Where has December gone???

Here we are, almost at then end of December, and I am finding myself asking, where the heck did December go? This month has been a busy month and a month full of a lot of changes!! Scott was called to be the 2nd counselor in the bishopric, I had shoulder surgery (on my right shoulder, which makes it kind of difficult to do things since I'm right handed!), my baby sister got married 3 days before Christmas, getting ready for Christmas before I had surgery, and all of the other Holiday festivities, and much more! It's been a little crazy here, but we've had a wonderful Christmas season and we had a wonderful Christmas with our families! What a wonderful, yet busy month it has been...well except for the surgery part, but it is wonderful that it is done and over with now!!! Scott and I have the best families in the world and they have given me so much help these past 2 weeks since the surgery and I am so very grateful for them!

Tile Coaster for Festival of Trees Gift Shop

I am on a committee for the Festival of Trees, and one of the things we are supposed to do is make 10 quality "hand made" craft items to be sold in the Gift Shop. This year I decided to make Tile Coasters. I am excited how they turned out! Anyone interested in going to Festival of Trees, it runs Nov 28-Dec 1st at the South Towne Expo Center! 100% of the proceeds go to Primary Children's Hospital!!

This is how they are on our counter! Each person in our family has one, and so when they use a cup, they can put it on the tile coaster, and that way, they know which cup is theirs and can use it for the rest of the day, and that way we don't need to go through 50 cups a day!

7 day Mexican Riviera Cruise

Scott and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary in July, so we decided to go celebrate with a 7 day cruise down to the Mexican Riviera (we spent 2 days in Cabo San Lucas and one in Puerto Vallarta)..with NO KIDS!!! A HUGE thanks to our parents for taking such good care of our kids while we were gone! We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the 8 days we were gone! The ship pulled out on Sunday afternoon (October 7th) and Monday was a day at sea. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in Cabo San Lucas where we spent one day on the zipline (AMAZING...by far our favorite shore excursion) and the second day riding dune buggies on on the beach) and then Thursday we spent in Puerto Vallarta where we did a shore excursion where you take a pirate ship out to a secluded/private beach (accessible only by sea) where they had snorkeling, kayaking and time to just spend playing in the water or on the beach! Then Friday and Saturday were days at sea, then we got off the ship Sunday morning, spent most of day at LAX waiting for our flight, then finally made it home Sunday night! The ship was awesome, the food was great (our scales can attest to that), we met some awesome people, got to sleep in a couple of days, and had a lot of fun just spending time together! I am kind of bummed because our camera battery died, so I didn't get many pictures around/inside the ship, but it was fun. It had mini golf, an outdoor movie screen, basketball/volleyball court, a waterslide, many pools and hot tubs, and much more. We enjoyed the comedy shows and the other shows they had. It was just an awesome week of doing whatever we wanted to do, whenever we wanted to do it! A very nice change!

In Cabo...waiting for our van to take us Zip Lining!

The Carnival Splendor from the dock in Cabo...I even captured the Jungle Booze Cruise boat as well!

CABO

For those that haven't been on a Carnival Cruise before, they have a dessert called Warm Chocolate Melting Cake that is to die for! We found out that the most anyone has ever eaten in one sitting is 4, so Scott wanted to try to beat it...he made it up to 3 on our last night, but that's as far as he got...but they did give us the recipe, so maybe I'll have to try to make it!

Zip Lining in Cabo San Lucas

Our first day in Cabo, for our shore excursion, we did zip lining. It was our favorite shore excursion! It was absolutely amazing, beautiful and such a rush! They split us up into 2 groups of 9, took us to a National Park that was about 75 min away, we met the group of 4 guys that were going to be our guides, we got our gear and they took us up the canyon. There were a series of about 9 actual ziplines down the canyon, with the last one being 1600 feet long and about 275 feet in the air..but not only did we zipline, but we also got to rock climb, rappel and do some rope bridges! Things I haven't ever done before! We were debating on whether to do the ziplining in Cabo or Puerto Vallarta, and we decided on Cabo...now I wish we did them in both places! It was that much fun!

They had a spot where you either had to rock climb with the rock climbing grips in the rocks, or they had ladders going up the side of the rocks, but the ladders didn't go straight up the rock, there were like 5 in a row, then then next 5 would be in a section to the left, then it would move back to the right, type of a deal...Scott was one of the only ones to do the rock wall and he FLEW up them! I opted for the ladder option and he said that the ladder was probably harder than the actual rock climbing...doh...oh well!

The poor girl in front of me was TERRIFIED! She was going so slow, they finally sent Scott and one other guy that were behind me, on another section of ropes to speed things up..but hey, she made it!

Dune Buggies in Cabo San Lucas

Our second day in Cabo, we did a shore excursion where we got to go ride dune buggies through the desert and on the beach for a couple of hours (complete with helmets, goggles, and a bandana to cover our mouths and noses from the dust, so we looked AWESOME!). Scott had the time of his life...I just held on for dear life! The beach they took us on was absolutely breathtaking! Scott was a little worried that they wouldn't really let you ride, and that it was going to be more like a "follow the leader" boring, easy type ride...which it was NOT! There was 4 other couples, then they had one guy in the front and one guy in the back, and boy did they let you ride those machines! They were having us jump them off of several hills, and needless to say, if you know how I prefer to drive our 4 wheelers, I let Scott drive the whole time. The way you had to drive them to keep up with everyone else was crazy! We were completely FILTHY by the time we were done!

Pirate Ship Excursion in Puerto Vallarta

Thursday, we went on a shore excursion where we took a pirate ship to a secluded beach (accessible only by sea)and we were able to play on the beach, snorkel and do some kayaking. This was our least favorite shore excursion that we did...but like Scott said, had we done this one first, we probably would have liked it a little more, but compared to the zipline and dune buggies, it wasn't nearly as much fun. We got on the pirate ship at 9:30 am, they assinged you (in groups) to your own "personal pirate" that was supposed to take care of you for the whole time, like get drinks, food, whatever else you needed..which I think we got the worst one on the whole ship! She was not very good compared to a lot of the other pirates, so that was disappointing. The boat ride to the beach was LONG...over 2 hours each way. They did shows and contests and other things to try to entertain us, but it was a little more cheesy than entertaining. We finally got to the beach a little after noon and had to wait to be taken by smaller boat to shore. The beach was GORGEOUS!!! I was shocked at how tropical/jungle like Puerto Vallarta was...at least the parts we saw. We spent 2 hours on the beach, then went back on the boat for the 2+ hour boat ride back to the dock and finally got back to the dock about 4:30, so it was a very long day.

Lexie's Birthday

Lexie celebrated her birthday on September 2nd! With McKenzie getting baptized on September 1st, we had everyone come over for food after the baptism, and we had a little birthday party for Lexie as well! We had a great afternoon with family (since I haven't let them have friend parties until their 5th birthday). The only thing she wanted for her birthday from us was a "big" American Girl Doll (we got her the twins (American Girl Dolls that are suited for younger kids) last year since she wasn't quite ready to take care of a "regular" doll, but she wanted a "big one".....since the regular American Girl Dolls are like 3 inches taller than the twins! Go Figure!) She really wanted the doll McKenna and was so excited to get her! She loves her to pieces!