February

 

Planting strawberries and other things in the garden. I am hoping to have a good garden this year. Below is the boys playing on the cushions one evening when I was reading them a story. (We just finished it it was My Side of the Mountain.)

Benson and Evan made scones with Michael's help. We all enjoyed them, they were delicious. They have gotten really good at cooking yummy breakfast foods.

Coming home one day I found all of the rooms cleaned well, it was a joy to find everything all cleaned up.

Below is when we were learning about Argentina in my Spanish class and we played soccer, practicing Spanish words as we did.

Flowers from Michael for Valentines Day.

The day after we got back we had friends over while their mom was doing kemo. Later in the week on Wednesday we went and saw Wizard of Oz. It was fun for the kids to see it.

Roslyn found this little gecko in the bathroom at the church and brought it outside.

Sunday February 8th we got back to Galveston were we got to go to Michael's nieces' missionary homecoming and got to spend time with cousins before we started driving home.

This was a second ice skating show. The ice skating show really was amazing, they were so good.

Our last day on the ship we went and did a number of crafts and activities this was one of them.

The server made these balloon animals the night that Maebryn and I stayed home or stayed in our room...well we walked around to get fresh air, she got sea sick that night.

We enjoyed swimming lots of times on the ship. Most of the time we spent in the hot tubs. Roslyn went down this little water slide many times. She is definitely our little water girl.

Our last towel animal.

Seeing an iguana in the wild, the boys were excited about this. We saw a couple of them and we saw a number of neat birds.

After leaving the cenote we walked a little further on until we came to this beach. It was so nice as there were these nice chairs and no one else was there it was just us almost the entire time. It was so relaxing and beautiful. Maebryn had gotten sea sick last night...I think it was from an all day driving and then being on the boat so it was also nice to have a day on solid ground and not going in a moving vehicle. Also I went to some stores at the ports they were great deals and I got a fun Spanish dress I have wanted with teaching this year.

We started walking towards the harbor and on our way a few guys that seemed like they may have been from our ship told us about this cenote and how there was a crocodile in one end but none in this second cenote. It was so neat to see some animals in the wild and to see a cenote. The only sad thing was that Michael was trying to get pictures of us and asked Calvin to go to the other side to take a picture but on his way he tripped and dropped Michael's phone into the cenote. I did strip down to my underwear and then jumped into to look for it but although the water was clear from the top it was very blurry to look in once you were in the water. I couldn't see anything and we didn't have goggles and we couldn't see it at all...really I think it went down deep. We eventually decided it was long gone and that we weren't going to find it and decided to just leave it.

We are reading a book that is all about these lions in China that Andrew gave us. It was neat to walk right by some.

In Cozumel we had originally planned on going snorkeling but decided just to go and walk around and see what we could see. The first thing was a little museum that was free and neat to walk through. I especially liked this day of the dead thing as I have taught my class about it.

This is what the painting would have looked like, it's hard to see but right above the painted part you can see the original and how they were able to tell what it looked like.

This was our second stop in Costa Maya. Here we spent 2 and a half hours driving to the Mayan ruins and then had to drive the same going back. It was neat driving through Mexico and seeing the people and the towns that we got to drive through. We did really love the Mayan ruins. They were so much more of them then I thought and so much bigger then I had realized.

Our server made these balloons for the kids. The second night she made paper origami and then the next night the napkin animals and then these balloons. She definitely went above and beyond she also remembered our names from day 1. 

When we got back from the excursion we went and visited the pizza place and then went to dinner later.

This was the next animal that we found in our room.

At the end of our time in Roatan we went and spent about an hour at the beach. The kids enjoyed playing there for a bit. Roslyn especially loved running in the waves.

Chocolate Factory. They showed us how they made chocolate and let us hold a coca bean and then we purchased some chocolate.

After we left the animal place we went to go snorkeling in the coral reef. It was a neat experience but we did get stung by fire coral so that made it a little more difficult, it was also hard to watch over the kids as your face is in the water and it was hard to see everyone to make sure they were still with our group. Originally we were going to go snorkeling again at Cozumel but after this we decided not to. It was a great experience though.

After the macaws we went in the enclosure with the monkeys. They were fun as they jumped all over us. They took Roslyn's hat at one point and put it on then dropped it. They were very playful.

We did get to go in with the macaws and got to hold one on our shoulder. 

We then each got to feed these birds. Because of it being mating season we didn't get to go inside with them because they are more violent during this time.

After the guinea pigs we got to see the sloths. At first we went in an enclosure with the sloths but they were all up at the very top. We then got to pet these guys that were lower on these post. They used to let people hold them but now they are protected and we could only pet them.

This was our first excursion in Roatan Honduras. This was an animal park. When we got there the first thing we did was hold guinea pigs. They had a ton of them, they say that they use them for food.

This was near the track where we would run in the morning but we would go here sometimes at night to watch the sunset. There wasn't many people here very often.

Napkin animals that our server made for us.

This was me going on the zip line that was up I think 8 stories maybe 6. It was a little scary but was neat to do at the same time.

One of the fancy nights at dinner. We really loved our servers at dinner they were so nice and showed so much love to our kids. It was fun dressing up for the special night.

Roslyn was too young to rock climb but they had this little climbing thing nearby for the younger kids, Maebryn loved the Merry-go-round and went on it many times throughout the trip.

Enjoying the sun set on the ship. It was always nice standing out looking out at the waves.

We also got to go rock climbing, another thing that I have never taken the kids to do, it would be expensive to do so but it was neat that they all got to try it out. I enjoyed being able to try it out as well. I never realized what a good workout rock climbing is.

In the afternoon we were able to go and try ice skating. This is something I have wanted to do for some time, take some of my kids ice skating. I took Alden once so he did okay, but I hadn't taken any of the rest of them so the rest of them had a hard time but I was glad they had the opportunity to try it out. I enjoyed skating around for a little bit.

For lunch we tried out the cafe sandwiches and salad place. It was good and fun to try out for a change.

In the morning we went and exercised. I took Alden and Calvin to the gym which was fun because they hadn't been to a regular gym before. After working out we went to breakfast then back to our room to change where we found this fun little towel animal.

This was us at the pizza place and then at our sit down dinner later at night.

All of us on the ship. Our first night we had dinner twice and went to an amazing ice skating show. 

The first of February we set off for our cruise on the Harmony of the Seas. Our ship was delayed so we were able to sleep in a little bit and go to one of our local wards where I was able to bear my testimony in Spanish. A lady I had invited to church via a phone call with the missionaries was there so that was neat.