Birthentine's

First, I have to mention that the term "Birthentine's" was originally coined by my good friend Kali and belongs to her. She really does have a birthday that falls on Valentine's Day. I am borrowing her phrase because I am behind on blogging and combing my birthday and Valentine's posts. Sorry, Kali. I will never use your word again.

My birthday marks the end to our "birthday season" at our house. The next birthday in our family is Blake's in November. All I wanted for my birthday was to go to the library by myself and eat Cafe Rio. That wasn't too hard for Blake to pull off, but he surprised me by going above and beyond! This definitely makes up for the year when my birthday presents consisted of an oven mitt, a cookie cutter, and journal (even though I had just gotten a new journal for Christmas a few months before.) I love you, honey! And I tease him about that birthday often. Hmm...looks like I don't have any ammo now. And don't scoff at the loaf of bread. That is school lunch, homemade, honey wheat bread. Don't mock it people, I ate half the loaf by myself. Heavenly!

better enjoy the last year of my 20's!

 Yep, Cafe Rio leftovers and diet Pepsi deserve a picture. It can't get any better than this.

Now, for Valentine's Day. This was a pretty last minute decision to do something festive.

Making valentines

We made our famous sugar cookies, Brooke was excited to eat them

Thanks Pinterest for the Valentine's idea

Flowers courtesy of Blake

Brooke and I decorated

The finished product

We enjoyed a quiet dinner at home with the kiddos. And really, I love celebrating this holiday with my family.  It's so fun to see how excited Brooke got decorating and surprising daddy.

And while we're at it, we might as well throw in President's Day weekend. I love that our school district gives us the Friday before President's Day off from school as well as the Monday. My brother and his wife were visiting from Maine, so I packed up the kids and headed out to the Wasatch Front for the weekend.

We had lunch at Kneaders and  went to the aquarium

Looking through the otter peek-hole with Uncle Jared

touching sea creature

with Uncle Ben

Brooke, Porter, Aunt Katie, Uncle Ben

We made a pit stop at Ikea, oh man, how I love that store! This chalkboard/dry erase easel was too cute to pass up!

Even though I had planned on driving home Sunday morning, I wasn't expecting to leave quite so soon. Porter woke up at 3:30am and Brooke woke up shortly thereafter. After two unsuccessful attempts at putting Brooke back to bed, I finally gave up on sleep at 5:30 and loaded the kids in the car and headed for home!

A Day at Sea & Going Home

Our fourth day was a day at sea. Those are always fun because it forces you to relax. You don't have to worry about getting off the boat or planning activities that day. I loved the adult only Serenity deck--perfect place to nap, read my book, get a little hot tubbin' in, and enjoy those ocean views.

Blake and I also played some miniature golf. I won!! I never do that--I even got two holes in one!

After mini-golf, we saw some amazing dolphin action. Seriously, it was the coolest thing I have ever seen: hundreds of dolphins saw (or felt, maybe) our cruise ship approaching and you could see them clear out in the horizon heading for our ship--wanting to show off and play in the waves. The video doesn't do it justice.

As it started to get dark, we even spotted a whale clear out in the ocean. Way cool!

We enjoyed the day by eating, eating, and more eating! We went to some shows on the boat and there were audience participation game shows throughout the day and evening that were fun to watch, too. It was a good ending to a good trip.

We enjoyed a nice breakfast with friends after we woke up on the 5th day, then packed our things and said goodbye to this vacation & headed back to reality.

Day 3 of Baja Mexico Cruise

Day 3: Ensenada, Mexico

Today was honestly kind of a bust. I was not impressed at all with this port. But we tried to make the best of it anyway. We got off the boat not really sure where to go or what we wanted to do. Of course there were local companies willing to take us on tours of the island. We found one who offered us this deal 1) a tour of the island on the way to La Buffadora (or the blowhole--one of three natural ocean blowholes in the world) and 2) free lunch when we got back--all for $15 per person. Sweet, we thought, and bought our tickets. 

I'm sorry and don't mean to offend, but Mexico is dirty and gross. Trash was everywhere, people's half drunken beer cans left over on the sidewalks from the night before. On our tour, we passed vegetable crop on the side of busy highways littered with trash. Yeah, make sure you wash your veggies.Seeing this made so  very grateful that I live where I do. 

The drive to La Buffadora was 40 minutes one way, so we got a very good tour of Ensenada. The blowhole was okay. If you've seen Old Faithful in Yellowstone, I thought that gave a better show.

 The scenery here, I thought, was very pretty.

 We did some shopping at these flea markets near the blowhole. We bought Brooke a really cute Mexican shirt and pants outfit. Then headed back into the city for our free lunch--that wasn't actually free. It turned out that you had to buy a $2 drink and then got all the beans, rice, and toquitos you wanted. If you wanted a taco you had to pay for it. Plus the music at the restaraunt was so loud. We couldn't even talk over it and it was giving me a headache. Forget that! We decided we could have a great meal, one included in our cruise price, on the boat. So we did.

We were going to go to the beach after lunch, but we all had such a bad taste in our mouth of Mexico we just decided to hang out on the boat. We went to the Serenity deck that is an area just for adults: padded lawn chairs that overlook the ocean and large hot tubs to relax in. I read my book, and the couples kind of split up and did their own thing for the afternoon. We met up for dinner that night, saw a comedian after dinner, went to the live show in the theater, and stayed up late for the midnight Mexican buffet and dance party. So even though the day started kind of rough, it ended on a good note and with some yummy food!

Baja Mexico Cruise, Day 2

Day 2: Santa Catalina Island

One of the best things about the group we traveled with was that all of us were punctual. Can I tell you how nice that was? Not having to wait on anyone, setting a time and having everyone show up? I am pretty anal when it comes to time, so this was a happy little detail. 

Our first port was Santa Catalina Island off the coast of LA. At first I kind of stuck up my nose at going to this port because I thought Blake and I had already been here before. Apparently not, because as I saw the scenery, nothing looked familiar. I was getting Catalina Island confused with Coronado Island that is off the coast of San Diego (where Blake and I went almost 10 years ago). So we were happy that we were going someplace new after all. And much to our surprise, this ended up being the funnest day--and we took a ton of pictures.

First, Catalina doesn't have a dock big enough to accommodate a cruise ship, so we had to anchor in the ocean and have these tender boats ferry us back and forth. We saw tons of dolphins and seals doing this--it was awesome.

on the tender boats--it was a little chilly at 7:30am

Watching seals in the harbor

dolphins

pelicans

 Since the only access to the island is by boat, there is only one gas station on the island and gas is over $6.00 a gallon. To compensate for this, all the locals drive golf carts around the island. We even saw a FedEx golf cart. We found a golf cart rental place, got a map of the island and off we went on our adventures.

While taking pictures at this spot, I dropped our camera case down this rocky ledge and into the ocean. I would have just called it a loss, but Blake scurried down and was determined to save it.

Morgan, Colby, Blake, and Blake

Melanie, Liz, Courtney, Sylvia

We saw a small, about 3 ft long, shark swimming along the coast

There were tons of beautiful overlooks that we stopped at to take pictures

our sweet rides

We stopped at a place that was called a "botanical garden", but really it ended up being just a bunch of cacti

my skirt is wet from Blake's dip in the ocean

 Because the botanical garden turned out to be kind of a bust, we took silly pictures instead

 Then, we continued on our drive around the island.

Our last stop was to the beach

We headed back to the ship for a meal

Blake and his two ice cream cones

 Then we played on the waterslide

 A seal that swam right by the boat:

Dinner that night: lobster and prime rib

 After dinner we decided to do some Karaoke and had a blast. Blake got hit on by some cougars

 On even got a little fresh and went for a butt grab

Blake dancing with older lady friends

The boys doing their thing

The girls' turn

Blake as Johnny Cash

The whole night was really fun and I don't think I have ever laughed so hard in my life!

Good Night!