DAY 4

On Sunday we went to church and then headed to the cruise pier to board our new home for a week. We met up with our friends Koby and Alicia and their baby and stood in line for about 45 minutes. The silver lining was that we were waiting in luscious warm California weather.

We were on the Carnival Splendor.

Once on board we started to get settled. Here’s Wesley “helping.”

Our room was in the middle of deck 4, which is close to the water. I liked it down there because we were close to the water, and the boat’s rocking was less noticeable. Wes liked watching the water go by.

The ship is decked out in a lot of pink, I’m not sure why. The elevators were decorated with big pink circles that every time made me think of Homer Simpson’s sprinkle-topped frosted donuts.

DAY 5

On our first full day on the ship we took a look around. Wes liked to play in the water of the fountain by one of the swimming pools.

He also lounged a little in the sun.

But mostly Wes enjoyed letting off steam by cruising up and down the extra-long hallways on the ship. After a while the crew members knew to watch out for him when they heard the pitter-pat of his feet coming their way.

DAY 6

On Tuesday afternoon John and I took Wes to the splash park on the top deck. It’s like a playground with slides, only with lots of water shooting up everywhere. Wes pretty much hated it at first, walking around with great apprehension and clinging to John’s fingers. After about twenty minutes he found one thing he liked to do, which was bat his hand in this fountain.

The big thing we had planned for Tuesday was dinner at the specialty fine dining restaurant on the ship, The Pinnacle. Before our dinner, I went to an afternoon cooking demonstration by the Pinnacle chefs. I didn’t know what to expect, so when they started bringing out free sample dishes of the food I knew I had made a good choice. Here’s the cheesy chicken and pasta dish they demonstrated for the main course (it was delicious):

The Pinnacle cost an extra $30 per person. When I heard about the $30 fee I was skeptical because, hey, we’re already paying a bunch to be on this ship, and all the other food is included, so why pay more?

But now I am a believer. The food and service was incredible, and we compared our $60 bill to the well over $100 bill we’ve had at nice restaurants back home where the entree alone costs more than $30.

From the start the food was amazing. They brought out a tempter dish based on what we had ordered (pictured below) and the most delicious bread and spread.

Here is my specialty non-alcoholic mudslinger drink (basically a milkshake-smoothie flavored with amaretto and chocolate) that I savored.

We dropped Wes off at Camp Carnival before dinner, but he didn’t last long. They called us after our appetizer and said he was crying and wouldn’t be comforted. John went and got him and brought him back to dinner. We set him up in the highchair and watched as his eyes settled into the half-closed position and didn’t move. He was so sleepy! John finally took Wes onto his lap and Wes was dead-asleep within a couple of minutes. So the rest of our meal looked something like this:

For dinner John ordered New York strip steak and I had lobster tail with fillet Mignon. It was right up there with the best meat I’d ever tasted anywhere–flavorful and melt-in-your-mouth delcious.

Here’s all of us with dessert:

For dessert I had cheesecake with homemade honey ice cream (which tasted aMAZing).

The sunset on Tuesday was gorgeous.

Day 7

Wednesday was our first port stop: Puerto Vallarta. We had booked a hiking tour through a local tour company. It was the only hiking tour that welcomed children, so we went for it.

Once we disembarked the ship we took a taxi to Bike-Mex Tours (which was interesting since the taxi driver didn’t know the city’s street names; John ended up pulling out a map and explaining in Spanish where we needed to go).

Bike-Mex Tours doubled as a tiny storefront and the owner’s family’s living quarters. When I asked to use the restroom I was directed to a typical Mexican bathroom that was dirty and cob-webby, with a shower spicket hanging from the ceiling and the family’s four toothbrushes in a dirty container by the sink. But at least the toilet flushed, and there was toilet paper.

Our tour guide (and store owner) was Oscar. He provided us with water bottles and a hip pack to carry them in. We set off on our hike by walking through a part of the city until we came to a bus stop. John carried Wes on his back.

The bus took us out of Puerto Vallarta and up through some villages and into the mountains. By riding a real Mexican bus we got the real Mexican experience. The bus was dusty and bumpy. It drove on twisty, steep roads that no bus in the U.S. would ever consider. It blew a tire on the mountainside, but the driver got out, looked at it, and determined we could keep going, so we did. This video was taken on our way home.

Once we got off the bus we hiked along a dirt road until we came to the Rio Cuale (Cuale River). Oscar knew some people who lived along the way, and we stopped a couple times to meet them and see their homes, animals, and gardens.

The jungle was pretty.

It was also very hot. We kept reapplying sunscreen and tried to stay in the shade when we could.

Once we started hiking along the river the temperature cooled and felt much more pleasant. Wes fell asleep.

The scenery around the river was beautiful. Oscar would stop and point out lizards, birds, and interesting plants. We saw one plant called Mimosa that was sensitive to touch and would close when you touched it.

The trail required us to wade across the river three times. The first time we went over with bare feet, but the next time we pulled out our water shoes because the river bottom was covered with rocks. Wading in the water was my favorite part–the river was warm and clear.

We paused for lunch (sandwiches made by Oscar’s wife, fresh oranges, and soda) by a swimming spot in the river. I didn’t swim, but I got to wade some more.

The one negative about this place was all the Mexican mosquitoes. They seemed to sense our foreign blood and went crazy on us. Even with insect repellent on, Koby, Alicia, and John all got bitten a lot. I didn’t fare so badly, with just a few bites on my arms, but Alicia’s legs looked like she had a skin condition. Oscar built a fire to help repel the insects.

We enjoyed the hike back (Wes slept the whole way, strapped to John). Overall, we got to see a unique aspect of Puerto Vallarta and we were glad we could do something semi-active even with our young kids.

However, we were TIRED by the time we got back on board, and that night John and I got a massage at the spa. Ahhhhhhhh, it was nice.

DAY 8

Thursday we stopped in Mazatlan. We had booked a tour with Mazatlan Frank, which I had read great reviews about on the forums at cruisecritic.com. And we weren’t disappointed. Compared to the arduous nature of our hike the previous day, a day spent in an air-conditioned van being chauffeured to different sites was terrific.

We went first to Mazatlan’s most historic cathedral. Frank dropped us off so we could take a look inside. There were a lot of tourists, but also some actual worshipers praying near the front.

From there we walked down the street to the marketplace where there were vendors of all sorts, obviously a place meant primarily for locals and less for tourists. We walked through the open-air meat market where we saw stuff like peeled pigs’ head and chicken feet. Also, it smelled exactly like the Farmland Foods factory I worked at as a teenager (i.e., NOT good).

Next Frank drove us to the coast to watch the cliff divers. These young men jump from a height of about 45 feet into a rocky, shallow part of the ocean. It’s their job. They make their money off the tourists, which, you can see, there are a lot of.

Frank drove us next to Old Mazatlan and walked us around the area. Once the Golden Zone (think tourist area) was built a few decades ago the older part of the city became more run down. But now it’s being fixed up and is a quaint and historic place to visit. We stopped in at an art store where my friend Alicia and I both bought some inexpensive jewelry.

Frank also took us to the Golden Zone to The Silver Bucket store. Obviously he was getting some kind of kick-back from taking us there, but I didn’t mind because the store had free non-alcoholic pina coladas, cookies, and restrooms.

From there we went to Tony’s on the Beach for lunch. It was kind of expensive (about $14 for an entree), so John and I split the steak fajita plate and a bottle of Sprite. This was the only actual Mexican food we ate while in Mexico. I was not disappointed. It may not look so great in the picture, but trust me, it was delicious. And the homemade salsa was amazing.

Wes looks sad in the picture above because he had been sleeping in John’s arms but was woken abruptly and unhappy about it.

We had a picturesque view while we ate.

After lunch we strolled down to the beach and played. Wes was totally content to sit and dig in the sand with the toys we brought. I couldn’t even get him to the water to dip his toes in the ocean.

The weather was perfect, the ocean was beautiful. We enjoyed this time.

Before heading back to our ship Frank took us to Mega, which is like a Super Wal-Mart. John and I went to Mega last year when were in Mexico, and I remembered how much I liked the bakery. It’s different than bakeries in the U.S. where food is carefully covered. Here, all the varieties of bread and pastries are in the open air. You pick up a silver plate and some tongs and select which items you want. Then you take it to the counter where they weigh and wrap your purchases. I wasn’t hungry when we walked through the Mega bakery, but it made my mouth water anyway.

We had a really good time seeing Mazatlan with Frank. The other family in our group went to a spa while we were at the beach and got a 60-minute massage for just $15 per person. Maybe next time…

DAY 9

Our final port stop was Cabo San Lucas, which is a beach community on the very tip of Baja California Peninsula. I loved our time at Cabo.

It’s a tender port, which means you have to wait in line to get on a smaller boat and be tendered to the pier. It took a long time before it was our turn, about forty-five minutes. Wes was getting antsy while we waited and, sure enough, the second we were seated on the boat and started moving he fell dead asleep.

John carried Wes through the streets of Cabo as we explored. Cabo has a ton of pharmacies that will sell you anything, no prescription required. If you wanted cheap Viagra or anti-depressants, this would be the place to go.

We actually didn’t explore a whole lot; Alicia and I bee-lined for a store called Del Sol, which sells products that change color in the sun. I bought a gift for someone else, but then John wanted to know if I had gotten myself anything. No, of course not. With his encouragement I bought myself a necklace whose beads change from white to brilliant blue in the sunlight. It’s my new favorite necklace.

We didn’t have any other activities planned at Cabo, but no matter; tons upon tons of merchants stand along the roads trying to get your attention to purchase various tours through them. John struck up conversation with one guy who gave us a good deal on a glass bottom boat water taxi tour. The water taxi has a couple of clear panels in the bottom where you can see fish swimming, which the driver attracts by tossing fish food into the ocean.

This tour was our favorite part of Cabo. The driver took us south along the peninsula and pointed out rock formations, all of which had names. We also saw bonus sites: couples totally making out on the beach between the rocks. I didn’t take pictures of them, but here are a couple of rock formations near the famous Lover’s Beach.

The weather was gorgeous and the ride was pleasant. Cabo has a lot of sea lions that we saw both in the water and sunning on rocks.

The most famous landmark here is the Arch, which you can see behind us here.

We also saw the Key of the Pacific, which is the first place where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean.

Here’s Land’s End, which is the last rock formation in the Sea of Cortez before entering the Pacific Ocean, plus a sighting of a baby sea lion on a rock.

Once we were past Land’s End they took us around the edge of the rocks and we entered the Pacific Ocean. It was a more bumpy (and more fun!) ride. We saw the opposite side of Lover’s Beach, which they jokingly call Divorce Beach.

The taxi dropped our friends off at Lover’s Beach for some swimming, but John and I decided to head back to the mainland and then to the ship for lunch.

Wes ate some of his signature cheese pizza.

He also saw a lot of birds. Some passengers on the decks above us were throwing food to the birds, so they were hovering near our window. Wes knows the sign for bird (although he does his own version of it) and can say “buh” for “bird.”

Days 10-11

All day Saturday we cruised towards home (a.k.a. Long Beach). We played a card game called Dominion with our friends and worked out in the gym. On Sunday we disembarked in the morning (very slowly; it took longer than we were told it would, but there was a good movie on TV so I didn’t mind too much). John’s mom picked us up and took us back to Calabasas to the Hilton Garden Inn. We hung out and watched Titanic on TV (maybe a good thing our cruise was over by then).

Day 12

Our last day we started in Malibu, which is about twenty minutes from our hotel (John, who grew up in Newbury Park, used to say that he lived over the hills and million dollars from Malibu). John’s mom took us to the Malibu Country Mart, a small up-scale outdoor shopping center with a playground in the middle.

We ate lunch at John’s Garden Lunch and Snack Shop. In addition to selling salads, sandwiches, wraps, smoothies, and shakes it’s also a health food store that sells things like meatless jerky. Our sandwiches were pretty tasty, but the milkshakes were particularly good.

John and his mom popped into a chocolate shop called K Chocolatier by Diane Kron, which has locations in Malibu, Beverly Hills, and NYC and touts itself as “the finest chocolate in the U.S.” It also boasts about some of its clients, like Whoopi Goldberg, Gucci, Microsoft, Lauren Bacall, etc. When they went into the shop John’s mom picked out some bags of candy and said, “Let’s get these.” John reminded her it might be good to know what it costs first, and its a good thing he did, because along with being “the finest chocolate in the U.S.” it might also be the most expensive. So they reduced the size of their purchase, and I got to try some fine chocolate by Diane Kron. I liked the chocolate-covered teddy bear crisps.

After lunch Wes went to the playground while John read a book.

Wesley liked the swing.

…And the sand.

…And the slide.

…And the monkey bars.

After we finished in Malibu we headed to Hollywood. I’ve always wanted to visit Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, after seeing the “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy and Ethel take John Wayne’s block.

I didn’t find John Wayne’s block, but I saw the signatures and hand/foot/nose prints of a whole bunch of famous classic stars that I’ve grown up listening to on old radio shows and watching in movies and on TV.

My hand’s about the same size as Marilyn Monroe’s, but that’s about all we have in common.

It was fun to be in downtown Hollywood. There’s a lot to do and see there, but we only had about an hour before we had to head back to the airport.

Our flight home was really good. It was a night-time flight, so I thought sure Wes would sleep on it, but he was awake the whole time, from about 7:30 PST to 10:30 MST. We let him watch some of his favorite shows on our portable DVD player and he was perfectly quiet and content and didn’t cry once. Flying doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

It was our first real family vacation, and it was a good one, but we were glad to be home.

My favorite gift from John:

A special, very unhealthy but fast-to-make treat for breakfast, from “Recipes Old & New, Tried & True, from The City Beautiful Nauvoo”:

“Golden Puffs”

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

Stir with fork until mixed. Drop by teaspoon into hot oil and fry until golden brown. Roll in sugar and cinnamon. Eat warm.

Meanwhile Wes has been busy, helping with the present trimmings:

And his favorite new pastime, which involves cleaning out his room and dumping the contents over the railing at the top of the stairs. He must have run out of books after I took the video, because next he started emptying out his hamper of dirty clothes. Yes, every day I carry a big pile of stuff back upstairs.

Today was a special treat: I got to go sans-child to SLC for a Zumba master class. It’s basically an extra-long Zumba class with a few extra incentives like refreshments and giveaways.

I didn’t think to snap any pictures BEFORE we turned all sweaty and un-photogenic…

There were a few other instructors there. Here’s me and Kate.

And me and Laura.

I even won something. I don’t know that I’ve ever won anything in a drawing before. I wasn’t even paying attention when she called my name and it took me a minute to figure out I was a WINNER!

Meet my new Zumba bag:

The other fun thing I got to do today was use a $100 gift certificate we got last Christmas for a swanky furniture/decor store. It was tricky to find things under $100 (or $200) so I wouldn’t spend anything out of pocket, but in the end I picked out some seasonal serving items and a covered dessert platter.

All for free! What is more fun than FREE?

On the way home I was dying of thirst and for once in my life I had no water with me. My brilliant solution: stop by Krispy Kremes and order a dozen donuts plus a cup of water. I have only been to Krispy Kremes once before, and today was the first time I’ve used their drive-through. How many countries in the world feature places where you can drive up to a window and get twelve fresh-baked donuts without even leaving your car? I love America.

спални комплекти

The best fun thing that happened today is we caught Wes on video trying to jump.

Today was a bizarre day with a bizarre beginning.

It all started at 3 a.m. when I woke up inexplicably awake and hungry. So hungry that no matter how hard I tried to distract myself with soothing, relaxing, sleep-inducing thoughts, my mind continually returned to food. Pancakes, specifically.

This was a little boggling to me since the night before we attended a church Christmas party where I ate a LOT. I had taught Zumba right before and came famished. And pretty much ate my weight in roast beef, real mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, carrots…it was so good.

So as much as I tried to reason myself back to sleep it didn’t work. I finally got up around 4:30 a.m., went downstairs, turned on Christmas music, and made myself pancakes.

When the pancakes were gone I popped in Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and did some online Christmas browsing. (What else are you going to do at 5 a.m.? Something practical like laundry? No way.) I finally crashed on the couch after 6 a.m. until Wes woke up at 7.

The next bizarre thing that happened was that I went shooting.

You heard me.

It was part of a church activity for the guys, and wives were invited. They successfully lured us out into sub-freezing temperatures with the promise of glazed donuts and hot chocolate. Pretty much manna from heaven.

This is the first time I ever held a gun. Do I look like I know what I’m doing?

If you said “no,” you’re right. John helped me and I shot it a couple times before my hands iced over and threatened to fall off. Not only was it FREEZING but there was a storm blowing in, and the wind was fierce.

I didn’t know this about John (and we’ve been married seven years), but the man can shoot. He hit the clay pigeon every time. He only started missing when the fellows were playing Annie Oakley (I know–who knew there were guy shooting games?) for a long time and his own fingers started icing over and threatening to fall off.

Here he is, and if you look closely at the sky you can see the orange clay pigeon that he just shot into three pieces.

Once I had my two shots of glory I was kind of done and joined the rest of the womenfolk in normal womenfolk-type things, like in-depth conversations about menstruation, menopause, and hysterectomies. Good times.

And the bizarreness didn’t stop there. After the activity ended we arranged for our babysitter to stay with Wes longer so we could actually go to a movie together. We never do this. We sneaked in $1 (actually, they’re $1.19 now) chicken sandwiches and bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s for lunch.

We saw Blind Side. I had serious doubts about the film when I saw Sandra Bullock in the previews with blond hair and a twangy southern accent. I was so wrong. SUCH a good movie, such a good story. And Sandra Bullock gave the performance of her life.

We were glad to be home at the end of all this, but we had fun together. Don’t EVEN ask how much I ate today. All I know is that I totally ate enough that I won’t be waking up again tomorrow at 3 for pancakes.