11 days and counting...

until the kids (and the grandkid) arrive for the holidays.  Two weeks with seven people in a 3 bedroom condo.  Wheeeee!

Preschooler activities

With the older kids away for the school year, activities have been focused around the little one around here.  For the past year, Juliana had been attending gym classes for preschoolers where she would do things like this:

and this:

and this:

However, with the start of the school year, she has been attending preschool four half-days a week with an hour of dance class on the fifth day.

So excited on her first day of school!

For dance class, she does some tap, some ballet and some gym activities...  If her joy of dancing continues/deepens, we'll see about signing her up for full-on dancing classes.

The tap portion of the class:

 (yes, I forgot to pull her hair back the first day, because I only had a hair clip and no hairbands that day)

And stomping those feet:

Her "freestyle" dance solo (the day's theme was Backwards day, so they were encouraged to walk/march/step backwards as much as possible):

We were going to sign her up for after school swim lessons, but she is so tuckered out after school that it didn't seem right.  Maybe when she is more used to school and has more energy in the afternoons we can look into that.  Although next summer, I'm rather inclined to sign her up for the Little Goose soccer program (non-competitive soccer for pre-schoolers), because she just loves to run so much.

For those of you with kids, what activities did yours do when they were this age?

Another bedtime story...

Tonight, as we were getting settled in for our bedtime routine...

Juliana:  Ok you need to tell me a bedtime story
Me:  Hmm... There was once a girl and it was time for her to go to bed.  So she crawled into bed and fell asleep.  The End
J:  No.  A different story.
M:  Ok... There once was a girl named Juliana and it was time to go to bed.  So she climbed into bed and her Mommy read her a bedtime story and she fell asleep.  The End
J: No... a different story.
M: Like what kind of story?
J: Once there was a circle named Jeff.  He was ROUND like a circle. And he was a nut.  And he crawled under the bed.  One day he cracked...  CRACK!(splays fingers out in front of her)... like an egg.  The  End
M: (muffling laughter)  Can I go outside and tell Daddy your story?
J: Yep!

So I relay it to Daddy who runs into the bedroom and asks:
D: Can you tell me the story about the circle named Jeff?
J: No.
D: But I really wanted to hear it.
J: I already told it.
D: Oh, so you're not going to tell me?
J: Of course not... tomorrow.
D: Ok, well how about a hug?
*hugs*

Summer activities

(Disclaimer:  I started this post in August just after the boys left, so if you notice any timeline discrepancies... that is why.  I tried to fix them, but I might have missed some)

 Wow... this summer has gone by FAST!  The Boys arrived at the end of May for their summer visit and flew home mid August.  And now it's already October. 

That's all.

See you later.

It does seem like it went by that fast.  Maybe it's my age... maybe it's having an active (now-) 3 year old in the house.


 I'll say it's because of the Munchkin, because I don't want to think about my age and turning the big Four-Oh  six weeks ago.


You would think with more people in the house to help keep an eye on the Munchkin, that I would have MORE time to blog and keep people updated.   Maybe in a normal world, but this summer has been a "MommyMommyMOMMY!" phase for the most part.

Case in point:  About one week before the boys left, Derek and I decided to take in a movie after Juliana went to bed.  (the theatre is maybe 15 minutes away from home)  We make it through the movie and are headed back to the car, when the phone calls start coming from Mitch. 

"Um, Juliana just woke up and needs to go to the bathroom.   She keeps asking where Mommy is and won't let Jonah or I help her."

Needless to say, while Derek's driving, I'm trying to give Mitch instructions on helping Juliana (she's still refusing to cooperate with them and I hear her crying/asking for me in the background).  By the time we get home, I rush in the door and they got her to calm down in her bedroom (still hasn't used the bathroom).  She has a meltdown in my arms and I hurry her to the bathroom (hopefully) before any accidents can occur (thankfully, we made it).   I get her settled down into bed, but for that night and the next 3 nights, I'm woken up by Juliana twice each night to make sure I'm still there.


She's slowly coming out of this phase, though.  Every so often, if I need to make a quick run to the grocery store for something, she would opt to stay at home with her brothers instead of coming with me.

But let's get back to the bulk of the summer with the Boys.  (Sorry, Mitch, I know you don't like being referred to as a Boy, but it's easier to type "the Boys" than "Mitch and Jonah" or "the Teenagers" or anything else that comes to mind right now :P )

For me growing up, summer was a time to relax, revel in the fact that school was out for three months and take bus rides downtown to wander Pike Place Market with friends... and maybe seeing what trouble there was to get into. 

These days, summer isn't much different in routine from the rest of the year --- except there are more people in the home to feed and I'm spending more time thinking up things to keep them out of trouble.  I guess that in itself is different enough. Especially considering the fact that with two teenagers in the house, I'm having to prepare 2-3 times as much food per meal than I did prior to their visit.

Then I think of the mountains of food Derek's parents had to prepare feeding FOUR teenage boys in the house. (They went through 15 GALLONS of milk each WEEK!!)

And then I bite my tongue and finish making my one little mountain of food for the family.

 
In trying to keep the kiddos out of trouble, we've been busy with the following:

Trips to various parks... 

Swimming/diving lessons...

     and a crowd favorite:

Juliana and I attended a baptism for a friend's son...

We caught up with some old friends and met a new one...

(sorry, bad lighting, I know)

Derek's company picnic...

The annual visit with the Harveys for SeaFair Sunday...

Topped off with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory for their last night here.

Random bedtime routine interruption...

I'm working on a longer post, but wanted to share this with all of you...  I should have typed it out last night while it was fresh in my head, but I think I got most of it in the right order)

-------------------------------------

Last night, while I was tucking Juliana into bed (well, trying to) she picked up one of her play phones and started talking...

Juliana: (into phone) Hi, this is Juliana. 

Me: Juliana...

J:  (whispers to me) Shhh! You have to be quiet.  I'm on the phone.  (into phone) Ok.  We will be there soon.  I will give you a call 30 minutes before we leave. (*hangs up the phone*)

M:  Who was that?

J:  Those were my boys.

M: Your boys?  How many of them are there?

J: 1..2...3..4..3...4..1!

M:  That's a lot of boys.  Who are your boys?

J:  Poshee and Meem  (Yea... that's what it sounded like she said)

M:  Poshee and Meem?

J:  (nods) Girls, too.  I'm a girl, and you're a girl, and Mischee, Jonah and Daddy!  (I hope she was only listing off family halfway through that and not listing them as girls)

M:  Well, it's time to get ready for bed, so pick out what bedtime story you want me to read...

J: Hold on.  (picks up the phone)  Yes, I TOLD you, I'll be there in 30 minutes  (hangs up the phone)

M: You know, we have a family policy of no phone calls at bedtime.  You will need to tell them that you can't talk now, and that it will have to wait until tomorrow.

J:  I can't! (picks up the phone again)

M: Do you want me to talk to them? (she holds the phone up to my ear)  (into phone)  Hi,  Juliana can't talk right now, but will be happy to talk with you tomorrow.  Thank you.  Bye bye! (she hangs the phone up again) (to Juliana) Ok?

J: Ok.  Thank you.  I can talk to my boys tomorrow?

M: Yes, tomorrow.  It's bedtime now. 





---------------------
 I wonder what this bodes for the future years...


Note: Lately she has been hearing Derek refer to her brothers as "My Boys", so once in a while she will try calling them her boys and I'll correct her "No, they're your brothers, not your boys"  "But they are boys and we are girls!"

Caribbean 2010, Part V (Grand Cayman & back to the US)

Thank you for being so patient with this series of posts. And I'm sorry to have it spread out over so many posts, but there were so many things that I wanted to record for Juliana to look back on in future years.
------------------------------------

After our day docked in Cozumel, we made our way to our last port of call in George Town, Grand Cayman. After days of constant activity, Derek decided to pass on the excursion we had signed up for, so it was just Juliana and myself. We had signed up for a short excursion on a pirate ship:

The first part of the trip was spent keelhauling various passengers (ok.. it was the pirate crew making the kids aboard swab the decks), doing drive-bys of the cruise ships in the area and letting loose the cannons on said ships while shouting various pirate-like insults. ("Avast ye scurvy crabs! Give us all your booty lest we open fire and sink your ship!" and then we'd open fire anyways)

A bit cheesy, but it was a warm day and nice to be on the water.

The next part of the pirate excursion was dropping anchor offshore and swimming around. The water was really blue and clear, but we didn't swim. Shortly after we "ran out of cannon fodder", Juliana fell asleep from the warmth of the sun and lull of the rocking ship, I didn't have the heart to wake her up, so found a comfortable spot in the shade and enjoyed the warm breeze as she slept in my arms until she woke up shortly before we returned back to shore.

On shore, we bumped into Jaden and his parents and wandered the shops for a little bit and then decided to return to the cruise ship for a bit of lunch. As we rode the tender back to the ship, Juliana noticed that it was slowing on the approach. Worried that we wouldn't make it, she cried out "OH NO! We gotta push!" upon which she stood on the bench and started pushing the back of the bench in front of us (luckily it was empty). Jaden, not wanting to leave Juliana with all the work, jumped up and started to help. In order to make the most of their efforts, Juliana started to chant "Push! Push! Push!" in time with their pushes. After about 6 or 7 pushes (which were interspersed with "Almost there!"), she and Jaden would cheer "Yay! We made it!" . Then one of them would shout, "ONE MORE TIME!" And then it was back to "PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!...We made it!". I think they did this 4 or 5 times before we actually reached the ship.

That evening we saw a play in the ship's theatre and Juliana fell asleep in our arms about halfway through the performance. When we got back to the room, we laid her on her back on the bed and she immediately rolled over and curled up:

I just love those little feet!

I don't think she even noticed the lobster that crawled in the room and across her blankets:

It is a rare thing that she falls asleep in our arms anymore, but she did so almost every day during the cruise, there was so much for her to do.

The next day was our last full day at sea before our return to Ft Lauderdale. I finally took a turn at climbing the rock wall

The rock wall was a new feature of the cruise ships when I took my first cruise in 2000, but the car accident I had a few weeks before that cruise made it too painful to climb more than 3 feet. This time, I was injury-free and resolved to climb the wall before the cruise ended. I haven't done any rock climbing since 2001, so it was a slow climb, but I made it to the top to ring the bell. Yay!

Juliana spent some more time in the H2O zone, which resulted in this at the dinner table that night (again).

This also happened during the first formal night. Our head waiter brought over an extra chair and also a clean tablecloth to use as a blanket in case she got a little chilly. She never budged an inch sleeping on the chairs; people kept stopping by to make sure she was still breathing.

Hmmm... I just realized that I've focused so much on the days' events I neglected to mention some of the other things offered aboard for evening entertainment. While aboard we saw two musical plays, an ice skating show and a performance by an a cappella group called Mosaic. Derek and I enjoyed the last one, but my uncle and aunt didn't care much for it... the set list was a bit too young for them. There were also musical references to shows we grew up with, so maybe a bit too old at times for the current teenage generation.

All in all, it was a fun trip. Derek even enjoyed himself, although he says he'll only go on another cruise if we promise not to sign him up for so many excursions.

Thank you, Pau-Pau, for the gift of this cruise!

Caribbean 2010, Part IV (Cozumel, Mexico)

Our third port of call was Cozumel, Mexico. While this was our longest port of call, we (Derek, Juliana and myself) did not spend a single minute in the town. So, in a sense, I can say our boat was docked there, I've still never really been there, but I hear it's beautiful.

Cozumel is along the inland side of a small island on the Mexican coast. The channel running between Cozumel and the mainland is deep enough for the cruise lines to build a pier for the larger ships:

Yes, the water was really blue and amazingly clear.

That is our ship on the left. The one on the right (Radiance of the Seas) is one of the smaller cruise ships in Royal Caribbean's fleet. Awww, isn't it cute?

We were signed up for the Xel Ha Park excursion, which was an 8 hour deal. We got up bright and early and walked down this pier to another pier where we hopped a commuter boat to Playa Del Carmen which was about 30 minutes away (by fast boat).

This was one of the commuter boats we took. The ride was a little bumpy at times, but most of us made it without getting seasick. (My cousin's wife who was 4 months along with their second child got a little nauseous) This was the only port of call that I remembered where they had a table with some motion sickness pills laid out for those who wanted to have any.

After getting off the commuter boat, we got on a bus and rode 45 minutes south along the shoreline to Xel Ha.

There, Juliana and I snorkeled with the fish in what they tout as the world's largest natural aquarium. Well, actually, we TRIED to snorkel, but Juliana couldn't quite get the hang of keeping her mouth sealed around the snorkel itself while looking underwater. So mostly she floated and I swam and steered her around.

This is the area we did some of our swimming (looking towards the ocean)

It is a sizeable park with a lot of different activities that you can kind of see on this map:

Derek saw this area and decided he would be spending his time here instead of swimming:

We saw quite a bit of wildlife just wandering the paths:

 

This was one of three sitting along one area of the path:

Some people swam with the dolphins (we didn't):

And the dolphins had some fun on their own:

Juliana loved exploring the park with her cousin, Jaden:

By the time we rode the bus and commuter boat back to the pier in Cozumel, we just had enough time to board the cruise ship before it undocked and sent us on our way to the Cayman Islands.

But not before some amorous avians snuck into our room:

Next up - the Cayman Islands and our last day at sea.

Caribbean 2010, Part III (Belize)

Let's see... where was I...

Oh... we finished off with our first shore excursion out of Costa Maya, Mexico. 

You saw a few pictures of Juliana's and my excursion.  Below are a couple of pictures Kou-Fu took at the Mayan ruins that Derek visited.

(mouseover the photo above for Derek's response to this photo)

Maybe I can convince Derek to post his own impression of the excursion... although, I can't promise he'll do it.  But I'll try.  While he likes telling stories and entertaining people in person, it's really painful for him to type much even when he has to.

So back to the vacation pictures!

The next day brought us to Belize City, Belize.

Derek, Juliana and I signed up for a tour of the reefs on a "semi-submersible".  That's a fancy way of saying, "you're not really going to be in a submarine, but in a boat that has picture windows underwater and looks more like a little party barge up top".

We had to take a ship to a barge that the semi-submersible was tied off to.  We had some good speed going there and back and it made for some rather windy rides.

We loaded ourselves onto the semi-submersible, where it was comfortably cool below the water line, untied ourselves from the barge and proceeded to tour the reef.

Unfortunately, the visibility was rather low, because the currents were very active and stirring up the sand that day.  So while we were able to see some fish and coral, most of the pictures didn't turn out very well.

Here's one of some jackfish(?) we saw that swam right past the boat:

While it was only about 85 degrees F that day, it averaged 83% humidity, which made for a warmer-than-we're-used-to day.

After the excursion, we arrived back on the cruise ship, freshened up, grabbed a quick lunch and then hopped a tender to shore to check out the shops.

We asked Juliana if she was tired and wanted a nap before boarding the tender and, of course, she said "No". Not two minutes into the ride to shore, this was happening:


sleepy girl from Life & Other Plans on Vimeo.

To add to that day's excitement, after dinner, we found our rooms invaded by monkeys!

Ok... this really was the one hanging in the adjacent room, since Juliana assaulted the monkey in our room before I could get a picture taken. The room attendant used my brother's sunglasses as an additional prop, since he had left them in the room before dinner.

After all the excitement of the day, someone had no trouble going to sleep that night...

Next up, Cozumel (but not really--- you'll see what I mean).

Caribbean 2010, Part II

In case you missed it, Part I is here

Last month we took a week long cruise to the Western Caribbean. Before I continue with the daily activities and shore excursion recaps, here's some of the basic details I should have gotten out of the way first.  (I never claimed to be a good writer)

We sailed on Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas. Up until December of '09 was among the largest class of ships afloat, but has now been surpassed by the Oasis of the Seas and now the Allure of the Seas.  They're apparently like huge, floating cities... where the Liberty and her sisters are more like... slightly smaller floating cities.

Here's what our ship looks like at night:

1,112 feet from stem to stern, just a smidge over the length of 3 football fields.

We had to walk over 2/3 of that distance for every meal on board.

Pau-Pau, Kou-Fu and Sahm-Yi were in the adjoining room.... and Juliana spent quite a bit of time going back and forth between the rooms.

 A favorite activity was covering her Kou-Fu with pillows:

Until he turned the tables:

 There were a lot of photo opportunities on board (cruise line photographers ready to take your picture, which you can purchase later after review), but we didn't do too many. If you wanted, they would take your picture on the pier at every port of call, at different points in the promenade on formal nights, at your dining table on said formal nights and even private portrait sessions if you cared to book an appointment.

Here are the few we did purchase:

           the day we boarded the ship:

          formal night #2:

Yes, I forgot to bring a necklace to wear for the formal nights. 

            formal night #2 with my family:

Please note Juliana's feet position... do all kids do that?

We ended up taking some pictures on our own, too, though:

         Presenting the amazing floating child on formal night #1

You can see the lighting equipment at the station behind us where one of the ship's photographers was set up.
             and here's one of our travel group:

Hey, look!  Derek isn't the only non-Asian in the picture!

26 people which included my Uncle and his family (3 boys and 1 grandson plus one on the way), my Uncle's schoolmates and their families.  One of his classmates is named Dragon.  Yes, his first name.  Derek thought that was the best name EVER!

Next post... more shore excursions!