More at Costa Maya

While walking around at all of the ruins, Mya got wiped out! It was really hot this day and we were doing all we could to keep her cool.
Justin and his family resting under the shade during a short break.
This tree is actually what they consider to be the tree of life. I have a better picture of one from Guatemala because this one is missing a lot from the hurricane. But they consider it the tree of life because the branches are like a ladder up to heaven and also a bunch of other symbolic things (like there are 12 roots - which I know 12 is symbolic for priesthood, but I can't remember what everything meant).
The bus ride back. Mya was crashed! We were actually on our way to go have lunch, but after lunch on the bus, we stopped on the side of the road and our guide got out and bought us "pineapple and cayanne pepper". The guide was raving about how good it is, so of course you gotta do as the locals do and try it. It was hot, but really good! In fact, it reminded me of hawaiian pizza.
This is at lunch. We ate at a restaurant that is right by the lake. The limestone sunk down and because of a bunch of underground rivers, it filled up to be a fresh water lake, even though you don't see any rivers going in or out of the lake. So Justin and Mya went swimming to cool off. For lunch that day, we had salsa and chips (the salsa was flaming hot and just kept getting hotter and hotter in your mouth-you definitely could not pile it on your chip) rice, fresh vegetables, and chicken.

Our Room

So you hear about how small the rooms are on a cruise, so I was expecting it to be pretty small, but I didn't think it was bad. We slid our beds together and Mya slept in the middle of us. You don't spend a lot of time in there, but we did probably more than we would have because of Mya. She was so fun. She is such a character and cheese.
This is our first night there. She really loved being with 'mom and dad' the entire week and getting so much attention.
We put her shoes on her and so she just had to try them out. She walks so funny with shoes on. Her legs go so high in the air with each step. But she did good and walked up and down our long hallway.
This is right before we headed up to dinner. She's just showing off her new Mexican dress!
Mya did get sick on the trip. Tuesday we went to Costa Maya, Mexico and when we got back on the ship that night she had a cough. It kept getting worse as the night went on and the next morning we woke up and she had a 100 degree fever and was not breathing well. I was thinking I would just stay on the ship with her that day instead of going to Guatemala so she could rest and get better. Justin, his dad and brother gave Mya a blessing and we felt like we could take her and things would be okay. It really did. She was able to sleep a lot that day since we had long bus rides and when we were at sites they were shady so everything worked out really well. I think it was crupe that she had. We turned our bathroom into a sauna for her that night and it really seemed to help. But this is her sleeping and totally getting comfortable that night.
This is Friday night (feeling much better). She was suppose to go to bed, but wanted to play tackle instead.
This is the last day. We were getting ready to leave. She's so cute!

Aboard The Cruise

There was a lot to do on the cruise, especially if you drink or gamble. But for us, we went swimming one night, went to an improv comedian show, and went to classes for the Book of Mormon group. The classes were either John Lund lecturing or Michael Ballam's concerts. I liked both a lot. John Lund had so much information to give us. The things I learned from him about where the Book of Mormon had to take place (I guess some people believe they lived in the Great Lakes area so he gave us a lot of reasons why in the Book of Mormon it could not take place from there) were really cool. One example was about one of the wars in the Book of Mormon where the Lamanites wore loin cloths when they went to war and the time of year it had to have been would have been in winter and that would not work out up in that area because it's so cold up there in the winter (he also explained why it would have to be winter-I think he said January, but I'm not positive-but I can't really remember why he said, he talks so fast). Anyway, he just had a lot of cool facts. I'll tell some of his stories as I post pictures. Michael Ballam's concerts were really relaxing and he told of some cool experiences.

Another thing we did on the ship was going to the Chocolate Buffet. This was late at night and everything was made of chocolate (statues and decorations) and a couple of ice sculptures. Here are some of them:

Look at our plates! Everything looked so good so you wanted to sample it all, but really, not a lot was wonderful. Most things you took a bite or two, but only a couple of things were worth eating all of it. It was fun either way, though!

The Famous Towel Animals

The stateroom guys would clean our room twice a day. Once in the morning after we left, and once after dinner. The morning was just making our bed and cleaning up, but the evening was cleaning up, delivering newsletters for the next day, and leaving a mint and an animal. Here are the animals we got:
Bunny
We really do not know what this is. Any ideas?
Penguin
This one I thought was a frog at first, but Justin said it's a snake head...?

Dinners On The Cruise Ship

The cruise was a lot of fun and there was a lot of food! It was really good and you could order as much as you wanted because you've already paid for it! Dinner was fun and interesting with Mya. It seemed like she got tired about half way every night (right before we would get our main course). I did like that when they would pass out the menus they would take her order (and any of the younger kids) so she would get it right away. I have a lot of pictures from dinners on the cruise, so here you go:
This was the first night. Mya thought that it was okay to bathe herself with ice water in a nice restaurant. Whose child is that? (It was actually really cute and funny).
This is formal night. Mya wore her dress from Trichelle's family. I just love it!
We bought her this dress in Mexico! She looks so pretty in it!
She loved eating everyone's lemons. They'd come with the shimp cocktails and they would just pass them down to her. She also loved the shrimp. Who knew my child would like seafood?
These next two are from the last night on the ship.
She was really tired so we let her roam under the table.

New Orleans

I've been a slacker this week. I've wanted to post about our trip, but I have just had a lot going on, plus with jet lag I've been so tired and ready for bed around 9 every night (which is really early for me), so I haven't gotten around to doing this. But here I go.

So we left on Saturday/Valentine's Day. Our flight was delayed a little because of the snow storm here, but we flew to Atlanta which is about a 4 hour flight. We had a pretty long layover there and then flew to New Orleans. Mya did really good on the plane, except she pooped on both flights! Good timing. The doctor had given us a prescription to get ear drops for the plane ride and I think that really helped.
(Layover in Atlanta)

On Sunday, we didn't have to be on our ship until 5:30 that night, so our Book of Mormon tour group had set up a tour for that day if we wanted. We went to Oak Alley Plantation.
It was really cool with all of the oak trees.
We toured the mansion there and the girls who do the tours dress up from the time with the slaves.
They didn't really have any slave homes left on the plantation, but we did pass some plantations on our way to this one that had slave homes. It was a little drizzly there so it didn't seem hot at all, just humid.


After that, we got on the bus to go to our cruise ship! It was cool driving around New Orleans and kind of getting a feel for the area.
Mya liked hanging out with everyone! She definitely got a lot of attention that week!