Warm weather, good friends and beautiful beaches!

While still on our amazing Maui vacation last year Chris decided that we were going to go on a cruise for our 6th anniversary. :) 

I didn't complain one bit...I mean who would? 

So we convinced some of our friends from Chris's work to come with us and headed off to the Carribean for 8 days. Then we thought, why not add an extra day in Orlando so we can play? Who doesn't like to play? 

We scored some free tickets to Universal studios and had so much fun on all the rides. 

 I was the camera woman for this ride. They were completely soaked and somebody had to take the picture right? 

Hogwarts! I'm such a Harry Potter nerd, so I had a blast! 

 Frozen Butterbeer. It was so yummy! Kind of tasted like Butterscotch candy in liquid form. :) 

 Luckily the lines for all the cool rides weren't too long. Especially since I had to wait for everybody else for the majority of them. 

Like this one. I couldn't go on. Chris chickened out. He said it looked like a throw up ride.  

Couldn't go on this one either. We all decided against it, because the wait was the longest in the whole park. 

 Kim and I sat out on this one. It was either ride this ride, or watch the parade. We chose the parade. It was an easy choice for me. Since pretty much 100% of the rides have this outside. 

Wait, Zoom in a little closer. 

 See it yet? 

No? Zoom in a little closer....

 Yup, that is why I was the photographer for the first ride, and hung out enjoying cauldron cakes, and basking in the sun for the other rides. Apparently once you find out if you're pregnant, rollercoasters of ANY kind are out. Especially if you are past 12 weeks, which I am. :D 

We are super excited, and I was happy to sit out on the rides for this particular reason!

On Sunday, Feb. 3rd (our Anniversary), we boarded the boat, and I called my kids to tell them goodbye for 10 days. I will admit, I cried when I heard their little voices. It was so hard to think I was going to have no contact with them for a week. It took me about 10 minutes to get myself back under control. 

But as the week went on, I somehow survived. Being in beautiful places and doing fun things with awesome people sure helped. 

Our first stop was Labidee (?) a private island off of Haiti. We got our own private cabana and it was incredible! We had sun chairs, cold water, a shaded couch and out own little swimming area. 

 The view

 Our cabana, and everybody getting lathered up because most of us are so white. 

Our next stop was Jamaica. We were a little nervous because we heard that Jamaicans don't like Americans at all. We decided just to do our excursion and go back to the ship. We were glad we did because a family on our ship got robbed by the cops while exploring. 

 The view from our room. 

 Ready for the ATV tour! 

 Our group with our guides. 

The next stop was Grand Cayman, and it was seriously INCREDIBLE!!!!! Everybody else went scuba diving, but since I can't Chris and I did our own thing. 

 Our ship.

 Our first stop was Snorkeling at the island's barrier reef. It was awesome! I normally don't care for  snorkeling, but I LOVED this! The water was so clear and you could see forever! 

 After Snorkeling we went over to this beautiful sandbar and swam with Sting rays. We got to hold them and feed them and pet them. They are so gentle and get so BIG! It was one of Chris's favorite things! 

This was one of our guides, he literally dove off the side of our little boat while headed back to shore to pick this up from the bottom of the sand bar. Awesome. 

 Then we had a few hours to kill, so we hung out at this beach. I could live at this beach for the rest of my life. It was so nice.

 We headed over to Cozumel the next day, and long story short, our original excursion plans fell through so we ended up swimming with Dolphins. Cross that off my bucket list. I LOVED it! 

I would have pics but they were $30 for ONE, and $400 for all. Lame. 

 These are the dolphins we were with. Lingo, and his girlfriend. They are expecting a baby later this year. :) 

 Finished up the week with some rock climbing and sun bathing. 

Vacations really are the best! 

The only thing that's much better is getting back home to my kids and them being beyond thrilled to see us! After hugs and kisses Maddie just kept grabbing our faces and looking at like "I can't believe you're back!" In the last three days I have lost count of the hugs and kisses she's given me, which is a big deal because she never gives kisses.
Boston just keeps hugging me and saying "I'm so happy we're together!" or "I'm so happy we're home!" 

They make this cold weather totally worth it. 

Advice

I need your advice. I'm not quite sure what to do. 

Boston will be 4 in May and it seems that everybody has their kids in preschool at this age...most since they were three. 

So I've started looking into some of the preschools around here and they range from $90 to $130 a month. FOR PRESCHOOL. 

My first car payment was $130. 

We've got some incredible preschool teachers with amazing preschools all with in three houses of where we live in one direction or the other. 

But I feel like that's a lot each month. So I'm debating on putting Boston in an actual preschool, or keeping him home and doing something like Joy School. 

I did Joy school when I was four and loved it. 

Joy School is a much smaller group of kids (5 or 6) and you rotate going to different kids houses each week. Along with numbers and letters you also have a theme each week like "your Body" or 

"Sharing Service". It's $140 fro the entire program, but once you have it, you always have it, and through out the year you only put as much into it ($ wise) as you would like. Usually you meet twice a week for a couple hours. 

What would you do? 

Venting

So I just saw a post on facebook that this sunday is LDS wear pants to Church for equality day.  And this is their reasoning and what their purpose is

LDS Women Unite: Wear pants to church in solidarity for women's equality. If you already wear pants to church (we're talking to you men!), we invite you to show your support by wearing a purple shirt, tie, socks, or ribbon, purple being a color historically associated with the suffrage movement. This is the first act of All Enlisted, a direct action group for Mormon women to advocate for equality within our faith. “The Church has not attempted to indicate just how long women’s or girls’ dresses shoul d be nor whether they should wear pant suits or other types of clothing.”--LDS Church Presidency (1971) We are feminists. We do not seek to eradicate the differences between women and men, but we do want the LDS church to acknowledge the similarities. We believe that much of the cultural, structural, and even doctrinal inequality that persists in the LDS church today stems from the church's reliance on – and enforcement of – rigid gender roles that bear no relationship to reality. We subscribe to the Book of Mormon teaching that “all are alike unto God,” and hope that our choice to wear pants to our Sunday worship services (a choice sanctioned by our spiritual leaders over 40 years ago!) reminds our families, congregations, and leaders that we have not forgotten this gospel truth. Please refer to this link for a comprehensive list of the doctrinally unnecessary gender inequities that exist within the church: http://www.ldswave.org/?p=402 I feel like these women are missing the bigger picture. Don't get me wrong, I don't care what you wear to church, you being there is the important part. However, I think there comes a point where you wear your Sunday best out of respect. Wear a dress, and if you are really, truly concerned with how other women feel (being left out or isolated) put your arm around them, get to know them, become their friend. 1:Church is not the place to make political stands. 2: The church may take a political stand (Gay marriage, abortion) but that's not something done inside of the actual three hour block. 3:The roles between men and women ARE DIFFERENT. Period. Some of the things are set up with the intention of having Priesthood holders lead, that's not going to change. And in the end you or the people following you may fall away from the church because they become blinded by things that don't matter. I don't know about you, but I have NEVER ONCE felt put down, or unequal as a woman in the Church. I have felt the opposite. When I think about it, I feel that the roles we have as women and men in the Church are divinely inspired to help us refine and use the qualities and traits we have/need to develop . I just don't understand why people get hung up on things that are so meaningless and/or things that are not going to change (Women giving blessings). Am I alone in thinking that this "protest" is disrespectful and walking that slippery slope?

Thanksgiving on Tuesday.

They don't have Thanksgiving in England (obviously) so we decided to take a trip over Thanksgiving and have the traditional meal on Tuesday instead of Thursday. It was my first attempt at doing the entire thing by myself, and when I say the entire thing, I mean the basics. 

I discovered Turkey is something that is a bit tricky to find here, but Thanks to Costco I found not only a turkey, one that was stuffed with stuffing already, and not so much the entire bird, as just the part you want to eat. Gotta love Costco! 

I also made garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted asparagus, green beans,  brown sugar sweet potatoes with marshmallows and a pumpkin cake for dessert. 

And I did all of this with a screaming Maddie clinging to my legs the entire time. 

 

 We had Dallin over since Daniella went back to Utah a few days before. 

 They have a drink over here that we LOVE called J20. Boston drank three of them. 

 Maddie loved every bite of her meal! I can always count on her to make me feel good about my cooking.

 Not sure what this face is about. 

 When she eats it gets everywhere! Hair, ears, bottom of her pants, toes, seriously everywhere! 

 The potatoes were a hit! I used an entire bag, and we cleaned them up! To be fair, the potatoes are much smaller here so we were lucky that we had enough. 

 Here's the turkey with the stuffing. Normally I think stuffing is the worst part of the meal, but this was actually very good. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make a regular turkey after this one. 

Here we are completely satisfied and ridiculously full. We didn't even touch the pumpkin cake. Which worked out because I ate it for basically every meal for the next 48 hours. :) 

This Thanksgiving I'm incredibly thankful for all the usual stuff (family, gospel, etc.) but I'm incredibly thankful to be an American! I know it sounds cheesy, but it's completely true. I feel so blessed to have been born in America!  

What's on your face?

(I'm having a hard time hearing the sound on these, so if you can't hear them either come back because you've got to hear it for the first video)

Holy cow! I'm pretty behind. I have so much I'd like to catch you up on, but barely any time with the laptop to actually do anything about it. Even now, I've only got 5 minutes before Chris leaves for work and takes the lap top with him. So I grabbed it and thought I'd put a little something on here.

These are my kids and this is what happens when I think they're playing quietly by themselves. Notice how innocent Boston sounds at the end. 

And here's a very short one of Maddie that I thought you'd all enjoy. I wish I could have gotten more but I ran out of room on my phone. 

Halloween

Oh Halloween. It was just not quite the same this year, but it was still a blast! In fact, I think I'm going to have to start having a Halloween party every year. I seriously LOVE Halloween!

 I was going to let Maddie be a BYU Cheerleader for Halloween this year, but then right before we left I found this little number, and I couldn't resist! I was just too cute! It had a hat, but the only time Maddie would wear it was when we were outside and it was raining. 

 Year three of this Dragon Costume! Talk about getting your moneys worth! He wears this ALL the time! People at Chris's work half expect to see Boston in this costume whenever they see us together, regardless of the time of year. If I had really pushed it, I'm sure he would have been Spiderman this year, but since I didn't, and since he still LOVES to dress up as a dragon, I let him.  You'll see it's getting a little small on him, but after three years of growing it's surprising that it still fits! 

 This is Gabe, the cutest (and best I might add) baby ever! He seriously makes me baby hungry! If only our kids came out as well behaved! 

 The whole crew before we went Trick or Treating in our apartment. I should have taken pictures, but I didn't think about it. I put the grown ups in each room connected to our hallway with three treats each. Then we got our grocery bags and went "trick or treating". At Maddie's room we got glow sticks, at Boston's room we got halloween bubbles, at our room Chris gave them Glow necklaces and at the living room they got Halloween balloons. It was really ingenious actually. 

 The glow sticks were a big hit. I took the kids in the hallway and we closed all the doors which makes it pitch black and we had a blast with the glow sticks! This is just Boston, Maddie, and Ally. 

 Notice the Green apparition on the left? What could be more Halloween than a ghostly appearance while playing in the dark? 

 After playing with the glow sticks the big kids decorated Halloween cookies, which somehow I didn't get any pictures of. Poor Maddie wants to be so much like them but isn't quite big enough yet so she gets left out a lot of the time. Luckily she was pretty entertained by the glow stick jewelry we made. At one point she had three glow necklaces and at least four glow bracelets. 

 We then carved/painted our halloween pumpkins! The kids thought this was the coolest thing ever and had a blast! 

 Boston and Maddie's pumpkin, hers didn't get painted, but we probably should have let her...oh well. Next year. 

 Morgan always makes Ally some kind of cool pumpkin each Halloween. Last year was Cinderella, the year before was Dora the Explorer. This year Peppa Pig made an appearance. It was seriously impressive. The kids thought he was quite the artist. 

 Isn't she the cutest witch EVER?

 Boston decided a plain old dragon wasn't cool enough, so he threw his super hero costume on over it. I I ask you what's more awesome than a super hero dragon?

 A super hero dragon and a super hero princess! 

 Here's Maddie with the witch hat. You can see she's thrilled about wearing it! 

Maddie loves to hang out in her super hero costume! She brings this to me most mornings and then runs around the house. 

Halloween night we went to the BletchlyWard's trunk or treat. It was pretty rainy, and we were positive it would be moved inside, but it wasn't. We all trick or treated in the rain and froze. Actually it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The rain went from pouring to a drizzle and the wind died down so it was bearable. This kids didn't care. They got Candy. Not good candy, but to kids sugar is sugar. I guess it worked out because with their candy being so gross, Chris and I didn't eat any. :)