FINALLY!!! – Christmas/Anniversary update

February 3, 2009

Well, after taking the month of January off, due to work busy-ness and side project busy-ness, and family and church busy-ness, I finally have a couple minutes to start writing again — so it’ll be a LONG catch-up entry.  So I’ll throw in some subheadings so if you want to skip past certain parts you can.

Lots of Time Off!

Christmas was awesome.  One big benefit of my job is a TON of time off.  Coming into December I still had 5 days of available PTO, PLUS it’s kind of tradition for the entire office to shut down completely the last couple weeks of the year.  It’s a VERY nice part of working here.  So on the 17th of December, we packed up the kiddos and hopped on a plane to San Antonio and didn’t come back until the 5th of January. 

Flight to Texas

We were very nervous about the flight down with 6 kids 8 and under.  Well, the nervousness only increased as we made it to our terminal and saw a huge line at the counter.  I knew something wasn’t right.  Well, we decided to fly on the night of the worst snow storm in Vegas in 25 years.  Anything in or out of Vegas had just been canceled, including our flight which had a layover there.  Our original flight had been scheduled to leave at 5:30pm and arrive in S.A. at almost 1am — 5 hours of flying with an hour-plus layover in Vegas.  So after worrying and wondering while we waited in line to talk to the good Southwest people, they told us there was a direct flight to San Antonio that was leaving shortly and we could get on that.  Wow.  It didn’t actually leave shortly.  Turns out they had decided to just put another flight in the queue to get people to San Antonio and so we had to wait for an hour or so for the pilot to show up.  But it was great.  There were only about 12 other people on the plane, so rather than our original packed flight we got to spread out, take up 3 rows, and the twins got to run around a bit and explore without bothering a bunch of people.  Plus, we ended up getting into San Antonio a little after 10pm, a LOT earlier than our original flight.  It was great and we were definitely blessed.  I don’t know why they got a separate flight just for 20 people, but I’m sure glad we were watched over.  While we were on board the plane waiting for the pilot to arrive, the stewardess brought some coloring books and crayons for the kids.  Soren busied himself coloring and after 20 minutes or so started gushing about how “this is the best flight ever.  I love this flight!”  And we hadn’t even left the ground yet.  But he was right.  I think it was about the best flight ever, especially for a family of 8.

PRE-Christmas Events

We had a lot of fun leading up to Christmas in Texas.  We went to a get-together with our old ward friends from growing up – actually I should say with JESSICA’s old ward friends because only one of the friends there was my age, but we were all a pretty close youth group anyway, so I was pretty good friends even with Jessica’s age group.  We also went to a Christmas concert that featured amazing performances by a bunch of different performers who just happened to include my mom singing and Jessica playing the piano.  Also we attended my Mom’s school Christmas concert – amazing what she pulls out of those little kids.  Probably the highlight of the pre-Christmas activities though was celebrating the twins’ birthday.  I made this video showing the party entertainment and I think it turned out pretty well.  Too fun.

Christmas Day

Well of course we were up nice and early Christmas morning.  The kids had a ton of fun discovering what Santa brought and then we sat down to open presents.  I had been secretly planning a surprise for Julie with the help of actually my whole family.  For Christmas (and our anniversary which is January 2nd) I gave her a cruise.  We would leave on the 27th of December and be gone for 5 nights as we sailed to Cozumel and Progreso, Mexico.  My mom helped out in the months leading up to Christmas by concocting a story about how we were going to go across the border into Mexico for a day or so and how Julie and I needed to bring our passports, but to not worry about getting the kids passports because Mexico has a “reciprocity agreement” with the U.S.where adults’ passports are required but their kids aren’t.  Fortunately Julie bought it all and wasn’t suspicious.  To give her her present, I wrapped a new swim suit and the tag said “Because you need the proper wardrobe for the ride to Mexico”.  Julie got a boatload (pun intended) of cash from my parents and got to go shopping the next day in preparation to leave.  I got the SWEET Olympus Stylus 1030SW shockproof, waterproof, dust-proof, freeze-proof camera that I had wanted to take on the cruise for good snorkeling and swimming photos.  So I was stoked.  But the best gift we got was that my parents and sisters had volunteered a couple months before to watch all 6 kids for a week so we could actually go on the cruise.  Without that, obviously, it would not have been possible.

Anniversary Cruise

The cruise can pretty much be summed up in 6 words: “best week of my adult life”.  It was AWESOME.  We’d never cruised before but we’re sold on it now as the most relaxing method of vacationing.  It’s so nice to be spoiled and taken care of.  Your luggage and hotel room “goes with you” basically, so you settle in on the first day and don’t worry about packing or hauling luggage around until the last day even though you’re going to different locations.  The crew waits on you hand and foot and there’s always something going on — or you can just sit and relax and watch the water go by.  And of course there’s the food.  Plenty of food.  At any time of day. 

Cozumel was our favorite stop.  The shore excursion we chose was “Amazing Cozumel Race”.  Julie and I have always loved the TV show.  A few years ago I had a business trip to Las Vegas.  I didn’t tell Julie about it at all, and she was surprised when I had a cousin of mine show up at our house to take the kids and give her her first “clue” leading her to the airport.  After a few more clues she finally found me at the Rio Hotel and we enjoyed a couple days vacation from real life.  But her race was nothing compared to this “Amazing Race”.  We ran all over Cozumel and there were many challenges we had to do like:

• Par 8 holes on a mini-golf course
• Answer a sheet of questions about exhibits in the Cozumel Museum and use those answers to get our next locale
• Get a Henna Tattoo and translate it in order to get the next stop.
• Take a boat ride and then snorkel out to a sunken ship to get it’s name (my personal favorite – the image of that sunken ship is permanently etched in my mind.  It was AWESOME!)
• Find the right shop in the farmer’s market
• and more!

Julie and I ended up doing really well.  We came in 2nd place.  Our undoing was our physical fitness.  The thing I like about Amazing Race is it’s not just about physical prowess, but there’s a good mix of mental gymnastics to even out the playing field.  Julie and I excelled at the mental part.  If we could get in a little better  shape we’d make a perfect Amazing Race team.  Even with our lacking though, we were only 2 minutes behind the first place team and 6 minutes off of the fastest time ever so we were pretty excited.  As a prize we got some “Amazing Cozumel Race” t-shirts.

After the race, we did some shopping, then headed to a pier the race organizers had told us about to do some snorkeling.  It wasn’t as good as the reefs that are in the area, but those require more time  than we had.  The snorkeling was still pretty nice.  At one point, I was swimming around and all of a sudden I was surrounded by “Sergeant Major” Fish swimming all around me.  They’re pretty aggressive and weren’t shy at all.  I got some great shots of them using my sweet new camera.

The next day we docked in Progreso.  Our excursion here was to some Mayan ruins called Dzibilchaltun.  Not as big as Chichen Itza, but a shorter drive and impressive nonetheless.  The best part of the ruins, though, was the Cenote, or sinkhole, where we were able to swim.  It’s a spring and the water is crystal clear and refreshingly cool.  The swimming was amazing.  I could have stayed in the water all day, but unfortunately we didn’t have a ton of time there.  After the ruins we went to a private beach house where we sat on the beach sipping Pina Coladas and enjoyed the water a little more.

New Years Eve was our last night on the ship and there were loads of activities planned.  After dinner we went to our room and found hats and noisemakers waiting for us on the bed.  After some karaoke, we went up on the pool deck for the party and counted down to midnight while the band played.  It was packed and pretty crazy.

Late the next morning we debarked in Galveston and drove the 4 hours back to San Antonio.  It was an awesome vacation and honestly I think about going back every day.  We are so grateful to my family for volunteering to take the 6 kids, who can be quite a handful.  Julie and I never really had a honeymoon.  We got married on January 2nd and school started 2 days later, so we got a weekend in Salt Lake for our honeymoon.  So finally, for our 10th anniversary, we got to get away from everything for an extended period, forget about life, and just enjoy each other’s company. 

If you’re really wanting more info on the cruise, I posted all the cruise photos here.

Post-Cruise

The rest of the time in Texas was spent just lounging around and getting ready to come home.  Peyton and Soren had driven home with Katie and Tagg so they could be home in time for school to start.  They left San Antonio while we were on our way back from Galveston, so we didn’t get to see them until we got home from Texas 4 days later.  10 days is a long time for a 6 and 8 year old to be away from Mom and Dad but they did OK.  The flight home wasn’t quite as nice as the flight there.  We had to go through Denver and Maren was very riled up and didn’t settle down until the second flight.  And the flights were packed so we had to hold Maren and Roman on our laps which got pretty uncomfortable after a while.  But we made it and for the most part it was nice to be home after so long away.  But it was definitely a great time and worth any of the hassles there may have been.

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