Young Women

I have been the 1st Counselor in the Young Women Presidency for six months now.  We have a great group of girls.  We have a large group of girls--I think we are almost 60 in total in our ward.  A recent activity for our Mia Maids was to learn how to make Bentos--a Japanese-style lunch box.  Heather Yancey, one of our leaders, served a mission in Japan and continues to carry on many of the traditions from a country she learned to love.

She had so many cool little cooking knick knacks too--containers, a carrot rosette maker, punches to make star-shaped cheese.  Who wouldn't want such coolness in their lunch?  I also learned the key to making a rice ball.  First, it is all about the rice.  A short-grained rice is best.  Once cooked, you add water to your hands, sprinkle them with salt for flavoring, and then mold the rice.

The girls had a lot of fun creating their own bento.

Medicine

We've had sickness at our house over the past couple weeks--since Chris and I got home from our cruise.  I was fortunate enough to be able to avoid all of the germs.  Kristen was down for the most days from school and quickly found the medicine I gave her to be quite distasteful.  I found the second bulleted item added to my grocery list and had to chuckle.  I'll admit it doesn't taste very great, but it works well.

Julie

I can't say enough good things about Julie.  She is a friend that we met a couple of years ago when Chris was still working at IBM, and she was hired on.  We have kept in touch with her as she has moved to different states and had different jobs.

Her kindness in agreeing to watch our girls for a week was huge and certainly not the most fun choice she could have made.  But, she loved our girls, chaufered them around for a week, cooked for them, made cookies with them for Valentine's, painted fingernails, read scriptures with them, and tucked them in at night.  It took a few days to break through the, "I'm too old for a babysitter" attitude from my two oldest until they were having fun and joking around.

This is their "Dinosaur Faces" picture followed by their, "We're having fun and doing ok Mom" picture.  Thanks Julie. (This picture also showed up in our mailbox a couple of days ago as a postcard created from Instagram.  So cool.)

House Progress - Feb. 19

We are pretty certain on our tile selections.  I have made a few changes recently though.  We had selected a travertine for the bathroom showers and floors on the second floor that were the same color.  I thought it would be just too much of one color.  I was able to find a ceramic tile in a darker walnut tone that looked as though it were travertine.  It will give a great color contrast and hopefully be more durable.

The problem with having so much time to make decisions is that I waffle back and forth between choices and second guess myself.  I will have less stress in my life for sure when everything is installed.

The front porch is finally being added on.  They have been waiting to add a water-proof membrane to the front porch concrete and then another layer of concrete, but the weather has not been cooperating.  We needed to get the porch added on in order to finish the roof line and work toward making this house water-tight.  Up until this point, it has not been and there is a lot of leakage.  It is a true concern since both Misha and Chris spotted mold in the crawl space.  It makes me sick to think of it, because I think it could have been prevented.  It will be taken care of.

The concrete portion of the shower pan was poured.

House Progress - Feb.18

We are still missing three windows in the living room because of incorrect measurements and/or incorrect keystrokes on the computer.  They are now ordered for the third time.  That's the charm, right?  You can see them in the picture below still covered in plastic.  It keeps some of the weather out, but not all.  However, the rest of the windows and doors have been installed.

The view from the upper deck is pretty amazing (minus the scaffolding).  I don't think I will ever get tired of it.  I love to stand on it and listen to the honking of the geese and the singing of the meadowlarks.  I have been told, and I will definitely put some people to the test, that mosquitoes are not usually found so high up from the ground.  I will let you know this summer.

House Progress - Feb. 16

Chris and I returned from our cruise on the 15th.  It was dark so we waited until Sunday afternoon to visit the property and check out the progress that had been made on the house.  We were excited to see that the second deck had been added on as well as the roof over the deck.

The view from the master bedroom.

The hubs for the outdoor water faucets were finished, including a hub in the garage and a hot/cold hub by the back door.  If water weren't so expensive, I'd invite you all over to run through a warm sprinkler, but since it is so $$, we will use it for washing off when coming up from the beach.

The lake is filling quickly once the pump was turned off.  I was actually a little skeptical at the swiftness with which it would fill again, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Both of the fireplaces were installed.  The basement one has since been raised so that we could have a hearth.

Misha discovered the shelf above the closet in her "bedroom", however, it is not officially her room yet.  All of my girls have grown lazy in the rental because they simply don't care to keep it tidy and there is a lack of space for things.  I told them that their bedroom choice would totally depend on who kept their bedroom at the rental most tidy until we move.  It has motivated Misha for sure because she REALLY wants this room.

Cruise - Day 9

Saturday, February 15--Coming Home--There was a part of me that was sad to be leaving a week of fun with my sweetheart.  It was a much needed time for rest, relaxation, and fun.  Another part of me was excited to see my kids again.  I realized that we were back in port when I woke up around 5:30 am.  Chris was still sleeping, but I turned my phone on to download messages and get mail.  I also have it set to vibrate since I am notoriously bad about hearing the phone ring.  The phone started buzzing on my night stand. I quickly grabbed it and threw it on to the couch.  That wasn't too much better.  Finally I stuffed it under my pillow. 

As much as I wanted to text my kids, they were still two hours behind.  Chris had set an alarm for 6:45.  I don't think I was so good about letting him have a sound sleep.  Once I am up, I'm up and there weren't too many places to go.  I did slip out onto the balcony to take some pictures though.  Florida was colder than usual since there was arctic air flooding the rest of the country.  I didn't stay outside too long.

Chris was not looking forward to going home.  In fact, he mentioned, "I am so done with the rental."  Hmmm, how to respond.  "You can't be done yet.  We still have two and a half months to go."  I totally understood.  I have hated living in the rental and have felt claustrophobic for the last ten months of my life.  Not a good feeling to have.

We decided on the Windjammer for a quick breakfast so that we could disembark around 8 am.  As you can imagine, we encountered lines.  Lines to get off the ship, lines to pick up luggage, and lines to go through customs.  It doesn't happen often for us, but we happened to pick the fastest line at customs and were out of the building in no time.  But...more lines.  The taxi line to get to the airport.  We decided to share a taxi with our friends from Oregon, the Dentons.

Once deposited at the airport with our luggage checked, Chris was happy to see that he had been given Pre-check status.  He seemed to forget that I still had to wait in the very, very long line.  If he had just gone through as Priority Plus, I could have gone with him.  I was a little bit perturbed.  He was just coming back out to go through security again with me, when I was sent to the Pre-check line.  (That was after waiting in line for half an hour though).  I told Chris I was almost through and not to bother.

I stopped in a little shop to pick up some water and things when we met up.  Chris had found Kevin and Laura sitting close to our gate.  Laura looked tired.  I'm not sure she wanted to be "on" for even a little longer.  We boarded earlier than they did (their plane was late), and were able to sit in one of Chris' favorite rows--the exit row with only two seats.

Now for the long ride home.  Chris booked a connecting flight through Houston just to get us home earlier in the day.  It was a long day, but I was able to journal most of the previous week (which would normally take me a week or so to finish).

It worked out that Julie met us at the airport with the girls before her flight returned her to Utah.  I had my camera ready to take pictures, but it was hard to get a good focus on the girls as they spied us and then raced toward us.  I am pretty sure Julie was tired and worn out, but all of the girls seemed to be in good spirits.  Yay for good friends.

Cruise - Day 8

Friday, February 14--Happy Valentine's Day—Our last full day at sea.  Boo.  But another day of classes with Laura.  We followed up our breakfast in the Romeo and Juliet dining room at 8:30 with class at 9:30.  It was a fun morning of learning and discussion.  One idea we learned for keeping harmony in marriage is to have even and odd days that belong to the husband and wife.  If your day is an odd day and a decision is to be made on an odd day, then you get the final decision.  Interesting concept.

We had a quick lunch in the Windjammer with not so great options by the end of the week.  We also found out that we could have been having lunch in the dining room all week long as well. Oh well, the things you learn.  We returned for a quick "Not So Newlywed" Game followed by a group picture.  It is crazy that even by the end of the week, there were still people that I hadn't had a chance to get to know and even wondered, "You were in our group?"

A bunch of us helped to pack up Laura's equipment and papers.  I am sure that she would have done a much better job organizing things, but I believe we needed to be out of the conference room for another group who had scheduled it.

Chris and I had a relaxing afternoon.  We started to watch the movie "Jobs" and both of us drifted off to sleep.  It was nice to have some down time.  We tidied up for dinner and were happy to see that those who wanted to sit together as a group had to be there on time or actually had to mingle with the rest of our group.  That was the big difference with this group from last time. I didn't feel as though we were able to get to know as many people simply because the wanted to stay as a group.

We had to have most of our luggage set out Friday evening for it to be off-loaded and ready for us at the dock on Saturday morning.  We picked out clothes for Saturday and set everything else out in the hallway before heading off for one more evening of fun.

Some of the previous attendee ladies, brought stuff to play Bunco along with prizes.  Good thing I had had a nap since we didn't get started until after 10 pm.  Let's just say they raided Goodwill in the weeks before the cruise to find gag lingerie gifts.  When we ended the night, we had one of the crew members take a picture of our group.  Some of the guys had said "prizes" on their heads and bodies.  The guy taking the picture wasn't quite so sure that he wanted to even come in to the room, let alone take a picture.  But he caught the spirit of official cruise photographers and said, "Ok, this one will cost you..."

We said goodbye to some amazing new friends and headed off to bed.

Cruise - Day 7

Thursday February 13—Our next stop on Thursday was to be at Labadee, Haiti.  It was Royal Caribbean's private island.  They had built a dock and made tremendous improvements to the spot.  Many of the Haitians from Labadee (across the bay) worked in the resort when ships were docked.  There were shops, a zipline, kayaking, kids area, water toys, lots of beaches, and places for eating.  As we were leaving the ship, the employees were also loading all the food that would be needed for the day since lunch was included.

Lots of our friends were going to experience the zipline, but at $95 a person, we decided to forego the experience.  Chris and I brought our snorkel gear with us, (so did Laura and Kevin) but the water we swam in was so murky that we saw absolutely nothing.  It was even hard to see each other if we swam too far away.  We did try to get pictures of some of our group who chose to zipline, but after 45 minutes of waiting, we headed back to our "beach" for lunch.

Lunch was similar fare to what we ate in the Windjammer at lunch time--hamburgers, hotdogs, salads, fruit, brownies--it was nice to not have to worry about the preparation.  Following lunch, we joined up with a lot of couples from our group for a kayaking tour.  We followed Jerome.  There may or may not have been a little bit of competition between our kayak and Doyels.  I thought the tour was a lot of fun.  I always enjoy some great exercise couched as fun.  We decided to check out the Artisan Village for a few more souvenirs.  Chris and I found a funky looking art piece.  We debated the feasibility of transporting it back to Colorado, but it was wrapped up well for us.

We gathered up our backpacks from the lockers and headed back to the boat to, you guessed it, shower and get ready for dinner.  We attended another performance in the Alhambra Theatre followed by disco dancing on the Promenade followed by karaoke.  A few in our group were brave enough to participate.

Cruise - Day 6

Wednesday, February 12—The one drawback to a Western Caribbean cruise was that there were no US ports that we were able to visit.  Last time we docked in the US Virgin Islands and were able to check in with our kids mid-way through the week.  The roaming charges would have been too much.  We docked in Jamaica Wednesday morning.  We met up in the Schooner's Lounge again with a different group of people from the Couple's cruise for an excursion rafting down the Martha Brae.  Our bus driver today was Germaine and he didn't want a lick of talking among his passengers while he was talking.  He did share information about Kingston and Falmouth.  This island reminded Chris and I a lot of the Philippines.  There were shacks made of corrugated tin and blue tarps.  Every where we went, people were imploring us to come and look at their wares, "Hey boss lady," or the like.  I didn't enjoy that part of it.  I just wanted to look without the pressure.

Germaine, drove us to the start of our raft trip where we each had our own little raft and raft captain.  Our boat captain, Simon, was not terribly talkative compared to some of the others AND he liked to be first.  Even though we were the fourth or fifth raft to depart, he quickly bumped and knocked his way in front of the others.  Since it was a "leisure" excursion, we would have liked to take it a little slower.  It was lovely.  We saw almond trees, bamboo, blue herons, and termite farms.

Again, Germaine picked us up to transport to our next stop--lunch at Jamaica Swamp Safari Village. We had jerked chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, punch, and some type of bread.  We wondered if maybe it was from the bread fruit.  Chris actually sent a text to the girls but we didn't get any response.  After dinner, we returned to the port.  It was a lovely area that had been recently upgraded.  Still there were plenty of Jamaicans trying to sell their wares.  We ventured out in to the market, but each "store" sold the same stuff as the others and all were trying to entice us in.

We used our SeaPasses to enter the terminal area again and did a little shopping there where the sellers weren't quite so vigorous in their sales techniques.  We found a few things for the girls and then decided that a snack was in order first, followed by a nap.

After dinner, we had tickets to the skating performance.  Yep, a skating rink on the cruise ship.  It was impressive and the skaters were very talented. We followed the skating with "Love and Marriage" in the Alhambra Theater.  It was a Newlywed type game with four couple picked from the crowd.  Julie and Darren from our group were picked to participate.  Hilarious.  The oldest couple were 83 years old and had been married for 58 or so years.  They were from Canada and most likely spoke French.  Julie was so kind, she would try and help both the husband and the wife understand what was going on. 

Cruise - Day 5

Tuesday, February 11--I woke up early.  Not my favorite thing when I don't have to.  Crazy how I still do it in different time zones.  Since we showered late in the afternoon on Monday, we figured we didn't need to shower early if we were just going to be in the ocean later.  Today we docked in Grand Cayman.  We had a group excursion planned to Sting Ray City which included a stop at a turtle farm, and a short visit to Hell.  Charming.

We had to take boats--tenders--from the ship to the dock in Grand Cayman, so the disembarking process took a lot longer.  We met our group in the Schooner's Lounge at 9 am after breakfast in the Windjammer Cafe.  I think it was on the 4th floor and once we got there, our tour guide, Mark, suggested that we might want to bring along our ID.  Ugghh.  Chris hiked back up to the 10th floor, grabbed our driver's licenses, and ran back down to the lounge.  When our entire group of 18 was assembled, we headed down to the first floor to board the tender.

Mark got us situated with our tickets and bus driver--The German--on bus #10.  The German shared interesting facts about the island as we drove along.  Our first stop was a turtle farm.  Apparently it is okay to kill a turtle if it has been raised on a farm, but not if it has been caught in the ocean.  These turtles at the farm were huge.  Huge.  And I decided that I was going to go further out of my comfort zone and impress my kids by holding one.  They should be impressed.

Laura Brotherson

We finally convinced The German that we could skip the rum-tasting portion of this excursion.  I don't think he minded too much because it jumped us ahead of all the other tour buses on the same excursion.  We drove instead to Hell.  True story.  The name of the little town was Hell, and we took advantage of the small post office there to mail our girls postcards from Hell.  There was also Hell Rock a short distance behind the post office.

Our final stop of the day was to board our boat--The Ray Explorer--to Sting Ray City.  I am not sure what I thought this was, I guess I didn't really read the brochure that carefully, but the Ray Explorer took us about 30 minutes from the shore to a sandy reef in the middle of the ocean that was inhabited by numerous sting rays that were fairly docile.  We climbed down the ladder in to the water which was a perfect temperature. It was a little weird to have the sting rays swim around us and up against us.  We touched them, took pictures with them, pretended to kiss them, and let them drape across our backs, though I did opt out of feeding them "chum" - teensy, weensy squid.  We would have liked to stay longer, and Chris really wanted to snorkel, but we only had about 45 minutes in the water.

Chris found a cool shell with a crabby inhabitant.  Kristen would have thought the shell, minus the crab, would have been perfect, but we were not allowed to remove any souvenirs from the ocean.

We returned to the terminal where "The German" dropped us off.  Nathan and Polly D, Kim and Ben Aanderud, and Chris and I decided to do a little exploring and shopping along the streets nearby.  I think Chris found a shell souvenir for Kristen here, though it probably isn't real.

We were some of the last cruisers to return to the boat on the last tender of the day.

We showered in preparation for dinner--non-formal.  We were able to sit with some of our Portland friends and enjoyed their company.  Following dinner, we headed to the Alhambra Theater to find seats for the 9 pm show.  It was a tribute to Motown.  Though I can't say that I knew all of the songs, it was enjoyable.

There was a "MadHatters Ball" on the Promenade at 10:20.  The girls would have enjoyed the singing, dancing, and colorful characters.

Cruise - Day 4

Monday, February 10--This was our first full-day at sea as well as our first day of seminars.  After meeting up with our old and new Sherwood, OR friends for breakfast on the Romeo and Juliet floor of the dining room, we headed down to the second floor to the Conference Center.  I forgot to put on my wedding ring and climbed all the way back up to the tenth floor from the third.  Oh, those stairs.  I didn't realize when I went back down to the second floor that you couldn't got from the the front of the boat to the back of the boat.  I was now late for the start of the seminar, and hurriedly climbed back up to the third floor.  There was no direct way to get to the back of the boat on this floor either.  Fourth floor.  I finally made it to the aft of the ship, descended back to the second floor, and found my seat next to Chris.  Whew.  We had two and half hours of seminar from Laura in the morning, a short lunch with Kevin and Laura, and then two and half hours again in the afternoon.

Chris obliged me in going to exercise.  I had missed a couple of days already and was beginning to feel sluggish.  I had the most energy.  It was great.  I love exercising at sea level.  We came back to the room after about an hour, showered, and rested. 

Monday was our first of two formal nights.  My husband looked HOT!  We had some pictures taken, but none of them were our favorite.  We did decide however that we need to dress up more often.  It is a lot of fun to look great for each other.

We had to take a picture of the Lobster Bisque.  Studio C anyone?

And, of course, our towel animal.

We didn't coordinate well with the group about meeting up for the "Once Upon a Time" performance.  We tried to save a few seats for our friends, but seat saving wasn't encouraged and some of the many "older" people on board were happy to sit next to us.