Lets go CRUISING!

Our family had the BEST time ever this past week on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. I wrote about 20 pages of details in my journal, and will do a fun scrapbook, so I won't go into much detail here, and will ONLY include 20 (or so) pictures. . . I will give a list of my favorite things:

*our port excursions in Cabo, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. We did an awesome adventure in Cabo. We did a zipline, rapelling, and rock climbing high adventure. In Mazatlan the kids went parasailing, swam in the ocean and in a pool at a really nice resort. In Puerto we went snorkeling, and saw about 10 whales doing awesome tricks for us. We were within about 25 yards of them at times. It was so cool.

*eating what we wanted, when we wanted, and how much we wanted, and never having to worry about parting with any money (at the time) for the food or tips. Oh, and of course no preparation or cleanup!

*that it was just the 7 of us- lots of bonding and shared memories.

*the ages of all the kids. I don't know why anyone would ever go on a cruise with a kid younger than 12. Cam was old enough to do all the activities we did, play cards with us, entertain himself, etc. We love the addition of Brody to all the fun times we have. With two major family trips w/in 7 months of each other, it's quite the test of Jensen family togetherness. As far as we know, we haven't scared him off yet. As with everything we do, it's always more fun with the Hatch's.

*playing lots of fun games of shuffleboard, chess, cards, and yahtzee.

*beautiful scenery

*warm weather

*when the boat was rocking enough to make the ship swimming pool like a wave pool.

*cool night-time shows. Our favorites being an amazing and funny juggler and two-time world champion magician.

*working out by running around the track on the top of the ship.

*seeing the kids having fun and enjoying every minute of our time together as a family.

It really couldn't have been a funner vacation. Everything was so perfect! We're already planning our next one in a few years!

Kylee is going to do a much more detailed post of the trip with many more pictures as soon as her laptop is fixed in the next week or so, so be sure and check out her blog if you're interested in seeing more of our trip.

School Scrapbooks

One of the things I was most excited about this Christmas was giving the kids these school scrapbooks I secretly made over the past two months. For all their Elementary and Middle School years, I've been saving some of their papers and drawings. I sifted through them all- one paper at a time- threw most of them away, and kept what went into the books plus several bins full. Kids bring home a lot of "stuff." When saving in the first place, be selective, because no one has room to store every bit of paper brought home- as important as they seem at the time. They each got a book full of the cream-of -the-crop (2-6 pages per year- most years 4). They loved looking through the books on Christmas morning remembering some things, but not others. We had a great time laughing over their spelling, stories, and pictures. The following is a page from each book. I recommend to all you mom's out there with small children to think about doing something like this in the future. It doesn't have to be fancy (as everyone knows, I'm not a big scrapbooker) since all they care about is their work.