WEDNESDAY - MAZATLAN!

We didn't really have any big plans for today. We thought we would just go shopping and check out the city a bit. Right when we entered into Mazatlan we were being pulled in many different directions from everyone wanting to give us a taxi ride, go do this, go do that but one guy got Jared to stop and listen to him and tried to convince us to go with them to a resort and listen to a one hour time share presentation and they would pay for the taxi. Right then Jared figured, why not. Me, on the other hand, I was to nervous, how did I know they weren't going to drive me to some deserted street corner and kill me and take my cash and cameras?! I get nervous when I am in unfamiliar territory. They saw my hesitation and then said they would throw in a free taxi ride for an hour to take a tour of the city. Jared was still on board but I was still hesitating. Finally they said, one hour presentation, free one hour city tour and $30 cash. OK, I will go I guess.

The man doing the presentation was very nice and not a pushy salesman at all. We were done in 1 hour and we were allowed to use their pool, their beach, shower after, etc. Sadly, we didn't bring our swim suits so we just walked along the beach for a bit and then stopped and ate our lunch. (Let me tell you how cheap/smart we are, my cousin told me to bring zip lock baggies and order room service the night before and get sandwiches, chips, fruit etc and take that with you on the days you port so that you won't get sick from the food on shore and then you won't have to spend more money on food - so we did and it was quite delicious and fun!) After that we hopped in our VW glorified golf cart and hit the city!A 200 hundred year old church.The 2nd tallest Lighthouse in the world.
We thought the city seemed so big until we saw a picture of the city and our cruise ship along with another one - they made the city look so small after that.I would like to point out that I have the video camera in my hand in this picture. I had to take it away from Jared. He has a little bit of his father in him and got carried away video taping everything. When he watches home videos sometimes he laughs at the stuff his dad would tape well guess what, he just did the exact same thing. So, to spare his feelings from his kids laughing at him at all the stuff he taped, I took the camera for a bit :) Kids, you are welcome....Jared, we still love you!That night was probably one of Jared's favorites. I got a little sick and just wanted to lie down for a bit before we went to dinner. We went back to the room and I crashed. I am not a nap taker. Jared was able to just chill on the bed and watch TV while I slept for a bit. Funny part is, for the first time ever, he wasn't able to sleep and when I woke up I caught him watching Twilight. Ha Ha. (I will say in his defense, you don't have a wide selection of TV and that was the best choice on at that time.)

After I woke up, I asked Jared if he wanted to skip going out to dinner and just have dinner in. He jumped on that idea. We ended up having pizza and salads in some cherry cokes in our room. After that I perked up and we pulled a late-nighter.

We went and saw a show called "Piano Man" filled with singing and dancing. It was pretty good. We really appreciated the dancers a lot more having to see what Emma does all the time.

Then we went to another comedy show. This time it was Steve Moris who has played backup with the Beach Boys for 20 years. During his show he plays a lot of music on his guitar and the audience will join in with him. He plays music from several decades and several different artists. During the Beach Boy songs, Jared would ask me, "how do you know all these songs?" My reply was, "how do you NOT know all these songs? It's un-American to not know." (lucky for him, we have some good friends who have a Beach Boys greatest hits CD and burned us a copy on Monday and its been playing in the Armada ever since! My kids will learn to love Beach Boys by the end of the week.)Seeing how it was Cinco De Mayo, Princess had a Mexican Fiesta late that night and had a dance party out on the pool deck and we went out there for a while. It was very fun and the food was pretty good too. I have to say I was excited to be in Mexico for the first time ever on Cinco De Mayo but the people there don't seem to celebrate it, or at least not during the day while we were there. There was no signs of the holiday anywhere and whenever I had Jared ask people about it they were surprised of the day it was. Oh well.

GO FISH!

Today was Emma's 2nd grade "Go Fish" Musical. It was exactly what you thought a 2nd grade musical would be. They all did a great job. Emma had 1 line in it and was a clown fish. Our favorite part was during the singing parts the kids would have little actions, nothing big just little ones but Emma always looked a bit better doing it because she did it with a beat - we got a little giggle out of that. Good job Em!

TUESDAY - PUERTO VALLARTA!

Tuesday was the day we were probably looking forward to the most. It was Puerto Vallarta day, which meant it was Zip lining day!!

The last 2 days when we woke up we looked outside and all you could see was ocean but this morning when we pulled back the curtains we were pleasantly surprised with this site.We got dressed and decided to skip the gym and head out for some breakfast. We were excited and nervous for what lay ahead of us.We had to take a 1 hour drive through the city to reach our destination. Jared loved this part because it reminded him so much of Brazil. (It was fun to watch him talk to all of our drivers in Spanish.) When we finally got there it was fun to meet our instructors who were hilarious, there were 12 of us and 6 of them. They gave us the safety instructions and we headed up a hill to begin and I was the first one there and not thinking anything about being the first one up there I just assumed we would wait for everyone and then decide who wanted to go first but because I was the first one up there they hooked me up and sent me down. I had no idea what was going on but that's probably a good thing, there is no way to get scared that way. I was also nervous about getting stuck, going backwards or something else but it was so easy and so fun and none of that happened. We were a good 150 feet up from the ground soaring up the trees.I think one of the scariest parts for me was when you are done zip lining on a certain rope you land on this platform high above the trees and they are telling you to quickly move around to the other side while the person behind you comes down and they are getting ready to go on the next line but the platform is not very wide and that made me a bit nervous.There were 2 times we had to rappel down. I am not going to lie, because of Kyle dying from rappelling it did make me a bit nervous but once I leaned over the edge, turned around and sat back and started down, I was good to go and wanted to go down faster!When we were done and we were sitting around having our snack and looking at the pictures, Jared found this snake and became obsessed with taking pics of it (kinda like the watch in the Bahamas if anyone remembers that, Shelby?!).We made it back to the boat and on our way stopped and bargained down the price of some vanilla and that was our only purchase the whole trip :)We got ready for dinner and went and ate and then went to a Lorenzo Clark comedy and magic show (it was OK but not my favorite) and then we went and played a movie trivia game.That night while we were walking around the ship we discovered the most beautiful sunset. We had someone take our picture but I ruined it with my dumb eyes closing (I do that a lot). It was another amazing day at sea.

MONDAY!

Monday was our really lazy day. We got up, did the gym thing, breakfast thing, drank some more Miami Vices, ate some lunch, layed out and read our books and drank some milkshakes. (I am a total nerd and ending up bringing a book on the life of Walt ELIAS Disney - a personal favorite/hero of mine, some books on WWII - that subject is fascinating to me and a book called "Glenn Beck's Common Sense. The Disney book made me happy and and sad that I never got to meet him in person. Glenn Beck's book just pissed me off about our Government and made me want to be President because I would get back to the basics of our Constitution and what our forefathers stood for. I never did get around to reading the WWII books but when we got to LAX to head back home there were 30 or so soldiers waiting to depart and I went and up shook each one of their hands and said "Thank you" so that was neat and satisfied my WWII hungering.) You get the idea of how our day went, relaxing and fattening. We got ready for dinner and then went to go see Carlos Oscar for the last time.I wanted to go to the Club on Ship and go dancing so Jared was kind enough to escort me up there but that was about as far as his generosity went. He wouldn't dance with me and I felt dumb dancing by myself (that was the only time I wish I had some friends with me other than my husband - just for the dancing) so we left. Lucky for him he held my hand so I couldn't be mad at him.

We raced down the stairs to our room and winner got to pick what we did next, I won! YES! (lucky for me he took a wrong turn).

MOTHER'S DAY!

Did I have a good mother's day? That is the question I have been asked several times today. The answer, YES! I woke up and tried to sneak out of the house without the kids knowing because I knew they were going to surprise me with breakfast in bed, so I could go to the gym super fast and weigh myself (I needed to know exactly how much I gained on the cruise, 4 pounds in case you were curious). After I got home I quickly hopped back in bed and then the kids and Jared surprised me with an orange julius and a breakfast bagel sandwich. It was quite delicious.

Then I guess Jared decided that I didn't gain enough on the cruise and he wanted to make me fatter so he replicated the french toast we had on the ship the last day. It was super thick with a crunchy outside on it and he got it perfect! (its to bad too because now he will have to cook for us more).

I basically spent the day doing absolutely nothing and I loved every second of it. The house was picked up, the dishes were done, no poopy diapers for me, you get the picture. That night Jared made tacos for dinner and had another surprise for me. He made me a Miami Vice! It was delicious.It was a great day, with kids spoiling me, homemade cards and even a necklace from Jared with all the kids names on it. I am so glad to be a mother and wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

SUNDAY!

Sunday morning we woke up and went and hit the gym. I don’t like running on treadmills and I really don’t like running on treadmills on the ocean. It is very hard and makes you kinda sick. After working up a good sweat we went and ate breakfast. Our breakfasts were pretty much the same every day, water, orange juice, omelet for me along with other stuff and a variety of food for Jared but it always included oatmeal (yuck). (We told our travel agent that Sunday was our Anniversary - yes, we fibbed but we were there celebrating our anniversary so we picked a day and pretended it was ours to see what would happen. She was awesome and upgraded our suite a bit for us, when we went outside our room the cruise had placed these balloons out there and later that day we returned and found 2 glasses of Champagne in our room - which would have been awesome had we been drinkers.)After breakfast we headed over to listen to a "Mexican Riviera Port Shopping Talk." It was quite a let down and basically just wanted us to buy diamonds, etc. The weather was perfect outside so we decided to hit the pool deck with our towels and books in hand and soak up the sun.
After Jared had gotten enough sun (he burns pretty easily) we decided to go to the theatre and watch, "Sherlock Holmes."

Tonight was formal night. Jared brought his suit and I brought a dress that is older than Emma and we got ready to go to dinner. Poor Jared married a pretty casual girl, I don’t really do my hair, I don’t really wear make-up - I am just plain and simple. I knew for formal night though that I would need to step it up a bit so I sat down and started doing my hair and make-up and Jared sat there and watched TV and we just slowly got ready. That was the best hour. We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was so relaxing. I have decided I don’t like getting ready because I am always so rushed with getting everyone else ready that by the time it comes to myself, I am so sweaty and running late that I don’t care anymore. We ended up enjoying that hour so much that every night for the rest of the cruise I curled my hair, wore make-up and heck, just looked presentable. Lucky Jared.After dinner we went to go watch Carlos Oscar again and then went to go watch, "Do you know more than a crew member" game show. Then it was getting pretty late so before we decided to head up to our room it was time for our new cruise tradition of eating more desserts and making ourselves sick.

(The first day we were on ship we were told by our friends to purchase a soda card so we could get soda and juice whenever. We ordered our soda cards but then we learned that we could upgrade them to a UKP card which meant we could have sodas, juice, milkshakes, malts and my personal favorite, mocktails (virgin drinks) whenever we wanted. We quickly upgraded our cards and we never let the Miami Vices stop flowing. I am pretty sure I drank my weight in them!)

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CRUISE!

*I am warning you now...I will be doing a new post for the next 8 days all about our cruise. Should it bore you, please don't check back for another week*

One week ago today Jared and I left for our 10 year Anniversary Cruise. It was a goal we made for ourselves a few years ago and finally it came to fruition. We booked our cruise Feb 1 and May 1st seemed so far away. We never could really wrap our heads around the trip because we were so busy with our kids, work, Em’s baptism, Easter and the countless day-to-day activities.

We booked a 7 day cruise on the Sapphire Princess (after Randi, Richelle and Jared convinced me that the 4 day one wouldn’t be long enough - Jared couldn’t thank Randi and Richelle enough for the help and now that the cruise is over I too have to agree, 7 days was perfect and 4 would have been way too short!).We worried a lot about how the kiddos would do. We knew they were in the best of care with Grandma Jensen and Grandma and Grandpa Rodgers but the part that made me nervous was they wouldn’t be able to call and ask us anything and if the babies got upset they just couldn’t pick up the phone and ask what they might need or what they should do. I created an obnoxious 12 page typed out spreadsheet. It had everything from the day-to-day activities in it, what to do for meals, where the nearest hospital was, our cruise itinerary, lunch money for Emma and even helpful tips in it like if Eli starts to make a gagging face while eating dinner (take his food away and give him something else to eat because the next bite, he will puke it all up).The morning finally came for us to leave for the cruise and it still didn’t seem real. Grandma Jensen came over at 7am on Sat May 1 and we headed for the airport (thank you Greg for the ride!). We left before the babies got out of bed thinking this would be the easiest on everyone. I did go into their room and take a last little peek at them. Eli was up and we gave him the world’s biggest kiss and huggers (his words) and then smart Grandma J took him right outside to play so he wouldn’t be sad. Emma came with us to the airport and was so desperate to come with us she didn’t even mind riding back with Greg (he is extremely friendly but that was way out of her comfort zone).

We finally got to the airport, landed and made it to our boat. This was our first cruise and I am not sure what I was expecting but ok, I will admit it...I pictured it like the movie Titanic. The part where Kate Winslet exits the fancy car, in her fancy dress with her large brimmed hat covering her face and she ever so slowly raises up her head and takes her first glance onto the ship. Um, ya...nothing like that. We got out of our taxi van, hopped out onto the street in our jeans and hat and went up to a holding room to wait until we could board. We finally made it on the ship but where were the crowds of people standing and waving back at us as we are about to set sail, where was the band playing the jazz music?! Who knows, but I did manage to see them loading our luggage onto to the ship and loading all the gazillion tons of food on there and hey, who doesn’t enjoy a good stinky fish smell from the ocean water :)We got to the elevators and they sent us up to our deck to head to our room (that was the first and only time we took the elevators, we vowed to use the stairs every time - even in heels). We dropped off our carry-ons and headed straight up to the buffet! I wanted to get my "cruise baby" going (cruise baby would be my big ‘ol huge belly I was planning on developing while on the ship). We sat up there and ate and I thought about the kids. I worried about them, thought how much they would like what we are doing, we took pics with our cell phones and texted them to Grandma J to show the kids, and we called her a couple of times.

Finally it was time to set sail. I was kinda in a grumpy mood I must admit. I couldn’t figure out why. We said our good-byes to Grandma and she told us how good all the kids were doing and even told us that sweet little Emma was being a great big helper (one of the boys had made a crumby mess on the floor and without being asked she went and got the hand vacuum and cleaned it all up - thanks Grandma for taking this picture).That made me feel a little bit better. I was still not very happy though, but I was trying. Right before I couldn’t use my phone anymore I sent my dad a text asking him to take good care of my babies and that I loved them. He sent me one back saying, "Have a great time. The kids and I will". That made me feel tons better so I tried to just sit back and enjoy the rest of the 8 days on the boat in my suite with my balcony.Since we were first time cruisers we didn’t really know what we should be doing so we kinda just made up our own thing. We didn’t yet have our "Princess Patter" (daily ship schedule) there to be our handy little guide. So we did the next best thing and headed out to eat dinner - after all, why not eat more food?

After dinner we were able to catch a show of a hilarious comedian, Carlos Oscar. He kinda reminds me of a Puerto Rican version of Jerry Seinfeld - he takes the every day stuff and puts a realistic spin on it that is just hilarious and my favorite part is how he keeps it clean, no dirty jokes, no dirty words and its still freaking hilarious.

After that we went and guess what, that’s right, ate some more. We went up to the buffet grabbed some desserts and what not and then went back to our room and crashed for the night.