My birthday

On Thomas's side of the family there are 3 October birthdays, so we celebrate them all at one time. This is me and my niece Sage blowing out the candles on our cake. I have no idea what setting the camera was on, but it only captured certain colors, I thought it looked kinda cool tho.

Here we are being sung to. She is half hidden by the table at the moment :)

Ready? Blow!

I never got pictures from when we celebrated it with my side of the family, but I got to spend the day with them working in the garden and picking fruit. It was a very laid back, calm day, which is just what I wanted. (The school term had just ended so I was coming down off of a frenzied week) Thanks everybody! Oh and another highlight was that all of my college roommates and a high school friend called. One of the calls even came from Africa! One of my roommates currently lives there, so I was surprised and happy to hear from her. Thanks again everyone for making it such a special day!

Cruise Day 6 and 7 (The end)

The last 2.5 days were spent at sea. Up to this point, I wasn't quite sure why they had so many activities aboard the ship, it seemed like no one was ever around to participate in them.........until those last 2.5 days. The weather outside was extremely windy and cold, so the rock climbing wall, ice skating rink, and game rooms were always packed instead of the pool areas (which were always being pounded with the wind). Lucky for us, we seemed to time things prett well and got to do all the activities we wanted.

He thought he was funny when he scooped up the ice shavings and threw them at me :)

I was being cheesy and blew a kiss at him.

My first time ever climbing a rock wall. I was kind of nervous but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. They gave us shoes to wear which was a good thing for me, because my tennis shoes had gotten soaked on our zip line adventure the day before and I didn't have any others left!

I made it!

Thomas and Curtis had a race up the wall, but Thomas didn't know they were racing.... so he lost lol.

He made it too! ha ha ha ha

They boys entered a dodge ball contest and their team won over and over again, but they never gave any prizes to the winning team...... how rude! j/k

An action shot, he has just released the ball and while it looks like it is coming sideways, it actually went forward and got someone out! woot woot! (LOL such a seriuos face!)

One of the little fun things of the trip was that every day you had them make up your room, they would make an animal out of the towels and your sunglasses!

I would call this a bull dog......

Monkey!

Um...... poodle or lamb or.........????

I hope the video works, even though it isn't good quality. One day we wandered down onto a lower deck and watched the water as the boat cruised along. All of a sudden I looked down and saw a little plane disappear into the water! My first thought was "oh a little boy must be down below us throwing planes off the ship". And then I realized that it wasn't a little paper airplane and that there weren't any decks lower than us. So I told Thomas what I had seen and he just looked at me like I was crazy. I told him to watch the water and low and behold another one! But this time we saw it jump out of the water, cruise along the top of the water and then dive back in! We both just stared at each other for a second and then got really excited! Flying Fish!!!!! We only had our picture camera so I got the best video I could with it, but it isn't very good. This was the best clip and I still had to watch it 3 times before I could see the flying fish.

Well that sums up our cruise! It was very fun and I am glad for the experience, but I will never go during the school year again! I paid a heavy price for missing that much time which is evident in that it took me a month to get this posted. But I wouldn't trade it for anything! :)

Cruise Day 5 Puerto Vallarta

By far our most favorite day of the trip, Puerto Vallarta was gorgeous and offered the most fun I have ever had. Our day started bright and early because we had heard about this way fun adventure and wanted to find a local to take us there for half the price that the cruise ship was charging. To our disappointment, only the ship offered this adventure, so we forked over the money, but man it was worth every cent!

First we boated across the bay with about 20 other people. Can I just say that I LOVE boat rides? When they are safe, that is. :) They are so soothing to me and I just love the feeling. Anyway this is a picture of the bay. The coolest part was that the water was sooooo smooth. It looks like we were on a lake, not the choppy ocean.

We passed this cool formation where the rock had a naturally built tunnel. I don't know if any boats ever go thru it, but that would be cool!

As awkward as I look, this is our only proof that we took a boat ride :) I didn't know Thomas was taking the picture cause I was just enjoying the ride and trying to keep my mouth from drying out lol.
These houses were crazy! Literally built on boulders in the ocean! This picture is my favorite because if you look closely at the boulder down and to the right of the house, the one with streaks on it, that is a hot tub! ha ha ha ha

Yet another crazy house but this time it is partially pink! :)

This is the bay where we docked, it was so calm and serene.

Then we loaded into army type jeeps (in following pictures) and drove up this jungle road for about 15 minutes. It was soooooooo loud! Take crickets and multiply it by 1000 and you might be there..... I don't know what was making all the noise, but it overpowered the roar of the army trucks!

We're here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and that paved jungle road ended and turned into a bumpy dirt road for another 20 minutes before this picture.

The truck I mentioned earlier.

Me and Krystal. See the padding on the bars? So glad it was there! ha ha ha

Thomas and Curtis. See the handles above their heads? I didn't think I would use mine.... ha!

Now, unfortunately, this is where the pictures end of this outdoor adventure because we had to put all of our belongings in a locker and leave them behind. So from here on out it is just storytime. We got to the basecamp and put on repelling harnesses, helmets and wet, slimy leather gloves. Then we loaded up on donkeys and rode another 20 minutes up the mountain. It was here that the awesomeness really occured (pardon my cheesy-ness). They hooked us onto the zip line, taught us how to stop and sent us on our way! LOL, not quite, but pretty much. We had about 7 guides that would leap frog around the course to make sure someone was always there to catch us, unhook us and then re-hook us on another zip line,but other than that we were on our own. We ziplined over the tops of the jungle (sometimes 1000 ft above the ground), into pools of water, repelled down waterfalls, and freefall repelled off of platforms. There were 13 lines in all. My favorite part was when one zip line ended in a pool of water. Everyone else went feet first into the water, but apparently I balled up (bracing for impact) and sent a huge wall of water over one of the guides... he congratulated me for drenching him the best, ha ha ha. The whole course took about 2 hours to complete and was the coolest thing i have ever done! One of the guides took pictures along the way but you had to buy them at the end and for pictures of one person it was $30 and there weren't even 30 pictures. Just buying one picture was $15 and Thomas and I never got captured in the same photo, so we decided to pass, but even now I am still torn as to whether we should have sucked it up and bought the pictures, cause some of them were cool. Sigh, oh well. The next day, my abs were sore and my right arm wouldn't work very well. To stop on the zip lines, you have to press down on the line with your hand (thus the need for the slimy leather gloves). The only problem is that you are going pretty fast and if you press down too hard too soon, it practically rips your arm off...... I will admit it took stopping a couple of times before I finally figured out how not to do that..... Anyway, I recommend this activity to any and all!!!!!!

After our adventure, we had few hours to do some shopping. This bridge connected two major shopping areas, but is the most unstable thing I have ever been on! It is just a hanging bridge and one movement to the right or left makes the entire thing move. Thomas and Curtis thought they would be funny and purposely shake the bridge without my knowledge, and Krystal took a picture. You can see me in the background losing my balance and hanging on to the side for any kind of support. Real funny guys!

A glimpse as to what the shopping looks like there. The merchants weren't nearly as harassing as in Mazatlan and Cabo, but I still barely dared to look in any direction for fear of the words "Miss! Amiga! You buy! we make deal! almost free! how much you pay?" and so on.

Another shopping area, there are about 50 stores in the building's tiny interior. It is crazy!

The churches there were pretty cool. I don't have any idea which denomination this one was, maybe greek orthodox?

See the guy lighting all the candles and the dome behind him and above his head? I don't know how, but he climbed on top of the dome and lit a candle which was pretty entertaining to watch.
This is the outside of the church, and don't worry, our camera was on the wrong setting yet again. Yea for grainy pictures.

We walked along the water front as evening set in and it was really neat. I don't have any idea what these arches were built for, but they were fun!

Along the way the boys got hungry and spotted some fried bananas. Thomas, remembering how good they were in Puerto Rico, bought some...... and I think his face says it all. ha ha ha ha, they were nothing compared to Puerto Rico's!
As we walked further, we ran into this event. All of the hanging guys started out up with the guy on top. They wind their ropes around the pole and then hang upside down while they slowly spin around the pole to unwide the rope. I am pretty sure there isn't any safety equipment being used, just ropes! It made my stomach turn just thinking about it! When they stopped spinning, the guy up top had to climb all the way back down and that pole was swaying like crazy!

Right in the same area were these sand sculptures. There were lots, but this was the coolest in my opinion.

While watching the rope spinners, this guy was making all of these rocks stand end to end. Being a math teacher of geometry and having just talked about balancing points in my classes, this was very intriguing to me! He would pick it up, stand it on end and just turn it back and forth trying to find its balancing point. I watched him do it with about 5 of the rocks! Insane!

Here is the after picture of the rock he was holding in the picture above. He really did get it to balance. Also, you can see the hanging rope spinner guys reaching the ground. From all the way up, to all the way down. I am still impressed just seeing it my mind :)

After this, we got tired and decided to head back to the ship but not before taking a picture of our last Mexican sunset.....I think it was an excellent note to end on :)

So long Puerto Vallarta and Mexico in general! It was very enlightening and entertaining. Now I just have to survive 2.5 days on a boat to get home! :)

Cruise Day 4 Mazatlan

The next day in port was Mazatlan and it was our "shopping" day. We had been told that there wasn't a whole lot to do there except shop.... so that is what we did..... or tried to do. The merchants there are RELENTLESS! I still cringe just thinking about it. When I shop, I usually like to go alone and be left alone to think and decide. So that made shopping in Mazatlan a nightmare for me. The second you are in ear shot they are shouting at you to come buy their stuff. "Amiga! You like? You buy! Almost free. How much you pay? Almost free. We make deal! Almost free! It fits you. Almost free!....." Get the picture? And they follow you around constantly pushing things in your face to get you to buy it. If you look at it, you want it and they won't let it drop until you leave. We did that for about 2 hours before we were exhausted from saying no so we decided to go sightseeing. This is another church, but it was very beautiful inside and out.


This is the entrance and I thought the stonework was incredible.
This is a picture of the ceiling and again, being a geometry teacher, I was very impressed. I can't imagine they had all the technology we do these days when they were aligning and cutting the bricks.

Here is the inside of the church.....I thought it was the most beautiful of all the ones we saw.

A building in progress, but i found their support beams to be a little unsettling. Obviously they make it work, but I still wonder..........

Us at the beach watching all the parasailors take off. You can't see any in the background, but it looked like fun!

Thomas decided he wanted to show off how strong he was lol.

In a brochure we (our friends and us) read about the light house and how it was one of the highest in elevation in the world, so we decided to go see it. It was pretty far away so we took a taxi across the city and told him to drop us off at the light house. We got out of the car and he pointed up a path that goes up a little mountain and said "hike". It smelled really bad and we wanted to get away so we started hiking. There were about 4 long switchbacks (that we could see) but found this well worn path that went straight up through all the switchbacks so we climbed those instead. This is a picture of one of the sections that cut through the switchbacks.

Thomas was in the lead and all of a sudden he was gone from view. Well there was another "shortcut" path I saw so I assumed he took that and had decided to run ahead to check it out. So our friends and I start climbing the path and it quickly turns to a narrow trail and we are getting bushwacked, climbing over what I think were power lines running up the mountain, and I started seeing cacti, and the path slowly started to disappear and branch out into nothingness, so i started calling out Thomas's name and nothing..... I am getting concerned and frustrated that he has just disappeared so we turned around and headed back to the last switchback we were on before the shortcut. I was a little faster than Curtis and Krystal so I started up the regular trail only to find we aren't even halfway to the light house and there is another little mountain on the other side of the one we were on. Thankfully, however, Thomas came jogging down the trail towards me. He had run way ahead and had talked to some people who informed him that it wasn't one of the cool looking lighthouses, it was just a building with a big light on top. What a bust! Oh well at least we didn't hike all the way up there only to be disappointed.

This is a picture of the bay from where we stopped hiking. Our ship is the big white one with yellow along the side.

We walked all the way back to the boat from where we were. It wasn't a very populated area, so there weren't any taxi's and people kept telling us "its only 5 more minutes" Well 5 minutes turned into 35 minutes and having just hiked a mountain, we were slightly tired!

Once we reached the bottom of the trail we turned around atook a picture of the trail. You can see the zig zag switchbacks. We made it to the top one before we gave up and turned around. We also discovered that the reason it smelled so bad was because there was a sewer plant right by where we started hiking. Lovely.

One humorous part about the walk home was this building. It is a restuarant! We joked about how you would have to decide to go to dinner long before you were even hungry because it would take so long to hike up all those stairs, so by the time you got there, you would be starving! That or if you had already eaten, by time you made it down the stairs you would be hungry again! LOL, maybe it isn't that funny, but in our tired condition, we found it hilarious.

Ahaaa! Finally our ride back to the boat! I loved how colorful it was. :)

We were leaving port when I saw this hillside and just had to take a picture because of how colorful all the houses were. It totally reminded me of Puerto Rico!

This is a Mazatlan sunset. The pinks and purples were so brilliant! The picture doesn't do it justice, but is pretty just the same.

So long Mazatlan! Thanks for the adventure! ha ha ha ha