Holidays and Vacations


Me and Heidi decided to go on a cruise for an anniversary vacation. We had gone on a cruise before, and had a very good time, but the last time we cruised out of Orlando so had to drive all the way down there and all the way back. This time, we found a seven day cruise out of Baltimore for about the same price as the other cruise a couple years ago.

We started out on the first day, Sunday, in Baltimore and started heading south. Our first stop was in Orlando, but we wouldn’t be there until Wednesday morning. Full PostSo we spend the first two and a half days at sea. The water was pretty choppy at first, but it didn’t make either of us sick. We had a very good time all the way down. Our boat was the Carnival Pride, which is a very nice boat and we had a balcony, which we slept out on one night. The food was really good, and we each bought an all you can drink pop card. I figured out how many pops we needed to drink each day in order to break even so I drank at least that many each day.

We got to the beach in Orlando, which is very nice but would be a lot better if (more…)

Over the Columbus Day weekend, we celebrated the discovery of America by discovering a new camping spot, Belle Isle State Park, or “Bell Al” park as the natives would say. We set up our camp in good time. The kids both brought capes, so they each had assistance from capes. We went on several hikes. The paths at Belle Isle aren’t very difficult; they are mostly tractor roads. But they are quite deserted and scenic.

Sunday night a fellow camper gave a presentation on astronomy, and brought along a powerful telescope. We all got to see the moons of Jupiter and a galaxy that is the farthest object visible. Mason was hoping it was the Star Wars galaxy.

We also went out along the river bank and on the way back found a copperhead snake that had recently been run over. So, we did what Columbus would have done and ate it. Seriously, we ate roadkill. At least (more…)

So for Fathers Day I got one of these: from my Amazon Wish List. It is awesome. I also realized that homemade ice cream is really just flavored butter that is frozen. Seriously, half a cup of the batch I made has 450 calories. Its just cream…frozen…into ice. I wonder where they got the name. We also had a very good meal for Fathers Day and I had a good day.

Anyway, I’ll use it a lot. Mason likes sherbet so I will have to try that as well. Here are some kind of Fathers Day pictures…

This year for Easter we didn’t go anywhere exciting but it was pretty busy. The kids made me jump on the trampoline with them, hollow out eggs and paint them and make S’mores with Peeps and Easter candy. They were very good.

The Easter bunny hid their eggs and they had fun looking for them, and the weather was at least sunny, but not very warm. We (more…)

A few days before Christmas, we decided to drive across the country to Idaho for the holidays. We just hopped in the car and started driving on my last day of work, and didn’t tell the kids where we were going. Mason was kind of sick, and so wasn’t real into things, but finally, about 5 hours after we got in the car, Whitney asked where we were going and we told the kids. Whitney was very excited, but Mason wasn’t so much cause he was sick. But later he warmed up to the idea as well.

It took us about 42 hours to get to Idaho, which isn’t that bad. The weather was decent for the most part, although we ran into some bad weather in Wyoming that slowed us down a little. Once we got there, we had a good Christmas and surprised everyone. We did a lot of fun things and Santa Claus even found us in Idaho, where he brought the kids a Nintendo DS, which they have been wanting for years.

We also went ice fishing and caught a couple fish, then cooked them right on the spot, which was fun. We built snow forts and went to Grandpa Herb’s and the kids went sledding behind the mule. You can see the pictures of them trying to ambush the sled as it gets towed by.

The trip home wasn’t bad, either, and only took 38 hours. I put all the pictures after the break, and range from Christmas morning at Grandma Hubbards to the ice fishing pictures and more. (more…)

We had a pretty good Halloween. I reprised my role as Buckethead and once again scared little kids with my appearance. For the first time in recorded history, Mason did not go as a lion and instead went as the Grim Reaper. Whitney went as a princess, and they both looked very nice.

The weather was pretty mellow also, so we didn’t have to wear coats over our costumes, which was always one of my pet peeves growing up in Idaho. As far as the candy haul went, we’ve probably had better years. I don’t know if it was just that with Halloween on a Friday that a lot of people were at parties or what, but the street we went down had a lot of lights out.

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