Sunday, February 07, 2010

Cruise!

Well this may be the longest blog post in the history of mankind! :) But there were so many good pictures! So enjoy the slideshow of our cruise to the Western Caribbean! The captions are below the pictures. :) We had a wonderful time. It was so warm and relaxing. We missed our kids so much but it was nice to have a break from life for a week. We got to see lots of places. We stopped at Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; Cozumel, Mexico; Cancun, Mexico; Belize City, Belize; Isla Roatan, Honduras. I had a lot of 1st this trip a few are that this was the 1st time to go to the east coast, 1st time to see the ocean, 1st time to swim in the ocean, and my 1st time out of the country besides Canada. It was so much fun! So here we go...
We left Saturday, January 23rd to head off to the airport. And this is what the roads looked like! It was so cold out and it was blizzarding. The roads were horrible! But we made it to the airport. Due to the yucky weather it made us even more excited to head to the warmth!

Mike and I on our 1st plane.

Mike's 1st time in Florida!

My 1st time in Florida and on the east coast! Yay!



Our sweet hotel room! Killer deal only $80 a night! HOLLA! We stayed at the Springhill Suites.

The couch in our room


Me in the shuttle on our way to the cruise port!

Mike in the shuttle on our way to the cruise port!


Our 1st view of our ship



Mike pushing a button on the elevator on the ship

Tampa, FL

The Tampa port


Mike on the ship..."I'm on a boat, I'm on a boat! Take a good hard look cuz I'm sailing on a boat!" Mike sang this song quite a bit on our cruise. I guess it's from SNL and Mike watched it right before we left. If you want to watch it look for the "clean" version.

Mike and I right before we left port


Another boat. Mike thought it was the coast gaurd boat.



This was the inside of the ship. It was gorgeous! Very elegant and beautiful. This is what the lobby area looked like from the 9th floor.



This was the Enchanted Forest. It was very pretty.

They had vases like this all over the boat. I thought they were beautiful.


Mike chillin' our 1st day at sea!

Me chillin' our 1st day at sea!

Mike getting ready for elegant night



Us taking a picture together and me pushing the button too early

Us on elegant night...I was looking at the screen and not the right part of the camera

Finally a good one! :)


Mike and I on elegant night on the deck.

Us again...I loved my pink dress!

Me


My handsome hubby!


Mike

Ok so this was my favorite part of dinner every night....the butter! This is a butter holder. As soon as I'd sit down I'd pull the top up cuz it was so darn cute!

Who could resist the cute butter? Seriously! Doesn't it just look like so much fun?


And here is the cute butter! Just adorable!

Lobster and Shrimp! YUMMY!!!!!

Mike so excited to dig in!

Me excited to dig in for my 1st time eating lobster!


So happy!

Our cute towel animal on Monday night

1st port! Grand Cayman! It was so beautiful!

Mike at Grand Cayman
Me at Grand Cayman


Mike and I

Us by the pirate. We had just gotten done snorkling so we were walking around drying off.

There were chickens running around the city


A nice little friend that scared me to death when we walked around a corner.


Crystal clear water. You can see the coral from the boat.

We were on our way back to the ship and the driver turned around so his wife could give him lunch! :)

A 'pirate' ship for tourists to go on


The Carnival Legend our ship

Our ship

Grand Cayman from the ship

Grand Cayman from the ship.

Mike eating sushi. They had a sushi bar every night. Mike was in heaven! He loved it!

See so happy!

A beautiful view from the ship


My FAVORITE dessert! Warm chocolate melting cake! YUMMY!

Our towel animal Tuesday night

Me in Cozumel, Mexico. Look at them guns! :)

A pretty flower

This guy sang for us on our boat ride to Cancun. The water was really rough and the boat was really rocky. He was a good singer and spoke English very well. We found out right before we got to Cancun that he used to be a member of the church, but had moved away from home and stopped going. He said that he hopes to come back one day. I hope he does cuz he would be awesome. He did a great job singing but I still got sea sick and ended up throwing up, as did 6 others on the boat. I got to the bathroom...no one else did...ick!

We were walking to our tour bus and I saw this and just had to take a picture. If you want to keep someone out of your yard....just put shards of broken glass on the top of your fence!

Our tour buses at our bathroom stop

Juan our awesome tour guide!

It was so green and beautiful!

Mike before we got to go into Tulum

Mike and I


Some pretty vegetation on the way into Tulum

Cute pink plant!

A lizard thing on the side of the walkway


The wall outside of Tulum

The entrance to Tulum

Some of the Mayan ruins

A guard tower on the wall

The temple at Tulum
The ruins

Juan again! He seriously was awesome!

Art they had on the building. This is a mask.
This is an eagle eye
More of the ruins
The beautiful beach at Tulum
Just beautiful

I love how clear the water is!
More of the ocean
This was their 'weather station'. If you stand in the building you can hear the winds through a hole in the wall. They believe this is how they could know if a hurricane was coming.

Mike
Me
The ruins
A closer view of the temple
This was right next to the temple. When I first saw it I immediately though of the Navuoo temple.
This was a building right above the cave where they got fresh water
The cave where they got fresh water
A view of Cancun, Mexico as we were leaving
Cozumel, Mexico
Our towel animal on Wednesday

The shops at Belize

Me with some ladies from Belize
At this port they had the cruise area guarded off by cement walls and barbed wire. So we cound't go very far into the city.

Belize City
Belize
An island in the middle of the ocean.
Our towel animal on Thursday

Isla Roatan, Honduras
These were all the buses and taxies they had lined up for the tourists
This was the most beautiful port. There was so much green! It was gorgeous!

The beach we went to in Honduras
Me in the ocean!
Mike and I lounging!
Mike relaxing on the beach
Me laying out soaking in the warmth and sun!
My favorite part was sticking my toes in the sand and feeling the sand on my feet.
The beach

Beautiful!
Mike and I in Isla Roatan
Honduras
Some dancers from Honduras.
This guy had me dance with him. I uploaded a video of me dancing at the end of the post.
Our second elegant night

Laughing and having fun!
Me
Mike kept taking pictures and I was so done!
Kisses for the camera!
Our towel animal Friday night
Mike and I with I Gusti our waiter! He was awesome! I loved when he'd say "Sweet time!" when it was time for dessert.
Our towel on Saturday night.

This is a video of the guy that sang for us on the boat ride to Cancun.

This is our waiters dancing to "Low". It was so funny! This was my favorite part of dinner beside the butter! :) Every night the waiters would dance and sing for us. I loved it!

Video of me dancing with some dancers from Honduras.

We had a wonderful time! :)

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

New Blog

Well I've been getting quite a few requests lately to make cakes for people. I have my 1st wedding cake for a non-family member in February and I've been asked by a few more people how much I charge. Well I've got to think a little bit more about pricing but I decided to set up a Cake Blog where I'll post all my pictures of the cakes I've made. So I thought I'd let you all know so if you have anyone that would like a cake they can go there and then contact me. The blog address is http://www.dedescakes.blogspot.com/. I will get pricing soon I just have to add it all up and right now I'm busy getting ready for my CRUISE!!!! YAY! :)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Wedding and Cakes!

Well last week was an exciting week. Mike's little brother Mark got married to Jacky. We had a wonderful time. I was able to make their wedding cake. I also made a cake for my friends baby shower. We were busy but had a great week. Here are some pictures:

Cake for Annie's baby shower

Another view of the cake

Me making Jacky's bouquet...it was almost 2 am and I was so tired!

Here is the final bouquet
Me and Amy (Mike's sister) waiting for Mark and Jacky to come out of the temple

Here is everyone at the temple. If you notice in the corner of the picture there is little Madilyn walking away from the group. She wiggled out of my arms and just started walking...she appearently wanted to go somewhere and knew just where it was. By the time we were done taking the picture she was almost around the corner. She was so cute!

Jacky the beautiful bride
Mark and Jacky


The wedding cake. It was a cheesecake one and it is so yummy! The entire cake was eaten!


The wedding cake again

Mark and Jacky at the reception

The Wright family


The boys

The girls
The dance off to the song 'Glamorous'! On Christmas I was walking up the stairs and found Tim and Matt jamming out to 'Glamorous' at the top of the stairs. So I told them at the reception they had to have a dance off! It was awesome!
Us doing a dance from Hot Rod! "Wwwwwhhhere do you get off!" We so have the moves!


Dancing at the reception! We had a blast! It was a fun weekend! We are so excited to have Jacky join the family! :)

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Past couple weeks exciting Events

Well it has been really fun these last couple weeks. Here are pictures of the girls on their last day of school before the break. It's been nice having them home but it will be nice to get back to our regular schedule. Here is how cute they were:
KatelynMayli

At TLC (Tikes Learning Center) where Mayli goes for preschool they always do a fun Christmas program for the parents. Mayli's class was so cute! She is the only girl and she loves it. They were so adorable.

Another picture of them singing. Here is a video of them singing.



One really exciting thing was that Jacky, Mark's (Mike's little brother) fiance, flew in from Guatemala on Christmas Day and we were finally able to meet her for the 1st time! She is so cute and sweet! We are excited for her to be in the family. Her and Mark are getting married on January 16th.


Me hugging Jacky when she arrived. We were all surprised because she wasn't supposed to come until the 26th. So when Mark came in with her on Christmas night we were all so happy to see her! The picture below is a picture of the 2 of them together.

We went to temple square on Monday the 28th to look at the pretty lights. The girls got to ride the train and they loved it. Here are some pictures of the fun time we had.

So Beautiful!
Mike and I in the visitors center. It was FREEZING outside so we had to go inside every once in a while to warm up.
Maddie and Daddy
Uncle Tim and Madilyn
Uncle Matt and Mayli

Mommy and Kate
The beautiful lights

Another picture of the temple

Then on January 2, 2010, Caleb Fausett my nephew was baptized. He is the 1st cousin on either side to be baptized so it was neat to be able to go to a baptism for a family member. I miss going to baptisms every month now that I'm no longer primary president so it was fun to spend a Saturday morning being at a baptism. It was a great service and he was so excited to be baptized. He is a wonderful little boy and we are so happy to have been able to have been there. Love you Caleb!


Here is Caleb and he was so tired of taking pictures but he let me take one anyway. Isn't he so handsome! Well that sums up the exciting things that happened the last couple weeks.

Christmas Time!

Christmas was wonderful this year! Unfortunately either my camera or my SD card is broken and all the pictures I took were deleted and we were unable to recover them. I was able to have a few that we took on the sweet new video camera Mike got for me! Here are a few pictures of the day.


The kids were so excited! They had a great time opening gifts and loved everything they got. We had a wonderful family get together on Christmas Eve with Mike's side of the family and were able to have the annual program where all the kids present the story of Christ's birth. Katelyn, Mayli, and Madilyn were all angels and they looked so cute. It was wonderful!