Living in Munchkinland

I went with Davis on his field trip to the Witte Museum on Thursday. It was fun, but exhausting. I got to ride down with Stacey and bring the kids back with us. Davis loved the treehouse and sky bike and the dinosaur exhibit. I enjoyed watching all the little second graders go crazy and sharing a special memory with D.

Usually open house at the montessori school happens the day before Christmas break. This year, the montessori school teacher/director was in a car crash and open house was postponed until last Thursday. Michael and Sam and I dressed up, dropped Davis off at my grandparents' house with his kindle fire and drove to the Montessori school for our very last open house. Sam took us to his table and showed us two of his works. The first was contractions, where he matched up words with their contractions. The second was the metal dot board where he added three huge numbers together and did the carrying. We were very impressed. Then he took us to the side room and served us a plate of food that the children had prepared. Sam had even made a vegan cheese ball. It was very sweet and on the way home, Samuel, who had told us we didn't really have to go if we didn't want to, told us it was the best day of his life.

We threw a murder mystery party last weekend at my parents' house. Mom and I made a vegan dinner and dessert and everyone came over dressed up and in character. No one knew who committed the murder, but we all followed the clues and in the end, we found out that my character was the murderer! Ooops. I was totally surprised. I had a great time. Our friends are so fun and all embraced the characters and the game. It was an awesome evening.

Parenting was especially hard today. I'm sick with a terrible head cold that has knocked me off my feet, so that has probably made things harder than usual, but still. Samuel hates to do homework and practice piano. Making him do these things is no fun. We won't make him do piano again next year, but we feel like he needs to finish the semester. We feel like we need to teach him to finish the things he starts even when they are hard. We feel like when he makes a commitment he needs to learn to stick to it. He disagrees. We are trying to be good parents and teach him good values. He is trying to throw the biggest fit possible every day in the hopes of wearing us down. Sigh. Davis had a huge fight with Michael and me this evening. Davis loves piano and usually likes to practice, but he HATES to fail at anything and the last thing he had to do for piano practice this evening was very challenging. Davis couldn't do it. So he quit and threw a HUGE fit when we insi...

Our last day on the boat included a stop in Nassau Bahamas. I had printed out a walking tour with possible side trip to the pirate museum to do with the kids, but when the day came, they didn't want to get off the boat. They wanted to spend the day in the kids club and on the water slides. Michael didn't really want to get off the boat either, and so we enjoyed having the boat to ourselves for the afternoon. We had a great time lounging at Posh, playing on the sports deck, and sitting on our balcony watching drunk, sunburned and overburdened people run down the dock to the Carnival ship as it readied to leave the port. That is such a fun thing to watch, people. Try it. The next morning we arrived in Miami. We had paid to have our bags taken directly to the airport and checked in without us so we were free to explore Miami with just our backpacks. We got off the ship around 9AM and took a taxi to the Bayside Marketplace so Michael and Davis could see it. We sat outsid...

My birthday was on a sea day. We woke up, took the kids to the breakfast buffet and dropped them off at the kids club. Michael and I went to the gym (we made it there 4 times on the cruise) and had a nice long run. We picked the kids up and went to lunch at the buffet before rushing down to the Bliss Lounge for a balloon animal making class. It was so fun! We learned how to make swords and puppy dogs. It was one of the best children's activities we've done on a boat. We went back to the cabin for some downtime and found a birthday cake waiting for me! My parents had sent me a birthday cake! I was so grateful. We all had huge slices and really enjoyed them. (I decided to eat dairy and pay the consequences later). Then Michael and the kids watched a movie and I paid for some internet time and had a great time reading all my birthday wishes on facebook. After our rest, the boys went back to the kids club and Michael and I went up to Posh on the 18th deck. It was the...

Finally our St. Thomas day had arrived. We woke up early again, packed our beach bag, had breakfast in the buffet and were some of the first ones off the ship. I had the right island this time and after a twenty minute taxi ride in the passenger vans they have there, we arrived at the Red Hook marina. We were early and so we grabbed a cup of tea at the coffee shop and waited at the pier for our Captain. He came along shortly and we all boarded the Rumbaba, a 37.5 foot racing sailboat. It had great reviews online and it was even better than expected. The crew was fabulous and kind, the boat sleek and stable and the food superb. We originally had planned to sail and snorkel around St. John, but the bad weather in the NE had caused huge swells in the caribbean that had killed people earlier in the week so instead, we went to Christmas Cove and snorkeled there. This was the first time the kids had snorkeled and we were excited for them. The weather was cool and overcast, though a...

We woke up early on Monday as were pulling into port in St. Maarten. We were so excited for our sail boat/snorkeling trip I had booked for my birthday. We had packed the beach bag the night before and sped through breakfast and were the first ones off the ship! When we asked the taxi driver to take us to the yacht club, he told me we were on the wrong island. Whoops! Turned out that our sail boat trip would take place on the St. Thomas. I guess I already had cruise ship brain. I ran back to the ship and changed out our beach bag and ran back. We were now ready for our beach day adventure. We took a taxi to Le Galion beach. It was gorgeous! The water was the most amazing color and you could walk out far into the water without it going higher than your knees. The kids had never seen clear water like that and were amazed. There were some floating swimming rafts and clean white sand. We paid for two chairs and a beach umbrella and settled ourselves. Michael opened a tab at th...

Sunday was a day at sea. We had booked a NickJr. Character breakfast, but hadn't told the kids. The breakfast was held in the Spiegel tent where they do the Cirque dreams dinner. It is a really neat space. We got a great table and really enjoyed meeting the people with whom we shared the table. The kids were thrilled to meet the characters, but Michael and I thought the show was pretty lame. Still the kids liked it and it was for them so it's okay. After breakfast we dropped the kids off at the the kid's club and went to check out Posh. It was awesome. We spread out on the big red cushioned beds on the 18th deck and ordered cocktails. Perfect. We picked up the kids for lunch and took them to the buffet and then to the pool. Sam swam and I watched him while Michael and Davis hit the pool slides. It was a bit chilly, but they all seemed to enjoy it. We dropped the kids back off at the kids club around 2 and went to a martini tasting at the Shaker's bar. Th...

Saturday morning, we took a quick taxi ride to the cruise terminal, dropped off our luggage at the curb and made our way into the terminal. We got our key cards and pertinent information and then waited to board. We were in group 6 and got on quickly. We went straight down to the guest services counter and bought the last two posh passes available. These are passes that allow us into the private lounge area on the boat reserved for the "haven" suite passengers. We were thrilled! Then we went down the hall to Taste restaurant for our first lunch aboard ship. The food was good and while we were dining, they announced that the cabins were ready. We rushed upstairs to deck 14 to see our family balcony cabin. It was tiny, but we loved it. I was worried before we arrived about the bathrooms on the epic, but I think they worked out fine. The bed was comfortable and our balcony was twice the size as others in our category. We dropped our backpacks and went to explore th...