Fun Ship Activities

Mariner of the Seas is not Royal Caribbeans largest ship by any means but there are a lot of fun activities. We took advantage of the one day that it was REALLY warm outside to do anything. The girls and Mike did the rock climbing wall. Haylie was filmed by the cruise line and ended up on the Cruise In Review DVD they were selling. The 9-hole mini putt putt is always fun and the girls had a blast ice skating. Whoever thought you could ice skate on a ship?! The pool is always a hit. The ship had the Solarium which had a pool and huge hot tub just for adults, but the general area included two pools and four hot tubs for everyone to enjoy.

 

Seattle, WA

This is my kind of city. We'd live here but for the status of the housing market which is out of control. Pike Place Market is THE place to see. I was hoping since it was a weekday that it wouldn't be so crowded. It was until the people off the ship disbursed to various places. You can get whatever you need in this place. They sell fish, meat, art, toys, flowers, fruit. Just a plethora of things. If you need it, most likely you can get it. Notice there is not a price listed on the HUGE lobster tails. Down the row we found out they are $40 per pound. The pic of the girls is on the Harbour Steps. This is a beautiful place of stairs (if stairs can be considered beautiful), with fountains, eateries, and places to sit and enjoy. They go from the waterfront, clear up to 2nd St. Always a great pic of Mt Ranier. As much as I love Seattle, I would hate to be there when that thing decides to blow. Everyone thought St Helen's was bad. Ranier is going to decimate the Seattle area.

 

Victoria, BC

For those of you who have not been to British Columbia, Victoria is a very sleepy town. One of the major attractions is the Parlament Building. We didn't take any shore excursions, but just bummed around. Had lunch at Sam's Deli, bought a great ornament at The Christmas Village and got ice cream at Rogers Chocolates (aptly named). Their local mall is called The Bay with 85 stores. The 2010 Olympics are going to be held in Vancouver so several things were purchased with the Olympic theme. We were in port that day until 11:30p.

 

San Francisco

Our first stop was in San Francisco. As you can see cruising into the area was a typical foggy morning. It was cold, windy, and I thought that we wouldn't be on shore for very long. An amazing thing to experience is going under the Golden Gate Bridge. According to the Captain, the ship cleared the bridge with only 13 FEET to spare! By the time we docked at 2p the sun was out but it was still windy. We got clam chowder in a bread bowl at Boudin and bought chocoate at Ghiradelli. Which is funny because we can get it at Wal-Mart! Haylie was playing funny with the skeleton pirate.

 

Our New Building

We have had to drive 15 minutes to church for the last several years. However, our new building will be done in the next little while and supposedly by July we'll be in it. They tweaked the ward boundaries yesterday and everyone is to go to their designated ward. Once we are ok to get into the new building our ward will now meet at 11:30. Which is great with me AND it will only take us 2 minutes to get there! Yee-Haw.

Fun Times

Had a great time with Ryan/Karie at Worlds of Fun. Thank you to Anesthesia Associates of Kansas City!

Happy Mama's Day

The Mama of two beautiful girls!

Well, All Is Not Lost

Here's the scoop. I was checking Royal Caribbean's website just to see their prices now for our upcoming cruise since the itinerary has been changed. In our original reservation back in January we paid a total of $2863 for the four of us for the cruise, taxes, and RT transfers between the airport and pier. However, because of the change in itinerary I am sure lots of people were canceling. So in order to fill the ship they were having a "deal". So I just had to do it. One itinerary change option was to cancel the cruise without any penalties. Normally at this point in time, you would loose 50%. You guessed it. I canceled our original booking for a full refund. THEN I turned around and re-booked it with everything staying the same for just $2102! That is quite a chunk of change in savings. And the funny thing is, our cabin is now just down the hall from the first one we had. Got to love those savings! I am going to check the website the night before we leave to see if any balcony cabins or suites were left unfilled and see if we can get upgraded when we check in.

Stupid Flu

Well I must say that I am thoroughly ticked that the human race is making such a big deal out of this Swine Flu. Don't they realize how stupid it is? Let's check the numbers. 30,000 people die each year just from the normal flu that comes around every winter - 30,000!!!! Last number I heard: a whopping 88 people in Mexico have died from the Swine Flu - 88!!! What the heck?! And the reason those 88 people have died is because they know that the health care available to them is not that great so they don't even bother going into the doctor. We're in America. I think our health care rocks. So if we have access to Rx that will help - GO GET IT! So in lieu of this issue our Mexican Riviera cruise has now been changed to the Pacific Northwest. Are we going to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta? NO! We are now going to San Francisco, Seattle and Victoria BC! WE HAVE BEEN TO ALL THOSE PLACES A COUPLE OF TIMES. Unfortunately we don't want to change it because it will cost us more money for a different cruise not to mention changing our flight plans. I guess the upside is since we have visited these places we know our way around, what to see and do and know the transportation so we don't need to pay the cruiseline for our shore excursions. And maybe the upside is we can get Steve/Claudia to hang out with us for a day in Seattle.

Phantom - Need I Say More

Mike and I went to see Phantom of The Opera last night. This is probably my 4th or 5th time seeing it. It is SO awesome. And the best part was our seats. When I bought our tickets several months ago it didn't click with me but we couldn't have done any better. We were CENTER ORCHESTRA FRONT ROW! The only other time I have gotten tickets that good were 4th row seats for Neil Diamond. What a wonderful play it is. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Easter - bah humbug

OK. I spent two hours in the kitchen, brought out the china, the silverware, the crystal, we ate in the formal dining room and this is the result. I made Flag Chicken from the Rachel Ray show per request from Mike. I thought it looked pretty good. Its chicken breasts, fresh basil, fresh parsley, boison herb cheese, EVOO, tomatoes and fresh parmesean. I added balsamic vinegar on my own. The annual family pic. I didn't get one "thank you mama for making this Easter fun" or "great meal mama." Ungrateful buggers.

Way To Go Haylie!

We are so proud of our Haylie. We received a letter from the Olathe School District. It said that her artwork has been selected to be displayed at the Instructional Resource Center for the school district. Hundreds of people will be able to enjoy it. Way to go Haylie.

The Awesomeness of Lacie

Down-sizing

I was perusing my blog this evening and thought - there's A LOT of stuff on there. In other words, too much stimulation. So I decided to down-size, out-source, lay-off, what have you. So I've now just put the most recent and/or significant stuff on here. The only long list I have is all my blog friends so that I can keep up with your posts.

Lacie - Still A Girl?

Our little Lacie went to the vet yesterday for her spaying surgery. I DO NOT want to deal with the mess every time she goes into heat and I DO NOT want to take care of any more puppies. We were somewhat worried because she is still a little pipsqueak at only 3 pounds, but I picked her up this morning and she came through with flying colors! We love ya Lac!

What A Break

Spring break started the minute the girls got out of school on the 13th and boy have we taken advantage of it! As my mother always says when she leaves: "lets count how many fun things we've done". Flip flop shopping, McDonalds, Disney Store, Hotel For Dogs, Golden Corral, green cupcakes, bbq at park, Chuck-E-Cheese and Zonkers. They are back to school today, but what a great time we had!

Lets Get This Party Started....

Haylie's birthday party was at Monkey Bizness. A great time was had by all.

Nothing important - just stinkin' cute pictures.

And then.......

I came home to a delivery of these from my wonderful husband and two sweet girls!

Toto - We ARE In Kansas!

The girls are out of school today for parent teacher conferences. We decided to have a play day. After birthday pictures this morning we went earring shopping at Claire's. Then we headed up to the Crown Center. This is the 70th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz and they had a wonderful play area set up. Then we went to Fritz's. You call in your order from the table and then a train delivers your food. I love all the activities and stuff this city has to offer!!!!

School Shopping

Went shopping today for the girls' school clothes for next year. Bought $351 worth of clothes and only paid $98! LOVE THOSE CLEARANCE SALES!

Happy 7th Birthday Haylie Bug!

WE LOVE YOU!!!

LOST........... and found

OK OK. Now we know what all the buzz is about. For whatever reason we did not catch on to the ABC series LOST when it premiered in 2004 - (that long ago)? But we have seen the light. Mike's cousins suggested we start watching it. So of course we couldn't start with this year which is Season 5, we had to start with the beginning. Even though it is available to watch online, we figured the tv would be much better. So I checked out Season 1 from our local library and we started watching it. Last night we got done with Episode 5. Only 17 more go go. I will then go to the library for Season 2. What can I say - AWESOME SHOW and I highly recommend it.

As Sharpey says...... I Want Fabulous

And thats what I got. Fabulous weather. Midwest. First week of February. Expecting ********* 72 degrees ********** today!

5:00 AM and the ER

Today started out with a bang. First of all Haylie was sent home from school Wednesday afternoon for a fever. Nurse said if it was gone by Noon the next day she could return. So I took her back Thursday afternoon. She then proceeded to attend her friends birthday overnighter at Great Wolf Lodge and played in the water that night and most of Friday morning. She played outside yesterday as it was 65 degrees. But last night she was complaining that her ear was hurting. Of course I gave her Tylenol at 10p and she was up again this morning at 2:00. Gave her the Ibuprofen. She was up again at 5:00 just crying because her ear hurt. So off we go to the ER which thankfully because of the new Shawnee Mission Hospital built by our home, is right across the street. We were the only ones there and got right in to find out she has the dreaded EAR INFECTION. Back home by 6am and I'm in the shower so I can be at the pharmacy when they open at 8:00. Guess we'll see about church tomorrow.

Lacie

I haven't said much about Lacie our little Yorkie. She is such a joy to our family. She is now 20 weeks old and weighs 2.75 lbs.

Show Me The Money

I LOVE tax season. I LOVE doing our taxes. I LOVE filling out the forms and watching our return grow. Got them done this morning. I do have to admit that I got onto TurboTax from the recommendation from my sister. It is SO SLICK. All I do is fill in the answer to the question and BOOM its completed. The $29.95 they charge every year is well worth getting our money back in 8 days instead of several weeks. Granted its just our money anyway that the government has had use of over the last 12 months without paying us interest, but just the same its fun knowing we're getting our money back instead of having to pay them extra at this time. And as much as we like to eat out I don't think we'd be as disciplined in putting the money away if we changed our exemptions anyway. Here's to the green!

Old McDonald Had a Farm

We haven't said much but we bought into a cow. This came about a few months ago. Someone in our ward approached us about buying into a cow and splitting the meat. We thought this would be a good way to fill up the rest of our freezer in the garage so we got into it with 3 other families. So this gives us 1/4 of the bovine. We get to pick up all this meat on Feb 7 and it comes out to $2.03 per pound. Can't get that good of a deal at Wal-Mart!

Deal of the Day

Everyone knows I love a good deal. Hence the reason I only shop at my WalMart Supercenter. WalMart will match any ad from any store. So why waste the extra time and gas driving from store to store to take advantage of their deals. Just take the ad to WalMart and they'll match it. So, my deal for the day was this. I needed some more cans of soup for our food storage. I bought 4 cans of Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup and 4 cans of Tomato. WalMart's regular price was $0.58 per can. Our local Price Chopper had them on for $0.49 per can. PLUS I had a coupon from the Sunday paper that saved $0.40 on 4. In the end, each can was really just $0.39! Now, one can will feed one of my girls. Add a glass of milk and a orange and I've spent maybe $1 per lunch. Too bad you can't get that at McD's.

Best Time EVER!

Now that the new year is here we finally have the 11:00 block for church. Yeah! In 2008 we had the 9:00 and I hate that - especially trying to get us all out the door. Prior to that, because the ward we were in and then our move to the new ward we had the 1:00 timeframe for about 3 years and I HATE that. Nothing like feeling the day is wasted. You sleep in, have brunch, get ready, go to church, eat dinner then its time for bed. We'll see what happens this summer. Our new Stake House which is literally 2 minutes from our home is supposed to be done in July. At that point both our Stake and the Olathe Stake boundaries will be re-alligned. We're crossing our fingers that we keep the 11:00.