Cruise part 3 Victoria

Our final port stop was in Victoria British Columbia.  It was such a beautiful day and the city was amazing.  I have always wanted to visit Victoria because I have heard that it is a lot like Europe and I LOVE Europe.  It did not disappoint!

Some of the bunch chose to go to Butchart Gardens but I wanted to see Victoria and the gardens were pretty pricey so Garrett, Jordan, Matt, my Dad, and I all walked around Victoria for the day.  This was the pier and the harbor was so beautiful.

Normally I would not be taking pictures of me let alone posting pictures of me nine months pregnant, but we had to document the cruise, so too bad for me.

This is the oldest hotel in Victoria.  Tea at the Empress hotel is famous and we walked through the tea rooms to see what all the fuss was about but it was like $50.00 a person for tea so we passed.  The hotel was really beautiful inside and the gardens surrounding it were amazing.

I loved the grounds at the Empress.  The flowers were all so beautiful!

The blue and purple hydrangeas were my favorite, but they had really pretty roses and all sorts of other ones that I don't know the names of:)

I loved this little bench in the rose garden.

We went to eat right along the pier at a little restaurant where we had amazing clam chowder and fish and chips.  Our waiter was a high school boy who was asking us all about the election since he has dual citizenship.  I was happy to hear that he was pretty informed about the issues and seemed to be pretty interested in knowing more about the candidates before he voted.  It was kind of funny though since there are few topics my Dad enjoys discussing more than politics, and actually all of us our quite interested in politics so I think the boy got more than he bargained for:)

These cool bushes were just right in the center of town.  This trumpet player was awesome and he kept telling me how lucky my baby was going to be.  I think it was because I gave him a dollar:)  I have to admit, we did a ton of walking around Victoria and by the end I was really feeling pregnant!  I had several contractions and my feet got really swollen.  I was feeling pretty relieved that I only had to make it one more day and then I would be in Seattle and would be okay if the baby decided to come.

We took a tour through the State legislature building on our way to lunch.  It was a pretty building and it was pretty cool to see the big room where their congress meets.  This is a picture of the dome ceiling right in the center of the building.  It was very european and the congress room reminded me a lot of the one in London but much smaller.  It was kind of weird to see pictures everywhere of the Queen of England and I have to admit I didn't know before then that they even had anything to do with her.  So I  learned that she has no influence over them or their government but that she is sort of a figure head for them.  She's even on their money.  Anyway, we finished off the day with some delicious gelato on our way back to the boat.  Oh and I can't forget to mention that we bought some Lion bars and other delicious european chocolate candy bars!  I missed my London cadbury chocolate soo much so it was so good to enjoy it once again!

The next morning we arrived in Seattle and said our goodbyes to my wonderful family.  It was such a fun and amazing trip and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.  I'm so glad I snuck on board 9 months pregnant!  None of it would have happened though if it weren't for my wonderful mother in law and sister in law who watched our kids for us.  We drove back home and were so excited to see our kids after a whole week.  They had had a great time with Grandma and Auntie and Lauren too.  A couple days later we went downtown to eat dinner with them at the Spaghetti Factory and the whole time we were there I had contractions pretty regularly.  I was a little worried but then on the way home they finally stopped. Little did I know, our little man would be making his appearance a couple days later and exactly one week to the day that we arrived back in Seattle!  More details to come...

Cruise Part 2 Tracey Arm

The next day we were at sea but we travelled through the Tracey Arm Fjord all morning.  It was amazing!  We went up on the top deck first thing in the morning to see the glacier and got to watch as the captain maneuvered the ship around all the little glaciers floating in the water.  I have to admit it made me a little nervous and I had flashes of "Titanic" in the back of my mind, but he did a great job and we survived:)

These are both pictures of the glacier.  You can kind of see in these pictures(I have a crappy camera) but the color of the glacier was amazing.  It honestly looked like it was glowing or something.

There were tons of these tiny glaciers floating in the water.  Most of them were pretty small but some of them were pretty good sized.  That's why I got a little nervous!

It was pretty amazing actually to see the captain steer the boat back and forth to avoid every little ice burg.  

You can kind of see from these two pics the color of the water.  Again it looked like it was almost glowing.  They said the color comes from the sediment of the rocks of the mountains which are actually granite.  It was the coolest color water I have ever seen.  It wasn't clear like the bahamas but it was the same aqua kind of color.  It was cloudy though, almost milky looking.

This was a pretty good sized glacier and I thought this picture was cool because you can kind of see how far down under the water it goes.

It was a misty cold morning which made it all look so much more magical.  I love the mist in the mountains.  It reminds me of Lord of the Rings.  I know I'm a nerd.  It's my husband's fault:)

Ben and Garrett are huge dorks and while we were passing this huge waterfall they kept on talking about how they wanted to open up an excursion here where you slide down the waterfall into the freezing glacier water and that they would build a hot tub off to the side so you can warm up afterwards.  That is, if you survive, which is highly unlikely.

After we got out of the Fjord we sailed along these Alaskan and Canadian mountains the rest of the day.  We saw tons of Orca Whales that day which is what is in this picture if you look closely.  At one point we past an island that the captain said had more bears per sq mile than people.  We never actually saw one though.

This picture was taken through the window of our beloved conference room B.  As I mentioned earlier, we are huge dorks and love to talk and play games all day long.  So instead of going to all the planned activities everyday, we would sneak into this conference room, which you are supposed to reserve and pay for, and hang out all day.  It became a huge joke because we never reserved or paid for it but we used it everyday.  It was our meeting spot after dinner too where we would have FHE, book discussions, and other stimulating conversations!  Anytime people poked their heads in, we would just look at them like, "can we help you?" and then they would leave.  It was awesome.  The best thing about it was that it had huge porthole windows and it was on the third deck so it was really close to the water and had awesome views.

The Cruise!! part one

This is the story of one of the craziest, if not THE craziest thing I have ever done.  Back in December my parents announced to the family that they would be going on an 18 month mission for our church the following fall and so in celebration of that and my Dad's 60th birthday they paid for all the adults to go on a cruise to Alaska together!  I didn't know at the time that I was pregnant but I had an idea that I might be.  I mentioned this to my parents for planning purposes but at that point I had no concrete evidence so they went ahead and locked in the date.  So it turns out that I was pregnant and my due date was Sept 5th and the cruise was August 17-24.  That's right, my baby was due 12 days after we got home:) I completely planned on going since I have never had any of my babies more than one day before my due date but as we looked more into the policy I realized I wasn't supposed to go past 24 weeks of pregnancy.  BOO!!  So I was not going to go.  As the months past and it got closer and every one was more and more excited I was so bugged that I was going to miss out on all the fun.  So my Mom and I were chatting one day and we came up with a brilliant plan to sneak on the cruise.  The first concern though was to make sure it was medically safe for me to go.  So my mom called a friend of hers who has been and OB/GYN for several years and explained the situation.  She said there was absolutely no risk of anything going wrong with the pregnancy as a result of going on a cruise, whoever, she did say that going anywhere that close to your due date is slightly insane and that there was a risk that I would go into labor on the boat.  So after I knew that nothing bad would happen to my baby as a result of being on a cruise I decided to go for it!  My mom went out and bought a 42 DDD bra from good will and sewed pillows into the boob spots and then got me a giant moo moo to go over the bra.  Our thinking was that if the boobs stuck out as far as my belly then you wouldn't be able to tell that I was pregnant; I would just look really fat.  

So here I am in all my giant bra moo moo glory!!  BTW if any of you ever use this picture for blackmail purposes I will kill you:)  So I talked to several of my friends who had cruised recently to ask if they were asked about pregnancy at check in because I really didn't want to have to lie point blank to anyone.  They all assured me that they were not asked that and then talking to another friend I learned that as long as they allow you on board and then find out you are pregnant they can't kick you off.  All of this being said, I was pretty freaked out while we were standing in line waiting to check in but it all worked out and no one asked me anything about pregnancy so I didn't even have to lie!!

We were at sea for Friday and Saturday and ate tons of yummy food, played games, went to a few of the shows and mostly just did what Monsons do best, talked.  All day!  It was so much fun and although I really missed my kids, it was amazing to be able to have as much uninterrupted adult conversation as I wanted to.  

The first port stop was in Juneau on Sunday.  We all sort of wanted to do different things in Juneau so we split off for the day.  Garrett and Ben were very excited to go fishing so after we got them off and on their way, Molly and I wandered around Juneau exploring the cute shops.

We stuck together since we are the two preggos (she was only 20 weeks so she was actually allowed on board:) and we were both coming down with a cold.  It was really fun though and we got to see the Medenhall glacier from afar.  We were sad to find out at dinner that we could have gone with the others to "hike" to the glacier.  For obvious reasons we weren't feeling like we should do the 7 mile hike but as it turned out they were driven right up to the trail and the trail up to the glacier was totally flat and we could have easily walked it.  Oh well.  At least we got to see some really pretty pictures of it.  My mom and Abby and Matt went on a dog mushing excursion.  That looked really cool too.  Everyone got to do fun things and it was just cool to be in Alaska!

 The next port stop was the next day in Skagway.  This is us at the port in the morning.  We all went on an excursion together on the yukon and white pass railway.  It started out with a bus ride all the way up the pass into Canada.  The views were amazing.

We stopped for lunch at this little lodge and ate Bison chili.  It was really yummy and the view was beautiful.  There was a cool suspension bridge going across a huge river right behind the restaurant.

After lunch we boarded the train and took that back through the mountains down to Skagway.  The train is built right into the mountains so it is a little scary at some points since you are looking straight down into valleys way below the train track.

 This was one of the picture stops along the drive with the whole gang!  Don't mind my nine month preggo fat self:)

This was a shot from the train

Right before we drove into Canada we made a stop to see these crazy rock statue things.  They are called anuk shuks.  Our awesome bus driver/tour guide told us he would give a prize to whatever group or person could build the tallest anuk shuk.  So naturally being Monsons and therefore highly competetive, we took up the challenge!

Here was the building crew.  The rest of us gathered rocks to help.  After much effort and strategic planning we came out victorious!  

We had amazing weather!  It was sunny and beautiful which was really awesome since we were told that a lot of the time it is too cloudy to see all the waterfalls and mountains along the bus ride.

How awesome is this train conductor?  Garrett had to get a picture with him:)

That's the train tracks going across the falls!

It was really kind of crazy thinking about all the thousands of men that hiked this trail with a ton of supplies strapped to horses backs all in the pursuit of gold.  Unfortunately most of them never found any.  

 Seriously the views along the drive and the train were amazing!  

 Our tour guide was a student at BYU Idaho and he was really cool. 

 He told us that the horses that were used for the gold miners were usually old and sick to begin with and then after loading them so full of supplies, most of them ended up dying.  They also had to travel through something like 14 feet of snow in the winter.  It sounded like a pretty miserable journey.

 I was happy to get to ride on the comfortable bus and train to view the beautiful scenery myself.  I don't think I would have lasted long back then:)

After the excursion was over we got to walk around Skagway and shop.  It was really small so it didn't take too long.  One of the facts we learned on the bus was that there are no doctors in Skagway and that when women there are pregnant they make them fly to Juneau 2 months before they have their babies in case there are any complications since there are no hospitals there either.  I have to admit it made me a little nervous to hear that in my "current condition":)  We headed back to the boat and set sail for Tracey Arm Fjord the next day and of course had lots more yummy food!

The craziest month!

So our lives were completely up in the air all summer long but August was especially insane.  Garrett lost his job in August, we knew we had to move out of our rental house by september, and we had a baby coming at the beginning of september so we were just a little bit stressed.  So Garrett was looking for jobs, I was semi-packing constantly and on top of that we had a birthday, surgery, and a cruise to keep us busy.

Carter had to have surgery to correct his totally messed up circumcision poor kid.  But it went really well and the surgeon was amazing.  He was really brave!  The morning after the surgery when I was removing the bandage and Carter was in quite a bit of pain I was wondering if it was even worth it.  But then when I got it all off (very carefully!) he was so excited and said, "Now I look like Beckett and Daddy!"  It made it all worth it.  He was so happy it was fixed and the recovery went really well and quickly. As a side note, look at those eye lashes!!  Seriously that kid is so lucky! 

While packing out in the garage and separating all our junk, the kids would always stay busy and find something outside to do.  A common activity was a picnic.  They love this picnic basket and I love that my kids can just play together and entertain themselves so well.  I give most of the credit to my imaginative little activity coordinator, Rylynn.

Amid the chaos, Beckett turned 3!  He is such a fun little boy with an over abundance of personality.  He always keeps us laughing and keeps the volume very high at our house.  Seriously this boy has been a screamer from the start and as the third child he uses that weapon every chance he can get.  Unfortunately, we are all a little immune to it now since he screams about everything.  It has to be a scream combined with crying to really get our attention anymore:) 

Beckett was very spoiled with money and cards from his grandparents and aunts and uncles.  

He was very excited to buy his own set of golf clubs with his birthday money.  

I seriously can't imagine our family without our little Beckett.  It is extra special to celebrate his birthday in August because that was also the month that he fell out of the window last year.  It just reminds us even more how blessed we are to have him in our lives and to know that his life was spared miraculously.  Beckett has become quite the movie quoter in our family.  He especially loves quoting Dispicable Me .  He is also our little singer.  He sings all around the house all day long.  He loves singing primary songs and the songs from his favorite shows and of course, the ABC's.  He is incredibly verbal and talks all the time.  Some of our favorite little Beckettisms are "I want them to come to we home", "I want sissy for ever!" and "I am not a baby, I am Beckett!'  He lovingly teases people by yelling, "you're a neatball!" This translates to you're a meatball which is also a movie quote from Curious George.  Every time he gets in trouble he bursts into tears and runs and hugs us and says,"I'm so sorry Mommy it was an accident!"  

This is proof that Beckett wants a band-aid for every single owie he gets whether it involves blood or not.  He got bonked on the nose in this one and he looked hilarious so we had to capture it on film:)

He is also very affectionate and he loves to give hugs and tell us that he loves us. He often says things like, "you're the best mommy or I love you so much Daddy."  Seriously the kid melts our hearts.  One thing I just love about Beckett is to see how social he is.  He has so many adult friends that just adore him in our ward.  His nursery teachers are all his buddies and he gets so excited when he sees any of them.  I swear he would have play dates with Brother Demars if he could:)