Cruise...

I had a strange dream last night that we took a cruise with all the adults in Joe's family. It was one of those tiring dreams where you have to go over and over the same thing. I had forgotten everything except clothes (i.e. toiletries, underwear, swimsuit, books, etc.) and had to keep borrowing items from my sisters and mother in law. It was exhausting! I took it as an omen that I need to finish posting cruise pics ;)

Arrrrr!! Andrea brought a bunch of awesome pirate loot and shared with everyone. It was so fun!

I think the gold hoop earring is really workin' for Dad.

They were actually within strangling distance and paused in their efforts for a quick picture! Amazing!

Janie had this face for a large percentage of the experience...as did Gracie. LOL.

The kiddos were in LOVE with this huge lizard who wanted to bite their fingers off. Aunt Andrea flinagled a big piece of lettuce from one of the zoo workers so all the kids got to feed it. She's such a great Aunt!!

The Disney Magic is the boat on the right. (Our boat.) This is on St. Thomas at the top of the mountain looking down.

Cutie pie Janie!

This is such a cute picture, it's a shame that it's a bit blurry. Oh well! Isn't Minnie's outfit cute?

A chip off the old block...

Grandma Sue and Leah Sue in the Walt Disney Theatre.

"Those that say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip." ~Author Unknown

PS. "Thriller" is our music of the day in tribute to the awesome, the weird, the recently deceased Michael Jackson. (Let's face it, it's his greatest hit!)

Higher Education

I love this picture of Janie because she looks so serious...which is opposite her silly, carefree personality. I also love it because she's "reading" Homer's Odyssey. That's my girl!

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." ~Anna Quindlen

Tuesday

"There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child." ~Frank A. Clark

Gracie the Artist

Gracie has the spirit of an artist. She's fiery, unique, tender and intelligent too. Every time I take a moment to ponder the child that is my Gracie, my testimony that God is our father and the creator of our spirits and bodies, grows. She came down to earth with more sass than I've got in my little finger. SOMEONE must have made her that way.

Here's what she did the other night while Joe and I enjoyed our dinner toward the other end of the table. I was surprised at how cool it was! It's Picasso-ish to me. (It's a face, by the way.)

From "The Family: A Proclamation to the World":

"All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."

Memorial Day/Gracie's Birthday

I am a huge slacker in the "birthday party" department, so when April invited us over for a Memorial Day BBQ, I asked her if we could tack on Gracie's party as well. Here are some pictures from the fun afternoon!

She looks so cute and excited :)

Eatin' a cupcake the Gracie way - frosting only.

Uncle Brad and Aunt April got her the coolest present! Her very own aquarium with two goldfish and a tiny froggy! She was SO excited!

I think this was her favorite present. A Dumbo dolly that she saw on our Disney Cruise. We bought it for her on the sly and smuggled it home without her finding it. (Pretty impressive, if you know how much Gracie is into EVERYTHING!) She was really excited when she opened it. It made me so happy.

The first BBQ of the season! Bring on the warm weather!

Baby Calli, Ryan and Val's newest addition :)

The hosts! They always have such fun stuff planned for us when we come over to their house :)

Janie playing with one of the animal decorations. April got her the cute dress for her B-Day :)

Some More...

Are you guys tired of my vacation pictures yet? This is kind of a journal after all, so I'm just going to keep posting 'em!

Zoe and Gracie in the Walt Disney Theatre waiting for a show to start!

On the water taxi to St. Maarten. Gracie had her mouth open in all the pictures :) They had Bob Marley playing in the taxi and it was just so stereotypical "caribbean" that it was almost funny. I really wonder if they listen to the same CD every single day to please tourists or if they just honestly breathe B. Marley.

Grandma Sue in the back and Daddy and Gracie in the front. You can also see our boat (the smaller one) in the background!

We left Janie in the nursery on the boat for a few hours during the morning and when I went back to get her, the family did this awesome sandcastle! Isn't it cool? The Tanners brought all sorts of cool sand building gear!!

Here's the fam (most of them) with their creation! We saw a couple of other people come and take pictures with the sandcastle :)

Here's Janie just hanging out after we got back onto the boat.

Gracie's trying to make a towel animal! She LOVED seeing the animal on our bed each night. The girls would gobble up the chocolates they would place on the bed and disassemble the towel animal in minutes flat each evening. :)

St. Maarten was really fun! The beach was very beautiful and the girls had a good time playing in the ocean. It was my second favorite day of our cruise (right after Castaway Cay). We had yummy coconut gellato and I bought a pretty necklace and black swimsuit coverup that will help remind me of the good times there!

More Disney...

Here are more Disney Cruise pics!!

This was at the character breakfast where we got to meet Goofy (Janie lovingly calls him Boofy) Mickey and Chip & Dale. All the pictures turned out blurry. This is the best one. Which is good because they adored Goofy :)

All the kidlets (minus Stanley) in the Alexander line. This is in the lobby with a cool statue of Captain Mickey at the helm. (A helm is a ship's steering wheel, right?)

Gracie with Minnie's ears on in the store onboard. They had some cool loot!

We celebrated Janie's birthday while on the cruise! She turned two years old! She got some really fun presents from her Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunties and Uncles. These glasses were actually a gift for Gracie, but Janie claimed them as her own, seeing as how it was her birthday and all! Our server brought out this huge piece of cake for her (we're talking like 6x6" here!!) She dove into it, of course!

Janie cuddling with Grandma Sue. Every morning when we would wake up she'd start calling, "SUE! SUE!" She loves her Grandma and we're glad they're back close to us!

Here's Papa Dave rockin' out to his new iPod that us and the Tanners got him for his retirement. I'm pretty sure he's listening to the Beach Boys here :) I loaded a bunch of music onto it and Andrea made three awesome home movies with their old family photos (with music!) that we put onto it as well. It was a fun surprise to give and I think Mom and Dad really enjoyed it! Now we just need to teach them how to navigate iTunes :)

Julie and Dad! Cute!

Janie's getting some Beach Boys action.

Here's our little fam with Captain Mickey! No, I'm not pregnant, I'm just a chunker, okay? I should maybe avoid profile pics from now on, hm?

In the lounge, waiting for dinner to start.

A pixie by the porthole!

More later...

Disney Cruise!!!

I finally have a few minutes to post some pictures from our AWESOME Disney Cruise that we just returned from! I am so exhausted that everytime I sit down for more than two minutes I fall asleep. Traveling with children is probably the most tiring thing I have ever experienced. It was worth it though! We had a fabulous time and will enjoy the memories as much as we enjoyed the cruise. I'll let the pics tell the story...watch for more in the days to come.


Here are my little bed bugs in the hotel where we stayed in Orlando the night before cruising. Notice that there are no pictures of us actually getting to Florida. Going to the airport and flying with the kids was the definition of "CRAZY." Our bags were too heavy so we had to take things out of them and squeeze them into our already bursting carry-on backpacks. Janie was on this little leash thing that she hated and she was so angry about it that she just prostrated herself on the airport floor and I dragged her little bones around with the leash. People were laughing...it was kind of embarassing...man, I'm glad the traveling part is through.

Here's the fam with Grandma Sue wearing our awesome, Tanner-custom T-Shirts. I'll have to take a good pic of the designs on one of the shirts. They're really cool! They say "Alexander Retirement Celebration 2009" with a picture of a cruise ship on the front. On the back they have little stick figure people representing everyone in the family. They're darling!

Joe and Gracie with our boat, the Disney Magic in the background. I like this picture because it looks like Gracie is flipping me off, which is totally what she would be doing if she knew about said gesture.

It was so bright, she couldn't open her eyes :)

Notice the flat hair! The humidity totally skunked my 'do. :)

Unfortunately, it looks like every single picture we took of us with the characters turned out kind of blurry. I'm irritated with my camera because it didn't live up to it's price tag. Oh well. I'm having our big Nikon worked on this week.

Zoe and Taytem showing Gracie the finer points of the Nintendo DS. She was so into it!

At the sailaway party! Gracie loved the pompoms that they passed around!

We're finally onboard! We've been looking forward to this vacatin for over a year! :)

The girls looking out the porthole in our stateroom! This picture totally reminds me and Joe of an old picture we have of our labs and two cats looking out our front screen just like this. No more labs or cats...just two crazy nuts we call our children!

More pics to come...

Oh, and there was a complete LACK of Jimmy Buffet on the boat. I was seriously dissappointed. So Jimmy will be providing the soundtrack to the memories, if not the actual experience. :)

Halloween Cat

Here's our first attempt at posting a video on the 'ol blog! It's Janie singing "Halloween Cat" which I'm not sure is a real song...I think someone in the family might have made it up. She got a new stuffed black cat that she adores, so she's been walking around the house singing it all by herself! So cute!