The Mayan and Living Planet Aquarium

As you can see by the pictures, we had a great weekend with my mom and brother, who drove down for a visit. It was so fun to have them stay with us for a couple of days. I don't get to see my brother too often since he lives in Washington, so this was extra special. I get to see my mom more often, so her coming was not a big deal (just kidding mom!) The Mayan is pretty amazing these days! When they call your party, it's "Cook party, pack your bags. Your adventure is about to begin!" Cheesy, but it's true....it's an adventure. The divers are awesome (not to mention ripped!). And the food is GREAT!!! Not bad prices either, especially since it includes entertainment and cool atmosphere. No I'm not being paid to say these things. From left to right: my mom, my brother, me, riley, ben.
Open wide!!! You can never get enough ice cream, although it's funny to watch him get a brain freeze...I mean, it's so sad to watch him get a brain freeze.
Apparently I can also open wide. I love how kids make the feeding face when they are giving you a bite, just like some of us do when we give them a bite. You know what I mean....when you open wide and bite down on air in unison with your child.
The aquarium was fun, although a little pricey for what was there. I couldn't get Riley to touch the sting ray. They a soft an slimy, but their spines are spiky and creepy.

Liberty Park

There's a bird in the shadow there. It bites. I know. It bit my finger when I offered it.
My adorable brother Chris, explaining some deep life lesson to Riley about how to be cool.

I operated these rides when I was 14. And teenagers are still in charge. Kinda scary but hey even teenagers need money! Riley fought the young worker who tried to get him out of the plane when the ride was over.....arched back, kicking, screaming, the works.
One of my favorite pictures! Riley is such a little dude.
I think Riley is smiling behind that bar. He loved this ride, even when we threatened to throw him overboard he thought it was a good idea :)
Liberty park is still beautiful, but not like I remember as a kid. If you go there you can see the groundskeeper has taken some time off.

Boys just wanna have fun!

We are back, and had a great time on our cruise! I am not even going to try to make a nice, neat and even looking post with all these pictures because there are too many pictures and I have a hard time making a post look nice with just a few pics! As you can see by my hair in one of the pictures, it was sometimes very windy!






I love this picture!! I wish the sunset had come through better in the photo.

These Senor Frog stores were everywhere! It's hard to tell, but the whole outside of the store is covered in water falls. It's neat to be inside the store and just be surrounded by water!




This place new how to serve a DIET COKE! This was a huge goblet. Ben enjoyed his margarita as well!

I went parasailing!!! Nothing like trusting your life to a bunch of people you just met!!!









The entertainment on the ship was AMAZING! Great singers, dancers, and comedians.




Some scenic pictures in Cabo San Lucas!



Our waiter, Rajeev from India!

Once again here we are eating. We did a lot of this on our cruise because the food was SO good and it was everywhere!
There was another cruise ship out there! But as you can see in the picture, it was a LOT smaller than ours :)
We really had fun, and definately want to go on another cruise someday (maybe to Hawaii or the Mediteranean.) Next time I will for sure wear sunscreen, because in my effort to get really tan, I got really burned which made two of the days a little miserable. And the last couple of days Ben's face looked like it had some disease he was peeling so bad! It was seven days, which is a pretty long vacation for us, and turns out it's just the perfect length....we felt like we had enough time to relax and have fun...and ready to come home too. It's such a shift to go from cruising to being a parent again, but man I love being a mommy! And Ben loves being a Dad. Riley keeps us laughing, especially now that we've started attempting to potty train. More to come on that...let's just say for now that Riley is already trying to manipulate the treat-for-going-potty system. More to come!

Last weekend we spent the night at my brother and sister-in-law's house while they went for a weekend getaway. Including Riley, we had six kids! It was definately fun even though near impossible to maintain a clean house with that many kids, but I was actually sad when we had to leave Saturday night. As you can see by the pictures, Riley has a cousin who is as cute as he is, and they had fun feeding a pet lamb (Yes, the picture of the stressed out lamb IS the pet lamb and yes, it hangs out in the house!). Riley also tackled his new hobby....skateboarding. He's much better than me all ready and he's only two! They also had fun in the tub. Riley refused to get out. Even after the water was completely drained he's still slipped around the tub on his belly for five minutes and was upset when I pulled him out. Ben and I will be leaving soon for our cruise, and we are pretty excited! It's hard to believe it's actually happening. We apologize to any friends that we haven't been able to get together with for a long time...things have been BUSY. Even though school is out, I am just as busy because I am taking care of the lawn again here at the townhomes, plus working part time as a cashier again for the summer. The rest of the time I am having fun with Ben and Riley! But we miss some of our friends that we haven't seen for awhile. Bon voyage!!!