So let me preface this announcement by asking if you remember what one of my business goals was? Anyone? Bueller?
Yes, it was a family cruise. (I think I specifically said Disney, but realistically any cruise would suffice.) And we hoped the grandparents would tag along—I mean, what a great experience for the kids, right? And we’d all get an amazing vacation where no one has to cook or clean, we all get to relax and have fun with the kids, and hopefully escape some yucky Midwest weather.
So we forewarned the grandparents (they weren’t quite as excited as we were but they promised to think about it) and let our travel agent know we were looking for a good deal on a cruise. But then life takes over and you don’t think about it and time passes and you know that if you don’t actively engage, nothing will ever happen. And then something happens out of the blue and before you know it, you have put down a deposit on a cruise and it’s convenient to wait a few days to tell the kids after their party!
So what happened in an instant? New friends of ours (from baseball) that we’ve been hanging around with (and the kids love) were talking about a cruise they’re going on this fall. And not having any idea that a family cruise was actually in the back of our minds, she (possibly mostly in jest) said “You guys should come with us!” So I took a breath and said “You know, that might just work!”
It was the cruise line we just went on last year (almost the same ship, too) so that was a plus. A quick check of the calendar and with Tom (who pretty much gave an immediate and unequivocal YES!), and a few quick messages with our travel agent…and the cruise was booked! (Our TA even said he’s never booked a cruise that fast before!)
Long multiple-day story short, my dad and stepmom decided to go, too, so that’s awesome and we’re super excited. (We really tried to convince my mom and stepdad to go but weren’t successful.)
In the meantime, Tom started watching YouTube videos about the ship, pretending we were just showing the kids examples of cruises. We reaffirmed that we would be going on a cruise before we moved again, but that still left us two years.
We honestly didn’t think too much about how we were going to tell them, so after the party I rushed to the basement and cobbled together a card with the cruise info on it so they’d read it and hopefully we’d get a great video reaction.
Well, as usual, things didn’t go quite as we’d thought…
I heard about this cool mini golf course that was supposedly difficult so we tried it today…and while it was neat (with lots of moving parts) I wouldn’t call it difficult.
They had some of the coolest balls we’d ever seen!
Getting some math in while keeping score!
A water hazard led to balls in the shrubs and Tom ended up pulling out about four extra balls trying to get ours.
Congrats, Cardinals! Nothing wrong with second place after your amazing season!
BACK: Assistant Coaches Mark, Eric, Adam, Tom, and Head Coach Jamie
FRONT: Mason, Eli, Owen, John, Aden (Old Man), Jackson, Reuben, Jaiden, John, and Wyatt
I could not be more proud of this team of boys. To be perfectly honest, they started out on shaky ground and we didn’t have much hope for the season. But then a miraculous thing happened…they practiced, they learned how to work together, and they exceeded all our expectations and ended up in second place in their division!!
Watching them play was a joy (and also completely nerve-wracking as the mom of a pitcher)!! And it warms my heart to see my boy with 10 new best friends, my girl with almost as many player sibling friends, and my husband and I with a handful of new friends as well.
Of course they were disappointed that they didn’t win (especially since they’d won the last few games by a wide margin) but they took it in stride and were great sports.
And then it was off to Culver’s to celebrate!! Yes, Katie loves being right in there with all the boys!! But she moved to the girls table one everyone arrived!!
What do Friends’ Chandler, Garth Brooks, and Fiji have in common? I bet you could guess if you really thought about it…or if you’re lazy like me and don’t want to put much thought into it?? Just click. 👇👇
I love dollar stores and on a total whim stopped at a new Dollar Tree while I was making a run to ALDI. Oh wow. It’s much bigger than the one I normally shop at and the stock, while mostly the same, just seems so much…more. I didn’t need anything when I walked in, but I managed to spend $50. And I found the holy Grail for my kids.
Owen has had a loose tooth for awhile now and he came home from school today saying it was time for project Nerf gun tooth removal. Inspired by his second cousin Luke he decided it was time to try it. It took a few tries (our string was way too long) but we had success!!
Owen doesn’t really fit on his ATV anymore and he’s wanted a Segway for awhile, so when we were able to grab one for free to try out and review, we jumped at it! He practiced in the basement and actually got pretty good, so today was his first real world experience. I’m amazed at how good he is!!
I even did a Facebook live of it…
And of course Katie wanted to try but she’s too light so Tom helped a bit.
I even got on (holding Tom for dear life) for about 10 seconds and that was enough to know I didn’t need to do it again. 😂
This was originally a live video on Facebook. I had just finished a work event during which I had been drinking margaritas and it turns out I was a bit drunker than I thought when I came downstairs…so I decided it would be the perfect time to taste test some Oreos we had. It just makes me laugh.
Um guys…did you know today is my day?! It really needs to be in the summer, though, right? Anyhoo, I’m looking forward to having a few sips tonight—I can’t have much more since I’m being super strict on Naturally Slim, but I can’t NOT have one today!
ROW 1: Lemon margarita!? Yes. I NEED a slushie machine.
ROW 2: YES! YES! Two bottles.
ROW 3: Always. NyQuil margarita? I believe.
ROW 4: Combine them! Nothing. There is on Facebook!
Y’all—I don’t mess around.
He’s not a margarita fan so I have to drink enough for the both of us. #FirstWorldProblems
When the entire outside is a freezer you take advantage (chocolate covered caramel corn).
You also take advantage of cool science tricks!! I’ve always wanted to do this but we’ve never been anywhere it got cold enough (I think it needs to be like a minimum of -20°). The kids weren’t nearly as excited as I was (heaven forbid we interrupt a damn Xbox game) but we did it twice because it was so cool!
Trying out an almost life-size Connect Four. It held their interest for maybe 30 minutes.
Then how about a game of GUESS WHAT’S IN THE CUP ON DAY TWO OF POLAR VORTEX SNOW DAYS AND THE KIDS ARE GETTING ON EACH OTHER’S NERVES.
If you guessed a margarita you’d be correct. If you didn’t, I don’t think you really know me.
She sees me doing this and she wanted to be like me!! So she’s wearing She’s Apples and Blue Orchid gloss (and I’m wearing Fly Girl with Blue Orchid gloss). Maybe she can sell something at Parents Night Out tonight. 😂
The cousins were all having a ball playing together and I thought they’d have a blast playing “WHAT U TALKIN BOUT?” (the game where you try to say phrases while wearing dental mouthpieces—there are many versions of this game). Katie had bought it for Owen for Christmas and we weren’t set to open it for days but I am glad we did…we haven’t laughed so hard in a long time! It was definitely worth the $2.50 sale price at the dollar store.
Just when you get complacent thinking your 9yo is self-sufficient in the mornings… You find out he put a plastic container in the oven to heat up pancakes. 😳
You see, Katie came up to ask me how to toast the pancake pieces. I told her to have Owen help her (since he heats up pancakes in the toaster oven regularly). She said she knew but they were (cut up) pieces (instead of full pancakes) so it was different. True, good point. So I told her to put them on a tray and we discussed which tray to use.
Owen came up a little bit later and told me that they put the top in the refrigerator because it was hot. Huh? What? Top? What top? What was hot?
A quick check of the June oven cooking replay shows the entire plastic container in the oven. Top and all. Slowly melting.
I asked Owen how he thought that would toast the pancakes (being inside the container) and he says “BUT I DIDN’T KNOW MOM!”
I asked how it was so different from how he normally does pancakes and he stands there like he can’t understand English.
Stuff like this is so frustrating… How can he not have common sense? I suppose that’s normal for a 9yo boy. Right?! 😣 At least he noticed and took it out and didn’t burn the house down.
The future is here. Our Christmas present arrived today—a June wifi oven! (I wasn’t loving our toaster oven and we use it A LOT so when we read about this one—and all that it could do, including air frying, which Tom really wanted to try—we had to try it.)
First things first: download updates! 🙂
Then we had to try cooking something! So brownies it was! Unfortunately it doesn’t recognize a pan of brownies so we had to *gasp* set the temp manually! But they cooked perfectly. Oh, we can also watch the cooking process via the camera…plus it takes a time lapse video of the process.
Owen’s music class is learning barn dancing and parents were allowed to come watch! So of course I took advantage!
The whole thing was a hot mess from start to finish—you can imagine how much fourth graders really want to be dancing, right? That said, Owen did well and didn’t screw around too much (especially compared to other boys, some of which I wanted to throttle).
All I know is those teachers DO NOT get paid enough.
The morning started a little later than I’d have preferred (we didn’t dock until 9:30)—we had a full day of excitement (half mile zip line) and relaxation (private cabanas over the water) planned and I wanted to GET TO IT!! Royal Caribbean has their own private section of the island (a secluded spot on the north coast of Haiti) and they have Nellie’s cabanas, which is a set of 10 private cabanas overlooking the bay. Our group had rented seven of them…which meant about 40 of our group members were going to be there!
While waiting to get off the ship with our group, we realized Keens were the shoe of the day! 🙂
Just gorgeous views walking down the pier…
After walking across the island to get to the cabanas to drop our stuff off (and taking a few quick pics)…
…Six of us thrill-seekers pretty much had to leave right away to head to the Dragon’s Breath zip line, which is the longest over-the-water zipline in the world.
Here we are after getting suited up and getting some brief instructions. We then had to walk across the street for a short practice run. You may laugh, but one person in our group decided it wasn’t for her after her 10-second trip. (I have video of our practice run but it’s not terribly exciting!)
It was fun, but we all felt the process could have been streamlined a bit as it took us about two hours! Thankfully, one of the “beach monitors” took us under his wing toward the start and got us out of there as quickly as he could—he somehow managed to get us to the front of the line so we didn’t then have to wait for 25 people to zip line ahead of us. He also volunteered to take photos and videos of us (with our cameras) so we had him do that. Of course I am not used to that kind of thing and realized a bit too late that he was obviously angling for a tip…so we thankfully ran into him again and were able to tip him. It was hard to see the screen in the bright sun so I was just crossing my fingers he actually took some pics and we didn’t just waste our money…but I was able to look later and he did get some so that’s cool. The ride was really fun and was over waaay too soon—it only takes like 45 seconds to travel the half mile but it felt like 20 seconds. The only bad thing is that you can’t really take pictures on the way down (which I had been hoping to do) so I set it to video and the resulting video isn’t terribly exciting…
To get our entire group up to the top at the same time, Tom and I rode in the cab with the driver!!
Walking out the catwalk to get to the drop zone!
Here’s what it looked like:
I’m next!
I didn’t have a GoPro and couldn’t hold my camera in my hand, so I just wrapped it tightly on my wrist and tried to angle it enough to see something. This might make you seasick. 🙂
I don’t know how they knew to assign this pic to our onboard photo account, but I like the magic! (Usually they had people asking for room numbers, but this pic just appeared in our account! We searched and found mine, but long story short we had two logins and we saved it under the wrong one, and when I went to pick pics to buy, it wasn’t saved in my account and I forgot about it.)
Awesome group shot! The good thing about going with other people is being able to share the group photos without having to buy each one separately!
Then it was back to the cabanas to hang out with the group where we spent the rest of our day floating in the water and enjoying tropical drinks. We all had floating mats and pretty much just floated around in a big group (or a few smaller groups) the entire time. I could have stayed at the cabanas another few hours (or days) and been totally content…
All too soon it was time to head back to the ship. This is when I decided this should have been a super long port day—docking at 6:30a and leaving at 8p. On the way back, we realized we hadn’t gotten a drink in a pineapple!! The guy was just closing up but got us one…aaaaand we should have skipped it. It was waaaay too strong, plus it started leaking almost immediately (we tossed it before we even got back to the ship). And it was $14! And not included in our alcohol package! But we got the photo op so I guess it was worth it? 🙂
And why not stop by a bar on the way to our room? We’d only had a few drinks all day…
Then it was time to get showered and dressed for dinner.
We actually ate with eight other friends at a different table because all of our regular tablemates were off eating elsewhere so Tom and I would have been eating alone (not the worst thing ever—we did it one other night and had a blast!). They happened to have two open seats so it was perfect. It was also nice because we hadn’t actually gotten to visit too much with them. Of course we also then got to hear some stories about other people which was fun.
After dinner I sat at the bar for awhile with two girlfriends and then Tom came down and we all went shopping! (Towards the end of the cruise they really bring out the souvenirs and have deals on alcohol.) I bought a neat dress clutch and bow ties for Owen…and Tom and I bought a few bottles of cheap liquor. Then he went back up to the room and us girls walked around for a bit. I might have shopped more.
Unfortunately, the one bad thing about the day is that we missed a show that was supposed to be super hilarious and we’d been looking forward to…but it didn’t start until 11:15 and honestly that’s just too late for us (we’ve been in bed by 11 every night). We thought about trying to stay up and make it but I started feeling really yucky about 9:30 and just needed to go to bed. I hadn’t had that much to drink—there were days I’d had more and never felt bad—so I think it was just a combination of drinks (mixing alcohols) and being in the sun all day (it was HOT and we were all sunburned). I felt fine when I rolled over in the middle of the night (thankfully).
And they both had fun on these. Katie called them feet puppets. 🙂 Tom and I got a good laugh out of that one.
Owen actually looked like a serious runner.
Katie did well this year, too—she knew she couldn’t sit on Tom’s shoulders at all. And she wanted to beat Sophia (since Sophia can’t in right before her last year)… And she did!
Tom and Katie actually both qualified for a medal, but we didn’t want to wait around 1.5 hours until the end so they’ll just get them at school eventually. They all did awesome!!
When your 9yo asks you how the universe was created, you go to Google. Here’s your lesson for the day—it’s actually very interesting and at a level we cloths BOTH understand. 🙂 It’s only like four minutes, too!
What created all the planets, stars and galaxies? BBC Future presents a four-minute animated guide to one of the greatest questions we’ve tried to solve.
It was our first major shindig at our new place…and we didn’t even think about turning it into a housewarming. Oh well.
We did 9 racks of ribs in the sous vide. Our sous vide container isn’t big enough so we had to jerry rig a Rubbermaid bin.
We rented a waterslide and invited about 60 people. We had a great turnout of about half…and the kids had an amazing time on the slide. I don’t think Owen got off for more than a minute to use the bathroom and five minutes to eat dinner—he started about noon and we pulled the plug about 9.
We were so busy with party prep and visiting with guests that I didn’t even take many pictures. I can’t believe I didn’t even take a pic of the food spread—I always take pics of the food!!
We set up a tent and picnic tables.
Tom had put up posts to hang our sunshades and lights from.
Tom prepped the ribs in the driveway.
The kids still sliding at 8:15!
A good time was had by all…and we decided to keep the slide another day because it was supposed to be another hot day and we only splurge like this every few years.
Today Owen had his first orthodontic appointment—getting his mouth scanned for many thousands of pictures of his teeth/mouth to be stitched together so he doesn’t need impressions! Technology is awesome.
They also put on the two rubber band spacers to prepare for the expander.
I saw this super cool colored hair wax advertised online and went directly to Amazon to buy it. My hair has been fading and Katie has wanted more color than the pink shampoo I have been using on her. And this was very temporary—as in comes out in one wash. So we tried it! I did it Live on Facebook…which the kids thought was great fun (they are always intrigued when I do my Live LipSense demos so they liked being part of a video).
Here are our results… The kids loved it! Owen’s was much easier as it’s shorter, thicker, and much heartier. Katie’s was a mess because it is so fine and snarls easily (I’ll have to try hers later when it’s wet). But as something fun to do? I highly recommend it.
We’ve known for a while that Katie was very close to being able to ride without her training wheels so we decided that today was the day. She whined a lot at first but she did it! (There was actually a hell of a lot of whining and drama involved. Tom has much more patience with her than I did. #teamwork)
Big brother helping teach her how to get started on her own without a push from daddy.
She wanted to be the line leader.
We went around the same lake path three times. At one point, there is a fairly decent downhill section which she did not want to ride down because she was scared—and there was LOTS of drama—so, she walked it down the first time. We told her that if she managed to ride down the whole thing she would get a new bike and that would be her birthday present. On the second time around she walked down part of the way and then rode the rest of the way. And the third time around, I was riding next to her and she was doing really well and as soon as she reached the bottom she said matter-of-factly “I get my bike now” and off she went.
