If it doesn’t feel like time is flying by in September, by the time October gets here is really picks up the pace. School, activities, holidays, more birthdays, and all the things that go with those make it hard to stop and enjoy everything that is going on.
Matthew’s last baseball season with his FBC competitive team was in full swing for September and October. They played pretty much every weekend. There was a weekend in October that off and that was it. I have a lot of good pictures from this season. I will share them in another post.
The biggest event for October was our family trip we have been planning for a while. Unless something changes it is our last big family vacation together before Matt graduates and goes on his mission and the family dynamic shifts into a new era. We talked about what we should do and asked Matt for his input a lot because it was also over his 18th birthday so we wanted to celebrate that too. Matt loves beaches, sunshine, warm places, fishing and food. After tossing a few ideas around like Hawaii, Alaska, cruise, and all inclusive beach resorts, we decided that a cruise would check the most boxes on the wish list. When we went on a cruise in 2019 for Christmas with the kids we had a great time but we thought it would be fun if they each had a buddy. Since then we have tossed the idea around with Ross and Lauren to come on a cruise with us. Matt asked if that could happen with this trip so we invited them too. Each pair of people ended up with their own room.
We settled on a cruise in October that was the week of Matthew’s actual birthday. A few weeks before the cruise there was some issues with Ross and Lauren not realizing they had other priorities the same week. I don’t really want to get into all the details but I was pretty upset about it. They were going to send Ethan and Leah home alone half way through the cruise, but luckily the cruise required them to have an adult accompany them. So Ethan, Leah and Lauren left half way through the cruise which was dumb. Allison and Matthew were on their own the last two days but we had a great time still.
A few days before we left all the girls went to the nails salon together and got a manicure for the cruise.
To include Matthew’s love of fishing and for part of his birthday present, our family drove down to Galveston Texas a few days before the cruise left. We drove to Dallas and stayed night with Kenny and Sherri. Then next day we drove the rest of the way to Galveston and that afternoon we Ryan booked us a deep sea fishing boat.
Matthew and Ryan went ocean fishing a few years ago in Florida for Matt’s birthday. They caught probably 40 fish in a few hours. This time…we caught one fish…in five hours. It was a good one though. Matt caught a 4 1/2 foot long black tip shark. Once we got it on the hook Matthew wrestled it until we got it up to our boat. He did a good job, he said it was a little awkward because the pole the shark bit was right handed and he usually fishes left handed. I was the video/picture person. I tried to get fancy and take photos while I was videoing and at the point when he pulled it out of the water the most instead of taking a picture I stopped and started the video. 😢 Total mom fail. I still got some video and pictures though. The captain asked us if we wanted to keep it but we had no where to store it because we were getting on the boat the next day. So we let it go. It was a fun experience to watch him real in the shark. Pretty exciting. The other 4 hours and 50 minutes was a little slow, that is the lot of a fisher. I thought just relaxing and floating on the waves was great. The others had occasional waves of sea sickness but everyone kept everything in their stomachs.
After a day of fishing we went to dinner and checked into our hotel for the night. The next morning we headed to the boat! We didn’t realize it at the time we booked the cruise but the ship we were on was the same one we went on with the kids in 2019. Mariner of The Seas. The kids were all paired up and had their own rooms. Allison and Leah’s room ended up being the hangout spot for cousins when they weren’t doing other things. They mentioned a few times the room was pretty hot. A few days into the cruise we realized their AC wasn’t working. We called maintenance and 30 minutes later it was much cooler in their room. The first day we explored the ship and got settled in our rooms. We discovered the ice cream cone dispensary and snack areas, soda refills, all the important things.🤣 For dinner we ate at the Hibachi grill. It was a fun kick off to the cruise.
It seemed like the kids really enjoyed having a buddy and doing whatever they wanted together. We all got a lot of activities in on the ship. We had two days at sea, plus the embarking day. Some of the favorite things we did were shows, trivia games, dance parties, swimming, the flow rider, water aerobics, mini golf, rock climbing, napkin folding, working out, finding and hiding ducks, napping on the deck, watching movies at the pool, ice skating, board games, a sushi making class and eating lots of yummy food. Our waiters names each night were April and Jozie. They were really nice and took great care of us. They had been on the boat for 7 months and were getting off to go home for the holidays the same day we did. The only picture Matthew asked for the whole time was with them. They always brought him extra food. I have never seen someone eat so much, he was like a food vacuum. He started keeping track of how many ice cream cones he ate but lost track after 34. The girls decorated their doors and I decorated Matthew’s room for his birthday.
We had two days at Ports. The first was Costa Maya. We all went to a beach and the kids played keep away and we did some souvenir shopping. The second was Cozumel. It was raining pretty good in the morning. Our family had an excursion booked. Jovee came with us and everyone else went to the airport to fly most of their family home. We were debating on canceling the excursion due to rain. When we were checking in they told us we needed two drivers with a drivers license. Ryan didn’t have his so Matthew and I were the drivers for our group. They asked us a bunch of health questions and when they asked about asthma I said yes but not who had it. They said Matthew couldn’t drive if he had asthma (how dumb is that btw) so Allison immediately said it was her. We went along with it (not the best example, I know) and I told them it wasn’t bad at all and we weren’t concerned about it. Then they said that Allison could not only not snorkel but she couldn’t go on the boat to snorkel because if she needed medicine they couldn’t help her. I told them it was fine and I had her medicine if she needed it, which she wouldn’t. Then they were really freaking out because I had medicine. It was a disaster. We decided to just cancel the excursion and rented our own car. We drove ourselves to the cenote that was on our excursion and it was closed anyway because of the rain. We drove for a bit until we found a nice beach that it wasn’t raining at. We had an almost empty beach with chairs and a restaurant. We rented some boogie boards for the kids and they enjoyed the pretty big waves for several hours. It was a great afternoon and I was happy that it wasn’t ruined by rain or asthma. It is so fun to see new places and make new memories.
We got off the boat early in the morning on a Saturday and drove the whole way home. Matthew had a baseball tournament that weekend and we were able to get back so he could play on Sunday and help them win. It is going to be very different and feel weird when Matthew and then the girls start leaving the house. I have enjoyed this phase of our lives. I still am but it is getting alarmingly close to it coming to an end.