OUR LITTLE BAKER GIRL

Brooke loves to be in the kitchen. With some of her bday money from last year she bought an apron/cook set (which doubled as her Halloween costume!) With some of her Christmas money she bought a cookie baking set. So the other night we set out to use her new stuff. I mixed up a half batch of sugar cookie dough (I mean really, a whole batch made over three dozen cookies and we all know that after decorating half who the rest of the decorating would fall on....). Brooke really went to town and did so much of the process on her own, including cleaning up!

BACK TO REALITY AND CELEBRATING JESUS' BIRTH

With our vacation behind us it was really grind time for the holiday. We did our usual family get together at Doug's parents Christmas Eve after attending the childrens Mass at church. Absolutely love to get our holiday photo of all the "girl cousins". Bree was much more into presents this year. She understood the Santa thing, but we really tried to instill in her the real reason for the season! Santa brought her a mini trampoline and Brynn and Brooke new bikes.

We finally cracked and bought them a Wii (it might be more for Doug though!!!)

The last pic of Bree is not of disgust, but of determination trying to get the ribbon off her present!

We hope everyone had a Joyous Christmas Season and revel in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Honduras

We had a beautiful day in Honduras, going to Tabyana Beach for the day. Ocean was beautiful and the sand luxurious. Bree could have sat and played in the sand non -stop.

Some other pictures of fun on the ship

Belize

The day we hit Belize the weather turned sour. It was very overcast and windy. Because the water is so shallow near the coast, we had to dock 5 miles out in the Carribean Sea and have tender boats take us to shore. We had planned a shore excursion of a city tour and a tour of a Mayan ruin. So off we went on this tender boat with three Central American men guiding us. Interestingly, Belize is the only Central American country that has English as their primary language. In the middle of our trip, flying across the ocean, jammed packed onto this boat, we see black smoke billowing up from the side of the boat and then inside the boat! It was at this point that I realized, there are no lifevests to be seen. The boat comes to a complete stop and Doug is formulating a plan of survival if we have to abandon ship! Thankfully, the engine fire that had occurred put itself out and they were able to restart the boat and coast us slowly to shore. From there we loaded onto a large bus and took a tour around the city of Belize. What squallor! Very sad conditions. Good experience for our older girls to witness. From there, the bus took us on an hour ride up to the Mayan ruin. It was sprinkling the entire trip, but of course once we arrived at the ruin site, it began to downpour- and I mean downpour. Since you had to do a small hike to get to the ruin our hopes were dashed and we ended up staying on the bus. Traveling back to the ship for an hour with five soaking wet people did not appeal to us!

I was never so happy to get back onto our ship. Since being home, Doug has checked the state department website for Belize and after reading what we did, we would have never gotten off the ship had we known. Very corrupt and dangerous country. They even mention the unregulated tender boat industry! We are thanking God for protecting us on that excursion. Shocked that cruise companies even use this as a port of call....and their were four other cruise lines anchored out with us on the day we were in Belize--unbelievable. Below are some pictures.

Ok, Ok, I know I am desperately behind!!!!

Wow, even I was shocked to get onto the blog and see my last entry! We blazed right through November, ending with a nice Thanksgiving. It was my holiday on call for this year so we stayed local celebrating with Doug's family. Once the holiday passed I was crazy trying to ready for Christmas. Since we had such an enjoyable Spring vacation on a cruise ship, we decided to try it again and had one booked for December 12-19th. We chose Carnival again as they had just launched a brand new ship called the Dream. Our travel agent was able to get us all in one room this time (with two bathrooms!) and an actual window. We left Orlando and spent the first full day at sea and then hit Cozumel, Honduras, Belize and Costa Maya and then another full day at

sea. Below are some pictures of the ship and Bree with our favorite dining attendant (Alexandrov from Bosnia)