sit and play trains for hours on end.
We are leaving for California next week, so I am sure we will have some much more exciting stories and pictures to post when we get back.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Autumn
We have had one of the most mild and beautiful fall's that I can remember! The kids had so much fun playing outside, watching all the leaves change color and enjoying the wonderful weather while it lasted.
We went to Gardner Village with some friends for the Witch Festival.
My dad came up to visit and we took the kids to the zoo. I love this picture because without knowing it, Jackson is making the same face as the eagle he is riding!
I am going to miss seeing this once it starts snowing! The past few months have been so wonderful~ Jackson is finally old enough to play outside with the "big kids" and they play so nicely together (for the most part)!
We have a small park at the end of our circle~ it is the perfect way to spend a nice afternoon with the boys while waiting for Shayden to get home from school.
We went to Gardner Village with some friends for the Witch Festival.
My dad came up to visit and we took the kids to the zoo. I love this picture because without knowing it, Jackson is making the same face as the eagle he is riding!
I am going to miss seeing this once it starts snowing! The past few months have been so wonderful~ Jackson is finally old enough to play outside with the "big kids" and they play so nicely together (for the most part)!
I am not quite ready for winter to be here~ but then again, if it was up to me winter would never get here and we would just go right into spring! A girl can wish....
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Finally Halloween
Okay, with all those cruise posts finally out of the way I can get back to posting the more important things~ like pictures of my kids at Halloween.
Once Tanner heard that Shayden wanted to be a vampire, Tanner didn't want to be anything but a vampire as well.
And what else would Jackson want to be besides exactly the same thing as his brother and sister?!
I dressed up as well, but didn't get a picture of myself and Korby didn't dress up at all (party pooper!) So we almost had a whole family of vampires. My mom made the awesome capes for my kids. You can't see the insides of all their capes, but it matched the bow on the top. They were awesome! Thanks mom!
At the beginning of October I asked Shayden what she wanted to be for Halloween and she told me a vampire. I told her no because I didn't want anyone to think that I had anything to do with her wanting to be a vampire as a result of the whole Twilight phenomenon. However, she kept insisting that she wanted to be that, so I made sure that she looked like a "real" vampire and not like Bella :)
Once Tanner heard that Shayden wanted to be a vampire, Tanner didn't want to be anything but a vampire as well. 
And what else would Jackson want to be besides exactly the same thing as his brother and sister?!
I dressed up as well, but didn't get a picture of myself and Korby didn't dress up at all (party pooper!) So we almost had a whole family of vampires. My mom made the awesome capes for my kids. You can't see the insides of all their capes, but it matched the bow on the top. They were awesome! Thanks mom! Monday, November 3, 2008
Day 8- St Thomas
Our last full day of the cruise was in port at St. Thomas. We rented scooters for the day to explore the island. They drive on the left hand side of the road~ it felt very strange and the fact that we were on tiny scooters, not knowing our way around made it a little more nerve racking. The girls spent the morning shopping while the guys took off on the scooters and explored. By this time the other 3 were snorkeled out and sun burned pretty bad (I was neither!) so we didn't intentionally get in the water this day.
This was the only plain building I saw the entire time~ and it stood out so much!
We were stopped at this look out and we could see off to the right a storm coming in (it is hard to see in the picture). It rained every day of our cruise, but only a slight shower for a couple of minutes and then it would pass. This one was not like the others. When I said earlier that we didn't intentionally get in the water this day, I meant that we didn't get in the ocean to swim. Not 3 minutes after we got back on our scooters from this look out point it started POURING! We were drenched within a couple of minutes~ on a twisting road, up on the hillside, on scooters, in shorts and flip flops~ not really ideal conditions to get caught in a storm. So, we had to pull off to the side of the road and wait it out. It lasted for about 10 minutes, but it was long enough to completely soak us. It was an adventure and made for some fun memories!
We had read about a local art gallery that we wanted to visit. When we got there we saw that is was just a group of small local artist shops. Not what we were expecting, but very unique and fun. They even paint their bikes there!
I wish we would have found this sign earlier in the week. Our guys could have used a little sympathy while we were shopping.
This door was was incredible! The entire thing is sea shells~ it must have taken forever to make!
One of our last stops was a beach called Meagen's Bay. We read that it was one of the Top 10 small beaches in the world. It was breath taking!
There were some little boats just sitting on the shore by an old life guard tower. The water was so clear that we were in the water up to our knees and we could see every single grain of sand on the bottom!
As we were leaving the port, this was a resort that we passed by. Doesn't that look like the perfect place to just hang out for a week?!
After eight days of vacationing and 2 days of traveling, it was perfect! We loved every minute of it~ but were very excited to come home to our wonderful children!
I am so glad that Korby was driving~ although I was a pretty annoying back seat driver (especially since I was directly behind him, holding/gripping onto him and talking in his ear the whole time!) You can't see it in the picture, but my helmet had a HUGE dent in the side of it~ luckily not from me!
This was the only plain building I saw the entire time~ and it stood out so much!
We were stopped at this look out and we could see off to the right a storm coming in (it is hard to see in the picture). It rained every day of our cruise, but only a slight shower for a couple of minutes and then it would pass. This one was not like the others. When I said earlier that we didn't intentionally get in the water this day, I meant that we didn't get in the ocean to swim. Not 3 minutes after we got back on our scooters from this look out point it started POURING! We were drenched within a couple of minutes~ on a twisting road, up on the hillside, on scooters, in shorts and flip flops~ not really ideal conditions to get caught in a storm. So, we had to pull off to the side of the road and wait it out. It lasted for about 10 minutes, but it was long enough to completely soak us. It was an adventure and made for some fun memories!
We had read about a local art gallery that we wanted to visit. When we got there we saw that is was just a group of small local artist shops. Not what we were expecting, but very unique and fun. They even paint their bikes there!
I wish we would have found this sign earlier in the week. Our guys could have used a little sympathy while we were shopping.
This door was was incredible! The entire thing is sea shells~ it must have taken forever to make!
One of our last stops was a beach called Meagen's Bay. We read that it was one of the Top 10 small beaches in the world. It was breath taking!
There were some little boats just sitting on the shore by an old life guard tower. The water was so clear that we were in the water up to our knees and we could see every single grain of sand on the bottom!
As we were leaving the port, this was a resort that we passed by. Doesn't that look like the perfect place to just hang out for a week?!
After eight days of vacationing and 2 days of traveling, it was perfect! We loved every minute of it~ but were very excited to come home to our wonderful children!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Day 7- St Marteen
St. Marteen was amazing! Our plans changed a little bit once we got off the boat. We had planned on doing a zip line tour, which included lunch and a hike. But when we got there, we learned that it was under construction and closed. So, we decided to rent a car and drive ourselves around the island.
Again, the beaches were just stunning!
While everyone else was snorkeling, this pelican hung out by me for about 20 minutes! I got to watch it fly, dive down in the water and come back up with a beak full of water and fish. It was a very large bird.
We were trying to find a beach with good snorkeling. At one stop, some guys showed us an island and for $20 per couple they would take us out there and pick us up 3 hours later. The ride out there and back were a little sketchy! The guys drove us out there on Sea-Doo's (Korby and I on one and our friends on the other Sea-Doo with the other driver). The two guys were as high as a kite! They were racing each other all the way there and on the way back as well~ and racing on 3 seated Sea-Doo's with impaired judgement made for a crazy ride for us! They were jumping each other's wakes and trying to swerve into one another, all at full speed. We were getting a couple feet of air on some of the jumps and there were a couple of times that Korby (sitting on the very back) almost fell off from bouncing so far off the seat. But we ended up with our own private beach! And I was told that the snorkeling was amazing~ Korby even got to swim with a sea turtle.
This is a picture from a cave on "our island" looking back at St Marteen. It was a fun island to explore. I found so much coral and a whole pile of conch shells. I brought one back for Shayden that was about a foot long! It is beautiful!
I started taking a photography class right before we left on vacation, and one of the accessories that our instructor talked about was a polarized filter. It is supposed to take away some of the light reflections. In this picture it is amazing to see what taking away the reflection of the sun off the water and clouds does to the color of the picture!
We ate lunch on the beach and this was the view from our table! I could really get used to this! There was a strip of shops along the beach and now I know what I want to do once Korby retires~ open up a little gift shop on the beach in the Caribbean!
At every port the ship just dominated the entire scene!
If you look close, you can see someone washing the windows on the front of the boat!
Again, the beaches were just stunning!
While everyone else was snorkeling, this pelican hung out by me for about 20 minutes! I got to watch it fly, dive down in the water and come back up with a beak full of water and fish. It was a very large bird.
We were trying to find a beach with good snorkeling. At one stop, some guys showed us an island and for $20 per couple they would take us out there and pick us up 3 hours later. The ride out there and back were a little sketchy! The guys drove us out there on Sea-Doo's (Korby and I on one and our friends on the other Sea-Doo with the other driver). The two guys were as high as a kite! They were racing each other all the way there and on the way back as well~ and racing on 3 seated Sea-Doo's with impaired judgement made for a crazy ride for us! They were jumping each other's wakes and trying to swerve into one another, all at full speed. We were getting a couple feet of air on some of the jumps and there were a couple of times that Korby (sitting on the very back) almost fell off from bouncing so far off the seat. But we ended up with our own private beach! And I was told that the snorkeling was amazing~ Korby even got to swim with a sea turtle.
This is a picture from a cave on "our island" looking back at St Marteen. It was a fun island to explore. I found so much coral and a whole pile of conch shells. I brought one back for Shayden that was about a foot long! It is beautiful!
I started taking a photography class right before we left on vacation, and one of the accessories that our instructor talked about was a polarized filter. It is supposed to take away some of the light reflections. In this picture it is amazing to see what taking away the reflection of the sun off the water and clouds does to the color of the picture!
We ate lunch on the beach and this was the view from our table! I could really get used to this! There was a strip of shops along the beach and now I know what I want to do once Korby retires~ open up a little gift shop on the beach in the Caribbean!
At every port the ship just dominated the entire scene!
We ended the day with a little bit of shopping. A lot of it was either tourist junk or very high end merchandise. But we did find a linen shop that I could have spent hours in and way too much money~ so it's a good thing that we had a time limit to get back to the ship!
It was about this point where we realized that the week was going by way too fast. I also realized that although there were moments where we thought about our kids, we really weren't missing them at all! (Is that bad parenting, or just the effects of a really great vacation?!)
Day 6- Sea Day
Our second day at sea was just as relaxing as the first. We slept in, ate, read, hung out by the pool, ate, worked out, played miniature golf, saw an ice-skating show, ate, played cards, went to see a comedian, sat in the hot tub. I carried my camera around all day and still didn't take any pictures until we got back to our room after dinner. Every day when your room gets cleaned they make an animal for you out of towels. The monkey is always the favorite~ it is hanging right over your bed and they always find a pair of your sunglasses to put on it!
Day 5- Curacao
After our crazy busy day in Aruba, we had a very nice un-scheduled day in Curacao. We spent the first half of the day just walking around the city, going to an open market, and a museum.
Curacao was so incredibly colorful! We learned that one of their first leaders/founder (again a little vague on the details) passed a law stating that there could be no white buildings~ hence every single building being painted a different color. Later it came out that he owned a major portion of stock in the island's only paint company! I almost wish someone would do that here~ outlaw beige houses! 
This building was completed in 1708! It is so beautiful and in amazing condition considering how old it is!
This picture shows the row of shops that greeted us as we got off the boat, with the freeway overpass in the background.
The architecture combined with the colors made the entire city so beautiful! This is one of Korby's favorite pictures. 
This is the back side of a floating market. All of those boats pulled up the the edge of the sidewalk and sold all kinds of fresh fish, produce, veggies and spices righ off their boat. It was nice to see what their normal market would look like instead of seeing all the tourist trash that most places sell.
On the side of one building they had painted a mural, but made it 3-dimensional. There were little squirrels, butterflies and grasshoppers all over the flowers and columns. Very unique.
This is awesome!!!
After walking around the city, we got some lunch and headed out to the beach. You had to pay to get onto the beaches and then pay to use the chairs they had, but it was so beautiful! The other 3 went snorkeling while I relaxed on beach. I finished 4 books in 10 days! It was wonderful!
The beaches were gorgeous! If you look to the far left you can see our ship in the background.
There really aren't any words to describe how amazing the beaches were! White sandy beaches, crystal clear blue water, palm trees and a good book~ perfect!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)