The Pre-Halloween Festivities

So hopefully after this post we will mostly be caught up, except for the actual wedding, but it may be a bit before we get those pictures. We're in the process of picking them out and getting them printed and whatnot.

Anyway, last weekend was a good warm-up for Halloween. Friday night, we headed up with Camshaft's fam and went to the Pumpkin Walk in Logan.

For those of you who have never been, it is a really fun (and free) activity that the community puts on every year where people make displays of famous scenes out of mostly pumpkins along with other vegetables. For example: Noah's Ark and Batman.

Michelle and Patrick helped out with the Pumpkin Walk, as Michelle's parent's help organize the event, and were part of the creation of a Sword in the Stone display.

We also caught two Jedi knights at the festivities.

This is just a small sample of the fun things at the Pumpkin Walk, but it should give you an idea as to what goes on there. It's a fun family evening.

Afterward, we also got a chance to see the Heidi and the boys in their halloween costumes.

The next evening, we went on the Ogden Ghost Tour, another great activity for anyone interested in the history of Ogden and is not easily spooked. We had been last year and enjoyed it, but this year we brought our camera and got some... interesting... photos. We won't go too into detail here, because we know some people are sensitive about that sort of thing, but there was some strangeness to be had along with all the history of the area.

Anyway, Happy Halloween everyone!

To Seattle! (The Open House)

Well, after the cruise we are and were still staying busy. So after being off the plane from Tampa for only 5 days, we headed to our open house in Snohomish with Mandee's sister Holli and her Grandma Child in tow.

There's actually not much to tell, we arrived up there in good order and hung out at Mandee's parent's house Friday night and Saturday. Mandee's cousin Kerry from Canada and Uncle Lynn from Hawaii cane and were part of the festivities for most of the day. They gave us some serving platters that everyone was jealous of. They even got used at the reception (the rotating platters below, along with a view of the goodies).



The reception was very nice. Mandee's mom made a very nice spread. Lots of the people from the Snohomish area that knew her family from church and work came. By Sunday afternoon, we were on a plane for Utah once again. These quick weekend trips are fun, but exhausting. Good times.

Cozumel and Tulum

Our last stop was to the Mexican island of Cozumel. But we had barely stepped off the boat when we were whisked away to the city of Playa del Carmen and then quickly walked to a bus where we started our trek to Tulum.

It ended up being fairly far away, and we even made a stop at a workshop where they work on reproductions of Mayan artifacts. It was very cool, and we wished we could have spent a bit more time there, because before we knew it we were back on the road again.

The actual site of Tulum is a half mile or so from the bus stop and behind some walls, so after a short walk, suddenly we were there. The city was a major port for the local people from about 1200 AD to 1500 AD and was called "Zama" back before being abandoned.It was quite the site, and much more had been uncovered than at Altun Ha. It was also extremely hot and humid, so we were both sweating like crazy, and it was very crowded. But it was worth it.

The city is dominated by a huge temple called "El Castillo," as seen from the distance above. It was the main site of worship for the Mayan and Toltec people that lived there, complete with human sacrifice and whatnot.

We had two other favorites. One was the Temple of the Frescoes, which was supposedly a fertility temple, where women would go worship when they wanted to get pregnant. It has a lot of cool carvings on the outside (and inside supposedly, but we really couldn't see those), including a cool carving of the Descending God (the main god of this area, left), and a carving af what they say is a baby holding it's umbillical cord (right).

The other cool spot was a structure called the Temple of the Wind. Our guide claimed that it was built as kind of a look out post for hurricanes; that when the wild would blow fast enough to be hurricane strength, that the whole building would act as a whistle that could be heard for miles. Luckily there were no hurricanes, so we couldn't experience it firsthand.

The whole city was also surrounded by a big wall, which some argue was primarily built as protection against hurricanes, while others state that it was like any other city wall. In any case, it was cool to see, especially considering some of the passages in the latter part of Alma in the Book of Mormon when they talk about the people of the Americas buiding great walls.

Tulum was beautiful, built right on the beach. The waters were very pristine and blue. It would be the last stop on our cruise, but would be one of our favorites. It was such a great and fun trip, just being able to relax after the last few hectic months. We enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it to anyone.

We'll leep you posted when we the wedding pictures back, and whatever else we can scrounge up from our ongoing adventures.

Belize

So our next stop was Belize City, the largest city in Belize. After a bus ride, we arrived in the Mayan ruins of Altun Ha. It was awesome. Our bus load was the first group there, so there was almost no one there while we took pictures and walked around. The coolest part about it was that it was occupied between 250 BC and 1000 AD, making it contemporary with the events that took place in the Book of Mormon. Who knows what might have happened here during those times! It's fun to imagine. They even let us climb this temple. Here's a view Camshaft standing on the main pyramid with his back towards the main plazas of the old city and one of Mandee facing the opposite direction with her back towards the jungle. These buildings were not only temples, but they also buried some of their priests under them. In one dig, they found a striking jade mask that the government of Belize keeps under lock and key that they consider one of their national treasures.

After leaving Altun Ha and making a short stop at a local restaurant, where we ate some local beans, rice, and chicken, we got on a boat and took a leisurely cruise down the Wallace River back to our boat. There was tons of wildlife around there, including howler monkeys (we saw so many, maybe even a whole barrel-full. We decided to name them all Patrick), several types of water birds, crocodiles, a variety of iguanas, bats, a crab, and manatees (they would just pop up out of the water for 1 to 2 seconds, so we couldn't actually get pictures of them). Here's a few of the shots:
The manatee area was the last stop. After sitting there watching and waiting for a few minutes, some ugly rainclouds snuck up on us. Our driver decided that we needed to get back to the ship ASAP, and gunned it full speed. Then the rain started. It was an absolute downpour. We were pelted so hard that we couldn't even look forward. It almost felt like hail. We were soaked from head to toe, but it soon stopped, and we made it back to the port safe and sound, quickly getting on the boat to dry off and get some rest. It was a full, but super-fun, day.

Roatan Honduras

So after a fun visit to the Cayman Islands, we made for an island off of the coast of Honduras called Roatan. The ship docked in a beautiful harbor called Coxen Hole where the locals were ready to greet us (We think they played their druns and danced the whole day).

We then headed to a nice spot by bus called Carambola Botanical Gardens. Incredibly green, they had not only let the natural forest grow, but had cultivated all sorts of plants native to Honduras there in the garden so that tourists could see them and learn about them. We saw a huge variety of plants: vanilla, cacao, coffee, mahogany, spanish cedar, teak, and palm trees of all kinds, just to name a few. We got to try some of the locally grown fruit and then headed on to the second part of our excursion.

After the botanical gardens, we headed to the Penang Butterfly farm. Not only did it have all sorts of butterflies, it had also become an animal sanctuary where they rescued abandoned pet birds and injured and sick wild animals that had be brought to them. Here's a sample of some of the animals we saw:

So after a couple more hours lounging and strolling on the west side of the island, we headed back to the ship. Another fun day.

The Cayman Islands

Our first stop in the cruise was the Cayman Islands. For anyone that has watched Pirates of the Carribean, the Grand Cayman (the island we stopped on) used to be called Tortuga. So besides the illegal bank accounts and the duty-free jewelry, there was pirate stuff everywhere.

The main excursion of the day was a pirate cruise excursion. We basically putted around in a pirate ship replica and watched a little show that the pirates did with some of the families on the excursion. They gave all the kids on the ship scrub brushes and made them swear on their lives that they would never lose their brushes. The kids also had to take a bunch of pirate oaths stating that they would never do their homework, go to bed on time, and that they would play video games all night. When one mother objected, they tied her to the mast and soaked her in icewater. Then they made all the kids scrub the deck. There were refreshments, and those that wanted to could walk the plank. The water was really warm, clear and blue, almost like a heated pool, except filled with saltwater instead of chlorine.

We spent the rest of the day walking around, taking pictures and checking out the local shops for trinkets. It rained off an on a lot of the day, but it wasn't bad, as the weather was so warm. Good times were had by all.

The Cruise

So it's been a long time since we've posted. With all the craziness, it just hasn't really been possible to find the time. But we're hoping that we can slowly get caught up on this blog with all the wedding and cruise and such.

Let's start with the cruise in general. We know, the wedding happened first, but as you probably know, weddin pictures can take a while to get picked and processed, so we'll try to get to those later.

Back to the cruise. Well, we had a great trip. It was so nice to just relax for a week. We hadn't realized how frazzled we were until we got on the boat. No cares and no worries after these last few months was just great.

This is our boat, the Carnival Legend. It was super-luxurious. Our room was very nice, and we had a balcony from which we spent quite a bit of time just sitting and relaxing, watching the water.

This was our room. It was very nice, not so much for the room, because being on a ship, it wasn't particularly large, but because of the service. We literally had people coming in, straightening up, and making the bed and replacing the towels twice a day. They even folded us all sorts of fun creatures out of towels while they were there.

They even offered free room service, but we didn't do much with that, as we preferred to go to the dining area to eat. They had a great selection of food, which allowed Camshaft to be adventurous with his pallette (fish, sushi, lobster, caviar, escargo, and a ton of different fish, to name a few menu items) and Mandee to be more conservative in her meal choices.

The ship always had a lot of fun activities, and we did a few. One afternoon, we decided to pretend to be all sophisticated and went to an art auction. We bid on a few things, but didn't win, as pretty much everything there was way out of the price range of a couple of poor newlyweds. The big item of the auction was a genuine Picasso that had a starting bid of $58,000. But while we weren't on excursions, we mostly spent our time either in the room, napping and relaxing, or in the dining hall (they did have a 24 hour buffet as well, incidentally, but we didn't eat there as much). There were also a lot of shows, including a big show every night that seemed to alternate between comedians or else big musical reviews with singers and dancers.

Well, that's about all we can think of for this post. We will try to go through our excursions in the following days and will get to the wedding when we get our pictures back. On and incidentally, here's another interesting picture from our balcony. That's Cuba! Crazy, huh. We were that close.