Needing Suggestions

So from the rumors running around it sounds like Anton's job may not start for over a year. That's a long time to be living jobless in my parents' basement. So I'm looking to you all to help us. What would you do if you had a year and you were completely unattached to jobs, homes, etc.? It can't be something expensive, like traveling the world, because we are jobless. But it could involve traveling if we were being compensated, liked teaching English abroad. It could involve school, since we both get military education benefits. We've looked at teaching English, which we're not really qualified for, but would love to do it if we could. We looked at sending Anton back to school to get his BA, but we're not residents of Utah so the tuition is more than the G.I. Bill will cover. So does anyone have any suggestions? Something less than a year and not expensive. Help me internet friends; you're my only hope!

Updates per people's comments:

We would only want to go to school if it furthered our careers in some way. We don't want to use up our military benefits just to get a job for less than a year. All Utah state sponsored schools are out, too expensive. BYU has already rejected Anton in the past, so no go there.

I do already have a job. I am still scoping part time. So I don't need a job, unless of course it was handed to me on a platter as something I would love to do that would make me more money than scoping, but that's not going to happen.

Also, we kind of want to do something meaningful, as in service or volunteering or something like that, but we would want a sense of adventure in whatever it is and the kids would have to be able to do it too. I realize this is asking for things that probably don't exist, but there it is.

Halloween Happenings

We had a fun Halloween. This was the first year both kids really understood what was going on which made things more enjoyable.

We started out the festivities the night before by carving pumpkins.

Neither of the kids were too sure about sticking their hands in the pumpkin goop, but they warmed up to it.

Both kids picked what they wanted on their pumpkins and mom and dad helped them cut it out.

Ella's was a self portrait. She was vary particular about how everything looked.

After hers was done, Ella moved on to help Daddy with his and Alex's. I love the look of concentration with the tongue hanging out.

Next year we might just stick with 2 pumpkins until the kids can carve their own.

And since my pumpkin looks better in the light, it gets a picture all its own.

I wanted a witch hat to put on it, but didn't feel like hunting one down.

And in all their lit up glory:

Alex's is the monster and Anton's the peeping Tom, which I thought was completely appropriate per his known habits (fourth picture down).

On Halloween itself we had mummy dogs for dinner:

Ella dressed up as Annie wearing a dress my mom made me when I was her age, and Alex dressed up as a knight.

Their favorite part was grandpa setting up the Great Pumpkin.

He makes a new face for it every year, and it glows in the dark.

At the end of the night he lets the grandkids climb inside of it and make pumpkin shadows. Such fun!

But before all that, we got the pumpkins set up:

Ella was acting really lethargic all night long. It's no surprise she woke up this morning with a barking cough and talking like a frog. This is what she looked like all night:

Poor thing. She wanted so badly to hand out candy and go trick-or-treating with her cousins, I just couldn't send her to bed.

The kids had fun trick-or-treating, even though we didn't go to many houses since it was too cold for the parents outside.

And that's about it. Fun times.

Another Cake

One thing about being here in Utah, there will not be a lack of cakes needing to be made for my family. It was my niece's birthday the other day, and she requested a monkey theme. I was happy to oblige.

Now, I know you all think I hate every cake I make, but that is just not true. I actually like this one, even if I had to make two batches of frosting in order to make it because the first one tasted nasty.

I mean, who can resist this cute little monkey holding her opened banana? I modeled it after a Little Pet Shop monkey.

See the resemblance, a little?

It even has a cute little tail.

And I couldn't resist a really silly play on words. Her name actually rhymes with banana, but I resisted the urge to go that far.

So there you go, a cake I don't hate. For the record.

Leaves are Falling

My kids have never played in the leaves before in their lives. Isn't that sad? Let me show you what they'd been missing:

(We had mac n' cheese for lunch. Can you tell?

The Vacation

For the longest time Anton and I had said over and over again that all we needed was a break, a vacation, time away. So when vacation prices started dropping at the end of the summer, we decided to ignore our joblessness and go on vacation. We chose a Mexican Riviera cruise on the Norwegian Star. So a couple weeks ago, we left the kids in the capable hands of Grandma, and headed off for some time off.

I won't give you all the minute details of everything we did. That would bore you to tears. But you are still going to have to wade through quite a few photos. Though I have to admit, I left the big fancy camera at home for this one. I just wanted to relax. And lugging that brick of a camera around is not my idea of relaxation.

We left from L.A. Harbor and it was bright and sunny and warm.

That's our ship.

Watching the ship pull out of the harbor.

You would not believe how entertained we were this whole trip just by watching the ship pull in and out of harbors and be tied up to docks. It's crazy that a ship that big fits in some of the places it did.

We spent the first afternoon just orienting ourselves and eating food. I'll come back to the food later. I have a bit of something to say about it.

That night it was Mexican in honor of our ports of call. That mango salsa there at the bottom of the picture was divine. It saved what otherwise was a mediocre meal.

Day 2 was at sea. We wandered the ship. Spent lots of time hanging over the railings. We saw flying fish, a hammerhead shark, a sea turtle, and lots of birds whose name I don't know. We partook of some of the entertainment options. Just a lot of hanging out and relaxing. No pictures to prove it, though.

Day 3, Cabo San Lucas. We were really eager to get off the ship that morning and hung out on deck staring over the railing. We also took a bunch of pictures.

This is one of only a few pictures with us actually together.

The boat behind me in the pictures is how we got to shore. They were hot and crowded.

We only had a short time in port, so we were forced to book an excursion through the ship. We chose to go snorkling in Chileno Bay. But first out boat swung by the infamous Cabo landmark, El Arco, The Arch.

And now I can say I did everything there is to do in Cabo.

And look, another picture of us!

We were on a catamaran, and they actually put the sail up, but then never used it. It was all for looks. Oh well, it was fun anyways.

They gave us our snorkel equipment and pointed us towards the fish and off we went.

(I look thrilled.) Anton got sea sick in the water so he didn't stay out too long, but I swam as long as I could. There were some fun fish to see and some coral, but it wasn't anything spectacular.

The ride back was fun because the spray kept coming up through the netting we were sitting on and we were soaked when we got back.

We had just enough time when we got back to go check out a taco place I had heard about, Gordo Lele's.

The guy is obsessed with the Beatle's and the walls are covered in paraphernalia. And the tacos, well, I wasn't hugely impressed. I ordered the carne asada, and they were out. So I got chicken instead and it was just so-so. And the guys after me ordered 6 carne asada tacos and somehow they got theirs, so who knows. Also, I got to eat mine while hurrying down the road to get to Hard Rock Cafe so Anton could get one of their souvenir glasses he collects. Not the best way to enjoy eating anything.

After that it was back to the ship. I honestly don't remember what we did that night. I'm sure we saw a show and ate food. You know, typical cruise stuff.

Day 4, Mazatlan. We planned a more low-key day in Mazatlan. It was blasted hot there. Plus we had gotten a little sunburned the day before, so we tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible. In an effort to do so, we bought some really tacky hats that just screamed, "Hey! We're tourists!"

I felt like a dork, but at least the sun was off my face.

We wandered the town a bit to see the sights that I had read were the sights to see, but when we got to the various locations, we didn't know enough about any of them to really know why they were sights worth seeing.

We stopped at a church.

It was pretty inside.

We stopped by a theater which we only took a picture of because we wandered forever to try and find it and when we finally did we thought, "That's it?"

Then we gave up being tourists and headed to the beach. We took a water taxi over to Stone Island, pulled up a chair under the grass huts, and just kicked back and relaxed.

It was a really pretty beach and the water was nice and warm.

We ordered smoothies and garlic shrimp that was DIVINE! And they were huge. Mazatlan is a big shrimp port and I wasn't going to go there without getting some shrimp.

It was nice to sit and do nothing.

In the shade.

The place we went to was called Victor's in case any of you ever want to go.

And when we were all tired out from resting and relaxing, we headed back to the ship. Where we spent the night at shows and eating food and so on.

Day 5, Puerto Vallarta. This was our favorite stop. The town was really pretty and our activity was the best ever! We went zip lining.

There were 15 different zip lines, and the longest one was over a quarter mile long and 500+ feet above a river gorge.

We both also got to hang upside down while crossing at least one of the lines.

There's Anton defying death.

Lots of fun that was over way too soon.

The company was Los Veranos. They did an excellent job. And we ate at their restaurant afterwards and I got bacon wrapped shrimp with a mango dipping sauce, and it was pure heaven. I could have eaten 5 plates of the things if the budget and time would have allowed. Yum.

We wandered along the boardwalk in town for a while afterwards.

Of all the ports we went to, the only one I think we would ever go back to on purpose would be Puerto Vallarta.

Our last two days were at sea, and we did a lot of what we'd done before, saw shows, ate food, hung over the railing, etc. It was nice to have the sea days at the end when you're all tired out from the port stops.

We did karaoke one night. I made Anton get up and sing Summer Nights with me even though he hardly knew the song. He did great. I love karaoke.

(Waiting to sing our song.)

We had an inside room on the ship, and I really think that next time we go we'll have to get a balcony because we spent so much time looking over the side of the ship.

The extra money would be so worth being able to sit and read books and see the ocean from the privacy of my room. Though our room wasn't bad.

That's the doorway where you come in.

That's the bed with the TV off to the left.

Good sized bathroom and shower.

The public areas of the ship were nice too.

That's the Grand Atrium. The main central area of the ship.

And that's the main dining room. Speaking of dining, let me tell you the greatest disappointment from this cruise, the food. I felt sick after every meal. Everything was heavy and overly rich, and the use of leftovers was far too apparent. Plus, they put diced carrots on every pasta dish I ordered. Carrots. On pasta. Yuck. There were a couple of highlights, some of the desserts were great, and the sushi restaurant was FANTASTIC. Soooo good. And it was all you can eat, and we ate all we could.

The entertainment on the ship was pretty abysmal too. The musical productions were high school quality. The magic show was pathetic. But the juggler and Chinese acrobats were pretty cool.

Thankfully the ship made it easy to be self-entertained by their choices of signage around the ship. Let me show you what I mean:

Example #1:

This picture was on a white box out on deck. A box of fishhooks, right? Or maybe snakes for the snake charming show? Okay, it may be for the fire hose, but we wouldn't want to make that too obvious, now would we?

Example #2:

These were in all the public bathrooms. I think it might be kind of important not to put the paper towels down the toilet. I'm not really sure, though. It's just an impression I'm getting. Maybe they need to post a sign about it in the bathroom.

Example #3 (and my favorite):

When the ship is being attacked by a giant killer octopus and the ship just happens to catch on fire, here is where you find the plans on what to do. The plans might also work in cases of lightning strikes, but only when 6 bolts strike at once.

There was also another sign that I forgot to take a picture of. It was in our shower. It said, "Please test temperature." I wonder how many silly people managed to burn themselves in the shower before the cruise line had to put those up? And you know what? The water temperature was even written right on the temperature control knob. Sheesh.

But all in all we had a really good time, as evidenced by how tired Anton looks on our last morning:

While we probably won't be rushing out to book another Norwegian cruise anytime soon, we haven't written off cruising in general. And it was really nice to be away from the kids for a week. Though I guess they had all sorts of fun cross-dressing with grandma. I guess it's hard to tell 5 year old girl clothes from 3 year old boy clothes? At least it was only for a week.

Still working on it.

I'm still working on that cruise post. Photoshop has eaten my edited photos numerous times, so it's a slow process.

But I wanted to write about something cute Alex has been doing lately so I don't forget about it in the future.

He has taken to singing "I Am A Child of God," all the time, really loud. His favorite is the second verse, which he sings like this:

"I am a child of God, and so my KNEES are great..."

(Bad picture, but the only one I could find right now.)

Now, while I think he's got cute knees, I don't think he needs to go around announcing it in the grocery store and the library and the park and at everyone's house we go to. A little humility goes a long way, my child. What a cutie.

In the Meantime

While I try and get all our photos edited and ready to post from our Mexico cruise, I figured I'd give you something to look at in the meantime. Right after we got to Utah we had a three-way birthday party for two of my sisters and my niece. I volunteered to make the cake. And as usual, things just didn't go well. So if you can ignore the tendency to lean that this cake has, I will show you the photos.

Each birthday girl got their own tier. I made little pictures of things that remind me of all of them to put on each layer.

My big sister got a Guitar Hero guitar, a cooking pot and spoon, a stack of books, and a bird (she likes to birdwatch).

My littlest sister got her dog Toby (who looks like he's wearing a tux, but it was just his white fur belly), a skull and crossbones, and a microphone and note. She's into karaoke and sings at people's weddings and such.

And my cute little teeny bopper niece got an iPod Nano with the Twilight logo on it with a set of headphones.

So it was all a little wild and crazy, but the chocolate cake I made for two of the layers was the best chocolate cake I've made so far. It was divine.

And even though we were only gone on our cruise for a week, I swear the kids had grown while we were gone. Here's a couple pics of them and some drawings they had done before we left.

Jekyll.

And Hyde. They're a couple of crazies, I tell 'ya.

So anyway, sometime in the probably not so near future I'll have all sorts of vacation pictures to show you. Don't hold your breath, though.