All Aboard!!

Get ready for a lot of pictures!! We decided to go on a cruise with our friends after graduation and we had a blast! We were gone for a week and stopped at Coco Cay (island owned by the cruise line), St. Thomas, and St. Martin. The whole cruise thing was new for me. There are definitely pros and cons to going on cruises but overall I loved it! It was nice to get away and eat meals without kids pulling on me, get dressed up each night, enjoy entertainment every night, go dancing, eat ice cream whenever I wanted, read books, laugh a lot, and well the list could go on!

Excursions


Our first stop was at Coco Cay. We loved it here. We went Kayaking with Jen and Logan out in the ocean. It was a great tour. The water was BEAUTIFUL and we saw some cool things out in the ocean and got to get out of our Kayaks to swim around with the sting rays. I loved it!

On St. Martin we all took a fairy out to a tiny island where we were driven up to the top of it and mountain biked down to the beach. I was nervous at first because I've never done mountain biking. I like to bike but mountain biking I realized is different (and this was not anything extreme) However, once we got down our first hill I enjoyed it a lot more. It was a beautiful ride and we ended up at Honeymoon beach which was pretty secluded and beautiful.








We had fun experiencing something very new to us on St. Thomas. We went snuba diving. It is kind of like scuba diving but you don't carry the oxygen on you. We could dive as deep as 20 feet. It was a strange thing to get use to at first but once I got the hang of it it was awesome. Here is Jen getting ready to try it out.
Here is the first of our group to go. This is Bryan, Mindi, Logan, and Jen. Here they are learning how to breath with the oxygen.

Islands

After Kayaking we all had fun relaxing on the beach and swimming in the nice warm beautiful water. One of my favorite things was swimming out to some docks in the middle of the water with Bryan and Mindi. We loved hanging out there for a while. Here are Jen and Amber attempting to snorkel.
St. Martin



This was Honeymoon beach just off of St. Marin.
The sun never really showed in St. Thomas but we still had fun. It was a really nice place.
We ate at a local place and I loved it. The view was so pretty. We all enjoyed looking out at the palm trees and beach.
This was our view for lunch and right down there is where I got a back massage on the beach. I was super happy about this! I wanted one so bad but the boat charged $120 for one and I got 45 minutes for $20! It was heaven!! Andy was smart not to leave me with any extra money because I would have gladly given her $20 more for another 45 minutes!! It really was a highlight of the trip!



Jen, Amy, Mindi, and Amber

Fun on the Boat

There was sooooo much to do on the boat! We only did a fraction of what it offered. They had swimming pools, hot tubs, dancing, ice skating rink, shopping, movies, live shows each night, formal dinners, Karaoke, arcades, rock climbing, basketball tournaments, work out room, running track, flowrider.....pretty much if you are board on a cruise it is your own fault.

This is looking down to the promonade which we passed all the time in the evening.


We found we liked being at the back of the boat away from a lot of the people. We'd hang out here relaxing and reading. People would come and go as they wanted. It was so beautiful looking out at the pretty blue water.



We had ice cream at least once a day and sometimes more.



This is the track I'd run on. It was pretty cool looking out at the water while I was running.

The evenings were fun. We'd get dressed up and go to a show dinner and then usually some other form of entertainment. It was nice staying out as late as we wanted knowing we could sleep in the next morning.

Here we are with out waiters. They were so nice.


We had fun dancing...ok so some of us had more fun than others!


The guys competed in a dodgeball tournament. To determine which teams played first they had to do this competition. It was pretty funny to watch!

This trip would not have been possible without my mom who not only took on taking care of 4 kids but also giving Ethan his shots and calculating how many carbs he is eating and how much insulin he should get. She did a fabulous job and I am very very grateful for her!!

Half Marathon

Jen and I ran the mini marathon in Indy the day ofter graduation and the day before we left on the cruise. It is the best race! It's so much fun and the largest race I have ever been in or ever will be in. I believe there are about 35,000 runners! It's crazy. I loved training with Jen (once I got here back on board to train with me and stop with P90X) Unfortunately the race wasn't as fun this year. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep the night before due to sick kids. I was definitely running on LOW energy but we managed to finish in the time we were hoping for - I just didn't love it like I usually do!
We also had a slight problem finding our ride at the end. We were running a tad late getting to the race. We took off to use the bathroom thinking Julianna (the girl who drove us there) was going to meet up with us. Unfortunately we never saw her again and it is really hard to find someone at the end of the race if you don't have a meeting spot. Let's just say it took us an hour wandering around the city trying to remember the streets we parked at before we finally found her!! My legs were really happy to sit all the way home!

Celebration Time!!

After graduation we had our last (OK maybe not quite last) hurrah in the cul-da-sac with desert. We figured it was a good way to celebrate and to let the parents get to know each other given many of them were staying behind to babysit kids. It was of course fun. The only thing missing were some scooter rides from Bryan and Logan!

Sara, Anna, Amber, Mindi, Amy, and Jen (hard to believe we all ended up as neighbors!)
Libby, Lucy, Kamryn, Eliza
Joe, Sara, Anna, Mike, John, Amber, Mindi, Bryan, Amy, Andy, Logan, Jen
Joe, Mike, John, Bryan, Andy, Logan

Graduation

This day has been almost 2 years in the making! It is hard to believe that we are already done!!! I am proud of Andy and his hard work and happy to say that we all survived and are grateful to have a job to go to!! We are excited to move but so sad to leave all of our friends behind. We have LOVED Bloomington! We were happy to have my mom and Andy's mom here to celebrate Andy's graduation.





We ran into the Joe and Sara's family after graduation so couldn't resist a few pictures with the kids. Ethan, Lucas and Jenna

Libby and Lucy

Week of parties

Last week was an especially busy week of parties and fun. Our week looked something like this:

MBA Easter Egg hunt at Kelley
Photography classes for me at IU
Andy's birthday
1 big Easter dinner with our friends (which had to be moved to the church because of LOTS and LOTS of rain)
Easter egg hunt/dinner for Kelley Kids
Farewell Party/dinner for the MBA's and families (to be honest we stayed for all of 20 minutes. It was supposedly for families but it was not very kid friendly - from the food to the china the kids didn't seem to fit into the evening so we ended up back at our house eating Wendy's with the Powells)
Royal Wedding party!!
Dinner with Jenner and the girls
Ward Arts night
Soccer games (which ended up being canceled once again because of rain!)
Piano Recital

As you can see we have been a little bit busy but mostly having fun!! I managed to leave my camera at home for most of these events but fortunately I had it for a couple of things!!

Lucy and Ethan have both made a lot of progress in their piano playing this year. I was so proud of them when they played in the recital!! Nice job kiddos!!


How could we not have a Royal wedding party?!??! Sara was all for meeting at her house at 4am the morning of the Royal wedding but given the early hour she got a veto on the time! So, instead we got the kids on the bus and went to Mindi's house at 9:00 to watch the wedding and eat waffles (provided by Sara). It was so much fun!! Good idea Sara!!

Guess who came to town?!?!?

We loved having Jenner in town over the weekend! She braved the trip with three kids all by herself. I am very impressed!! It was so fun to see her. We all enjoyed going out to dinner Friday night and had fun hanging out in the cul-da-sac - just like old times!! Thanks for making the trip Jenner!!

Happy Easter

The kids always LOVE decorating eggs. In fact, they love it so much I usually boil a dozen eggs for each child. Come to find out some of my friends don't do hard boiled eggs so had a hard time imagining doing a dozen per child. So this year I thought maybe I don't really need to do so many. So I only did 3 dozen and the kids said "mom, why don't we get to do very many this year?" So, I guess from now on I will do at least a dozen eggs per child each year.
Here are the kids with their baskets after gathering all of the candy
Jane was in heaven. I'm sure she couldn't believe it when we had candy hiding throughout the house! She could have filled her basket but got so side tracked once she found out there was candy in the plastic eggs she ended up stopping at her first egg! As you can see she is thoroughly enjoying the candy.
Here I am looking at the candy Lucas got....you know there is always a mommy and daddy tax in our house so I was trying to find what I wanted to collect!!

Lucas is a big fan of the chocolate bunny!!

Look who is as old as me!!!

Andy is always so so good at reminding me that I am older than him. Yes, it is true but only by a little more than 2 months!! We had a fun birthday weekend. Andy and I went out to dinner the night before his birthday and enjoyed a steak dinner at home (andy's request) with the kids on his actual birthday. We also had strawberry shortcake for his birthday cake (yum!!) Happy Birthday to the best guy ever!!

Who says you need Disneyland to get a good ride?!??!

It has been fun to have the MBA dads around more this semester. We see some (Bryan B.) more than others. The kids are enjoying having them around more also. They couldn't get enough of this ride! It's so funny looking!

Proof that my neighbor Mindi will one day be a hoarder!

Well first of all this is what I gave her for her b-day because she loves cats so much!
Look at what she wears to enrichment....bunny feet PJ's ! It does make you wonder!

Look at what she is holding onto in her closet for special occasions. I think it might come out on the cruise!! (what is she storing away in those sleeves? Probably cats!!)




Ok, so the truth is:
I did put this on her door for her birthday because we have had a few hoarding parties where we eat lunch and watch the hoarders show. (I would not recommend eating while you watch that show!) and we always joke that hoarding starts with cats!! ha!

She did wear the PJ's to enrichment but that is only because it was pajama night and she thought it'd be funny to wear these.

She does NOT own this dress. An older lady she works out with found out she was going on a cruise and brought this to mindi to borrow for one of the formal nights. Funny huh?!??!

If you knew Mindi you would know she would be the absolute LAST person to become a hoarder. Her house is always spotless and super organized. I just love giving her a hard time about becoming a hoarder!

John has entered life with the oldies!!

John turned 30 last week. Amber planned to have the adults go to her house for fondu. What John didn't know is we were planning to dress as old people to welcome him into his 30's! His face was pretty funny when he answered the door and saw how we were dressed. It only took one more couple to arrive before he realized everyone was going to come dressed old! Then Amber took out clothes for both she and John. It was a fun evening with lots of laughs!! I couldn't get over some of the outfits. I think I know how Mindi really will look as an old woman and Mike....just think Biff on Back to the Future! Too funny!

Now here are some good looking MBA students!!
Andy, Bryan, John, Mike

I can now say that I went to MBA school!

Thanks to Sara I got to go to one of Andy's classes today and LOVED it. Sara asked me a couple weeks ago if I would watch Jenna so she could go to Joe's class and then she'd do the same for me. I was glad to get a chance to go and see what Andy really does every day. I got to attend his digital marketing class and I was highly entertained. The topic was fascinating. I also enjoyed sitting next to Andy, Joe, John, and Brian (yes, they are all in the class together!)

Make yourself at home

Jane is crazy and full of personality and for the record she is very strong willed!! In the middle of dinner one night she just decided to kick her feet up and relax! It took me by surprise and we were all laughing



Then Lucas decided he should do it. Funny how there is such a double standard when there is a baby around. With Lucas' feet up on our dinner table it wasn't so funny anymore. Just seconds after laughing at Jane for the same thing, we told Lucas we don't do that. It's bad manners. He still insisted on me taking a picture of him as I did with Jane. We no longer laugh at Jane for this behavior!! (I still think it's funny when SHE does it!)