Flour and Consequences

So the other day, I was having a very long day. One of those where nothing went right. I decided we would make homemade pizza for dinner, since the kids love to help put the toppings on, and maybe that would cheer me up. So I set the dough to rise and figured I would use the 5 minutes it needed to rest to surf the internet and cheer myself up.

It is a sign of how much I needed that break that the noise of sudden laughter fits didn't make me check on the kids.

Instead, Christopher comes home and shouts "what on EARTH?" I come downstairs, and it turns out our kids had found my flour bin. They were taking handfuls and flinging them at our glass coffee table in the front room (apparently it's hilarious, you should try it) and leaving a trail of flour between the front room and the kitchen.

Yikes.

Christopher was put on "time out" duty, which was keeping them sitting on the piano bench so they didn't step in it. And I vacuumed and wiped the best I could.

Then, the next morning, I heard it again. LAUGHTER! Quiet pause. LAUGHTER! Quiet pause. I come running down, and it was the flour bin again. At least this time they put the bin closer to the coffee table, so there wasn't a trail.

And as soon as they saw me coming, the little stink-bugs turned tail and ran - straight for the piano bench. They then both patiently sat there while I cleaned it up. Again.

Apparently the crime was TOTALLY worth the punishment.

Malta- Cruise part 2

Our first stop on the cruise was Malta, a country I have to say I didn't know existed until I saw it on the agenda. But it turned out to be one of the most beautiful ports we came to! Everyone said we had to be up top while the ship came into port, and they were right. We were coming in just as the sun was coming up, and the port is deep into Valletta, the capital city on this small island country. It was beautiful.

We were all standing on the chairs to get a better view.

Christopher and I wandered around Valletta for a while at first, and it was a really neat place. The streets are mostly for pedestrians, and in fact some of the streets were actually stairs lined with shops, since the area had so many hills.


A lot of people said that the St. John's Cathedral in town was not to be missed, and from the outside we couldn't really tell why. It looked like a neat old church, but nothing that different. But on the inside, wow. It was an amazing Baroque church in every sense of that movement- completely over the top and over decorated on every surface. And the Caravaggio painting in there was really amazing. Unfortunatly, they don't allow flash photography, and I didn't carry a tripod on my trip, so my pictures weren't very good in there.

From there we caught the local bus up to M'dina, a Medival walled city up on the hill. They call it the silent city, and I could see why. It is well preserved, and beautiful, but only 300 or so people live in the entire place, and they keep it contained and preserved.

We also went through some catacombs, which had the most long-winded audio tour I have ever heard. But Christopher thought it was interesting. Mostly, we just enjoyed just wandering around and enjoying the city. There is a feel to these European towns that you just can't get in such a "new" country like America. We think something is old when it has survived a hundred years, but for them, the capitol city of Valletta is "new" because it was built in 1600.

But hey, no matter where you go, you can find people naming their business in a foreign language to sound cool without actually understanding what the words mean.

Progress and Procrastination

Is it still procrastination if I accomplish things not on the original to do list?

Because I still haven't started on the quilt or the house.

But Wednesday night we were shopping for fabric with the Beehives (we're making drawstring backpacks this week), and I found this really cute fleece remnant on clearance.

So the next day, I looked up instructions online, and made Kaitlyn and I matching hats and scarves.

I was going to make me the scarf and her a hat, but then there were enough scraps to make all of that . . . and I made a little pom pom into a clippie for her hair. Half a yard, $1.50 total.

Then I finally got around to a project that has been bugging me for months. I bought these 8x10 frames for the cabin, but I couldn't decide what design to do with the wood burning tool. I finally went with the four seasons, loosly. Everyone keeps telling me the wood burning tool is for cub scout projects, but I really like this thing! Especially once I stained them.

I did make some progress on my list. I went to the Disney store to check out their Tinkerbell costume for inspiration, and it was adorable. And on sale. And in her size. And . . . now we own it. But it didn't come with shoes or a hairbow, so it's still a craft project, right? I made a pair of shoes, but I think I might try again. Tinkerbell needs more of a dainty slipper than a solid pair of shoes. But at least this pair fits her and works, and I have plenty of materials to re-try if I want to.

But I still don't know what Tyler is going to be! He just doesn't have any new interests this year. The dump truck still fits him, but that would make me sad. Since Kaitlyn is Tinkerbell and Daddy is a pirate, I have a fairy costume and I could make Tyler into Peter Pan just so we all match. But I want something that matches his personality! Hrummmph. It'll come to me soon, I hope.

Gotta love fall!

I may not be as fanatic about it as my husband, but I do love Fall. The colors are so beautiful- and even if there is a sense of impending doom about it, it is fun to break out your sweaters for the first time and feel the crisp air.

We don't get too many leaves in our yard, but the cabin more than made up for that! So last weekend we went up there to enjoy the pretty colors of the canyon. The kids weren't sure what I was trying to do the first couple of times I put them in a pile of leaves, but they sure caught on quickly. They spent the rest of the afternoon crawling in circles and throwing handfulls all over the place.

My cousin Mike came up to go mountain biking with Christopher, and they decided to load up the slide with leaves and let the kids slide down. They loved that!

I know this last shot is out of focus, but I still love it anyway. I was taking pictures as she came down the slide, and she got a bit to close on this last picture!

Our NCL Mediterranean Cruise

This year, Christopher's company gave everyone the opportunity to choose their own vacation. I can't tell you how lucky we feel to be with Digicert! We talked about it for a while, and decided that if we could do anything, we would take a Mediterranean Cruise. We've never done a cruise before, and everyone always told us they were wonderful, so we figured it was time to see what everyone was talking about.




And now we are hooked.

I'll probably separate out each stop of the cruise into a different post, but for now I wanted to review the cruise in general in case anyone else is thinking about it.

Now, we've never cruised before, so we aren't experts. But we loved everything about the NCL Cruise. They brag about doing things "freestyle", and I don't think we want it any other way. My parents always took Princess, and had the same table every night for dinner with the same people at the table. But on NCL, there are a bunch of restaurants open a bunch of different hours, and you just pick one and go. That was great because some days we would have a big lunch on the excursion, and not be hungry until later. Some times we would be in the mood to sit down to someting nice. And sometimes we just wanted to grab something at the buffet so we could hang out by the pool instead. My parents went with a group- my grandpa always takes his kids and their spouses - so they liked that everyone would be on different excusions during the day, and then meet up for dinner to share what they did. But in our group of six, we generally stuck together during the day, and then dinner was couples time. We would catch up at the entertainment stuff.

Some people in their reviews said that they thought the paid restaurants were worth it, and we did enjoy the one night we went to the Mexican place for $10. But we loved the free places! We preferred to spend our food money on authentic food off the ship, and then look forward to eating what we wanted for free on the ship. There was a buffet, a dressy sit down restaurant, a 24 hour simple place, and an inbetween all included. We thought that was just fine.

Entertainment wise, it was fairly good. The dance and singing group they have is very talented, if a bit corny and over the top. But I knew my Grandfather would have loved every second. The comedy act didn't impress my husband, but they had a "multi-instrumentalist" who was fun and a magician who wasn't bad. But our favorite act was actually the most poorly attended one! They had a hypnotist come and do an afternoon show right after the boat left our last port, and it was an absolute riot. Some of you know that I do Hypnobirthing, so I was really intriqued to see the comedy act version of things, since I am so familiar with the real, clinical side of things. And I was really impressed. The guy knew what he was doing, and by the end, he had an entire row of people putting their shoes on the wrong feet, made one guy think his shirt was on backwards every time someone said his name, and made another lady forget her name. I loved towards the end when he had one lady as the laugh police that told everyone to be quiet when we laughed, and another one would bow everytime we clapped. So for the rest of the show, when we did those things for other reasons, those two ladies would faithfully yell at us for laughing and bow like it was their own personal curtain call. Priceless!

Our inside cabin room was tiny, but it was all we needed and a lot more luxurious than we expected. My mom said she would never cruise without a balcony, but we were happy to put that money on souveniers and such.

The pool up top was great- but cold! I don't know what was going on, but during the day the pool was too cold to swim in and the hot tubs were luke warm. It was the end of September after all, but everywhere we went it was 70 degrees. Also, the hot tubs send bubbles up, which means the wind catchs the spray and it hits you in the face. But then at night, the hot tubs were wonderfully warm. Go figure. So we just did what everyone else did during the day, and laid out in our swimsuits next to the pool and listened to the live band. Then we would come down at night and hit the hot tubs.

We loved the rock climbing wall and the bowling alley. It was $5 to bowl, but we would have paid that at home, so who cares? On our second trip to the bowling alley, I had the best game of my life! My first two were strikes, and then the third one was a 9. So close!

Nice work, babe! He made it all the way to the top of the "hard" wall.

This is Jon, one of the two co-workers who came with us. I think the smile says it all- we all had a blast!