Caribbean Cuise Part 2 - Cuise day and Cozumel

Our first day on the boat was completely at sea, so we managed to keep ourselves occupied by rock climbingDodge ball. This quickly ended when a ball flew over the net and drifted out to sea. The guy in charge was pretty upset about it, but hey, dolphins play with those types of things right? :)
We spent a lot of time playing games in the game room. I spent 60% of the cruise in sweats. another 30% in a swim suit. Basically I put on real clothes so they would let me into the dining room.
We also celebrated some birthdays!

Holly found some weird statues around the ship.

Our 3rd day was spent in Cozumel, Mexico!
Brian, Holly, Courtney, John, Dustin, Annie, Grant, and I went on an X-rail tour that took us out to swim in a sinote. They said to wear clothes we didn't mind getting a little dirty. little did we know...
Maria and San Juan - they told us we could put whatever name we wanted on our name tags
Juanita and Pedro
Dora and Diego
Surprise! we got to hold various animals they had lying around. Literally. Two snakes lying on the grass, sneaking up on a turtle, while a hawk looked on behind us.
Holly holding one of the free-range snakes
Chameleon!!! That thing had weirdy pinchy toes! (Dear Jenny, we have spent too much time on chat today. How do I know? I just used the word 'weirdy')
We got to take a picture next to this eagle. They said it's the eagle on the Mexican flag. It was intimidating. Brian had to reach out and touch the eagle's feathers after the picture was taken.

Because Brian touched the eagle after the picture, the eagle became untrusting of the next group to take a picture with it - Holly and Grant. The eagle would not take its eyes off of Holly the whole time she was standing behind it.
Our little group, notice how we are still semi clean? White shirts were a BAD idea that day...what were we thinking Annie?!
Courtney and John getting ready to head out. You have to be awesome to ride a dunebuggy
Holly drove for 3.5 seconds before she wrecked her buggy. Grant drove the rest of the way
First of the group to head out!!! our buggy had issues making left turns. It took both of us to turn it at times


Here we are leading the group out into the wilderness!less than a minute later we tried to turn left, ended up veering right, and drove our buggy up a tree. It took a while for them to get us moving again. Everyone had to wait in a line behind us and think bad thoughts about us for holding up the excursion. It wouldn't be the last time we wrecked either...
They told us we would get dirty. They told us it would be bumpy (mexican butt massage to be exact) What they didn't tell us is that we would be driving through puddles and end up completely encrusted in Mexican mud (our guide referred to this as a 'mexican facial')
This is the last time we wrecked. We somehow managed to high-center our buggy on a tree stump. It took many tour guides to push us off the stump. Thank you John for documenting this and laughing at us for 5 minutes straight.
Meanwhile...
The rest of our cruise group decided to hire a cab and tour the beaches in the area. Their pictures look pretty, but as far as I can tell finding a leftover nativity on the beach was as exciting as it got. Y'all missed out!
After driving through the mud we ended up at our destination - a sinote (spell check?) which i guess is an underground lake that connects to the ocean. It was pretty awesome! It smelled like sulfur though and had a colony of a zillion bats living in it. Some of the guys did a high dive into the lake. I just used the little ladder in.
These were our little excursion friends. The ship lost their luggage and gave them a credit to buy clothes/essentials at one of the stores. This equaled toothpaste, a pair of cargo shorts, and a dress. Their only pair of clothes ended up getting completely covered in mud by the end of our excursion. We felt pretty bad for them.
Eventually Brian convinced me to swim into the 'bat cave' which is an inner cave with no light and a zillion more bats. No one could see except when someone's camera flash went off, so no judgement on people's facial expressions or proximity to others.
I was clearly unimpressed at this moment. Pay attention to mustachio next to me. We have no idea who he is and I don't remember ever seeing him during the excursion.
Brian was caught off guard as I apparently made a move on mustachio behind him.
Then they told us to get close and smile for a picture, So Brian grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him. Somehow mustachio got between us. Or it was mustachio that grabbed my arm. We don't know.
Don't swim in the dark is the moral of this story.
Just when we thought we had seen all the random animals we were going to, one of the tour guides pulled a baby alligator out of the brush and let us hold it on our way back from the caves
remember when I started out with a white shirt and tank? :( they are no more

When we got back they let us 'shower off' with more dirty-ish water and we all decided our shirts were toast so we bought touristy ones from a nearby shop. They gave us chips, queso, and coke
Then we walked around for a while and found the most delicious tacos in the history of tacos. They happened to come from the back of some guy's blue chevy pick-up. It was all very authentic :)Us in all of our cozumel shirts in front of the ship before we got back onboard
Later, it was formal night so we all got dressed up and practiced our fake smiles while we waited for our food. Smile with the mouth, never the eyes :)
Then I grew 6 inches and Brian felt threatened by it
Then we hung out in the hot tub
Thats not a tan on my arm, thats where my "mexican mud bath" stained my arm. It looked pretty convincing though.

Caribbean Cruise Part 1

This February we got to go on a western caribbean cruise with some of my extended family and it was a BLAST!!! So glad we got to go with family! It made it so much more fun!
We left bright and early saturday morning! We all look so happy to go!
Some of us ate breakfast
Dustin and Annie look side awake and ready to go. Can't say the same about me.

We flew from SLC to Houston TX. We took cabs to Galveston Island where we stayed the night.
My mom and her two sisters that came with
We walked around the beach, went to Murdocks - a building i saw ripped to shreds a few years earlier the last time i was in galveston for hurricane clean-up, and we walked to CVS for some last minute supplies. The next day we got the tags on our suitcases and killed some time waiting for the taxis to the dock by walking around the beach. Brian had an extra tag and wanted to make sure everyone, including me, knew who I belonged to

So i put a tag on him as well, thinking i was being super clever. It was a good plan until i realized I put one of his tags on him instead of mine...it was a good attempt.


Brian climbed down to 'touch the gulf of Mexico'. ew. I was sure he was going to fall in. This is him having a 5 year old moment, and me having a 'my mother' moment.We boarded our ship and took some more pictures
Here we are leaving -

We have pictures of my dad doing this exact pose from every vacation we've ever taken
Courtney and Annie kissing the Bingo Seal

October/November

Things have been crazy!
We flew out to Arizona to help Holly move to Orem (to an apartment found by yours truly I might add! you're welcome!) The night before we had our own little pre-adventure when I forced my mom and Brian to apply a demi-color to my hair, because I was not about to walk into Tiffany & Co in Scottsdale with unblended roots. They were troopers and did a pretty good job! We flew out bright and early the next morning. I hate flying. I really really hate flying. And that body scanner that I always have to go through.
Anyway, we landed and went to go pick up our rental car which was definitely a Lincoln Town Car - Mafia Edition. The thing was black and black leather, had a glove compartment that could easily accomodate your tommy gun, and a roomy truck that could fit 5-6 bodies comfortably. We were pretty embarrassed to drive off in it. After some light packing and planning we all piled into the Godfather-mobile and drove out to Sedona to see the beautiful scenery and have old gypsy women read our futures.
We decided to pass on the gypsies and take some weird-angled pictures next to the garbage can by the public bathrooms...we were really tiredI really don't remember why or how we took this picture. I'm just surprised my dad didn't make it any of the other 5 shots I have of this exact pose.
The next day the guys went golfing at some ritzy place they were definitely not dressed for and we headed off to Scottsdale to shop and pick up cupcakes from Sprinkles for later. (yummy!!!) I'd like to take this opportunity to start a petition to bring Charming Charlies to Utah.
Seriously.
We should all write letters to get this accessory shop here as soon as possible.
After meeting back up at Holly's apartment for a cupcake break and some light packing, we went out for even MORE shopping. Poor Brian thought he had gotten out of it, but no. He at least got rewarded by going to Lucille's for some tasty BBQ after. Sooooooo good!!!
The next day was moving day. The moving truck got picked up, the boxes got loaded, and we were on our way by early afternoon. Brian and I were the lucky drivers of the Budget and took advantage of our chance to be truckers!
Ok, so 44 oz cokes and junk food was as trucker as we got, but we had planned on hats, sunflower seeds, and walkie-talkies. We drove to Vegas that night and Holly got her first taste of sin city. Pretty much all that happened was that I got us lost in Ceasar's Palace and we ate at the Cheesecake Factory. Whoo-whooo!
The next day we drove to Orem and unpacked the truck, then Brian and I headed off to Riverton for our first 'slow move-in' weekend. We couldn't move from Provo until the last week of October, so we decided to spend weekends at the house trying to get things semi-ready for us to move in. We are living in the basement while finishing it, which is its own little adventure. In the 2-ish months we have been working on it we have finished the outside entrance, framing, wiring/plumbing, insulation, and as of tonight I officially have drywall on the ceilings and 2 large walls. I talk about all that like I actually had some part in it. I didn't.
Our goal (which I was reminded of by Brian's falsetto rendition of "If you like Pina Coladas" from the chair behind me) is to be finished with the basement by our cruise in February, so we are double excited for that vacation!
Speaking of Brian, while I was packing I took the opportunity to go through all of Brian's boxes that have been packed since before we got married. The contents of one box were pretty interesting -

a LARGE flashlight with dead batteries

Bullets


Fireworks


Equipment for 5 different sports(not pictured - one sad looking mostly deflated volleyball)


one sock


construction books


dryer sheets


an unopened disposable camera


full camo


a hand-crank flashlight


a plaster replica of his upper jaw (who keeps these things?!!)



one 2002 olympic sockstrange, since Brian was in Brasil during the olympics



2 functional calculators and 1 nonfunctional



a knife, 2 sets of keys, a wrench set, tape, and, of course, Mardi Gras beads


hand warmers


wooden pen in wooden box


floss, naturally


A sticker from the 2007 playoffs


and, last but certainly not least, a single use drug test
when asked about this, Brian claimed he was saving it to test me

I don't know why these items were all kept in the same box or what he could possibly be saving them for. Living in the woods to escape arrest? World-wide epidemic? Breakdown of civilization as we know it?? Zombie Apocolypse???

I don't know, and I choose not to think about it anymore - especially that drug test.
Whatever it is, he's prepared.