Cruise With Me, Baby

Ken and I had the wonderful opportunity last week to go on a Caribbean cruise with some amazing friends. My mom came and stayed with the boys and we flew to Miami and boarded the Carnival Glory.

This is the second cruise we've gone on with these friends and we were determined to once again dominate games and trivia and win all the trophies and medals we could. Sandy is proud to display the first trophy our group won.
That night Ken started things off right by being the first in the group to karaoke. He rocked some Bon Jovi. Greg and Sandy performed also and were awesome.
This is a camel from the casino. Taking this picture is about the extent of our time in the casino on board :-)
I love this picture.
This was in the room where they had all the art for the auction. You can't pass by a photo op like this!
This is from our first formal night on board. We kind of interpreted formal as 'what you might wear to church'
Our friend Emy took this picture. I love it.Each night our room staff would make little towel animals. This was my favorite.
Our first stop was Cozumel, Mexico. We went snorkeling there. It was so beautiful.

Emy had an underwater camera and got some awesome pictures of our snorkeling excursion.This was while playing cards on deck one night. It was pretty windy. Later they ended up kicking us inside because of the wind.Unfortunately because of weather, we had to miss our port in Costa Maya. We were so excited to see the ruins there, but had a great time on the boat with our friends. Our next stop was Roatan, Honduras. It was absolutely gorgeous. We did a swim and snorkel with the dolphins. It was so incredible to spend a half an hour just snorkeling with 20 dolphins. What amazing creatures. I had a huge smile plastered on my face the whole time.


Our dolphin was Mr. French. Here we are kissing him, hold the jokes please.Can't you see Ken's excitement to kiss a dolphin in his face?Here are all the guys from the cruise.


Ken and I walked around Roatan a little after our dolphin swim. We found some great photo opportunities.This sunken ship was right by our cruise ship where we stopped. So cool.


Rowing in the jungle is hard work.
Our last stop was Grand Caymen. We'd rented a sailboat and had an amazing time. The water was unreal, like someone poured blue raspberry jello in there. We snorkeled with the sting rays. I'll admit it freaked me out. I got in though and loved it, until they started feeding the sting rays. Then they got very comfortable with us and I got very uncomfortable with them swimming all over me.They were so huge. It was a really incredible experience. We also got to snorkel by a reef. It was equally beautiful and amazing.We participated in as many events on the boat as we could. Robyn won a Minute to Win It game and got over $100 in prizes! She was awesome. It was so fun.Here is our whole group with our favorite magician, Paul. He would do some crazy cool card tricks and we caught his show whenever we could. One day they had a dance class where they taught us the Thriller dance. Luckily Ken and I had packed some 80's clothes. Here is a picture I stole from my friend Sandy. It is our dinner table one night. This is after they'd already cleared away the appetizer plates. We ate SO much good food. We'd spend 2 hours every night at dinner, eating, laughing, and having a wonderful time.





This is Miami when the boat pulled in after the cruise was over. When we got off the ship we had a day in Miami with the Porters before we flew out. We found this amazing open air Cuban market and had some awesome food and walked along the beach.





Anyway, if anyone has made it this far in my long, long post I'll thank you for indulging me as I reminisce our wonderful vacation. It was beautiful, fun, and so nice to leave everything behind and just enjoy hanging out with each other and wonderful friends for a week.

Favorite Places

Abraham didn't want to go to church today. He really, really didn't want to go to church today. So, in an attempt to help him I told him that church was one of my favorite places. I told him I felt good and happy at church. He then asked what my other favorite places were, so I told him I had 3: home, church, and the temple. I told him I really loved to be at all three of those places whenever I could. We made it to church and he had a really great day and his teacher even gave him an awesome little dinosaur trinket that he was wild about. On the way home he says, "Mom church is one of my favorite places too". I told him I was glad he'd decided that. He then says, "but I have 4 favorite places, not 3. Golden Corral, home, church, and the temple." I love that kid.

"Snow" Day

It finally snowed here in North Carolina. Yes, I use the term lightly. In fact, I know you can't see the other side of our lawn, but if you could you'd know that it was grass with no snow. Luckily it all depends on perspective and my kids were THRILLED beyond belief with the slush we had.We rushed outside first thing (honestly I was worried if we didn't go out first thing it would melt before we could get out there!)

The quality of the snow didn't damper the enthusiasm though. They went "sledding"...Made a snow angel...Tried to make a snowman, even stealing what snow they could get off the van...And had a snowball(slush) fight.

After about 15 minutes, we'd done it all and we headed inside for breakfast. That afternoon we went out in the 55 degree weather in short sleeved shirts and took a walk. So, I guess we should title this post, Snow Morning, instead of Snow Day.

Half a Year Old!!!

I know it is sad when my last post was Rex's 5 month birthday and this is his 6 month post. Oops. I guess not much has been going on in our household. 6 months old finds little Rex grabbing for everything and putting it in his mouth. He loves to roll and will roll all the way across the room to get where he wants to go. He also inchworm crawls by mashing his face into the carpet and pushing himself forward with his feet. He eats like a champ and has lately been very into his biter biscuits. He still isn't the great at sitting up, it is more accurately called slumping over.

He lost his contact 3 times this past month. Grrrr. Fortunately we found it right away twice, this past Sunday it was lost for good. Hopefully losing the contact this often will not become a regular occurance. He also introduced me to the misery that is thrush. I'm not sure how he felt, but it was the most painful thing I've ever experienced.

Happy 6 months Rexy! We love you.

(Doesn't it look like he's saying a prayer??? Either that or saying "I'm done with pictures now.")

Happy 5 Months Rex!

Our sweet little boy turned 5 months old today! He's had some definate firsts this past month. He rolled over for the first time and now wants to do it all the time! He's even woken up during the night a few times because he rolled over in his sleep and was mad about it.
He also had his first and second and third ear infection! We have our fingers crossed that he got it out of his system and that we aren't in line for another set of tubes! He's tried all sorts of baby food and the only one he doesn't like is green beans. He spends a lot of time in his jumper and really loves it there.

He still really wants to be a thumb sucker and tries to get his thumb or fingers inside his mouth at every possible chance. He's also gotten quite ticklish and I love to hear him giggle!
No new updates on his eye, except he's realized he really doesn't like that patch after all. He gets upset when we put it on and then again when we take it off and he'll try to pull at it quite a bit while he's wearing it. We try to patch him as early as possible to get it over with and he seems to be less resistant first thing in the morning. We head back to Duke on the 23rd to have his vision re-evaluated. I doubt we'll have to stop patching him, but I'd really love for at least a reduction in the time he wears it.

I think as he's gotten older he's starting to look a lot more like Tyler, although he definately has some of Abraham's characteristics too (those dimples!)

We love our little Rex and are so grateful every day that he was sent to be a part of our family!

Christmas with the Carlile's

Our Christmas fun always begins on Christmas Eve. We had my sister and her family over for french dip sandwiches and present exchange (it randomly occurred that we had their name and they had ours). They gave us these awesome moustache mugs with hot chocolate and marshmallows! They are great. Then we had the opening of the pajamas. I gave up trying to make my own, I had to face reality that I suck at making pajamas.A little story reading before bed. After Santa had arrived...Tyler could have opened his Tidmouth Sheds and been done. He would have been happy to just have that and nothing else. We had to convince him to try and open everything else.Abraham on the other hand, was an old pro. He was so happy about everything and wanted to show each gift to everyone. It was really fun to watch him.The boys were thrilled that they got their own package of juice that they could drink whenever they wanted. Isn't it the simplest things in life? I love this picture because I think Tyler looks like a rock star.Abraham decided Tyler was moving too slow and needed some help.Then came the removal of toys from boxes and the exploration of new toys. Abraham really wanted this Imaginext space station. He lucked out that "Santa" found it on clearance 6 months ago!It was really fun this year to watch the boys give each other gifts. Abraham was so excited to give Tyler his Thomas books. Isn't it fun to see them just as excited about giving as receiving? My very talented mother made the boys these awesome hooded towels. Tyler couldn't wait to take a bath and try his out!Rex slept through most of the festivities of the morning. When he woke up the other boys were more than happy to open his presents for him. Biter biscuits, yum!This is what my mom made for Ken (she made them for all the men). He LOVED it and wore it around all morning. It's the Christmas mugger!Later in the day Abraham told me he was doing a project and not to look. He was working on it for quite awhile. When he was finally done and I could look, our tree had been redecorated. The picture really doesn't do it justice. He'd put almost any present he possibly could on the tree. The Justice League of America, Thomas Trains, play tools, and Imaginext characters...it was too funny.

We had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the time we were able to spend as a family. We hope that our friends and family had a happy holidays as well!