Exciting news!

So here's the biggest news in our lives at the moment... we have started building our house!  We have been in the planning stages with house plans and such for about 6 months and now we have recently finished dirt work and started the forms for the foundation. I'm going to keep all of the house stuff on our other blog that I started when we moved here, so if you're interested, check it out here!

Hudson's Kindergarten Field Trip

On Thursday, I went to Hudson's first ever school field trip.  The Kindergarten classes go to the zoo and it is one of my favorites!  As a chaperone, my group was Hudson and his little friend Jordan.  Hudson was SO excited and full of energy.  

Hudson's class picture.. he's in the front row smack in the middle.  

Just for grins, check out a close up of this... the kid with swagger to the right of Hudson is Jordan.  As you can guess, we had quite the day.

After the class picture, we started on our way.  I asked "What do you guys want to see first?" with which Hudson replied "Let's go see the werewolves!"  Um... what??  I laughed, told him there was no such thing and he didn't miss a beat and said "Well, the elephants then."  That kid is too funny.

Sweet buddies...

Checking out the snakes...

These guys were map lovers.  We had to stop and look every few minutes to see where we were and where we were going.

My little stinker on a kangaroo.

We had a great day.  I'm so thankful that I am able to stay home so I can go to all the fun things like this in my kids life.  I'm a blessed momma. :)

SB - Day 6

We got up bright and early to eat breakfast (our time was 6:45), finish packing, and get off the ship.  Since we had so much time to kill before our flight that night, we decided to go to Universal Studios. The same driver that picked us up at the airport, came and got us at the terminal and drove us over.  Hudson fell asleep on Brian.

I didn't give Reed a dramamine that morning, so he ended up throwing up in the van - luckily I had a bag handy.  Poor kid.  He was feeling better by the time we got there.

We got in line for the Transformers ride, but after seeing what it did, Reed decided his tummy was a little uneasy, so he and I decided to sit it out.   We watched the Termonator 3d show (and had to get a picture in front of the Terminator (that Hudson wishes he could buy),

we saw the  Shrek 4d thing, the Twister "ride...

The Simpsons ride (which almost made me sick with dramamine in my system AND a motion sickness patch behind my ear).  We still had a little bit of time before the shuttle to the airport and since there was a movie theater right outside Universal, we watched Mr. Peabody & Sherman.  I slept through about half of it. :)  We got to the airport, flew home, and got in the car about 10.  Both boys lasted about 10 minutes and they were OUT.

It was a great trip.  SO glad to be home. :)

SB - Day 5

Today was our day to stop at Castaway Cay, Disney's private island.  We could get off the ship at 8:30, so i wanted to get off as quickly as possible 1) to avoid the crowds, 2) to get a great spot on the beach and 3) to see the water before it got all stirred up by everybody.  The boys and I got up early for some breakfast and were able to see another gorgeous sunrise.

The post office at Castaway Cay.  You can mail postcards from here and they have their own Castaway Cay postmark.  When we were there it was closed, so no fancy postmark for us. :(

It was on the cool side of comfortable that early in the morning, but the water was gorgeous!  The boys had a blast in the water, making sandcastles and burying each other. :)

After a few hours on the beach, it started to get really packed with people so we decided to go eat lunch.  After lunch we stopped for some souvenirs and made our way back to the ship. The boys were covered in sand, so they took a shower  but then decided they wanted to swim in the pool.  Tons of people were still on the island, so the pools were fairly empty.  Brian ended up riding the Aqua Duck with both boys.  We had a little time to kill before dinner, so Reed and I went to play bingo again. Wednesdays dinner rotation landed us in the Enchanted Garden which was meant to look like the Palace of Versailles.  Very girly and floral. :)

Hudson relaxing in a porthole.

Our last towel animal of the trip - so sweet. :)  

We went ahead and got to bed a little early since we had to be out of our stateroom by 8 the next morning.

SB - Day 4

On Tuesday, we were at sea all day.  This was our view for breakfast.. as far as the eye could see.

Since we were at sea, that meant the pools were crowded.  We tried to find more inside things to do.  There was a giant movie theater and they showed movies periodically.  After breakfast we went and watched Frozen in 3D.

We played 9 holes of mini golf...

While Brian and Hudson did the detective game again,  Reed and I played Bingo (one of our favorite things from the whole trip)...

We watched "The Golden Mickeys", a Broadway type show - singing, dancing, etc.  I thought it was cute.  It was in the Walt Disney Theater which reminded me of Bass Hall, but on a smaller scale of course.  

Our dinner rotation for tonight was at Animators Palette again, so we decide to skip and do our own thing.   Reed wanted to see Monsters University in the theater and Hudson didn't, so we went up on deck and he ate chicken strips and fries and watched Cinderella on the big screen for a while.

Then he decided he wanted to go see Monsters, so we went in the theater, sat down by Brian and Reed, and watched about 30 minutes of it before he decided he wanted to go (There's evidently something a little scary about that movie to him).  We got some soft serve ice cream and then went back to the room where our towel elephant awaited. :)

SB - Day 3

The day started with me getting up before everyone else and enjoying the sunrise out on our balcony. It was gorgeous!

 We docked in Nassau, but our excursion wasn't for a couple of hours, so we played some games...

and did a little detective game they had on he ship.  I only have a video of it and I can't get it to load, but it was pretty cool. 

We got off the ship to go to our excursion at the Atlantis Resort.  

For the ride there, they PACKED the buses full.  There was only 1 little fold down seat left in the middle of the aisle, so my poor husband had to cram himself in it.  I will say, it looked pretty funny!

The grounds of the hotel are beautiful.  They have a ton of places to see stingrays, sharks, etc.  The aquarium was awesome.  There were all kinds of fish and the boys really seemed to enjoy it.

Here they are in front of an "Atlantis" scuba diver. (Notice Hudson's Vanna White hands... I have several pictures of him doing this.)

We ate lunch and started back towards the ship.  This is us trying to get a picture... Hudson cracks me up.  This kid has personality (well, that's what I choose to call it.)

That's better. :)

As I was uploading pics, I realized that I don't even have ONE picture of the four of us from this trip. Boo.

Anyway, Monday night was Pirate Night.  We got cleaned up for dinner and put on our bandanas they left in our room.

Yep...personality.

Tonights ketchup was a skull and crossbones Mickey.  

After dinner, we went up on deck for the Pirate Party.  They had a skit with Captain Jack Sparrow - very cute and the boys were enamored.

Then came the fireworks... it was really cool to watch fireworks on a cruise ship.

We had to walk back through Cabanas (the buffet restaurant to get back to the elevators that went to our room, and they had these carved watermelons places around the tables.  

They also had a crepe bar (crepes, strawberries, bananas, chocolate sauce, caramel, whipped cream, etc.) so yeah, we had some of those. :)  When we got back to our room, our towel monkey was waiting for us. :)