Why All Mothers Deserve A Cruise

First because it might just be the only possible means for Mom's to have a "REAL" vacation. If you are tired of:

*picking up after your kids
*cleaning up over and over again all day long
*trying to keep your kids entertained and busy enough so that they won't fight
*trying to think of something different to cook every night
*cooking
*laundry

If these everyday "Mom" chores are getting you down and you are tired of them following you around when you try to take a vacation YOU NEED TO CRUISE!!!!!!!

I feel like I should write adds for Carnival...

We have been looking forward to our vacation with our friends the Flakes for almost a year. Things were actually set in stone by October. It seemed it would never come. And yet it did. Thank goodness. We all had a really wonderful time. Even Dave managed to not get too sick on the boat. And our friends who did get really sick on the boat (from some bug that Emily must have caught on the plane) didn't let their dependency on being near a bathroom ruin the vacation. What good sports they were. I felt horrible.

We got to stay with the Flakes for a few days before setting sail for Mexico. We enjoyed their home and their beaches. Seeing the swamps of Louisiana was pretty cool too. But the best part was just being able to spend time with them and play games to our hearts content.

Here we are at the beach a few minutes from their home in Biloxi and touring swamps looking for snakes and alligators.
Then it came time to go on our adventure. We had this picture taken of us before boarding our ship. Most everyone looks pretty excited.Our cruise was for five days with two stops in Mexico, one at Progresso to see some Mayan ruins and the other at Cozumel for awesome beaches. Here is a picture story of the highlights.Our visit to the Chichen Itza Mayan ruins was awesome. No one was sick. We had an awesome LDS guide and the temperature was only around 100 degrees. I will post my favorite part about our trip to these ruins in a separate post. But we all enjoyed looking at what might have been the remnants of Book Of Mormon Peoples. The kids all enjoyed shopping and bartering for souvenirs. I think everyone would agree though that one of the best parts of the day was stopping at a little taqueria on the way home and eating the best tacos ever. I wish we had bought more!


Our day at Cozumel was a mixed bag. We had a great time but definitely had bad luck. The worst was that Eric and Kelsey had been sick all night and so most of the Flake family stayed on board. We took Sierra and Landon with high hopes The rest of the fam would feel up for joining us but Eric didn't wake up from his drug cocktail until a few minutes before we came back on board. We also lost Dave's wallet in the ocean (had to beg money off a stranger to get a taxi back to the dock and deal with ship security to allow them to let us back on board). We also lost my shoes and Landon's shoes. That was a hot footed walk back to the boat. But we had a great time anyway. We had beautiful blue water, everywhere except where we were swimming. The kids enjoyed a full day of playing on the super cool water equipment out in the water. We got to visit with a squirrel monkey and everyone had fun trying to get parrots to talk. Chase almost snagged us an unripe coconut (yummy). And we only got mildly sunburned. We had an initial application before leaving the boat and I applied it twice more on the kids and we were still all pretty red.

The best part of everything though was just getting to spend lots of quality time together with our family and our friends. We had a little cabin Easter egg hunt. Chase finally after 5 years found the golden egg. All the children loved the freedom of getting to go up and get ice cream whenever they wanted. Dad was a great sport about playing with the kids in the pool and we were able to play many, many games.

P.S. Flake family I looked up the rules when we got home and that game that Dave won with an asterisk has been stripped from him. I was the WINNER!