EFY

July 15-20, 2013

Alexis decided to try EFY in Cedar City this year.  She has talked about going to college there and this was a good chance to check out the campus.  We got Heidi to sign up to go too.  They were roommates, but they stayed in a suite with a bunch of other girls.  I knew right when we walked in the bubbly girls there would drive these two crazy.

When we picked the girls up on Saturday, we went to breakfast and they showed us pictures of their week - there were very few photos of them with other girls.

There were plenty of pics of them with boys!

The girls had a good time...

and hopefully learned something and felt the Spirit.

Magic Mountain

Friday, July 12, 2013

Seth's teacher had given us tickets for the kids to get in to Magic Mountain.  We decided to go right from the ship.  We disembarked early and headed to The Mountain.  We saw these characters right as we walked in and took a quick photo before getting in line for the X2.

Seth said the X2 was his favorite but he was pretty freaked out.  We had stood in line forever for it and we were tired, hot and grumpy! Maybe going straight from the cruise wasn't the best idea.  We bought some refillable drink cups and things got a little better.

There were rides that Seth wasn't quite tall enough for so sometimes we split up.  Me and the littles saw one of my students there using the pass his teacher had given him.

Here is Alexis with her Superman pose.  

Uncle Bo and Uncle Paul were there with a friend, but we only ran into them a few times.  We met up with them for our last ride of the day. Seth chickened out and he and I ended up sitting out for this one, but he rode plenty of scary rides that day.  We didn't get to ride everything but we got a lot in, considering how hot and tired we were.  

We stayed in a nearby hotel that night then headed home in the morning.  Our week long vacation had worn us out!

Cruisin' on Thursday

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Thursday was spent onboard the entire day.  After breakfast, the kids wanted to swim.  They discovered that the rubbery surface under the water slides were very slippery and started to run and side on it.

We met up with Grandpa for a round of mini-golf.  

When he got a hole-in-one, Grandpa did a dance on the wall to celebrate, reminiscent of the dance he did for our neighbors years ago.

Mom called a family meeting to share a book she had made with the testimonies of our parents and grandparents in it.  Crying was involved.

Later, while the kids went to the Kids Club and the teens went to hang out with friends, Dave and I played a digital scavenger hunt game with Lee, Melissa, Bo, and Maddie on our team.  The Jenkins got a little competitive and beat all the other teams soundly, winning a gold medal made of plastic.  I think we got all possible points - except getting a picture of a man in a bikini.  We had some time before dinner, so I took Camryn and Anna to watch a children's dance team perform, while the boys went to the buffet area to play games. It was like watching an episode of Dance Moms.

We hung out that night at the karaoke party.  The girls sang with their new friend Amanda,

and Cam sang too.  She wasn't feeling well so it wasn't her best performance but she did end up having a fan. Ryan and I sang "You Light Up My Life"  for my mom, to remember all the times when we sang along with her while she played the piano when we were little - it was one of the few songs she could play.  Mom even joined us on stage to sing.

After karaoke, we met up at the buffet for some last goodbyes.  We weren't sure if we would see each other in the morning and we wanted one last round of ice cream cones and shared our favorite parts of the trip.

The Cousins Cruise was a great week.  We loved spending time with our little family and our big family.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! 

Cruisin' on Wednesday

Wednesday we ate at the breakfast buffet and went to meet our surf instructor. He drove us down to a nearby beach.

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We got suited up in our wet suits and our instructors had us practice how to get up on our boards on the beach.

Our instructors would ride the back of the surf board for Camryn and Seth, helping them be able to catch almost every wave.

For Dave, Lex, and I they would just go out with us and get us set up to hit the waves just right.  Dave was less successful, but Alexis and I were able to get up most of the time.

Surfing was fun, but exhausting.  Just paddling out and getting set up wore me out!  The next day I was sore in muscles I never knew I had.  We had a great time and thought it was well worth it to try something new.

We got dropped off back at the boat, ran in to change (there was sand everywhere!), then headed over to the huge flag at the Ensenada Port to meet up with the rest of the family.  Jeff had set up for us to rent vans to drive out to Las Canadas to go ziplining.

We got there and got harnessed up.  

Seth and some of the littler cousins were technically too short to zipline, but in Mexico rules are more like suggestions, so they got strapped up to go too.

The ziplines ran across a small valley and the first one  went over a pond.

Between the ziplines, you had to cross crazy bridges to get to the next zipline.  I was behind Seth, who did a great job but liked to have his space and not have anyone near him to shake the bridge (which Lee liked to do to freak everyone out).

The biggest zipline went clear across the little valley and the little kids had to get strapped up to a grown up to have enough weight to make it across. Everyone loved this activity and it was the highlight of the trip for most of the cousins. We think it would be fun to have a family reunion there.

The vans divided up by who wanted to go to see La Bufadora and who wanted to stay at Las Canadas. Alexis went with the cousins to shop and see the blowhole, while the rest of our little family stayed with Lee's family and the kids rode a tobaggan and played in the kiddie pool.  We made it back to the boat in time for dinner.

That night we went to watch a Newlywed Game Show.  We were trying to get Ryan and Chris on it, but I guess we weren't loud and crazy enough. Later we went to look for the folks and we found them in the adults only hot tub - first time I ever remember seeing my mom in a swim suit.  Historic! 

Cruisin' on Tuesday

Tuesday was spent on Catalina Island. The Hills headed over with Grandpa, Bo, and Zack.

The little island is very quaint and we had a nice day there. 

The first group that went over all went kayaking together. We only wanted to go out for a hour so we just went around the little Bay Area around the docks. I was teamed up with Alexis who kept hitting me with her paddle and throwing seaweed at me. We did pretty good until we tried to go under a restaurant dock and got sucked in and had a hard time getting back out. When we finished up the ferry was just coming in, bringing Jo and Paul. They were not able to go on the cruise because Jo was too far along in her pregnancy. They spent the week in CA and came over to join us for the day. 

We spent an hour at the beach, then headed over to Antonio's for lunch. 

There were peanuts and you were encourage to throw shells on the floor but I think they were thrown at people. Grandma had preordered a bunch if pizzas, including a vegetarian pizza. It did not have regular pizza veggies on it - it had things like carrots and zucchini. It was so weird. 

After lunch we tried to get a whole family picture, which proved difficult because everyone had an opinion on how it should be done, but we finally managed it.

We decided to rent a golf cart to cruise around the island. We took Mason with us, Lee's family and Zack had a cart, and  Grandma and Grandpa had a cart.

We drove up in the hills and around the little town of Avalon. 

With 3 carts from our family on the road, a lot of racing and honking was involved. 

We spent the rest if the afternoon at the beach. 

The kids buried Emily. She loved it. 

Jo tried to get JuJu to pee in the ocean. She just wouldn't do it!

The teens took pics. 

And we all got to see Jeff in his little swim shorts. It was a great day!

We headed back to the boat to clean up for elegant dinner night.

They had little lobster tails as one of the dinner choices. Seth tried it and swelled up in the night. Luckily Uncle Jeff had Benadryl. 

During the dinner thy had a dance for all the couples. 

Madison's waiter flirted with her all week and asked her to dance.  

After dinner we went to the Latin Dance show to get in the mood for our day in Mexico. The girls all had wigs that made them look like trannies. One of the guys dancing was named Nick- Madison had met him the day before. We shouted for him when he was onstage. After the show, we went to the buffet, where we discovered their delicious panini sandwiches and the others had soft serve ice cream.