March was a busy and exciting month. The entire First Grade did a patriotic program which I have a video clip below:
You will notice Alexis has pretty good rhythm:)
Alexis was supposed to wear read and blue. So Denali decided to wear a blue dress, black shoes with no tights and a red hat. She definitely has her own sense of style! Also, in Ms. Whitney's class, the kids took turns bringing home Mouse and you wrote in a journal of the activities you did with mouse. We took mouse to the 1st Grade program.
Paxton turned 2! We had a Toy Story family party at home.
This is Paxton eating a cupcake before I could even get them frosted:
Denali is holding the little Buzz and Woody that Grandma Bev sent.
I always make cupcakes for birthdays. So easy and still fun.
Paxton got big boy underwear, a package of Cars, Thomas and Buzz to be exact. For 3 days he wore a pair from each package, so three pairs of underwear over his diaper.
We made homemade ice cream sandwiches one night just for fun. They were really yummy and I took a picture.
And last but not least, Greg and I went on a one week cruise to Mexico with no kids. We have always wanted to go on a cruise for our 10th anniversary. Looking ahead to that, we knew we wanted another baby and you cannot cruise over 6 months pregnant nor with a baby less than 6 months old. So we started looking at cruises and booked three weeks before and just went! It happened to be Alexis' spring break, Greg was able to take off work and his parents were able to take all 3 kids. It was sooooo great! We came back planning our next one, but the next one will be with the kids.
We drove to Long Beach and had one night in a hotel before we boarded the ship the next morning. We were supposed to port at Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta. However, recent acts of violence in Mazatlan has for now canceled all ports into it. So we were going to have two days in Cabo instead. However, the first night a young guest had a medical emergency and we had to turn around to Long Beach for him to debark. I feel so bad for his family and hope everything turned out to be o.k. So we had only 2 port days, but I didn't care. I would do one of the cruises to nowhere because I just love the food, hospitality and entertainment the ship provides itself.
In Cabo, we took a small boat to an area great for snorkeling. Greg loves to snorkel and I had never done it before. I am glad that I did it, but not sure that I will again. I get claustrophobic easily and I had a hard time regulating my breathing through the snorkel. Also, looking down and seeing that I was extremely close to all of this wild sea life felt a little creepy instead of majestic. Greg had a great time and I enjoyed the experience.
In Puerto Vallarta, we had scheduled a zipline excursion from a company online. The online service had the incorrect pick-up time and so we missed our bus, had to take another cab and for a moment I had wished that we had just stuck with booking an excursion through Carnival. Turns out being late for our tour gave us our own personal excursion. And it was amazing! We drove through an interesting part of town and way up into the rainforest. All of the ziplines stretch back and forth over a river bed, it was gorgeous. The guides were super funny and made the entire trip fun. And when we got to the bottom, they had donkeys waiting to take us back up the mountain so we didn't have to hike. My donkey was so funny too. He considered it a race and no matter what I did, he kept inching forward before it was time to leave and even passed other donkeys on the way up. I might add that the trail was extremely narrow and a little steep, so my ambitious donkey made me super nervous.
Best things about the ship: For dinner every night you are scheduled for the same time and same dining room and you sit at the same table and have the same servers. (Unless you pay to eat at the even more fancy dining room or don't want to sit down and be served. There are other options.) The service is amazing and the staff often performed some sort of entertainment. We were put at a table with Rick and Meghan who also had 3 children (and one on the way) and were celebrating their 10th anniversary. They were a joy to get to know and we loved having dinner with them every night. It was funny too, because on this ginormous ship, we always ended up running into them. The best highlight of dinner for me was the dessert. They have this chocolate melting cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was too die for. I had it every single night and every single night it was just as delicious. We played miniature golf, enjoying soaking in the sun and hot tub. Took several naps. Really enjoyed the comedy entertainers and the Las Vegas style shows. Although we missed our kids like CRAZY, for one whole week they weren't driving me CRAZY:) One bummer about the trip is I got a bad cold the last couple days. By the time we got back home it was so bad that I didn't really get off of the couch for 3 days. Ugh. But we had a really wonderful time! We took lots of pictures so I put them into a slideshow.
The kids also drew a bunch of pictures and wrote notes and hung them in a collage on the wall. I have super sweet kids and am lucky to be their Mom!
We sent the kids on a treasure hunt. Some were more excited about the prize than others:)
Denali wants to be a Mom and a Pizza Maker when she grows up:)
May also took Greg to Denver for work and to Mesquite to photograph a wedding. We dog sat Sunshine for a few days. We had a successful yard sale. I enjoyed a girls day out shopping and out to eat at Olive Garden with Shanae and Julie. It was so fun and so needed at the time! My sweet friend Amberly lost her battle with cancer which I previously posted about. We attended the Elementary School's annual May Day program. Each class performs a musical number and/or dance. Greg and I were both on the committee for Scandinavian Heritage Festival. It is always the last weekend in May and I was in charge of the food and craft booths. We had about 70 vendors total and pulling that together and getting it to run smoothly was completely exhausting. But it was a really great festival and we had minimal mishaps. We ended May with the annual Dart family Memorial Day get together where we ate amazing food and decorated the family graves (in the pouring rain!)
