Beach Day

Today we went to the best beach in Jamaica - Doctors Cove. You can see that Daren is already having a good time.
This was about all that happened today - sleep, read, swim, repeat - perfect!

Out in the water they had a couple of those water trampolines, so we tried those out too.... pretty tough to stay upright.

We stayed until the beach was pretty much empty and watched a really amazing sunset.

Perfect beach day!

After the beach we went back to the supermarket from last night because they had a cafe there that we saw lots of Jamacians eating at. Turned out to be a very authentic experience. Daren had something with mutton - they don't cut the meat off the bones here, they just chop it all up with bones and all....ich! They also eay "rice and peas" with every meal, which it turns out is rice with kidney beans. Not too bad at all.

Jamaica Day 1

So, 24 hours ago, Daren and I decided to take advantage of a small amount of time he had before he started his new job to go on a quick adventure. At 1am this morning we booked tickets to Jamaica - 24 hours later we were on our way. Crazy!!! Just the way we like it. When we showed up and got our rental car we started driving on the left side of the road and saw this very distinctive liscense plate - 7 - awesome! Simple people - gonna be a good vacation!

I am holding 20,000 Jamacian dollars....which is equivalent to about $230 USD. It felt weird to spend hundreds of dollars on a sandwich. Made me feel like a high roller the whole time I was there.

After spending a rediculous amount of time trying to find our hostel - the police eventually helped us out - we wasted no time in hitting the beach for a little snorkeling. The water was amazing of course.

Daren found a $100 Jamacian dollars stuck to this sea urchin. Sweet!

We saw all kinds of interesting little fish and sea urchins. The water was as clear as a pool which made it even more fun.

And after we swam around a bunch we got to watch a really incredible sunset. This place is dreamy! It is the middle of their winter here - low temperature 76 degrees! Love it!

After the beach we headed for some authentic Jamacian food. Jerk chicken. This place is called the Jerk Pit. It's an outdoor bbq place with tons of chicken and pork on a huge bbq covered in sheet metal - not sure how that helps, but it made it pretty tasty.

That night we went to a big grocery story and checked out all the Jamaican food. We thought these cookies by "Ho-made" were pretty cool. We got all kinds of unusual snacks for our trip.

Christmas Eve

After a quiet day on ship of going to the gym, playing on the water slides and sitting in the hot tub we got ready for a nice Christmas eve dinner in the formal dining room.

Justin got all done up as well as you can see....

Late that night once we had sung some Christmas carols and had a nice Christmas Eve together we were out on the deck and ran into another group of kids we've been seeing a bunch this week. There is a big group of people on the boat at a family reunion that are Mormon so we have seen them a couple times this week. We rocked the dance floor together one night and one night we all completely overwhelmed the hot tub with 22 of us in there. So it was fun to hang out with them a bit before we dock tomorrow.

Puerto Vallarta

Today we decided to do a zip line tour in the jungle. Mom was going to stay behind because she thought it was too scary - until she talked to another mom who said it wasn't that scary. Turns out she loved it! She's a secret adventurer.

It was a series of 13 different zip lines. The longest one was about a half a mile long. They were all strung across this canyon so the drop was pretty dramatic which made it more fun.

Once the guides found out that I spoke Spanish and that I am a nurse they were all asking me to do CPR on them.....shameless.....

They offered to let us go upside down if we went with one of the guides. I did it on the 1/2 mile one and it was over a river. So we started out right side up and then I let go and hung upside down. It was really fun.

The very last zip line goes right over the river. So as I got close to the end I see one of the guides an my brothers at the end of the line holding onto the line and yanking on it, which promptly put my buns right in the water......nice one boys.

We had to make it back to the start so we got to ride on mules which was really nice, a very relaxing ride through this beautiful jungle.

We had another wonderful evening on board, including an amazing sunset.

Mazatlan

So this was the beach scene in Mazatlan. There were tons of people always trying to sell us something which was a little frustrating, but it was such a nice day that we got over it pretty quick.

We spend the morning laying around and in the afternoon we rented a catamaran which was really fun!

Driving it was actually harder than I expected in a strong wind, but it was really fun to give it a try.

After that the boys and Andrea did some para sailing, which seemed pretty fun but they were charging quite a bit for a very short ride, so I opted to just watch.

We took one of these little buggies back to the boat which I think was one of mom's favorite parts about the whole day. Especially when their driver gave them a jug of water to dump on us in our cart as we passed....hehe.

Cabo San Lucas

This time around mom and dad splurged and got one room with a view. This was taken when we were still in port in LA, but once we got out to sea it was soooo nice to have a room with a view!

We got into port in Cabo San Lucas this morning and headed to go scuba diving and snorkeling.

The water here is pretty cold, but very clear and perfect for diving. Jason and Andrea have never been diving but the guides gave them a 10 minute mini course and took them down. I love Mexico sometimes:)

We saw all kinds of cool things. Puffer fishes that our guide puffed and then let us hold and another kind of puffer fish that is black with white spots and we even swam by some really huge sea lions which was a little creepy, but cool.

We had a great time in the water. After we spent a little while looking around at the market place.
It is always nice to get back on the boat and know that you don't have to think about where to find a good dinner or where you are going to stay.

That night we went to a hypnotist show. It was the first one I had ever seen, really amazing. At the end when they had woken everyone up they told three people that until the host shook their hand it would be as though their bottom was glued to the chair. So they were all woken up and everyone left except these three who were completely awake but scooting all over the stage in their chairs and trying to get the host to shake their hand.....incredible! I will have to see that again some day.

Mexican Riviera Cruise

Today we all came from various places and met in LA to go on a Christmas cruise to the Mexican Riviera.

It was the best gift in the world just to be together for some good quality family time, mixed with a little Mexican adventure as well.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was pretty epic. With the Nelsons in Santa Barbara now we are getting a big socal crew. We had this great talent show. We are about to perform booty, foot shimmying. Because I have the biggest booty I was elected to be on these ladies feet - so fun! Katherine and I did a song with the guitar and all the teenagers had Ryan Miller at the piano playing the music from Mario Brothers and they all acted out the levels...so creative. And I think my favorite was Cubby who sang the primary birthday song where she changed it to be "I have a boyfriend, shout hooray"! It was super hilarious.

Other than that it was more of the classic amazing Santa Barbara things - here we are watching dolphins. Amazing!

Grandpa was certainly enjoying himself.

Thanksgiving dinner was at the Nelsons house. It was really beautiful and dinner was really great. Before dinner we all went around and said something we were grateful for. I was just grateful to be there in that room with that many people that I love....it was so great!

Look at all these great guys! What wonderful men - cleaning up after dinner.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing all kinds of crazy things. Tennis, surfing, kayaking, eating and going back and forth between the Mann's and the Nelsons house. Daren and I went out on the kayaks one day and we were just sitting out in the kelp and we saw tons of schools of fish and we saw several dolphins and a sea lion ducked right under my kayak. The great thing about having access to the Hope Ranch private beach is that since there are not many people there, there was always tons of wildlife. It was a great time in Santa Barbara as usual.