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.