Easter Eggs and getting outside in March!

My little man Alex! He has found this little monkey is his favorite toy. He drags it all over the house and likes to chew on his face and limbs.

I attempt a self portrait. I'm not as good as Eric:-)

We took Evan to a new park today and he had fun running around. He met a boy who was about a year older and they had fun chasing each other around climbing and sliding and running.

Alex tries out the slide. I think he liked it.

I can't remember if I ever colored Easter eggs when I was a kid(sorry Mom if we did), but Gay asked Evan if he was gonna color eggs, so I figured I better get on the ball and try it out. Here are the 5 eggs we colored. I boiled 6 of them and Evan cracked one when he dropped it in the bowl.

How the heck do I color Easter eggs? Dissolve a tablet in 3 Tablespoons vinegar(wait, wait wait). Add 1/2 cup water.

Add the hard boiled egg to the colored water mixture.

Wait, Wait, Wait!

Out comes a blue egg!

Is it ready yet? Patience...Evan..you must learn patience:-) So glad we didn't try to color 12 eggs! LOL.

After we went to the park we walked to Dairy Queen(2.7 miles each way thanks to GPS)! Evan was very excited to have some ice cream! I've been telling him ever since DQ opened that when it was warm enough to sit outside and have ice cream we could go there.

We ran into Evan's buddy Andrew from daycare and his family, so we had ice cream with them.

Alex had a little ice cream too:-) Had to wash his jacket again tonight, because he was eating crackers during our walk too!

Evan, Andrew and Annika had fun playing around the Dairy Queen sign.

The boys and trip to the zoo

This morning Alex was having fun playing with the CAT loader in Evan's room . He is starting to talk more and more. He says "Uh oh", "All Done", "Eddie", "Heather", "Dada", "Wow", and he is starting to try to say "Mama".

Evan running away from the camera

Alex can pull himself up to look out the window

Monday I had the day off and took Evan to the zoo. We visited the grizzly bears 2 times before they were awake and moving around. Tired bears!

Comfy in my stroller while Mom pushes me around the zoo.

This leopard was pacing back in forth in front of Evan. Good thing there was glass to protect him. Nice Kitty(a little bigger than Eddie):-)

Evan liked the tiger, dolphins, snow monkey's and grizzly bears. He didn't want to leave the bears. He really wanted them to jump in the water, but they just played. I got him a shirt that has the 3 bears and their names(Sadie, Haines and Kenai).

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Evan has taught Alex to not look at the camera, so now we have two of them. They almost look like twins in their St Patrick's Day Lucky Charms shirts!
Tonight Eric and Evan took Eddie to the vet to get his yearly check-up

Evan tries to get Eddie to come out of his carrier!

The boys in their Elmo chairs

Alex likes to ride the horse. JUMP JUMP JUMP!

Alex now likes to climb into the laundry basket!

Thanks Evan for dumping out the laundry basket! Lots of clothes boys:-)

Alex on his new ride-on Tonka truck from Sophie. Fun!

Miami Beach

We headed out a day early for our cruise and stayed a night in Miami Beach. We had these gigantic very expensive mojitos for lunch. They were 2 for one ...fine print..per person. We couldn't drink more than one. Guess how much? $19 each. They were pretty big, but we thought they were 2 for one! Good thing we were just walking:-)
It was a little cloudy in Miami Beach, but we enjoyed a nice long walk on the beach. Can't complain...no snow...and green is everywhere!!

Sights of Miami Beach!

So I was a little chilly during our after dinner walk and had to stop at Starbucks and get a hot chocolate! Eric had to get a picture:-)

Saturday was a much better day in Miami Beach...We got to spend some time walking on the beach before we headed to the cruise ship! AHHH SUNSHINE!

Norwegian Pearl Feb 20-27

Ready to leave Miami!

Our balcony view from Miami!

Getting ready for the emergency drill at our muster station, before leaving Miami. Our headboard was a mirror, so Eric took our picture in the mirror.


Heading out to the hot tub our first night on board.
Our first day at sea was a little cold! brrrr

Tortola! We had a great time on our cruise with Chris and Jennie. They took lots of these photos that I'm posting. We went to Samana, St Thomas, Tortola and Great Stirrup Cay. Our days at sea were a little chilly and windy but our days in port couldn't have been more perfect.

NCL's private island in the Bahamas. Great Stirrup Cay

Giant water slide. We didn't give this a try, but the kids were really having fun on it. If it was free we probably would've tried it.

Samana in the Dominican Republic

Whale watching in the Dominican Republic. This was AWESOME! They came right up to the boat.

They were waving at us! Welcome back to Samana:-) When Eric and I were on our first vacation together in March 2005 we came to Samana to see humpback whales. When we visited last time they slapped their tails against the surface of the water. We did see some whale tails this time but they didn't slap the water with them.

That is his eye you see on the far right. How cool is that?

Views around the Norwegian Pearl!

This is a bed they have in the Spinnaker Lounge. One night during a comedy show we couldn't find a chair to sit in so we hung out on this bed. Hanging out here made me sleepy!

Staircase going from the Blue Lagoon 24 hr food court to the Crystal Atrium.

Beautiful Chihuly glass in the Crystal Atrium

Beautiful ceiling in the Crystal Atrium

Having lunch outside on the back of the ship!

Dinner at Teppanyaki. YUMMY!

The Norwegian Pearl. We were deck 10 mid-ship

Dinner at La Cucina Italian Restaurant

The beautiful Summer Palace Dining Room. The staircase leading out of the dining room reminded me of something out of Titanic.

2 for one drinks anyone? We couldn't pass this up! I ended up drinking Jennie's too:-)

We almost always took the stairs. They have staircases ..Forward..MidShip...and Rear. At each landing between the levels they have pictures like this one. This one was our favorite of the view of an elephant under water.

Bowling on a cruise ship! If you do bad you can just blame it on the ship moving:-)

Virgin Gorda Baths in Tortola. We had to swim from the boat to shore to see the caves, so we didn't get any pictures. It was cool, but got crowded with tourists from other cruise ships. The water was pretty rough, so it would've been nice not to have to swim back to the boat. Eric had to help me get back to the boat!

At most of the ports we didn't pull up to a pier, so we had to take tenders or lifeboats to get off the ship. They were raising the lifeboats back onto the ship in Tortola. The life boats made me feel claustrophobic. I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time in them.

This one's for you Dad. One of the guides on our catamaran ride in St Thomas said this was the founder of White Castle's house. We believed him, because it really did look like a white castle.

Our Lottery house in St Thomas!

Here are some pictures of our room. When we cruised back in 2007 we just had two small port holes and one was obstructed by a lifeboat. This time we had a balcony and we really enjoyed it!

The TV in the room has an NCL channel, Fox News, CNN and only a couple other channels. No FOX, NBC or ABC. Who needs to watch TV when you are on vacation anyways!