Girls night

Natalie came down the other night and we just had a party night. She met me at work and helped me close, then we went to Wal*Mart. What is a night without going to hang out at Wal*Mart for atleast an hour. There we found these way cool socks, so of course we had to get them.

These socks here, we actually have no idea what they are for or what they do, but we thought that they were supper cool looking.

These socks we thougth were funny because they had wholes in the top of them.

After we tried on our new socks we decided to watch a movie. We watched Turn it up Center Stage. It was a really fun night! Thanks Natalie for coming down!

Day at the zoo

Here is a glimce in the life of the aminals at the zoo, including us! :) On Thursday Taryn and I decided to go to the zoo. We decided to take with us Robin, Elle, Fox and Cassandra. It was so much fun taking the kids to the zoo, they are great kids. Here we are seeing the elephants. The girls loved to watch the elephants. One of the elephants was eating a tree, while the other was playing with a big tube and making tons of noise.

Lunch TIME!

Here is the new animals at the zoo THE MONKEY GIRLS!

The girl tigers and the boy tigers.

As you can see the zoo was so much fun! The kids were great even after it got supper hot, they didn't even say anything about it. It was just a great day!

Cruise

So I am finally getting the hang of this blogging thing. After learning to do it, it is pretty fun. Well any way I will get on with it.

On May 8 the Marden family and I left home for our Caribbean cruise. That morning Nathan, Jason and I drove down to Las Vegas because that is were I flight was out of to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The boys and I decided to go early to spend the day in Vegas. The rest of the family decided to come later that day because of other commitments they had going earlier.

The next morning we had to be at the airport for our flight at 6:00am. It was so crazy seeing us try to get 7 people and all their luggage into the cars and from the cars into the airport. (This was the first time that we were all togeter with all our luggage). Once we got on the airplane it was off to Kansas City airport for our 1/2 hour lay over. (Just to mention, that is the stupidest airport I have ever been in. after we got off the plane and into the airport we had to go through secerity again! We almost missed our connection because of it). We we made it on our flight it was another 2 1/2 hours to Florida. That 2 1/2 hours were the longest hours of our lives. We were all so wanting to get there.

We finally made it to Florida about 6:30pm their time. We rented a car and drove from Fort Lauderdale to Miami, which was about a 20 minute drive. Florida is so beautiful. (This trip was amazing, by this time we all felt like we had already been on our intended vactation, and we hadn't even got to the curise line yet). When we finally reach Miami we found our hotel, I bet you would never guess what hotel it was, well it was the Hilton in down town Miami. Oh my goodness it was amazing! As soon as you pulled in to the hotel there were people that surrounded the car, ready to get you checked in, get your bag, and show you were to go. When we got up to our rooms, that were on the nineth floor, we opened the door and saw that there were two wall size windows, so we could look out over Miami. GORGEOUS!

The next morning was the morning that we get to get on the cruise. But before we got to go get on the ship we had to do a some things. We had to retrun the car. You would think this would be easy but on the contrary. We had a GPS that we just punched in the address to return the car, well it took us to the wrong place not once but TWICE. It was a good thing that we left three hours early, because it took us two hours to return the car. Finally we reach our destionation, and they took us to the curise line to get on our ship. The cruise line that we went on was Carnavial and our ship was the Valor.

Once we got through all the secerity and line to get our room keys, we got to board the ship Valor. Inside this huge boat, it was amazing, and beautiful. I sight to see for sure. Once we got settled, got in, and went to our rooms to see them, we were all starving. If there is one thing that I can say about this cruise, it would be, food food food. There was tons and tons of food. So we decided to go to the buffet. All the food was amazing, so yummy. I swear all that we did on this cruise was EAT.

So after we had lunch we decided to go explore the ship and go out on the deck to got a wonderful view of Miami.

Every night at 6:00pm we had dinner, and we could oder as much as we wanted and didn't have to pay for it!!! :)

At the end of each day the sturat went in to clean our stateroom and turned down our beds. Left on our bed was always a towel animal and the itinerary for the next day. I loved the towel animals I think they were so cute.

Day 2: Day two of the cruise was just a day at sea. On this day we just hung out on the ship and had family time. We also explored the ship somemore. This ship was huge, it took us like 3 full days to actually figure out how to get around and to know where we were. Our staterooms were on the 1st floor on the even side, the even and odd side of the ship made it so confusing. But eventually we figured it out. Also this was formal night. We all dressed up in our best and went to our daily dinner. Day 3: On day three we were at port to the Grand Cayman Islands. At the Cayman Islands we did an exercition. We dicided to go snorkeling with the stingrays. This was my first time snorkeling and it was so much fun. We took a bus to the location where we got a boat adn took it down a river that led into the ocean. They took us 40 minutes out into the middle of the ocean and dropped us there to snorkel. We snorkeled there by the second largest coral reef for the first 45 minutes. Atfer that they took us about 5 minutes west of where we were there able to jump in the water with about 15 to 20 stingray. We got to touch and swim with them. (I have pictures but they are in my underwater camera but I haven't developed those pictures yet).

Day 4: On day four we were at another port in Roatan, Honduras. In Roatan we took a bus through the the city. The city of Roatan was so so beautiful! It was deep green forest on one side of the road and on the other is was the deep blue ocean. For this exercition we decided to go to a private beach. This beach was like nothing that I have ever seen before. It was amazing! We all just spent the day at the beach.

Day 5: Belize, yew Belize is where we were on day 5. The exercition that we did in Belize was incredible. We went to the Mian Temples. When we got off the ship there was a bus waiting for us to take us to the temples. It was an hour and a half bus ride through the city of Belize to reach our destination. While we were on the bus the tour director gave us a tour of Belize city. I was amazing to see, all the poverty that just this one little city has. It make me feel so luck to be living were I am living now. So when we finally reach the Mian Temples, tour director took us around and showed and told us the history of the temples and the grounds on which we stood. It was so interesting to see how people use to live.Day 6: On day 6 it was another day at sea. On this day we had another family day. When went swimming in the pool ontop of the deck and down the water slide. We also went mini golfing but as Austin calls it "goofing." Today was another formal night but we didn't really dress up all fancy, we just dress up in church dress and went to dinner. I really like the days at sea, it just give us the time to realax and have fun.

Day 7: This is our last day on the ship. :( We were also at port this day. We were at the Flordia keys, also known as Key West. Today was also Jasons birthday and we had a suprise for him. (I will tell you in a little bit what it was). In the morning we got up and went and had breakfast together since it was our last day. Then we were off to explore the Keys. We didn't do an excerition that day because we just wanted a realaxing day at port. We got off the ship and just walked around. It was a big tourist town, lots and lots of shop. Nathan and Jason wanted to go and get some keylime pie, so we went and did that. Then we were all off on our own to go look at shops and get a few things to bring home with us. After we went shopping we got back on the ship and just hung out there until dinner. Kristy and I were incharge of decorating Jasons room for his birthday. So when Nathan and Jason went out to watch the ship undock, we went in.....We made a mess of the room, it was so much fun. After we were finished decorating it was off to dinner for us. Dinner was fun tonight. Rick wanted to go around the table and tell memories that we had of each person. I thought it was funny, I was sitting by Rick that night so i saw that he had a paper with notes that he made to do this memory lane. After memory lane it was desert time, and since it was Jasons birthday our waiter brought out a whole cake with candles, so we could sing happy birthday. Our waiters were awesome. When dinner was over we went to our rooms and was Jason in for a suprise. :) He opened the door and we yelled...suprise. He was way happy and so supprised. The next morning we were back in Flordia and it was time to get off the ship. :( It was a sad day, none of us wanted to come home, except Kristy. When we made it off the ship we had customs to go through. Once we were finished with that we got on the shuttle to take us back to the rent-a-car company, so that we could get Kristy to the airport before her flight. Once we got the car, we went to South Beach in Miami and played around for a little while because Kristy didn't have to be to the airport yet. After the beach we went and dropped Kristy off in Fort Lauderdale airport. Then the rest of us went to our motel and checked in. We were all so tired that we took like a four hour nap, once we were checked in. When we woke up it was time for dinner. We went to this little cafe on the beach. It was fun to sit and eat outside on the beach. Looking out over the miles and miles of ocean, wow what an amazing thing. After dinner we went and walked along the beach for a little bit, then we went back to the motel and got ready for bed. I could not believe how tired you get after being on vacation for a week.

On the next morning we checked out of the motel and went to the airport to fly back to Vegas to pick up my car to finish driving home. The flight this time around was so much longer because we flew to Jacksonville, Florida for our layover, and then from Jacksonville straight to Vegas. Once we landed in Vegas we went and got my car and started the jorney home.

What a wonderful thing, to travel around to different places of the world.

The beginning!

So today is the day that Taryn got me to start my own blog. I thought that it would be a great way to kinda keep a journal, since I'm not very good at writing one, I thought type would go over better. So we will see.