Of Basketball and Braces

A very hectic February is coming to a close this week. Both boys have been playing basketball, Faith has had gymnastics and play production classes and Jake has gotten his braces on. 

Faith is really doing well in gymnastics and seems to do new things each time she goes. At some point, once she is ready, she can test up to the next level. For now, she is getting stronger and much more confident on a weekly basis. She loves the gym she is at and is getting better about having different teachers and being in classes with different girls. She is also following up on her Peter Pan experience by taking a class at the library that is taught by the director from that play. She is loving that as well and seems to love the whole drama thing. 

We got Tanner into a different basketball league for a quick, short season before baseball really kicks in. He is playing Hoop Dreams, which is a league way across town, and is in the 3/4 grade group. He is really learning a lot, even tough the games are pretty disorganized. The drills and skills that he is learning will go a long way towards helping him as he continues to play. For 3/4 graders, then run a pretty involved offense and are learning some really good defensive techniques. This Saturday was his last day and baseball tryouts are this Saturday. So back to the Diamond for awhile. 

Jake has been playing on the 5/6 grade team at school. The regular season is kind of tough to watch as anyone who wants to gets to play, whether you have ever played basketball before are not. The rosters are huge, score isn't kept and a lot of the basketball is pretty unwatchable. After the regular season, they cut down to the tournament team, which is kids who have basketball experience and they play the other teams in the district in a single elimination tournament. Jake's grade has a bunch of really good basketball players. They all play in multiple league, multiple times over the course of the year, so this was one of the more talented teams the school has seen. They did not disappoint, mowing down the competition and ending up in the District Championship game tonight. They played Trailwinds Elementary, a team that regularly goes deep in the tournament. It was a really tough, close game but they ended up coming up a little bit short. They were in the game until the very end. Jake got to play some good minutes in the tournament and did well.  He is upset that they lost, but the team did the school and the parent group proud. 

This week, right before the semi-final game, Jake went in and got his upper braces put on. He had spacers for a week and the braces are on a timetable thing, so we couldn't postpone due to basketball. They will put the lowers on in a couple of months and then he'll have them on for the next couple of years. Luckily, there is an orthodontist in the neighborhood so it makes the regular appointments a lot easier than driving across town. In addition to getting braces, he signed up for his middle school electives for next year (computer sciences and Spanish) this week. He's getting old so fast, it's like instant teenager. 

Dad and Joan visited this last weekend. Dad got to come and watch Tanner's basketball camp and game. Joan, Marisa, Faith and Cori did a lot of shopping, both at the mall on Saturday and Downtown on Sunday. We went out to a couple of nice dinners and had a really nice visit with both of them. We are making plans to try to get over to England for Thanksgiving this year. So we'll see if we go international in the fall. 

We seem to be slowing down on the frequency of these posts. Some of it is that life is more complicated, some of it is that it starts to become somewhat repetitive (it's basketball season again etc.) but some of it is just that as they get older it's tougher to figure out what to write about. We'll keep it up, but it will probably be more infrequent as we all continue to grow up around here. 

Epic Cruise

Our last vacation was a whirlwind 10 day, 2,000 mile road trip exploring 5 Utah National Parks. It was so much fun- but also really tiring, so we decided to go with the opposite end of the spectrum for this family vacation and try out one of the laziest vacations known to man: A cruise.  Since Brian and I weren’t going to do an “adults only” trip this year, this seemed like a great compromise. The ship had a kids club and lots of activities for the kids, plus we could get separate rooms- one for the kids to destroy and one for us!  None of us really knew what to expect, and Faith was more than a little wary of spending full days in the middle of an ocean on a “big boat” (as she put it) but we hoped for the best and it turned out to be one of our best family vacations ever.

We left on Saturday afternoon and flew to Ft. Lauderdale where we spent the night at a Holiday Inn before our shuttle picked us up and brought us to port the next morning. Getting on the cruise was fast and easy and at 4PM we set sail.  Our cruise was two days at sea, a day in Ocho Rios, a day in Grand Cayman, a day in Cozumel, and then one more day at sea. It was pretty close to perfect.  Instead of a narrative about the week I think I’ll just go with a stream of consciousness on my favorite memories:

-Being in the hot tub on the top deck as the ship departed from Ft. Lauderdale. Faith was with us and not scared a bit. With her anxiety we were worried there would be lots of tears but she proved us wrong the entire trip!

- Moving into our cabins and having our own adult cabin with the kids next door. The decks were great and I loved looking around the corner at the kids deck and seeing Tanner and Faith in their deck chairs, reading their books

-Day 1 sitting in our deck chairs on level 2 of the pool deck, Faith found a friend to play with (she later forgot her name and she was referred to as "Friend X" for the duration of the trip ) and the boys used the water slides over and over while Brian and I read our books, drank pina coladas, and listened to the Jimmy Buffet impersonator. Heaven.

-Waking up (in our OWN cabin) each day and being able to get dressed, go workout, get coffee, etc… while kids slept next door.  They had an onboard app where the kids could text us so they just texted us when they woke up and then they would meet us at breakfast or  on the pool deck, etc… SO GREAT.

-Kids favorite part: Nutella toast for waffles for breakfast and nutella crepes for dessert each night. Oh yeah... and dry frosted flakes for breakfast each day. We let nutrition slide for the week (not that we are normally so good at it at home) and they survived mostly on the above foods plus french fries and chicken strips. 

-Cirque de Soleil Dinner Show- I wasn’t prepared for it to be so professional and so much like the “real” cirque shows in las vegas. The kids were mesmerized. We had dinner and drinks during the show and afterwards the kids couldn’t stop talking about all the cool stuff they saw.

- We both loved being without WiFi all week. It was so great to not have the option to use the internet or phone or email.  Surprisingly we both loved being completely disconnected.

- Our first stop in Ocho Rios we got off  the ship and wanted to get Faith’s hair braided. We found ourselves across the street from the dock behind an old green shack with a Jamaican woman braiding Faith’s hair. This was not what we had intended but luckily all was OK in the end. I’m sure we overpaid for the braids and the “braids” they insisted putting in Tanner and Jake’s hair were taken out almost immediately, but it made for an interesting morning in port!

-Hanging out at Margaritaville in Ocho Rios where they had a big water park in the ocean for the kids. And for the adults. Brian, Jake, and Tanner bounced on the trampoline together, Faith and I swam out to the toys and played, too. She was fearless.  The kids built sand castles and Brian and I luxuriated in the warmth.

-The kids were kind of surprised by the bartering in Jamaica. Jake caught on quickly that the vendor’s “opening price” was about triple what they were willing to take for an item. This was definitely not my favorite part of the stop, but Jake enjoyed it. 

-Faith really liked the  Kids Club on the ship and went there most evenings for an hour or two while the boys had the run of the ship (mostly the sports court) and Brian and I had nice dinners in the fancier restaurants.

-Blue Man Group was AWESOME! I’d forgotten how much fun the show is. Brian and I saw them in Las Vegas on our honeymoon and watching them again with the kids was a blast.

-Grand Cayman was beautiful and again we spent the day at a local beach. Faith and Brian spent hours jumping through the waves together. This from the girl that last time refused to go anywhere near the ocean! More sandcastles, more fruity drinks, more reading…. More heaven.

-Cozumel was awesome. I researched places to go before we left for the trip and so we got a cab to Paradise Beach. It was a great choice for Brian’s birthday. It had  a huge water park in the ocean and gigantic pool, beach chairs and waiters to serve you. The funniest part? There was this inflatable thing where Jake sat on the bottom and Brian climbed to the top and then jumped down and it forced Jake up into the air. It was so great! Jake “rode” this about 5 times in a row and caught some major air. Also I did the huge mountain climbing thing in the middle, got to the top (after some difficulty!) and then  had to jump from the top into the ocean. The kids and Brian were all cheering me on while sitting on a raft nearby.

- I took the kids to a comedy hypnotist show one day and while the kids really enjoyed it- I was amazed by it and now really want to be hypnotized!!

-The last day on the ship was colder and windy so there was no more waterslide fun to be had and Faith came down with a fever… but we made the best of it and played some SkipBo in the bar, some shuffleboard on the protected deck, and read in our rooms. No one was ready to go home.

-We got back to Ft. Lauderdale at around noon on Sunday. Customs was fast and easy and we spent the evening watching the Super Bowl in our hotel room with McDonalds for dinner (the only place nearby and we had no car!).

This vacation was just so great. The kids loved it, we loved it, we loved the family time and we loved the “kid free” time. I loved letting the boys be independent and also watching Faith come into her own. We are already trying to figure out how we can afford another cruise in the next year or two.