Sunday May 08, 2011

The first thing we did Sunday Morning was eat our muffins outside on the roof. It was so relaxing. Then we got ready and went to church. I loved going to church down there. I felt the spirit speaking to me strongly when the words couldn't and can honestly say it was a very spiritual experience for me.

After that we met everyone at the Finestera. The reason that we went to Cabo was because my dad was in the IGF World Championship fishing tournament for Marlin. We just went to support and enjoy a vacation. They handed out things to the fishermen and had a casting contest. Team Just Keep Fishing was in the top for awhile but someone caught the marlin twice.

This is the waterfall they had at the finestera. This is Team Just Keep Fishing!
We then proceeded to spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon in the pool. We went swimming. It took the three sisters plus Holly to take down my brother, David, but we did manage to dunk him. We enjoyed nachos at the pool side bar and then decided to walk down to the

This is a picture of Cameron in his reef safe shirt. Team Just Keep Fishing was sponsored by Reef Safe sun screen and they gave us all tee shirts and lots of sun screen. We loved the sun screen and after sun care products and it was nice knowing that the products weren't hurting the fish either.


This is a picture of the yacht that I am going to buy to come back to Cabo with next year.
We decided to go back to our room for a nap because a nap is always nice on vacation. Later we met Stacey for dinner. Team Just Keep Fishing had a nice dinner to go to but it was too upscale (expensive) for our simple tastes and we decided to sample more of Cabo's finest establishments. We were supposed to meet Samantha, Holly, Lauren and Trevor at the Crazy Lobster. We had promised the guy we would come and eat there last night. When we got there they weren't there and we waited eventually deciding just to eat. Little did we know that they were at the Crazy Lobster eating and that there were two at the city.

We enjoyed more shrimp and lobster. Do you notice a theme here? I liked it once again but did not especially think it was the best place we ate at all week. We did enjoy some funny Mexican t.v. that was like Star Search with little kids dancing and singing.
This is a picture of us checking out the catamaran that I want to go along with the yacht. It was pretty all lit up.


The only thing that Mexico is lacking is desserts. There are not even any on the menu. When we got back to the Finestera Amanda had a million little desserts she had snuck out of the buffet they had to try. They helped our need for sweets.

Cabo San Lucas

I have been home from Cabo San Lucas for almost a week but my heart is still there. I think I will be returning. There is something to be said for going to a different country, eating their food, fumbling while speaking their language and enjoying the beautiful settings they had. We got an early start Saturday morning at 4:30 am when our alarm went off. I did not mind because we were going on vacation. We left gray, foggy skies behind on a plane that left on time bound for a party place. Going to a party location makes the plane a lot more fun than usual.

We got to the rental car location quickly and without too much problems. The locals like to try and get you to go to their timeshare location but we just plowed through them and got our rental car. Soon we were on the road. We chose to take the toll road which does not go through San Jose Del Cabo which was a great decision. Our drive to Cabo was along the coastal shore and we saw tons of beautiful beaches as we were driving.

We stopped at Costco for lunch and for a few things we needed, mainly water and muffins for breakfast. Then we found our house we were staying at. The house is in El Tezal. Eat me Lures

gave the room to my dad as a prize for winning one of his fishing tournaments and he gave it to us since he chose to stay elsewhere. I was very impressed with the location and the place.
We could see the ocean quite well from the roof top area and enjoyed waking up each morning to eat our muffins on the roof with the gentle breeze. We could also see how many cruise ships were going to be in port each day.




Cameron and I enjoyed a nap to recover from our plane ride and then went to the Finestera to meet My Dad, Natalya, Stacey, and Amanda. We planned to go to a place called the Shrimp House but could not find it and finally gave up. We instead ended up at a little place called the Pescador. In Cabo all the restaurants are open and there is no air conditioning. At first this bugged me a little and I thought it hot but by the time we came home I found the load noise and cold air conditioning of our restaurants to be much more annoying.

We ordered shrimp, lobster and fish to share between Cameron, Stacey and I. I am not a fan of sea food but since that is what there is in Cabo I decided to be a brave partaker. I was amazed by how good everything was. I loved it all! I can not imagine what made me not love seafood. Maybe it was the way they brought the shrimp right to the restaurant same day?

This is Cameron's, "What happens in Cabo, Stays in Cabo" face. It is a virgin drink.
Here we are outside the little restaurant.
We enjoyed our walk home around the harbor and saw the biggest catamoran pull into port. The weather was perfect!

This is the view from one side of my dad's hotel. He stayed right near the port and we enjoyed his views each day and we met for dinner.

Just looking at the pictures makes me miss Cabo. I think I need to be planning a vacation to go back soon! I hope my dad wins to go down there again!

Trip to Phoenix part 2

Saturday morning we decided to get up and go on a hike by White Tanks. We also had to go buy Cameron a suit for the job interview he had on Tuesday. My girls decided they would stay home with Grandma instead of hiking so we were all able to ride in the Explorer together. We had fun driving over to the mall and then looked for a suit for about an hour. Everyone else shopped at the other stores while we were looking.

The we went hiking. I love the different cactus's around here. they are beautiful!






David was the only one who tried to climb the slippery rocks to see the corner where the water fall comes down. There was no water falling down the waterfall because there had been no rain but there was a couple deep pools of water up there.

After our hike we went out to eat and enjoyed each other. It has been a long time since we were all together for any reason.

Our Trip to Phoenix Part 1

David and his girl friend, Samantha, flew to Stacey's house in Phoenix for his birthday. We decided to go out there too so we could see them. The first day we were all together was Friday. We started out by playing settlers of Cataan and then went to the mall to shop. (I was the one who really needed to get out of the house due to the closed roads keeping me home most of the time.) We also went to REI.

At around 5:00pm we met Tony, who had to work, at the Rustler's Rooste. This is a restaurant on the hills south of phoenix. The view is pretty good of the city and the food is western. The main attraction is a slide that you can ride down to the dining area. We all chose to ride the slide. The kids of course loved this. The food was pretty good but pricey too. It wouldn't be my regular place to go but it was fun for a celebration dinner. We celebrated David's 26th birthday.

One of the interesting things they have on the menu is rattlesnake. Stacey and Tony ordered that and we all tried some of the rattlesnake. It takes just like chicken.

The girls enjoyed getting balloons and shirley temple drinks. They also enjoyed the dancing to live band after dinner. I don't know that we were supposed to do that but why have a live band and not have dancing?

The Living Desert

I went on Ali's field trip to the Living Desert with her last week. We were told we could not bring any siblings. I felt that this was very annoying but Ali really wanted me to come and so I found separate people to watch both of my children and made arrangements to carpool the two hours to the Living Desert. (We are not allowed to ride the bus with our children.) We had to drop off Annika, get gas, and get some subway for lunch before we headed out there. We met the bus getting there at the same time as us even though we left at the same time and I had to make so many stops.

This is the picture of my group of girls.
The girls ran from one exhibit to the next one. I could hardly keep up. I have never gone to the zoo with 8 and 9 year olds and I learned that they have a lot of energy. I was a little worried about not getting my daily workout but after the day I was exhausted and felt like I had run the 3 miles I try to do regularly.

It was very hot out there. We are used to it being in the 40's and 50's with occasional 30's mixed in there. It was 94 degrees. That caused the kids to need lots of water and to complain about sweating. You would think they had never felt such temperatures. (Wait in our mountains it hardly ever gets above 90 degrees so many they haven't.)


We found the butterfly exhibit and the girls were fascinated with the butterflies. It was by far the hit of the day.
Ali loved the butterflies the most and tried to see how many she could get on her fingers much to the dismay of the zoo people. I loved to watch all the butterflies flying around and smell the beautiful flowers.
After the butterflies we found the coolest park. It was perfect for a zoo.
The cactus slide was fun.
Ali got ate by a snake.
Ali fell down and had to find a bandaid to put on her skinned knee. (This was the third time the same knee got hurt. We ended up at the merry go round. At first the kids were saying that this was a childish thing to do and that they didn't want to go on the merry go round. I could tell they really wanted to go though and were just trying to sound cool.

I advised that perhaps acting childish was a good idea since they were only 8 and would probably have to adults for a very long time. They might as well enjoy being kids. It was funny how they all pulled 2 dollars out of their wallets and and paid for a ride on the merry go round. I am glad they were not too old to do it!
The last thing we did was watch a show. It was the best animal show I have seen in a really long time. (I have been to the zoo and wild animal park and their shows were not nearly as well organized or interesting.)
I took Ali and my friend took her son home with us. They were a little disappointed because we didn't give them 15 dollars to spend on silly zoo stuff like a lot of parents had done. My friend's son looked so sad and I have never seen him that way. I still didn't want to spend the money at the zoo but I offered icy drinks as consolation if he promised to smile the rest of the way home. It worked and he was happy until we got home.

skiing

Just like every year we have done a lot of skiing this winter. These are the only two pictures I have taken of the events. I guess we are pretty bad at taking pictures. Our kids are pretty good skiers. Ali can ski down the black diamonds when she wants to and regularly goes off of little jumps. She can ski in control and likes to ski with her friends every time. I have taken one of her friend's up skiing a lot and they have spent a lot of time going off and skiing one or two runs before checking in. She loves the independence.

Ashling is good at skiing too. She is fast and has learned this year to also be in control. She makes her own choices on when to turn and can ski down anything. Since she is littler than Ali she tends to get tired a little faster and she doesn't really go off any jumps with the intent to get air. She would be happy skiing down the green runs but usually she ends up skiing on the blues with the family. Her favorite trail is bubble gum which is a narrow road that goes through the trees. I don't know what is so special about this trail but most kids love it. Maybe it is the name.

I have enjoyed skiing this year with my only complaint being that the snow gets icy too quickly with all our warm days. Otherwise it has been great. I have learned to ski much faster but still slow down whenever I am uncomfortable with the conditions. I have added a couple blacks to what I like to ski but still go down them pretty slowly. At least I feel that as a skier I can go down anything I choose to do even if it is not graceful at all.