Magical Kingdoms, Magical phones

I know it seems as though it has been forever since the last post here at the corner. It has. The reason for that delay is that everyone here at the house has gotten new phones, and now everyone is too preoccupied to get anything done. Alixa managed to keep her iPhone 4s for 2 years without breaking it, and rewarded herself with a new 5s. She chose the gold color, and just keeps rambling about how amazing it is to have an extra row of apps on her screen. Jarom on the other hand threw in the towel on his fight against progress. As many of you know, Jarom hasn’t ever had a smartphone. In fact, he didn’t even have text messaging enabled on his dumb phone. He claims that this was in order to save money, but deep down it was really because he was afraid that nobody would text him and he would have to face the reality of what a big loser he is. But a great guy at work offered to give him an old iPhone 4 for no charge, and he hooked himself up with a prepaid plan that only costs $25 a month, so his inner cheapskate left his behind in the past and has leapt into the world of emojis and pinterest and Instagram. Ironically, he now has unlimited texts and limited voice minutes, so he has become a prolific texter. He is like the Saul of Tarsus of text messaging.

When I last wrote to you all the crew was headed off to Orlando for a memorable week at Disneyworld. It already seems like ages ago, but it was an amazing trip. All of Jarom’s family was there, which is a lot of people. They were able to spend a day at Epcot, a day at the Magic Kingdom, another at Hollywood Studios and the last one at Animal Kingdom. Epcot and Magic Kingdom were the favorites, although the best single ride may have been the car stunt show at Hollywood Studios that came complete with a visit from Lightning McQueen. Bo was sobbing at the end because he didn’t want to leave. As anyone who has been to Disney knows, the rides are okay but the real treat is the general experience and the details. Every facet of that place is meticulously planned and designed to create a memorable experience. From the shows to the rides to the lines and the characters, it was one cool thing after another. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

After a wonderful week at Disney Jarom had to come back to Dallas for work. Alixa decided to take full advantage of still having no job and no kids in school and headed up to Delaware for another 10 days. She and the kids were rewarded with snowfall after snowfall, which they turned into fun days sledding and making all manner of snow creatures. She got to see her east coast friends that we don’t get to see nearly as often as we would like, and a few new houses that some people have recently purchased. All that new house seeing only served to ramp up her normal level of house hunting and she has been in overdrive lately trying to get Jarom to approve the purchase of a new home. As she said at dinner last night, “I just can’t see how we are going to be able to fit in our house. It just won’t work.” Oh boy.

Upon her return to Texas Alixa was greeted with the news that we would once again be heading to a new ward. This time the stake redrew the boundaries of 3 units to make 4, and we are in the entirely new ward. The first week the only callings were the bishopric. The next week there were all the presidents, followed by the complete presidencies, and now we even have teachers and piano players and the like. It has been interesting. Alixa has handled this transition much better than the last one, which was famously terrible. When the announcement came down everyone immediately came to her to see how she was holding up. Alixa is apparently known across several wards as “the girl who cries when ward boundaries get changed.” She was asked to put together a meet and greet style activity the first week and it was a big success, and has now been called to run activity days for the 9-year old girls. We will miss the folks that we left, and we will be sad that we won’t be seeing them as much as we did, but we’ll be okay. The new ward is much smaller, which has been nice. Jarom and the kids showed up about 2 minutes late last Sunday and were still able to get a seat on a pew. That never happened before.

Jenna is playing soccer, and it is going as well as you could hope for a 4-year old playing soccer. She hops and dances and skips around the field. Sometimes she kicks the ball, and sometimes she even kicks it in the right direction. Her games are pretty fun to watch, not because any of the girls can play but because they are all about 60% clueless about what they are supposed to be doing. Bo goes to all her practices and plays with Jarom, and I think he is actually better at soccer than his sister. Emmy is crawling everywhere and seems to be very interested in walking, which she’ll probably be doing soon. She can go up the stairs, but hasn’t quite mastered going down, which is dangerous, especially because she is quick and can vanish instantly. She is as smiley and happy as ever, even though she spent a good part of February with the flu and an ear infection. Alixa is playing in a rec volleyball league, which she loves. Jarom hasn’t had a chance to go watch her yet, but you better believe there will be some video as soon as he does. Way to go, new old iPhone.

Kids eating limes. Always funny.

Cruise-iversary

2014 has been a bit of a whirlwind around here, which is my excuse for not posting anything during that month. After a great Christmas season with Jarom’s parents visiting we did what any sensible person would do: we celebrated Christmas again with Alixa’s parents after they got back from Utah. Jarom couldn’t have been happier to have multiple Christmases and basically not have fund any of them because they were so grandparent dominated. And you don’t exactly have to try and sell more presents and celebrations to Lix and the kids.

 January in Frisco - Scooting and outdoor picnics

 Emmy doing her favorite things - eating and sitting around

 Supporting Daddy while he plays basketball

Speaking of celebrations, Lix has been planning her 10-year anniversary cruise for many months now, and it occupied the last week of the month, ending on February 2^nd, also known as Alixa’s birthday. I’ll get to the cruise in a minute, but first let’s look at the solution to the problem of how to adequately celebrate Alixa’s birth. She’ll be cruising around the Caribbean the week before, and then in Disneyworld the week after, and then in Delaware visiting friends and family for another 2 weeks after that. So obviously you turn the first 3 weeks of January into her birthday party. Please everyone, feel very sorry for this poor tortured soul.

Since Alixa and Jarom have been using mismatched furniture their entire married lives, Jarom felt like it might be time to finally get a bedroom set. So for Alixa’s birthday he got a bed for the new mattress they recently purchased, and got some end tables and a few dressers to go with it. Now they can finally get rid of the hand me down falling apart dresser that they got from Amanda Erickson (now Boyd) when they lived in the Enclave at BYU. It was probably worth about $12 when they got it, and they would probably have to pay someone to take it now. The new furniture looks great, and it really makes the master bedroom feel more like an adult’s.

 Jarom's dresser in the closet, and the other furniture in the bedroom. Jenna thinks she is Vanna White.

 Bo promptly turned it into a racetrack where he would run over princesses

The rest of the month was filled with an assortment of dinners, parties, pedicure trips, and other fun things. Jenna continues to do well and really love school. She is doing a pretty good job learning to read and write, and we think she will love kindergarten in the fall. It is crazy to see what a grown up little girl she is. Bo behaved during a haircut for the first time, which was an amazing surprise. He and Jenna are best buds when they aren’t annoying each other to death, and love to fight and wrestle and chase each other and pretend. Jenna also got a haircut, trimming off a whole bunch of hair. She is a great big sister for Emmy, and both she and Bo have recently started to interact and play with our littlest one a lot more. A big part of that is that Emmy is starting to play back, and can know scoot and crawl around and make more responsive noises and gestures and faces.

And back to the cruise. Lix had wanted to do some sort of fun trip for a long time and we recruited a Grandma to come and stay with the kids for a week while the happy couple sailed off. I won’t get too mushy here, but it has been a great 10 years (in July) for this couple. And they still seem to very much love each other and are generally quite happy with their life so far. It is pretty easy to be satisfied when you are married to the most loving, devoted, caring, funny, intelligent, attractive, amazing person in the world. And Jarom is lucky to have Alixa too. So to celebrate having not killed one another in their sleep for a decade, they recruited a few friends and headed down to Galveston for a 7-day Caribbean cruise.

 3 on 3 tournament team (below) and fan club (above). As you can tell by age, physical condition, and skin color the team didn't win.

The vacation started on Saturday when the babysitter and the Carters arrived. On Sunday they packed up and made the 5-hour drive down past Houston. In retrospect they probably should have left a little bit earlier or driven a little bit faster or not stopped for lunch, because they were literally the last people on the boat. As in, they stepped on the boat and the crew then took the gangway off and the boat shoved off from the dock. I can only assume that had they missed the boat we would have seen the fastest transition from “anniversary celebration” to “divorce proceedings” in history. But they made it. The first few days were at sea, filled with laying out, sleeping in, working out, taking naps, playing basketball, eating food, more laying out, reading books, and generally not being in a hurry. It was nice to be away from the kids, but it was also really nice to be away from phone and internet connections. There was lots of dressing up for dinners, and did I mention the eating? Most of the dinners consisted of multiple appetizers, sometimes multiple entrees, and often multiple desserts. The theory was that you could order whatever you wanted and just eat a few bites, but in practice not much food was getting tossed. Oh well, there will be time to burn off those calories later. It was great to spend time with our friends (Carters, Ajirogis) who we don’t ever get to see.

The cruise had 3 stops: Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. In Jamaica we hopped on a bus and drove a few hours to a place called the Blue Hole, which is about the most amazing spot in the world. There are a bunch of waterfalls, rope swings, caves, and places to jump from. We spent a few hours there climbing around the rocks and jumping off, and being amazed by the aerobatics of our guides who were fearlessly doing flips from 35+ feet up. Alixa was very brave and did every jump that was offered to her. We had a great bus driver who entertained us during the long commute, and we also picked up some phenomenal Jamaican jerk chicken for lunch.

On Grand Cayman we headed over to Stingray City for some snorkeling and stingray fondling. It was fun to drive around the island and remember the places we had been when we visited there with a 6-month old Jenna. While at stingray city Jarom tried to do some snorkeling, but got yelled at by the boat captain for straying too far away from the group. He pretended not to hear him as long as he could, but eventually the captain sent one of the workers to swim over and yell at him, so he had to come back. Lame. They also did some diamond shopping, but it turns out those things are really expensive, so it didn’t work out.

The last stop was Cozumel, where the group had nothing planned. So we wandered a little bit, found a taxi and squeezed too many people into it to go to a nearby beach where we could paddle some kayaks, rent some jet skis, and climb on some inflatable water toys. We got to barter with the locals for some cheaply made trinkets and managed to not get kidnapped or robbed.

After one more day at sea we arrived back at the Galveston harbor. Unfortunately due to a thick blanket of fog we couldn’t actually enter the harbor, so we had to sit just off shore for an extra 6 hours waiting for Mother Nature to end our vacation. It did allow us to have one last leisurely sit down breakfast, and Alixa even had the chance to finally order something from our favorite bartender Akos, who had spent all week complaining every time he passed us about how nobody in our group drank alcohol. It was supposed to be virgin, but he may have spiked it. The Carters and Ajirogis had to make flight changes and move plans around, so the delay was pretty inconvenient. It also meant that Jarom and Lix didn’t get home until almost 11 pm, which isn’t a lengthy turnaround to unpack and then repack and then try to sleep a few hours and get up at 4 am to get the kids ready and catch a 6:15 flight to Orlando for a week at Disneyworld. I’ll cover that in the next post when I have the pics.

This little pirate was so happy to see mom and dad she woke up to hang out

I guess the moral of the story is that we don’t have too much to complain about around here. 3 great, healthy kids, a nice home, a great mom, a passable dad, wonderful family that volunteer to babysit for a week with no compensation and even let you come home to a clean bathroom and a newly organized kitchen. It’s been a great first decade and hopefully there will be a few more in the future.