When We Weren't Cruising...

October flew by because we were so busy with Halloween festivities and our amazing cruise. Here's some pictures when we weren't partying it up: 

I found this swimsuit on clearance for $5. Brynnli has been wearing it 24/7 since we bought it. She wears it to the store, she wears it to sleep, she comes home from preschool and changes right into it. She cries when I tell her we have to wash it and stands in front of the washer saying, "I miss you swimsuit!"

Do you know why you should always be nice to moms? You never know when she's lost another battle with a 5 year old. 

 So one day I was driving around and heard a contest on the radio. I ended up calling in and playing the game. Guess what? I ended up winning and won tickets to Clint Black! Clint Black is not my favorite singer, but for a free date night, I will go see anything!

 We went with my parents and my favorite part was as we were walking in my mom said, "oh look, Clint Black is coming!" We chuckled and told her that's who we were there to see. Then as we were waiting for the doors to open my mom was standing by a poster of Clint Black and said the same thing again. When we told her that's who we were there to see, she goes, "Oh how fun" like it was the first time she found out. Sometimes things like this can be sad to me because its a reminder of how sad and unknown my mom's future is, but this situation genuinely made me laugh.

Aww, our little snuggle bugs!

 When we got home from our vacation we had so many leaves to rake up. Our kids got right to work without us even having to ask them!

 I had to plan our ward's Trunk-or-treat. It was a lot of work, but I think it turned out pretty good. Sadly, this is the only picture I took.

 What's more fun than burying yourself in the leaves? We have a huge pile!

Yep, October got us like...

Halloween Festivities

We had such a fun Halloween this year. We started out by carving pumpkins at Grandma and Grandpa's house. 

 Caden's creation!

 Brynnli wanted a unicorn this year.

 Makayla painted a Mickey Pumpkin to help us get ready for our Disney Cruise.

 How cute are all of these cousins.

 We had another party at Tammy and Bruces. This year Makayla is a dead cheerleader, Brynnli is Rapunzel, and Caden is Mario.

 And Tyler and I made up this last minute costume. We're unicorns in case you couldn't tell.

 Here's our other family members all dressed up.

 Then Brynnli got to have a Halloween party at preschool. They did a special parade and song. Brynnli switched things up and decided she wanted to be Belle. Oh, the mind of a 5 year old.

 On Halloween morning we got to go to the kids' school for their parade.

 How cute is Caden and his friend. They were Mario and Luigi.

 I got to help in Makayla's class for a Halloween party. It was so much fun.

 For dinner we had our traditional chili and mummy dogs.

 Grandpa and Grandma came over to see the kids before the kids went trick or treating.

 Halloween night was SO cold! We had to bundle the kids up. I didn't think they would last very long, but they ended up going trick or treating in our neighborhood and the one next to us.

 We are on a sugar rush, so why not make mummy brownies too?

Happy Halloween

Disney Cruise!

Get ready for picture overload because we went on the most incredible family vacation of all time... We went on a DISNEY CRUISE!!! 

Tyler's family talked about doing a family cruise for a while. Tracy had been keeping her eye on prices and called one Saturday while we were at The Land and said the price dropped a few hundred dollars a person, so we booked it right then. With all the families together we were going cruising with 25 of our family members. 

We decided to go a day early and stay in San Diego the night before our cruise departed. We made it to the airport and were ready to begin our adventure!

Mickey nails for the win!

Our flight was short, but rough. Poor Makayla got sick and threw up on the plane.

We went to dinner and then walked around the pier and explored.

We got ice cream and went on a carousel ride.

Terry and Craig and the Jones family arrived later that night. We were all so excited for our week of fun, I don't think we slept much that night.

The next morning we had a few hours to kill before we boarded our ship, so we dropped the kids off at the pool (get it?)

Then we headed over to the port. This is Makayla in front of the Disney Wonder. We waited in line for what seemed like forever to get registered, take pictures, and make it to our room.

I was actually surprised how big our room felt. There was a queen sized bed and bunk beds. Caden and Brynn were in our room and Makayla stayed in Grandma and Grandpa's room.

Then we went to the sail-a-way party. We danced and partied, and waved goodbye to work and school and said hello to vacation!

Makayla even got to dance with Mickey, but she was super shy.

We had our mandatory safety drill and the kids explored kids club. I'm telling you, Disney has it figured out! Our kids spent so much time in kids club. They played games, had cooking classes, drawing activities, crafts, met characters, had dance parties and scavenger hunts. Our kids were constantly asking to go to kids club. The best part was that they had wrist bands on so they couldn't get out without us knowing, and they had to wash their hands every time they went in (Tyler's favorite part). While the kids were in Kids club we walked around the ship and explored. I got lost and would continue to get lost during our entire trip. I swear the ship was so big I could not figure out where I was.

Our first show was a comedy show called "Buckets and Boards". It was so entertaining and the kids were laughing so hard.

Our first dinner night was at Tianna's Place. The boat was rocking so bad and most of us didn't feel great that night. But we did get to meet Tiana.

Let me tell you a little bit about the food. It was amazing! Brynnli ordered Mac and Cheese every night (literally every night), they had so many fun things to try, and if you didn't like what you ordered, they would bring you a different dish. And, they encouraged you to try multiple desserts.

Do you want to know the other best part? They cut our kids' food. That's right. Tyler and I actually got to enjoy our food when it came out instead of rushing around to get our kids' plates ready.

We were so off on our schedule and after our fun filled day, we were all pretty tired. Brynnli fell asleep at dinner that night.

The next day we were at sea all day. We spent some time meeting characters, exploring the ship and going to different activities.

We went to an origami class, a drawing class, and Disney trivia

Our show that night was the Golden Mickey's. It was like an awards type show where Disney characters were given awards like best villain and best hero. I thought it was super cute. 

That night at dinner might have been one of my favorite nights. It was formal night at King Triton's. We told the kids they had to try escargot (snails). And you know what? They were so brave and tried them! They didn't like them, but they tried it.

Colton was my favorite. This facial expression says it all.

After dinner we watched the sunset. Our world is amazing and we get to show our kids a little piece of it.

Do you know the kids' favorite part about dinner? The Mickey ice cream bar. I think they got one every night.

The next day we had our first stop in Cabo, Mexico.

We had to wait for everyone to get there (getting 25 people to move is almost impossible), but once they did we took a glass bottom boat to see the Cabo Arch.

Then we spent a few hours at the beach. The kids had so much fun playing in the ocean and playing in the sand.

Brynnie, Caden, and Makayla the mermaids!

People kept coming up to us trying to sell things. We were trying to be polite at first, but by the end we would just ignore them. No I don't want my girls' hair braided... no we don't want a wooden cheap toy, ok, yes, we do want bracelets for the girls.

When we got back to the boat we had some lunch and laid out by the pool.

Do you know one of my favorite parts? Watching our kids consume insane amounts of "Eye Scream". I swear every time I saw Tyler he had an ice cream in his hand. 

That night we got to see the new movie Maleficent. It was a good show, but we were starting to feel the tiredness catch up to us and Tyler and I ended up sleeping through most of it. Oops! 

Dinner for our 3rd night was at Animator's Pallet. As dinner progressed the pictures on the wall changed from drawings to actual animations. Our servers were adorable. This one called Brynnli "Grumpy Princess" every time she saw her.

I loved our servers! They always had a ginger ale ready for me at dinner; it was the only thing that helped me not get sea sick.

After dinner our kids would go to kids club and we would go to one of the adult shows, like comedy shows, karaoke, or the piano bar. Brynnli chose to go back to the room and watch Dumbo every night.

We loved the cute towel animals on our beds every night.

Day 4 the kids were up early and played basketball with Grandpa Craig.

More time in kids club.

Our second stop was Mazatlan. We walked around for a bit and the kids got to buy some cheap souvenirs.

The kids were not very interested in the stops and preferred to be back on the ship, so we headed back and the kids got to play for hours in the pools.

That night was Halloween on the High Seas. We all got to get dressed up in our Halloween costumes and go trick-or-treating around the ship. The kids got SO MUCH candy!

Day 5 we woke up in Puerto Vallarta.

We all got off the ship and ended up at the beach with the Jones family. Our kids spent hours playing in the ocean and the sand. They all had a blast!

We ended up with so much sand in our swimsuits. It was crazy!

Back on the boat we ate lunch and then got ready for Pirate night.

This is the only picture we got of all 25 of us.

My cousin made these cute matching shirts for us. Aren't they stinkin adorable?

Our show this night was a magic show. It must have not been very good, because I don't remember it.

Anyone surprised Brynnli ordered Mac and Cheese again? You would think she would be sick of it by day 5, but nope.

After dinner we went to the deck for a Mickey show and FIREWORKS!! Can you believe there were fireworks on our ship! They were amazing!

Day 6 was at sea. We decided to dedicate the last two days to meeting characters. We got to meet a lot of our favorites:

We played around the ship and went to lots of family-type game shows. They were all so entertaining and a few of us even went up on stage to participate. We also played lots of Bingo!

We enjoyed the sunset

That night our show was the Broadways show of Frozen. It was magical. I LOVED it! I seriously cried. I've always thought Elsa reminds me of Makayla, Anna reminds me of Brynnli and Caden reminds me of Olaf. I love the story and the strong theme of family.

Our last day was at sea again.

We met Doc McStuffins.

Then Brynnli had a MAJOR meltdown as we were going to meet Vamparina, so she didn't get a picture. She did continue to throw a temper tantrum for a good 30 minutes that got me lots of pity looks from other passengers.

Mason competed in the baby dash race. He doesn't crawl yet, so needless to say, he didn't win.

The kids were so excited to see Stitch. He was hilarious with them and kept covering their eyes.

Our kids performed in the Friendship Rocks show. It was so cute seeing them onstage.

Our last show was "Dare to Dream" and although it wasn't as good as Frozen, I really liked it and the message about following your dream no matter how old you are.

Our last night at dinner was Animators Pallet. Our servers had us draw on these papers and said there would be a surprise later.

At the end of the meal we found out our surprise was the drawings we made became the show on the walls. We were all animators! It was so fun to see our drawings and names on the screen.

We had one last party with the characters and got some more pictures.

You're never too young to learn about Titanic, although I'm sure there's no icebergs on the Mexican Riviera.

This vacation was a dream and so much fun. I loved spending a week with my family where we didn't have a care in the world. We were treated like royalty and had so much fun every single day. I can't wait to go on another cruise... hopefully real soon.