Jeremy and I had the opportunity to go see Elder Ballard speak in the Tabernacle.  It was such a great date night.  We loved it.  I love the opportunities we have just because Jeremy works for the church.  Since Jeremy helps put together things for Seminaries and Institutes, we were invited to attend.  Elder Ballard talked about how the youth are changing and need concrete answers to their questions.  He also talked about how the interned is full of non truths about the gospel and so we need to teach them at earlier ages how to feel of the spirit, and seek for answers in appropriate places.

 It's been such a nice week as far as weather goes, that I took my boys to the part.  Jackson did not like the swings.

But both boys loved getting out of the house!

I love how all my boys like playing with cars together.  It seriously makes me so happy.

And this was taken by my mother-in-law when she was babysitting for us a while back.  I love the rare moments these two are treating each other kindly!

Coming Home and Valentine's Day

We got the kids first thing Saturday morning.  We spent that day doing lots of laundry and reassuring Jack that he could go play by himself.  He wouldn't let me put him down almost all day long! We also discovered that Jack learned how to crawl up the stairs all by himself!

We gave the kids their souvenirs too.  Each one of them loved it.  The boys loved them so much they wouldn't hold still, so their souvenirs are blurry in each of the pics.  I've included a close up of each souvenir so we can see what they looked like. 

The kids were excited to give us the Valentine's they had made for us while we were gone.

We did celebrate Valentine's Day the next day, but didn't take any pictures.  (We were probably all pictured out from the week.) We had our traditional doughnuts and chocolate milk breakfast and then the kids opened our gifts to them.  We gave Clara a diary that has a lock on it, which she has been using a lot.  She even has hidden the key from us.  :)  We gave Joe a ninja guy he's been eyeing every time we've been to the store lately.

Miami: Cruise Day 5

We left our ship at 9 am, but our flight wasn't until 8 pm, so we spent the day in Miami. We started out at the Lincoln Road Mall.  We saw some extra large pizzas.

We also went into a hat shop where Jeremy fell in love with an expensive hat.  If you are wondering what to get him for his birthday, just give him a gift card to Goorin Bros hat shop and maybe eventually it will add up to be enough to get him his dream hat.  :)

We then walked to the beach, but didn't stay long due to modesty issues.

We then decided to walk to a place to eat.  But we took some scenery pictures along the way.

We finally made it to Las Olas cafe where we ate a cubano.

We spent the remaining time at Jeff and Emily's hotel playing games.

We left the hotel around 5:30, headed to the airport for dinner and our flight home.

Great Stirrup Cay: Cruise Day 4

We didn't have any excursions planned this day since we knew we would be on a private island.  Our ship anchored at sea and we took tenders to get to the island.

Here is a picture of our ship that we took from a tender.

When we first arrived at the island, we chose some seats and got settled in for the day.

We then decided to go for a walk while it was still a little chilly before we headed into the ocean to swim. 

We walked to a light house that was about a mile away from our chairs. On the way we saw Great Stirrup Cay's "airport."  It was really more like a helicopter pad that had overgrown with weeds.

We found the light house, but decided not to go up it since there was a sign that said, "Danger, Keep Out."

We walked just a little farther until the trail ended with us on the other side of the island.

On our way back, we saw people up in the light house.  So some of the guys decided they wanted to risk going up there too. 

We then headed back to the beach area, had lunch, and then went swimming.

Since it was our last dinner on the ship, we told our waitress that it was John's 70th birthday soon.  So they brought him a cake and sang to him.

We got to meet Tyler, our cruise director that night right before the entertainment started.  He was such a good MC and really make the entertainment worthwhile all week long.

We also had to take a picture of the couples whose shirts matched.

And because it was our last night on the ship, I'll put all our towel animal pictures here.

And this was the view of our state room floor.  Sometimes this hallway seemed never ending! :)

Nassau, Bahama: Cruise Day 3

That morning, we were up early enough to watch the cruise ship sail into Nassau.  Here's a lighthouse we saw on the way in.

We started our excursion in Nassau by heading out to Rainbow Reef to go snorkeling.  Here is a pic of us on the ride out.

Our snorkeling gear:

When Jeremy first tried his mask on, it was way too tight.  You can see how it folded his face in this pic:

The actual snorkeling experience wasn't the best I had done, and since it was Jeremy's first time, that wasn't good.  The waved were pretty choppy, so we kept getting salt water in our mouth and it was hard to adjust our gear.  Jeremy ended up getting on the boat after about 20 min.  I stayed a little longer, but felt odd snorkeling without a buddy.  Since it was a cold and windy day, everyone was done snorkeling before our allotted hour was up.

Here are some pics of us heading back to Nassau.

We got back on our cruise ship, showered, and then headed back to Nassau for some shopping.

We started at the straw market, but Jeremy and I quickly became overwhelmed by all the extremely pushy salesmen.  So he and I headed to go visit some of the more upscale shops.  A few of them had some free stuff, which is where I got my favorite souvenir of the trip: a sea turtle necklace.

Jeremy was pretty picky with his souvenirs.  He seemed to not see very much stuff with good typography on it.  He ended up getting just a T-Shirt in Nassau.  But he was able to spot the Bahama Logo he'd studied.

Here we are right before we got back on the ship.  It was so windy that my hair wouldn't stay out of my face long enough get a picture.

We decided to switch where we ate dinner that night.  The previous two nights we ate The Crossings dining room.  But since we were always in there for over 2 hours, we switched and ate our last two dinners at The Palace.