Raspberry Pickin’

Rebecca and I are going to be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary this year and we decided that to celebrate we should go on a cruise.  Since our actual anniversary is in December we took an early victory lap to avoid the cold of winter.  We had taken our honeymoon in San Diego and the misery of the soggy and cold clothes we got when sitting in the splash zone at Sea World still resonated after all these years.

We booked our cruise with Royal Caribbean.  Not that we have much of anything to compare them to, but we think they are great!  Service was exceptional.

I find it mind blowing that they are able to have so much stuff on a ship and not have it drop to the bottom of the ocean.  We learned that the ship we were on is one of the smaller ones.  I read that a new ship that will be launching next year weights 250,800 tons.  What a monster!  We may have to go on another cruise just to witness that size of ship.

Our original itinerary was to go to Cabo, Mazatlan, then Puerto Vallarta, but as we were leaving LA the captain announced that they were looking at a low pressure system near Puerto Vallarta that had the possibility of becoming a hurricane.  It did…  Here’s the captain explaining the hurricane.

The new plan would be to go to Cabo, a short day at Mazatlan, then book it out of there back heading north ahead of the hurricane.

In Cabo, you have to tender to shore; there is nowhere to actually dock. When we got to Cabo the crew was able to get one group off the ship onto the tender without incident, but because of the swells they were having issues being able to get others onto the boat for shore, so they cancelled all the rest of the trips ashore.  As a result this is all that we got to see of Cabo.

Looks quite nice right?  We we a bit disappointed, but the crew organized additional entertainment and activities for us to enjoy.

We later learned at dinner from our table-mates who made it ashore with the first group that Cabo wasn’t very much fun at all. They had a miserable time on shore.  The beaches we all closed and there was feces all over the streets.  They weren’t able to get back onto the boat until the end of the day when the tender boat made only one trip hoping to be able to get the people back on the cruise ship.  We watched them come back and it looked a bit precarious.

Our next stop at Mazatlan went a lot better because the cruise ship was able to tie up to the dock.

After a taxi ride straight from Grand Theft Auto, we arrived at the tourism area of Mazatlan.

Our first stop was to a Catholic church.  This picture best shows just how hot it was there.  When Rebecca checked the weather prior to our trip, she didn’t understand how it could be 80° but feel like 115°.  We now understand!  It was boiling hot.

We stopped by a flea market to pick up some trinkets for the kids.  It was interesting to see.  The restroom situation is entire story in itself.

The meat in the market was… questionable.  There was no way those open air refrigerators were keeping the meat cool enough in the stifling heat of that building.  It even smelt like food poison.

No visit to Mazatlan would be complete without a pilgrimage to Abbey Road to pay homage to Mazatlan’s native boys: Los Beatles.

We spent much of our afternoon walking along the coastline.  The beaches were closed due to the high waves caused by the hurricane.

Sure OSHA is an American thing, but this company needs to have their business license revoked.  Tree limbs instead of 2X4’s?  Really?

The heat ultimately did us in and we returned to the ship early.  There is a blue line in the ground and if you didn’t follow the blue line that leads from the port to the downtown, you were likely to be murdered.  We chose to risk death by murder over auto accident, so we walked.

Our next stop was Ensenada.

People were hitting us up at every step trying to convince us to buy their souveniers.

Enjoying the Cabo sunset

Most mornings I was up much earlier than Rebecca, so I’d slip out and wander the ship with my camera.

We ate ice cream.. Lots of it.

One of our favorite things was to watch the ocean.

Formal night at dinner.

The piano player liked riding up and down the elevator.

We enjoyed all of the performances in the theater.

Our new friends and dinner mates.  I’m kind of sad we didn’t get their contact info.

Our cruise director was a lot of fun.

I had the opportunity to try escargot since the kids are expecting us to eat it when we go to France. Now that I’ve tried it, I don’t need to eat it again. Ever.

The crew sang happy anniversary to us and we enjoyed a slice of desert.

Adele has some new fans after we saw the Adele tribute concert.

These icons are all over the ship.  It took me almost all week to figure out that is a the symbol of a firehose.

All in all it was a great trip despite the hurricane and missed ports. I sure do love my wife of 20 years!

It was time for the ward Christmas party and Rebecca asked me to take the pictures again this year.

I’ve been storing up kid artwork for a while, so here’s a post dedicated to our aspiring artists/graphic novelists.

Brooke’s school papers continue to be used (for better or for worse) as her sketch pad:

Holidays bring out her creativity:

She saw our bananas and couldn’t resist giving them a little personality:

And then we have the endless doodles and comics she draws on every scrap of paper she can find:

Caroline isn’t quite as prolific of an artist, but she does do cute drawings as well:

Spencer enjoys drawing also. Here we have a self portrait:

Another child who can’t resist doodling at school:

Spencer went through a phase where he was really into flags. He’d look up pictures of different flags and recreate them in miniature:

Lately Madison has been joining the artistic ranks.

Madison drew this one in church. Her friend Norah is sad, so she’s giving Norah a doll to make her happy:

This princess got caught in a rainstorm and wasn’t happy:

Madison brought this paper home from preschool. I was shocked at the adorableness of that zebra and had to text her preschool teacher to see if Madison actually drew that. Turns out she did draw it all by herself. It’s especially surprising how good her zebra is when you compare it to the other two animal blobs beside it.

One day we played Pictionary as a family. We told Madison she could draw whatever she wanted. The category was “animal.” She drew this:

After guessing every animal we could think of we finally asked Madison what it was. Her response? A giraffe. I continue to chuckle to myself every time I think of her neckless giraffe.