Whoopy Brea--Look Who's 23!

Way back in February my bestie turned 23! Where has time gone that we haven't gotten that old (I was talking with my Mom tonight about how close I'm getting to be a quarter of a century, to be honest not that excited about it). 

Brea and Darrell hosted a fun party at their house, it was fun to get together with all our Newport friends, we live so close but because of life we don't get to see each other all the time. 

I was in charge of the drink and because I've cut back on soda I wanted to a drink that didn't include any, I found this really yummy lemonade- it must have been a hit because the whole bowl got brought into the living room where we were eating. 

Probably the best picture of the whole night, Leah was trying to tell Addie to be a monkey and I caught in on camera :)

Look at those cute pregnant bellies, crazy that they both have had their babies now and that Abby is two months old and Carson is a month old!

You would have thought that it was Addie's party with all the attention that she gets :)

At one point Addie disappeared into her room and shut the door, Brea and Kimmy were trying to see what she was doing in there by herself.

Brea has become quite the master at making awesome and delicious ice cream cakes.

Kimmy kept clipping the hairbow on Addie's nose and then it would fall off, Addie thought it was the most funny thing in the world and kept on bringing it back to her so she could do it again. 

What a Boat!

(I'm not sure why but this has taken me forever to want to get this written and posted--I guess that I just didn't have the energy to want to add the words that go with the pictures. I'm not sure that I'm even done, but it's better to get it posted now before I forget all)

Well the time has come and gone and we have returned from our whirlwind trip to California and our cruise. It was so much fun, with plenty of positives and some things that we could have done without. Despite having just seen everyone for Christmas barely two weeks ago it felt like it had been forever since we had seen each other. 

We saw the boat (ha boat--ship) a couple of blocks before we even got there and it looked beautiful and very really! I dropped everyone off but Kyle at the sidewalk with their luggage and went to park the car in the parking garage (we were awesome and parked at 3G--I don't think that it went up to 4G). We walked in and met up with Mom in line, it was much like going through security at the airport; you first had someone look at all of you paper work and ID, then went through a scanner, and finally you stood in a long line (where you showed them your ID and then received your room key). We went upstairs where they took a picture to keep in the file with our card (so when you got off and on they had a picture to match the card with-- you know, no stowaways or anything) and then we finally got to walk on the ship!

We quickly found our rooms, dropped off our carry-on's and headed upstairs for a tour and lunch. With the excitement of being on the boat it was little hard to sit and eat (which was probably a good thing ;D).  When we were doing our walking tour of the boat Nathan and Sallee found us and continued with us. 

After the tour I went to my room and changed into my swimsuit to try and go swimming- I quickly discovered that the pool water was FREEZING! So I joined Nathan and Claire in the hottub, we got to be in there for about 10-15 minutes before it was time to go to a meeting about safety the boat. Basically it was discussing what would happen if we needed to evacuate the ship and where you would go, etc. (just a bit boring). 

By the time the "meeting" was over I was freezing so I hurried back to my room to change into warm/dry clothes, then it was back upstairs for dinner. The first night we didn't realize that we had to all be together when we went into dinner so Ben and Sonia's family were at a different table then the rest of us.

The Fruit Cocktail, this was a favorite for everyone-generally every night this was ordered 4-5 times (at least--Thursday night when I wasn't feeling well I just ordered 4 of these for my dinner).

We were on our way back to our room after dinner when in the main lobby these two guys started a dance performance- it was pretty cool and really fun. I loved that you could just be walking anywhere and get a free "show."

At one point they asked for volunteers, Jacob had really wanted to be involved so he made his way downstairs to the very edge of where they were dancing in hopes of getting picked.

After dinner and all good children were in bed Libbey, Erick, Ben, Sonia, Nathan, and I went to their welcome to the ship show. It had a couple of dancers, singers, and comedians. It was a pretty good show and had us a bit excited for the week.

We moved very quickly into our room (with 3 adults what can you expect). Though there wasn't tons of room I thought that the different ways they had the rooms arranged made them as comfortable and as useful as they could. Mom and I had been afraid that we were going to have to share beds the whole week and so we were greatly relieved when we got there and found that they had 3 separate beds for us.

When we weren't doing anything this was most likely the place that you could always find Kyle- with this huge honking book (I think that he read the whole thing in like 3 days).