Provo

We went up to Provo the weekend of April 18 so we could celebrate Laura & Rachel's Graduation from BYU and to see Mom & Dad who would be there for the festivities. We left home first thing Friday morning because we had some appointments with Stacey in St George on the way. As soon as we finished that we took the pickup over to Costco for new tires and then we met up with Hayden & Megan & Stacey for lunch at the Habit. Then Hayden got his tire cut up pretty bad so after lunch we took his car over to Costco and got his tire replaced. We picked up the glass for my desk from Jones Paint & Glass and parked the truck at Hayden's for the weekend and finally hit the road five short hours after we started!!

The celebration dinner at Tucano's. We love that place and everyone had a great time. We got there with no time to spare on the reservation. Hayden and Megan drove up after Megan got off work so they missed the dinner.

 After dinner we headed to the house Carolyn had rented for her family and chilled for awhile. After everyone got there we all took our guesses on where we thought Emily would be going on her mission. I won by the way since I guessed the Philippines and she is going to Hong Kong in August!

 We all spent the night at Christina's. And by all I mean Coopers. The next day we had lunch all together again at Zupas. After lunch we took Mom and Dad with us and went to the Payson Temple open house. What a beautiful Temple it is. I knew it would be pretty but the details were incredible. I especially loved the stain glass inside and out.

We weren't able to get tickets but luckily they let us all in on standby which cost us maybe one extra minute. That night we all met up again and this time we went to Mexican food. IT took over an hour to get seated so we were pretty starved by the time we sat down. It was a fun night. It rained on and off the whole weekend so we went back to Christina's that night and watched some TV and chilled with a pazookie. Yummy! What an awesome weekend. We had so much fun. On the way home the four of us stopped at G & G Cooper's for dinner and a visit.

Coach Pitch and TBall

Seems like just the other day we were attending tball and coach pitch games for our own children and now it's time to watch the grand kids already. Little kids playing baseball has got to be the cutest thing ever!

Once in awhile the whole Cooper cheering section would show up to cheer one of the boys on. So cool!

 Cooper played for the Red Sox. He was adorable. Apparently he took extremely good care of his gear and was so excited to play. This was his first team ever! He did great!!

 Rees played for the Orioles or as they said oreos.  He seemed to really enjoy playing catcher but did a great job at all his positions. He was really hitting the ball like a champ by the end of the season.

 Rees' team won the championship! He got a huge trophy to keep and a trip to McDonald's with Grammy & Grandpa to celebrate with lunch. The boys did a great job. It was awesome to cheer them on.

Clark County Fair 2015

 While Chris was here we had a movie night with Ashley & Jolynn one night and we went shopping in Vegas one day but pretty much the rest of the time I had to work until it was fair time! Thursday was carnival day. Christina headed up to Ashley's earlier and I met up with them all after I got home from work.

 Dane was too young for the carnival pass I got him so Christina used it and took him on as many rides as she could.

 

I love the photo bomber in the back ground.

I totally used my kids pictures from instagram so thanks kids!

 Saturday night Ashley got Megan's sister, Emilie and her friend to babysit so I could take all the adult kids to the rodeo. There were way too many of us to slip in the side gate and watch with Mendis.

 It was a fun night! And a fun fair actually even though I am usually not that excited to go to the fair any more.

  

Too bad I am too lazy to take the tag icon off that last picture I stold!

And We're back

The day after we got back form our cruise was Easter Sunday.  We had dinner at our house with Ashley's family and Christina got there just in time too. After we ate we had the Easter egg hunt in our front yard. Now when you see the pictures keep in mind we had just gotten home and hadn't had time to mow etc so there was lots of long grass and weeds to hide eggs in!

The kids were really getting into it, even Dane caught the spirit of things and found a bunch of eggs. Awesome day. It was good to be home. We had a fun filled week ahead of us with Christina here.

Coming to an End

All we had left of our vacation was one last sea day. We spent it sleeping in and packing up and there were still alot of fun things to do on the ship.

 I watched a towel folding demo.

 I said good bye to Ben & Jerry's even though we never even ate there. Who had time?

 I wandered around and took a few pictures on the ship.

 What a view!

 I thought this was cool. They had interactive maps so you didn't have to drag a map around with you or your daily compass that told you what was going on. This showed you all that and how to get there etc. We used them alot.

Dinner was a party. 

 The crew put on a little show for us and we all applauded them for a great cruise and fabulous service.

 Our last sunset

We sat in front of these awesome ladies every night at the theater. They were so cute. They were always telling us to quit hugging. Jeff & Jolynn got to have breakfast with them on our last day. Lucky!!

  Gotta have one more peak at the room. Our home for a week.

The sea was of luggage now. We had to find ours and go through customs.

 Yup the party was over and it was time for the long flight home. We stopped at In & Out Burger on the way home and guess who we ran into...the Keel's. Thank goodness since we were missing everyone already.

Cozumel

Who knew that when we docked at Mexico we were going to be thrilled to be back in civilization so to speak. It looked so clean and modern compared to where we had been.

 We got off the ship as soon as we could and hiked over to the water taxi. Wouldn't you know we missed the first available one by 5 minutes which was a huge bummer. But we got the next one a half hour later. I had grabbed my Dramamine and was I ever glad we did. That was one rough 45 minutes. Wow. The band just kept on playing while the workers handed out barf bags and paper towels for cleanup! We found our guide, Jonathon, from Helaman Tours at our meeting spot. We loaded into his van (much nicer van finally too!!), and headed for Tulum. This was the highlight of our trip for sure. I know we were all looking forward to it the whole time and it didn't disappoint. There was a hike from the parking into the walled city with a mob of people but luckily once we got inside the wall it really thinned out.

Here we all are just outside the wall with a lookout tower right behind us.

 

 Heading on in through the tiny opening in the wall. 

Come to find out the wall was not necessarily for protection but to divide the upper class inside from the workers outside the wall. The city was patterned after a typical Hebrew city with five entrances into the city. The ocean was considered a wall here. The Temple was built on the east by the ocean.

 I discovered as Jonathon was talking to us I was getting hot and nauseous. I think honestly I had some sunstroke from the horrendous sunburn of the day before because I sure did not feel good. The ocean breezes helped when we got to the eastern side thank goodness but I was looking and feeling peak-ed.

 Here is an example of a ruin that used round stones cemented together. We know Nephites perfected cement work they probably learned from the Mayan because there wasn't any cement work back in Israel at that time. Also the dark area in the center of the floor was a tomb. They buried their dead in the center of their homes just like the Egyptians did with pyramids and such.

 This is a good overview picture.

Here we all are in front of the Temple. 

It was laid out just like Solomon's Temple with a place to wash up outside and a place for burnt offerings and a priest's home. The people don't know what they have here at all because all the signs called it a castle. At the top of the stairs there are two rooms with a cloth divider that used to hang there to divide the holiest place from the rest. Also in the frieze at the top there are three carvings. One is the highest God, the center one is the descending God (depicted by his head pointing downward) and the last carving is empty which is so obviously the Holy Ghost to us. It's so sad that you can't go into any of the buildings any more because people were peeing in them and graffiti was inside etc. People are so stupid!

 This is a little closer picture of the descending God. The closer your home was to the Temple the more important you were in their society so this was a mayor. Also there were carvings showing the city officials being put in office by the laying on of hands.

 Nasty Lizard!

 This shows the remains of the red paint hand prints on this building that symbolized divine healing.

 The Mayans were really into opposites like good and evil, light and dark. On the two corners of this building there was a face depicted with eyes open like in the above picture and closed like below.

 Also all the buildings were originally coated in blue or red stucco and now very little remains at all.

 A great view of the ocean at the edge of the city.

 This is a picture of a special honeybee hive. They have super tiny and they have no stingers! Also they work 6 days and rest for a day. How cool is that. They would most likely have been the bees to come over with the Jaradites.

 After our tour we had a yummy lunch at one of Jonathon's favorite places. It was delicious and we were starved. The chicken was especially good and they cooked it right there behind us on that big grill. The spaghetti was a little out of place we thought though ha ha. It didn't go on the tortilla very well.

 We all did a little shopping on our own on the way back to the cruise ship. That's where I got my cruise ship pandora charm. Then we had to seriously hustle to get back to the ship on time. We might have had five minutes to spare. Maybe.

 Back on our ship for our 2nd formal night of the cruise. Yup it was a little windy on the deck.

Here we are with our waiter, Milos, from Serbia. He was a great server.

Tonight's towel friend.