Bon Voyage!

With Mimi and Papa on their balcony...in Jamaica.

Me, Franci & Brit

Dinner one night...

Dinner the 2Nd night.

Since I FINALLY have our cruise pictures on the computer, I can blog about it!

My Mimi and Papa celebrated their 60Th wedding anniversary on August 5Th, and what they REALLY wanted was for everyone in the family to go on a cruise with them. All 16 of us (minus 5 of the great grandchildren)! We left EARLY Sunday morning, the 2Nd, and arrived in Galveston around 10:30 or 11:00. We dropped off our bags, parked the cars, and made our way to the ship! We were all so excited that while we were boarding the ship someone thought they saw Britanie's luggage on a rack about to be loaded, so like a bunch of rednecks we all ran to the window in amazement. It sounded something like "WOAH look there's Brit's luggage!! Oh my gosh they are about to put it on the boat! Where's my bag!?! Oh no wait....that's not Britanie's bag." Dad said we looked like Jed Clampett and his hill-billy family. It was funny. Here's the itinerary for the week:

Day 1- Fun day at sea (a.k.a. we'll be sailed for quite a while so find something to do)

Day 2- Another fun day at sea!

Day 3- And another fun day at sea!

Day 4- Mimi and Papa's anniversary and we arrive in Montego Bay, Jamaica

Day 5- Cayman Islands!

Day6- Cozumel!

Day 7- Last fun day at sea

Day 8- Get the heck off the boat

So let's go back to day one....about 3 hours after we boarded, ate lunch and checked out rooms and unpacked. Jared, Dallas, Britanie and I decide to go try out one of the pools. We get in the pool and all of the sudden my bathing suit FALLS APART. The only one piece that I have that was slightly too big for me as it is. The lining stayed in place but the outer "shell" I guess you would call it, lost all elasticity known to man. It looked like I had lost about 200 pounds and I had nothing but extra skin to show for it. My butt looked like I had taken a crap in my bathing suit. Nice. We have 6 more days of "bathing suit wearing time" and my suit crapped out after 3 hours. I had brought a couple of two pieces for Britanie since I didn't plan on EVER wearing them again.....ugh. So yes I thought ok I'll wear one of these just for the next two days till I can buy something in Jamaica. I figured, "I've seen a lot worse around here, and in bathing suits a lot smaller then what I'm gonna put on". Jamaica couldn't have come soon enough. Well on day two, the ladies were laying out and guess what....no one told me that the sun was stronger the closer you get to the freakin equator! So my SPF 30 didn't quite cut it. I was so burnt that you couldn't see anything but the halo of my star tattoo on my back (its a pink star). By Wednesday I realized I couldn't take the pain so Jared went to go to the store on the boat to get some highly over-priced aloe. But they weren't open. So he had to go all the way back to Jamaica to get me some even more over-priced aloe. How sweet. Jamaica was nuts. We didn't opt for the taxi drive deep into Jamaica, we settled for the shuttle bus ride to Margaritaville and the "Center City Mall" or whatever it was called. Basically people literally come OUT of their shops to try to drag you back in with them. Yikes. They don't believe you when you say you are broke. The Cayman Islands were SO much better than what we saw of Jamaica! We went to the beach after a few hours of shopping and souvenir buying. Dallas and Jared brought home pockets full of stupid rocks that they dug up with their feet in the ocean. Can't wait to display those little beauties in a jar in the bathroom. Come to think of it, that is probably why Jared wouldn't let me throw away the empty pickle jar Saturday night. Great, that's so classy. ANYWAYS...I forgot to mention that every night when we would get back from dinner and whatever activity that was going on after dinner, I beds would be turned down with chocolates, a list of stuff to do the next day, and a little animal made out of towels! Which takes us back to day 2....before we even got to breakfast Jared accidentally erased all of our pictures on the camera....work pictures, Jared's 2Nd birthday party pictures, and our first day on the ship, which included a picture of the towel seal waiting on our bed. Okay, back to day whatever....we arrived in Cozumel and the water was BEAUTIFUL! I couldn't believe it. It was amazing. We didn't really wanna do a whole lot there so we shopped a little bit and then caught up with mom and dad to get a taxi downtown and shop there and eat some real Mexican food. Okay downtown Cozumel was worse than Jamaica. And I forgot to mention that in the Cayman Islands they don't bother to stop at the stop signs, and I don't think they even have stop signs in Jamaica, people just pull out in front of each other and you honk to say thanks. It was crazy.

Mimi had it set up to where we had seated dinning every night at the same tables with the same waiters which were amazing! The food was so good! I tried duck, lamb, escargot, lobster tail, lobster bisque....I hated all of those things, but it didn't matter because you could just order something else! Dallas and Jared had at least 3 entrees every night on top of their 2 appetizers, salads, and whatever else they wanted, followed by a few desserts. Our waiter was so nice to us, I'm sure we looked like a bunch of fat greedy Americans, lol.

There was SO much to do on the ships and we all had an awesome time. I am SO thankful that we got to go and share that experience with my family. I loved it. I want to go back already. Maybe someday :)

Happy Birthday Jared!

Today is Jared's 2nd birthday! I can't believe he's already two. Two years ago today I never would have imagined the impact that our baby boy would have had on my life. He's so hyper (ALL the time), he loves being outside (especially if the dogs go outside with him), he talks all day long (which I never get tired of), and he already folds his arms during prayer, says Amen at the end, and tells me he loves me every night. He's such a blessing. He has lately decided that he wants to clean up his toys before we go somewhere, not always but sometimes. He has to say bye to each animal in the house before we leave, and sometimes he wants to give each one of them kisses....even the cat, which is sometimes a problem if she's hiding somewhere. Jared is already putting sentences together and he is really starting to make sense....to me anyways. I thought maybe I would use this blog to write a little something for Jared to read when he's a little bit older....

Jared: You're two today!! I've been telling you happy birthday all day long even though you don't understand what I'm saying. Right now your absolute favorite movie is CARS, every time you see a semi on the road you say "I see Mac!"....then two seconds later somehow you see another Mac. I'm pretty sure that your favorite character is Tow Mater, and then Lightning McQueen is a close second. You talk us into letting you take your cars to bed with you every night, and for naps too. You would rather be outside in the 100 degree weather than be inside where it's nice and cool. You LOVE swinging on the swing set in the back yard. Your favorite thing to do is lay stomach side down on the swing and get your daddy to spin you. You also love getting daddy to throw a basketball on the roof of the dog house so that you can both catch it when it bounces off. You made us do that for close to an hour the other day. And you love your little sister so much. You won't remember this, but just recently you have figured out that if she is crying and you hit yourself on the side of the head and say ouchie, it makes her laugh really hard and she usually stops crying. When we are in the car and the two of you are in the backseat together you somehow communicate. I can't figure it out, neither can daddy, but you both sit back there and just laugh at each other...and Wylee isn't even 8 months old yet! You are such a smart little boy and you are very loved by everyone in your life. I can't wait to watch you grow up! Well that's a lie, I would love for you to be little forever so that I could always protect you....but that won't happen. Anyways, happy birthday baby Jared (yes at two I still call you baby Jared and that is acceptable considering I am the one that gave birth to you). Mommy and Daddy love you with all of our hearts!

Anyways, have a good Thursday!

Easter

I didn't know how to put up videos back in April so here is a late Easter video of Gunner and Jared. Jared has no clothes on because during the Easter egg hunt he fell in the mud so we had to change him. Gunner has no shirt on because Jared had no shirt on.

Happy Monday

Since I don't really have anything fun to tell you guys about, I thought I would just put up some random pictures of the kids! Happy Monday! Her hair really isn't as red as this picture makes it look.

Aren't they cute?

This is how Jared takes pictures.....they are never normal.



Baby Jared was relaxing, while watching Days of Our Lives and eating a bowl of grapes....must be nice.

Doing his part to help out around the yard :)

It's been a BIG day for Wylee Ann!

Wylee crawled for the first time today! Well sort of the first time, a few days ago she moved each knee once and each hand once, but I don't count that. Today she crawled to me! We got a video of it but everytime she did it either baby Jared was in the way or a dog was walking in front of the camera, but we got enough of her to where you get the idea. She first started sitting up on her own last Friday (7-10) and then started crawling 8 days later! We are VERY proud! After nap time we decided we would take baby Jared and Wylee to Bass Pro Shop so Jared could look at the big fish through the glass and see the turtles and other stuff. He loves looking at the fish! After that big Jared decided to stop by Claire's and just look into getting Wylee's ears pierced....and we did it! I couldn't watch, so I went around the store with Jared picking up everything that he took off of the racks, but just like that it was done and she cried and cried for about 2 minutes and then she was over it! Baby Jared kept grabbing his ears and saying "Me pretty too", he really wanted his ears pierced and cried when we told him no. He got a sucker instead which seemed just as good to him. Here are some pictures that I took right before bedtime, I don't know how well you can see her earrings in them, they show up really well in the Windows Picture Viewer, though. I think if you click on the picture it might make it bigger, I don't really know. Anyways, that's been our big day! I hope you like the pictures and videos!

PROductivity...

So I spent all morning getting ALL of our home videos on the computer. Nice. And analyzing. And registering. Now I just have to crop and edit....someday. But for your viewing pleasure, I am going to try to post some videos of the kids playing together and some from the 4Th of July with family. Not too much is going on around here. Well, actually, as I typed that I thought to myself "If not a lot is going on around here then why am I so exhausted all the time and why don't I watch t.v. more often. Oh yeah that's right, I have two babies". I guess "Cars" and "Finding Nemo" count as t.v. for now. I guess we do have SOME exciting information....Wylee is now an INDEPENDENT SITTER!!! Yay for her!!!! I walked in the living room and heard baby Jared laughing at something behind the coffee table and as I peeked around there she was sitting straight up with her hands propped up on her fat little leg rolls and her bottom lip sucked in just lookin around at her new view. So then Jared and I were BOTH laughing at her. She has some pretty good facial expressions. I think my life is about to get much harder, it's easy for Jared to just take a toy away from her if he doesn't want her touching it....she can't go after it. But soon enough she will be crawling and Jared is gonna have a hard time keeping things away from her. So either he will just learn how to share with his little "sissy", as he calls her, or he's gonna be really upset, and often. Other than trying to get ready for the cruise, not much else is happening! Jared and Caine
Jared laying with Caine.....he was laughing so hard in there.

Jared got his Aunt Becky to get him that car while we were at Build-A-Bear and Wylee is just the right size for it!

Little sleepy Wylee and her baby doll :)

The video is from 4th of July, it's just a TINY bit of all the videos that we took. I'll put more up later. They are lengthy. The pictures are just some randomly taken photos from the last month or so!

Our amazing 4th!

We had an AWESOME 4th of July this year!!! The pictures that I'm putting up are stolen from my sister-in-law's blog for now, we haven't uploaded ours yet. We got to spend our long weekend in New Braunfuls (I really can not spell that) with ALMOST all of Jared's sisters and brother and mom. His youngest sister is still on her mission so she missed out on our family fun, but I think it was too good of a time to not do it again soon. We had all of Jared and Wylee's 13 cousins, plus all of the adults....I guess technically there were 14 cousins, one still in the womb :) We spent almost the entire day at Schlitterban on Friday and we had about as much fun as you can have with a 7 month old and a 23 month old, lol. But I know that all the older kids had a great time so we were happy about that. And then Saturday was a big day too! It was miss Caitlyn's 9th birthday, so we had a chocolate flag cake in her honor (and it was sooo good), along with ice cream. Jared grilled chicken and sausages and we had a little cookout to celebrate! After cake and ice cream we went to the San Marcus fireworks and Charite bought all the kids those fun little glow sticks, baby Jared made us sleep with his, he was so in love with it. I have some good videos to put up to, all the kids were so cute when the firework show started. Jared's ready to get out of the bath now so I'll have to put more up later.

We really tried to get a cousin picture but this is the best we got, lol. It was a good effort.
Sweet baby Jared

Me and Ruth

Big Jared, Aimee, Little Jared and Charite

Rane and Wylee