Alaskan Cruise Part 2: Leaving and our ship

We boarded our ship on Sunday, July 19th, and set sail. We had been on one cruise before, but our boat last time was teeny compared with this one. It was massive! We enjoyed walking around seeing everything. Our two favorite things about the ship: 1) They had this huge screen outside that they called "Movies Under the Stars" and they showed new movies on it throughout the week. Some days it was really cold, but it was still a blast to bundle up and watch the movie. They would also play the Wii on it too. This was a lot of fun! 2) The Lotus Spa--This was our little splurge. We joined the thermal spa on the ship for the week. We relaxed in steam rooms, saunas, aroma rooms, and hot beds. This was especially nice since it was so cold to go and heat up in the spa for a little while each day. We loved our Star Princess ship!!

Getting ready to board the ship

The view of Seattle as our ship leaves

Our great cabin steward put balloons up on our door because it was our anniversary

Watching the movies under the stars--this was the coldest day

Relaxing on the hot beds

Swimming in the spa pool

Our Lotus Spa robes

The Grand staircase on the ship

An ice sculpture during our kitchen tour. The food was pretty darn amazing!!

Alaskan Cruise Part 1: Seattle

As many of you know, Kenny and I went on an Alaskan cruise this past week. It was the first time we had EVER left the girls and I was worried about that, but it turned out to be absolutely wonderful. The girls had a fabulous time with Grandma and Grandpa and we had an amazing time rejuvenating our marriage and enjoying the breathtaking sites. I am going to be doing many posts so this will be my first about Seattle before we went on the cruise.

I had never been to Seattle before. It is gorgeous! Kenny has a friend, Clark, that lives in Seattle so he picked us up from the airport and showed us around that day. We went to the Pike Street market and saw them throw the fish, saw a bubble gum wall, Mount Rainier, the Space Needle and just enjoyed being together. Then that night we had a picnic at one of the many amazing parks there in the Seattle area. Thank you Clark and Laura for letting us stay with you. It was a lot of fun!

Kenny and me at the Space Needle

Our friend Clark and his daughter at the Pike Street Market

Kenny and me at the public market

The gross, but cool bubble gum wall

Mount Rainier--we flew right over it on the way in. It's amazing!

This video is of the men throwing the fish at the Pike Street Market.

Heather's Wedding

Our niece, Heather, got married on Tuesday, July 14th in the Draper temple. It was a wonderful day and Emily loved going to the temple to see how "gorgeous" Heather looked in her gown. Our little family got a couple good pictures too. Congratulations, Heather!

Heather with all her siblings

Heather & Chris with the parents

Our cute little family; and yes, that's the best Ashley would smile, the little stinker :)

Making Ice Cream

I am the eight year old activity day leader in my ward. For activity days last week I had the girls make ice cream. Emily of course wants to be involved with everything that the "big kids" get to do so I let her make some ice cream too. She thought it was the neatest thing and had a ball with the big girls. It turned out fun.

Emily with her ice cream bag

Some of my activity day girls making ice cream

Emily's haircut

Well yesterday Emily did something very naughty. She is such an obedient child that we never thought she'd do this, but yesterday we left her alone upstairs with a friend and Emily decided to cut her hair. Her hair was in two braids and she hacked off the bottom portion that's beyond the rubber band of each braid. Her friend cut some off too, which I felt even worse about because it was at our house. We'd told Emily that she never gets to cut her own hair, but apparently yesterday she forgot. :) We asked her why and she said, Cuz I wanted my hair shorter. I was so angry at first, but the good news is the cut hair was mainly underneath so it doesn't look terrible. She said last night as we were tucking her in, "Mom, I won't be naughty tomorrow, I won't." We'll see. Oh the joys of being a parent!! :-)

Precious Moments

Last night I had one of those moments with Emily that I dreamed about before I was a mother. I was tucking her into bed and she wanted me to lay down by her for a minute. Normally I refuse because it's one of her stall tactics, but tonight I said yes. We then proceeded to have this great little conversation with each other. She told me about a story she was going to write when she started kindergarten and how she's excited to learn how to read and a couple other things. Nothing earth shattering, but as her mother it was such a precious moment. I never could imagine how much I love my girls. I don't know what I ever did without them in my life and everyday I thank my Heavenly Father so much for them. I love you Emily and Ashley!!

4th of July

The 4th of July is probably Kenny's favorite holiday so we always go to the parade. We wake up early, get breakfast from McDonald's on the way, find any good place that's left and enjoy! We sometimes do a BBQ with the whole Day family. This year it was just our little family of four, but it was still great. We also went to see the movie, "Up", which Kenny and I really liked but quite scared Emily and Ashley. Emily is old enough now to be emotionally invested in the characters so she was not happy when the mean man was trying to hurt the "good guys." Ashley didn't like the meanie dogs, because she loves her dog so much. That night we went to the field at Grovecrest and watched the fireworks. It was a great day overall!

My cute girls!

Waiting for the parade to start

Oquirrh Mountain Temple and Fireworks

On Friday we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house. I think everyone else in the valley did too, because it was super crowded. It took us two hours to go through. But besides that, it was a beautiful temple and we enjoyed our time there. I have a friend, Laurie, that lives in Daybreak which is where temple is, so on the way home we stopped by her place and had a great visit. We haven't seen each other in a while so it was nice to catch up. We then finished the night with dinner at Costa Vida (my favorite) and fireworks with my sister, Vickie, and her family as well as Kenny's sister, Terri and her family. It was a great day before the 4th!

Getting our pictures in front of the temple while waiting to go inside

Kenny entertaining Ashley with his Mickey Mouse tie tac

My sister, Vickie, and I waiting for the video to start in the tent.

In front of the Christ painting in the reception center

Our impressive fireworks display :-)

This is Ashley's FAVORITE cousin, Trevor. He feels the same way! They love playing together and Ashley wanted to sit by him during the fireworks.

Ashley can't stay still for long so she was up and out of her seat all night so excited about the fireworks. Whenever a new firework would start she would yell at the top of her lungs, "Look, fireworks!" and repeat it a few times to each person she was near. Here she is playing with more of her cousins, Jasmine and Hailey.

Our fireworks attracted the whole neighborhood of kids so here are some of them watching the fireworks.

Ashley's Birthday Party

Since we were in San Fran for Ashley's official birthday, we celebrated it last Sunday with the family. We had everyone over for dinner and then had cake and ice cream and opened presents. It was the perfect low key event that a two year old should have. Happy Birthday Ash! We love you lots!

If you've read other blogs about Ashley, you know she's all about Mickey, so of course our party had a Mickey theme.

The whole gang posing for the camera.

She was dancing as we sang Happy Birthday to her.

Blowing out the candle

She would lift up and say, "Look!" to everybody to show off what she got after every present she opened. It was really cute. This was her favorite present of the night.

A word to the wise: If you're going to Disneyland and you'll HAVE to buy your kids a souvenir, these little doll sets are a great deal. Each set comes with 8-9 characters and they are small enough to bring pretty much anywhere and not take up too much space. We have the princesses, the Sleeping Beauty set, and now the Peter Pan and Toy Story set. My girls LOVE them!

As you can tell by her face Ashley was very excited to get the Toy Story dolls. She loves Buzz Lightyear and enjoys calling Zurg a meanie. :-)