Family Vacation 2019

The kids are on the last year of year round school. We love taking vacations on the off months. We decided to do our family vacation for 2019 in May during the kids off track time. We wanted them to try a cruise. We talked about cruising to Alaska or somewhere else cool and then realized for the same price if we did the shorter cruise out of LA we could do disney again. We all know we are disney fanatics so we booked the ensenada/catalina cruise. Thayne got off work Friday night and we booked it out of SLC. We pulled over to sleep for a couple of hours but drove it mostly straight through and got there just after opening. We knew it would be busy but we still love it. Before we left we made tie dye shirts.

This is her favorite ride. She LOVEs loveS loves a carousel.

She's really fun to take on any ride because she gets so into it. 

Korean food for the win after a long day at Disneyland

The next morning we got up and went to church. The weather was cool for California but still around 65 or 70 degrees. The ward members came in with scarves, winter coats and gloves. We had a good laugh. There also weren't any primary children in sacrament. We figured maybe they didn't have a primary. As soon as sacrament meeting was over the primary kids appeared. Not sure where they were hiding... Jordyn was the only nursery age child. They recruited a couple that had a baby to do nursery and Thayne and I (mostly Thayne) taught one of their junior primary classes. 

After that we headed to the dock to get on the ship. It was so fun taking the kids on the cruise. They loved the kid's club. Didn't care much about ports or fine dining but had a blast with the counselors and other kids. They were near tears the last night when we had to get off the ship. The older three kids were super fun and easy to have on the cruise and could mostly come and go as they pleased.  Thayne and I had our own room and the kids bunked together. It was great.

Tyson found a giant chess board and would play other adults. They were always impressed.

Magic tricks during dinner one night.

We celebrated Jojo's 3rd birthday on the ship by doing the cat and the hat breakfast. She didn't love the characters but the other kids liked them.

The day at Catalina was chilly and the water was choppy. We got off for a couple hours and then back to the boat to play.

Lexi loved the towel animals

Strawberry bisque for the win. I think we ordered 12 of these one night and Thayne and I ate it all.

We went back to the blowhole and market in Ensenada. The blowhole is cool. The market not so much.

We entered a scavenger hunt one afternoon. Some of the items on the list were smear ice cream all over one members face (the kids all had to participate, right?), make a congo line,  find people from other countries, get people to join in on the chicken dance, pretend to surf, etc. Our family took first (there were only 2 families that participated) but the best part is how much fun we had. I love that the kids are always up for whatever.

Jojo's birthday. She had her 2nd birthday in Hawaii and her 3rd birthday on a cruise ship. Lucky girl.

Thayne's favorite ship worker. We called him Prince Hans. One of the girls thought that's who he was. I can't remember whether it was Jojo or Kenz

The staff helped us celebrate Jojo with gifts and singing.

Super helper Tyson. Kenzie was complaining about her heavy load. We were trying to get off the ship early to get back to disney and so we opted for carrying our own bags off. Tyson picked up the extra load that Kenzie couldn't handle. He's growing up so much these days.

After the cruise, we headed back to Disney.  We were surprised how much the cruise wore us out. The kids were all dragging which they don't usually do at Disneyland.

They've figured out posing. :)

Pure happiness

We always love spotting Captain Hook and Peter Pan

Kenzie was all about posing in tinkerbelle's garden after playing her in the school play.

Poor Jojo had a yucky fever one afternoon. We went to the nurses station and they gave her some tylenol. She perked back up after awhile. You know she didn't feel good when she didn't care about the Frozen characters.

Mary Poppins and Bert joined us on the carousel one time. They brought the whole brass band with them and they were singing and carrying away like we were part of the movies.