Mexican Cruise!

Dear kids,

Last week Dad and I went on a vacation with some of our friends! We left you with Gramma and Grandpa for a few days and Grammie for a few days. I have some pictures from your fun week, but this post is just about me and Dad and our friends.

We left on a Saturday morning and weren't too happy to find out that our flight had been severely delayed. It was supposed to leave more than 3 hours late and we were going to miss our cruise ship! We were pretty stressed, although this pic doesn't show too much of it:

Luckily people from an earlier flight to Long Beach traded tickets with us and we made it to the ship with 10 minutes to spare.

We were pretty happy to be on board!:

It was warmer in California than it was in Utah, but it was still too cold for swimming.

Both us and our friends had our rooms upgraded to ocean view rooms! Woo hoo! The rooms were pretty nice!:

We had 3 full days at sea on this trip. Here are some of the fun things we did...

Fancy dinner night:

An example of the main entrees for dinner one night:

Water slide, reading, and soaking up the sun once we got a little further south:

Switching seats at dinner one night made for some funny pictures:

Comedy club:

Chess:

Mini golf, one time at sunset!:

And more food! Basically ship life revolves around food. Pizza and burgers and ice cream any time you want. Lunch buffets of Indian food and BBQ and Mongolian Wok and French food. Dinner was usually fancy and often had unique things to try, like these frog legs:

We enjoyed seeing our same waiter each night. His name was Attila:

And Attila's main man, I Gustii:

We played a lot of games, mostly this Phase 10 dice game that we brought along:

It's also fun to find a new towel animal each day when our room steward Pasek was finished cleaning:

Here are some of the things we did on our days in port!...

Day 1, Puerto Vallarta:

Here's our big ship!:

Exploring the quaint old town:

and Darin really wanted to try authentic Mexican tacos. I liked my carne asada taco a lot:

In the late afternoon we sailed on a big catamaran out to a private beach called Las Caletas. We saw
whales breaching, which was super cool. I only got a picture of him blowing out his breath:

We arrived at the beach at dusk. There were people dressed up, like this guy beating the drum and this guy hiding in the tree:

It was all lit by candles and torches and was really pretty. We had dinner:

And then headed over to a cool show about ancient Aztecs at their outdoor stage.

The scenery was cool, the music was pretty, the acrobatics and fire dancers were awesome, and they had a giant creepy crow:

and giant creepy skeleton:

I'm not even sure what exactly the show all about, but we liked it a lot.
As we came back across on the catamaran there was lots of music and free alcoholic drinks, that we of course didn't want! It was fun to see our boat all lit up at night as we returned to our harbor:

Day 2, Puerto Vallarta:

We started out with breakfast on the catamaran as we made our way to a pretty beach. We saw more whales!:

and cool rock formaions:

We made it to our spot and really enjoyed the snorkeling, besides that there were a few too many people. Check me out, ready for some more snorkeling action. Ha ha:

We also got to kayak around the area:

It was a pretty place, and it was so warm!:

They served us lunch on the boat as we made out way to a town called Yelapas:

We explored the little town that is built right into the mountain side:

We took a small hike through the village up to the top where there is a waterfall:

Then it was back down to find the beach:

The beach was pretty, but the sand was not very nice. It was like pebbles instead of soft sand. 

Day 3, Cabo San Lucas:

We caught an early tender from our big ship out to the main marina of Cabo:

We took a smaller boat out, passed a whale, and made it to our snorkeling area. After snorkeling and seeing colorful fish and even a sea turtle!, we tried the kayaks and the paddle boards:

We had so much fun.
Our boat then took us around the Land's End rock formations and past lots of sea lions:

As we pulled back into the marina, we got to see how the sea lions jump up on the back of boats as they are moving, and beg for fish:

We then explored Cabo and Darin wanted his tacos again. It wasn't too hard to convince me to try them. Fish and shrimp and lobster tacos at Happy Lobster were super yummy!:

Then it was time to get back to our ship and make our way back to Long Beach.
The last day was really choppy, but none of us got sick. We saw dolphins and whales from the boat again!
We made it to Long Beach a little later than scheduled, but that was fine for us because we had a few hours to explore Long Beach.
We walked down and around the bay from our cruise ship to a cute shopping area.
The bridge we crossed:

And the marina:

It was perfect weather in Long Beach. Aaah. We soaked up as much sun as we could before catching a car to take us to the airport and back to our snowy home.

There you have it! Lots of pictures huh?
We are grateful that your grandparents were willing to watch you guys. It was so fun, but it's also good to be back. We just need the weather at home to warm up a little!
Next up, pictures from your time at home while we were gone.
And also next week is Spring Break! We have a few fun things planned for that!
Love you my babies,
Mom