Baby Blue Eyes

Happy Anniversary to Vaughn and me! Today is the 11 year anniversary for him proposing! I truly feel like an old married couple now! Is it the 11 years or is it the 4 kids? I don't know, but it seems like we are old pros at it! (Not perfect, mind you, but we have a good routine down!)

Anyway, I just wanted to snap a few picture of Taysom to celebrate his upcoming 6th month! He is such a great baby!! We love his beautiful blue eyes and his big boy laugh! We love that he is sleeping through the night and that he weighs 17 lbs! Yelp! We love that he loves rolling over and tries so hard to sit up by himself! He is definitely loved by everyone in our family and we don't think we could find a better caboose for our family! He is such a sweetheart! 

Mason's Owie

Oh, boy. The drama in our house! Our kids have been having freak outs and Vaughn and I just laugh and laugh! These kids are so entertaining. Here is just a little peek into what Mason is like when he goes to bed too late at night and then wakes up too early! His foot did hurt, but not as badly as he was trying to have us all believe!

Oh Boy, Does He Let Us Have It!

Yesterday, Drew flew off the handle and into a rampage! Vaughn and I have no idea what set him off or where he learned what he lectured us about. He is right and we have (mostly) changed our ways! We love him and hope he keeps his convictions strong! We have a longer clip that I'm not posting, because it is a lot of the same verbiage, but I just wanted to let everyone know that Drew "knows it in his heart that drinking caffeine is bad." That is probably the best line out of both videos! He really is a good kid.

He's Rolling!

Sam has been taking speech therapy once a week. She has done so well and we have seen a huge difference in her speech. She still has a very long way to go, but she is now on the right track! Every Thursday her therapist comes over and works with her for 45 minutes. Sam and Taysom both love Nancy and Taysom just can't take his eyes off of her!

Taysom has been so close to rolling over for the past couple of weeks and he finally did it! I turned him away from Nancy and he rolled over so that he could see her! We all gave him big cheers and encouragement and he just went wild kicking his legs and cooing! 

Throughout the day he kept practicing and doing it over and over. By the time Vaughn got home from work, he could do it quite fast! He is so stinkin' cute!

Creative Reorganizing

When we were trying to decide how to arrange the bedrooms to fit the kids, Vaughn and I went back and forth on how we thought that it should be arranged. He was ok with Sam and Taysom sharing a room, but I was not. Sam is very mischievous and I just didn't feel like that was the best option for us. I knew that the two rooms in question were too little to have either a twin and a queen sized bed or a crib and a queen sized bed, so the problem was how do put the kids where they need to be and still have a guest bed for the company. 

We still need to paint and decorate it, but we are having a new quilt top made for her and will base the room off of those colors, so I'll post pictures when we get the room completed. She had a little bit of a hard time going to bed the first night. She knew it was her bed, but it was not her room! She wanted to go back and sleep where she thought she was supposed to be. It took just laying by her for a few minutes and after that we haven't had any other problems. 

Vaughn's solution.

I guess it works. The crib barely fit in there, it was like it was made to fit in the closet! 

Taysom's new room and our guest room. We will repaint and decorate when we get around to doing Sam's. I'm still trying to figure out where all of my craft stuff is supposed to go, since it was in the guest room closet. Maybe I'll put it in the garage...if I can find somewhere out there!

Mini Drew

Every one that knew Drew as a baby or little kid says that Taysom looks like a mini Drew. I always agreed, but seeing Taysom in the same outfit that Drew wore to Vaughn's hygiene graduation really shocked me of just how much the looked alike!

Granted Taysom is five months old and Drew was only four. 

I think if Vaughn and I weren't in the pictures, some would not know who was who!

Castaway Cay

After San Juan we had another full day at sea. It was fun to relax after two busy port days. Friday morning we woke up already in port. It was a pretty windy day and so a lot of the activities were closed, but it still was a very nice day! It still amazes me that we were on a ship with 30 members of the Hixson family and yet we hardly saw anyone. We could spend time together if we wanted too, but we could also go off and do our own things when we wanted too as well. Thinking back, we were on Castaway Cay all day, and I don't remember seeing Scott and his family at all! It isn't that big of an island, but there is just lots to do! 

Since the island is owned by Disney it is really just an extension of the ship. All the food was free and you could use your Key to the World card to make purchases. You could even buy something on the island and pick it up later on the ship! Everything was so convenient!  

Obviously, the family beach was a little crowded, so we headed over to the 'adult only' beach. It was so deserted and we were able to find a nice place to sit back and relax for a while. We even took a short nap!

While going back to the ship at the end of the day we saw Jean, Oz and Luan up on their balconies. We had no idea they had such great rooms, so we boarded the ship and headed to check out their rooms! We told them that had we known they had balconies we would have been there every night to enjoy the ocean with them!

While watching people board and crew members come and go we saw some really cool behind the scenes stuff. They brought in load after load of beach towels! It was crazy to see how many towels an island can go through in just a few short hours and with one cruise ship! 

Someone told us that the island really doesn't have that many employees that live on Castaway Cay. The crew members on the ship get off the ship and work in different areas when they are in port there. They work seven days a week for 4-6 months and then get 6-8 weeks off. They then renew their contracts and start all over again. They do get a couple of hours off during the day, but no full days off. Also we heard that most of the people that Disney hire for the cruise ships are from different countries and they never leave the ship. If they never leave the boat then they are always in international waters and don't have to worry about visas. I thought that that was so interesting. 

One thing that really amazed me is that Disney must really take care of their employees. Everyone was so happy and nice. I would think that after working 7 days a week, especially around kids, that I would get tired of it and become less than nice or friendly. That was so not the case with all the crew members. I never once encountered a short tempered or irritated worker! It was incredible!   

Disney workers waving goodbye to us! 

Magen, Emma, Jessica and Sarah

Dinner that night was once again at Royal Court. 

Johnathan, Emily, Sophie, Austin and McKay

Spencer, Aaron, Brooklyn, Ty and Jana and Tanner

Richard and Ozzie and Jeannie and Luan

Molly, Scott, Madeline, Parker and Jefferson 

Brenda, Richard, David, me, Vaughn and I Made

The two best servers ever! 

Richard is from South Africa and I Made was from Indonesia. Richard was actually finishing his contract and so this was his last night on the cruise as well. He would then fly to Washington DC and then take a 19 hour flight home. We asked about his family and he said he has a wife and two children. We asked how his wife manages while he is gone and he said it is a huge sacrifice, but he does it to provide for his family. Such an amazing guy. He also said that we were by far his favorite group ever! I don't know if he says that to everyone or not, but we'll take his word for it!  

I didn't notice any other tables doing this, but our waiters used the crayons to color on the table cloths. Every night I Made would think of some riddle or puzzle for us to solve. He stumped us a few times and the other times it just took some brain power and other times common sense to figure them out!

After we said our goodbyes to the them we headed out to buy some last minute souvenirs for the kids and then headed up to deck 11.  Every night we seemed to gather up there before bedtime and eat pizza, french fries and ice cream cones. Not good habits at all, but it was only for a week, so no real harm done! One night while we were sitting there, I glanced over and totally saw someone that I knew from Jerome! Ok, so I didn't really know her, but I knew that she was a kindergarten teacher at Drew's school. So I told Vaughn and him being the brave soul went over to talk to her! It is such a small world! Then another night we were eating our french fries with fry sauce and a guy approached our table and said, "fry sauce huh, you must be from Utah." Turns out he was from Utah as well and a huge BYU fan. 

Since this was the last night on the ship we didn't really want the night to end. So we decided we'd have a party in our room! We had a great room that had a hallway on one side and a cleaning closet on the other and stairs behind us. So we really didn't have to worry about making too much noise and waking other cabins up!

We decided to order room service and watch a movie! 

Here is what we all wanted to be ordered:

Mac & Cheese x3, french fries, chicken noodle soup x3, grilled cheese sandwich, chicken tenders,  ham, turkey and swiss sandwich x2, all hands on deck (can't remember what that was), and mickey bars x7

The lady that answered the room service phone just laughed and laughed while Vaughn was placing the order! 

Jessica, Sarah, Magen, Austin and Johnathan

The room service! 

The guy brought it in on two trays!

Our SEVEN Mickey bars! They were so so delicious!

We had so much fun with our nieces and nephews! They are such great kids and we love being around them and feel like we aren't so old when we hang out and do things with them!!

Sadly, that night went by way too quickly. When we woke up in the morning it was time to hurry up to deck 11 for breakfast and disembark the ship one final time. The process was pretty easy and it all went so smoothly. You could tell that the vacation was definitely over when you saw parents being short tempered with their kids and more tantrums from the kids! It made me so so happy to know that I was refreshed and ready to go home and see my kids! That was the only bright thing about the vacation being over!

Our group loading back up onto the bus.

Jeannie, Aaron and Emma

Taking the tram at the airport

Johnathan, Austin (doesn't he look so happy to be going home?!) and Jessica.

On the flight home we had a lot of family on the plane with us and it was a direct flight! 

We were "so" excited to be heading home to the cold weather.

Can't you tell?!

San Juan, Puerto Rico

The next day we landed in San Juan! We were able to join a zip lining excursion with a lot of other family members! It was awesome! The only bad thing about it, was it took up the entire day and we didn't get to see much of San Juan. I guess we'll just have to plan another trip to see the sights!   

While we were zip lining, we were flying past so many iguanas! They were everywhere and they were huge! I am so glad I was many feet off the ground and above them. There were some in some trees not far from the zip lines, but I am just glad they were not in the trees I was walking next too. They probably were, but I didn't see them, so that makes them not there...in my head! 

There was a ton of hiking involved with the zip lining, but it felt great to get some good exercise. Especially after all the food we'd been eating!

The company provided a catered lunch that was very interesting. It was some grilled chicken, rice and beans. The rice was really good and the chicken was good. There wasn't really any meat on the chicken, so I think most of us went back to the ship hungry! Or maybe we'd been so used to having more food than we were used too, so it just seemed like a normal portion was too small! 

About to get back onboard! I was really impressed with the boarding and disembarking procedures. You had to scan your key card to get on and off the boat, so they could keep track of missing passengers. There were a few names that were called over the pa system before we left the port and I wonder if they ever made it back on! 

Disney takes such great care of their ship. Every time we were at a port there were people outside cleaning and even repainting the exterior. The maintenance of the ship was incredible. It really did feel like we were on a brand new ship, even though it had been out many times before.

That night our dinner was in the Animators Palate and it was so fun! We celebrated my sil Molly's birthday and we got to be animators!  

Johnathan and I with our animations!

Austin and Emma with theirs! 

They put on a show using your drawings! It was so fun to see our lovely artwork dancing around on big tv screens! It was incredible!