Snow Boots

I have been complaining to Spencer for some time about my wet feet after walking through the snow in my very not-snow-friendly shoes. I had my eye on a pair of boots that I thought were both cute and warm, but Spencer told me he thought they were ugly. Alas, we went out to run errands on Saturday and I got them anyway. After all, they were nearly 50% off after using the "Christmas Money" discount. My feet love them. Although Spencer said he didn't like them, this is what I found when I came in the living room after church:

Lookin' good!

I even had to bribe him with a few bites of my cereal (he was jealous of my Frosted Mini Spooners) to take them off. At least if he still doesn't like how they look, he can understand the coziness is worth it!

A (Very) Long Weekend

Hooray for no school on Monday! All of the museums in Cleveland were free on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so we went to the Great Lakes Science Center with our neighbors for a few hours in the morning.

I fully intended to take some cool pictures of us inside, but it didn't happen.

For dinner, we had a get-together with some friends. We all miss the deliciousness of Cafe Rio, so we just get copycat recipes off the Internet and make it ourselves!

I think this was the 3rd "Cafe Rio Night" that we've had. Yum.

In other news, we went to the temple on Saturday and were called and set apart as ordinance workers. We are so excited about it! So if you're there in the morning of the first or third Saturday of the month, be sure to say hi.

Winter Wonderland

We had a winter storm warning for Tuesday and Wednesday, and boy was the snow coming down fast! By Tuesday night it was level with out front door.

It may not look that bad, but keep in mind that there is a step up to our front door. They had not plowed our street by the time Spencer had to leave for school on Wednesday morning, so it was an adventure getting down the road (we got stuck a few times).

On a different note, remember our dining room?As you can see, it needed some help!

Well- good news! Our dining table arrived at the end of December, and I just put up some much cuter curtains today.

What do you think? (Uh, don't forget that I had nothing to do with the leaves stenciled on the wall, nor am I allowed to paint over them :)

Funny Stuff

My sister Wendy recently had baby #5, and I held him quite a bit while we were at her house. The most memorable conversation I had this Christmas Eve was with Riley and Dallin regarding babies. I was sitting at the kids table while we ate dinner, and Riley said "When are you gonna get a baby?"

Then 7-year-old Dallin looked at me very seriously and said, "Do you know how to fertilize?"

When I gave him kind of a shocked look, he recovered with, "I mean, (pointing to Spencer) does he know how to fertilize?"

At that point it was hard to hold in the laughter (my sister Shauna and I were the only adults that heard him say this). Thanks, Dallin, for the laughs. We'll be sure to tease you about it in a few years when you understand the implications of your question well enough to be embarrassed by it.

Christmas

Every Christmas Eve my family has a yummy dinner and then a talent show before reading the Christmas story in the Bible. I didn't take very many pictures, but there was lots of music with:

dancing,

spinning,

and stomping when the kids did their talents.

Shauna, Dan, and James played percussion to "The Little Drummer Boy."

Elayna got a hold of the cymbals and didn't want to let go.

Dallin played some Christmas carols on the violin. He was pretty good!

We also had a white elephant gift exchange, and here's Shauna modeling the attractive new biking outfit she opened. Spencer got some athlete's foot spray, and I got the single of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" on tape. We both "accidentally" left our loot at Wendy's house.

For the majority of our stay at my parents' house, we were busy playing serious games of ping pong. Spencer even beat my Dad quite a few times! You might not think that's very impressive, but it took me about 3 years to beat him, and I can still only do it once in a blue moon.

Cozumel, Mexico

Our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico, which ended up being one of my favorites. Everyone that we'd talked to on board seemed to really be looking forward to docking here because of the clear blue water.

Showing off the massive-ness of these ships.

Who wouldn't want to swim in water like this?

We decided to go snorkeling again, and there were several different beaches to choose from. We'd heard that Chankanaab was the most popular and very beautiful, but it cost $16 per person just to get in. So we opted for Dzul Ha, a much less crowded "beach" that we heard had tons of cool fish - and it was free!

Snorkeling here was pretty awesome. We saw lots of multicolored fish, big ones, small ones, long ones, short ones, etc. And they'd swim right up to us. One of the coolest things I saw actually happened when my head was out of the water. I was adjusting my mask, and this school of little tiny fish starting jumping out of the water (kind of like the wave at a football game). Then some of the bigger fish would jump out to eat them. It was so neat, I was totally mesmerized by it.

We actually got in 2 times, but after about 10 minutes of snorkeling the second time, I saw a jellyfish. I told Spencer, and we quickly decided to get out.

Lookin' for lunch?

Later that afternoon we went to town and looked through the shops. It was kind of funny to see Christmas decorations like this ginormous tree outside because the 85 degree weather hardly felt like Christmas. We also got a good laugh at some of the waiters at the restaurants, who would be outside trying to get people to come in. When we walked by they yelled, "Honeymooners, honeymooners!" to get our attention.

Guatemala

Our destination on day 4 was Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala. The island looked so beautiful from the top deck of our ship.

We checked out this market area on the pier to do a little shopping before our excursion. Like Honduras, the people were kind of pushy. If you even eyed a piece of jewelry, they were right next to you saying "special price for you" or "you like something?" It was pretty crazy, but at the same time I always felt kind of bad for saying "no thanks."

A little live entertainment while we shopped.

We booked a "4 hour kayaking eco tour" through the ship. We rode a boat to a resort on the island, where we did about 30 minutes of kayaking and then we were trapped at the resort for the other 3.5 hours until the boat came to pick us up again. So we tried to keep busy by swimming, going down some water slides, and exploring.

Some of the lush greenery surrounding the resort.

Visiting the lighthouse.

Chillin' on the beach.

These iguanas were in a cage at the resort, but we saw several others roaming around. They were huge!

That night was the second formal night on the ship. I think we look better in this picture because we have a little color (ok, so I have a little and Spencer has a lot).

A prom style pose in the Centrum (there really was a photographer that told us to stand like that... we just had someone else snap a photo with our camera too).

The folks at our table from left to right: Bill, Mandy, John, Spencer, Me, and Kate. Bill and Kate would talk about alcohol like it was going out of style, and we rarely saw Bill without a beer. That made for some pretty good entertainment. Surprisingly, Mandy and John were also from our neck of the woods, thus making it slightly easier to fill any awkward pauses in conversation with talk from "home."