Earl Family Cruise - Day 5

For my (Courtney) blog post I decided that I needed to give out awards to the deserving participants of our family cruise. For those of you who didn't realize that our reunion was a constant competition of who is the smartest, best looking, most athletic...etc, then you probably aren't an Earl....

It's no shock to any of you that I win the most awkwardly quiet award (I was actually the only one in our family eligible for this award ever since Rhode learned how to talk). So I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking in this blog.

The competition started out with a nice little van drive over to a waterpark called Aquaventura. Dad almost took the Gringo Translator Award with his bilingual skills in portuspanglish getting us there, but Trevor pulled ahead at the last second by scoring us some taxi rides back home. Trevor wins! (Although I think that they might have both been disqualified because of how much sunblock they had to put on in the water park...embarrassing)

So we went to the park and watched a dolphin show. We watched the trainers being launched in the air and doing back flips and were all wondering the same thing... How in the world is swimming with sea lions going to be cooler than this?

But we had faith in my dad's patient who told him that our "swim with the sea lions tour" we had pre-signed up for would be more fun than swimming with the dolphins. This is our excited faces as we were lead to the pool to go meet the sea lions...

...and this is Pepe...


Yup... This is about how interested we were in learning about sea lions. (How fast can those dolphins swim?)

I'm pretty sure that this next conversation went like this...
Kristy: How long do we have to pet this thing for?
Trevor: I don't know... I'm going to pretend to be excited and give a thumbs up so they don't see how weird this actually it.



Turns out they changed the program so you don't get to actually swim with the sea lion (turns out, its kind of dangerous, whoda thought?). But you do get to watch it do poses and you get to pet it while it lays there like a tub of lard in front of you. (I think it would have actually been less gross to pet a tub of lard) Luckily we got a nice award out of this and so the Best sea lion picture goes to Mom!

Preview

(although I'm not really sure it was a fair competition because this was the only time that Pepe decided to do anything cool)

Luckily for us, Mexicans don't like to give money back and dad is good at pretending like he is rich so we got a free lunch and we got to visit with the dolphins later that day! Dad gets the King of getting whatever he wants award for that display.

• Sidenote: At lunch our table was swarming with bees. Kacey made us all feel stupid for being afraid of them because of course "if you leave them alone they wont sting you." Let me tell you, I was about two seconds away from crying and showing her kids my bee sting so they would be scared of bees forever just to get back at her...

So this is our newest friend Dori...


Yeah I know... Bring back Pepe! We want to see some more of that beastly face and moldy fur! But I guess Dori will just have to do.

We got to feel, shake hands, and even kiss the dolphin. (I guess it's ok for dolphins to give out their kisses like pretzels) Although this picture was a great contender for best dolphin picture, unfortunately it lacked the kind of dedication that it takes to be a winner. (Scarlet couldn't reach the dolphin on her own...aren't you Kacey's kid?) But there is nothing cuter than seeing a baby kiss a dolphin.


And the Best picture with a Dolphin award goes to Mom! Just look as she accepts that kiss with such style in her designer sunglasses. Plus it's mothers day. (Kylie stop crying...The judges were sick of talking about how cute you were when you were little...)

Here is a shout out to my father who for once actually looks blind in one eye in this picture.

So what's my excuse?....

We also had a great day just running around and going on all the different slides. This also opened up a lot of opportunities for awards. First we are going to start with the best toilet bowl slide picture. To explain, the toilet bowl slide is a crazy contraption. You jet down this water slide at full speed and it launches you into this circular bowl. You take a few speedy circles around the tube until you go falling out the bottom.

Now you would think that Brad would have won because he is the biggest (fattest?) and could go down the slide the fastest.

Or it could have gone to Jon Wayne who likes to pose for the camera while he is going down.

But no.... Neither of them are writing this day's blog... So the award for Best toilet bowl picture goes to me! (Courtney... in case you forgot who I was because of the middle child curse) I won because I'm pretty sure this looks exactly like what Barbies look like when they get flushed down the toilet.



You have to look closely at this next picture to see what exactly is going on but Scarlet is "helping" Rhode go down the slide by bossing him around and making sure that he is waiting for his turn.

So the award for having kids who are exactly like you goes to Kacey! (Kacey just called to order me to finish my blog right now...some things never change)

After the eventful time at the water park, all the competitors walked down the beach of Puerto Villarta. There were many different interesting things along the way. This is one of the first things that we saw.


Yes... he stacks rocks for a living. At first, you might think it is a little pathetic. But your next thought is probably...this is what Bryan can do! So the Finally we found some useful skill for this kid award goes to Bryan! We were all so happy to find something that our poor little Bryan might actually be able to accomplish with his life. (I think this might be his first award ever)

Joking Bryan... we all know those rocks would be too heavy for you to lift...

There were also a lot of sand castle artists that we enjoyed looking at along the way. There was one certain piece of artwork that was my personal favorite. In case you can't tell, it is a sculpture of the last supper made out of sand.


Yeah, it was pretty amazing. So the Something Jon Wayne can't do award goes to.... Jose? Carlos? Juan?.... I'm sure one of them is right.


Then we all went back on the ship and ate dinner after a long day of competing. It really was such a fun time for us all. I think most of us would agree that Puerto Villarta wins the Best day of the vacation award. Not because of all the fun things that we got to do... Mostly because we got to do them with each other. I am so blessed to have been born into such a great family. And even more blessed to have such an incredible mother! We would be nothing without you mom. I love you and Happy Mothers Day!

Earl Family Cruise - Day 4

Hey this is Kendall! I got the task of Day 4 of the cruise, our second day in Cabo. This day started off with splitting into two groups, the tough ones and the weak ones. Alright alright we won't call them that. We'll call the two groups the Swikers and the Shoppers.

For those of you who don't know, Swiking is a combination of hiking and swimming. Jon led dad, Brad, Bryan, Courtney, and me over rocks and through water on a swike to Lover's Beach.

We got to go see the Arch up close until we were shooed away for "our own safety". Then we got to sit around waiting for the shoppers to show up so that we could get some dry clothes and towels.

The shoppers had a great start to their day in Cabo too. The shoppers included mom, Kacey, Kristy, Trevor, Kylie, Scarlet, and Rhode. When they got off the boat they straight away went to go take pictures with a lion and tiger cub. Kristy's tiger cub started to bite at her so it got taken away...
Then they actually did some shopping and Scarlet got a beautiful necklace which she bargained down for all by herself. She informed the very nice sales lady that she only had a few birthday dollars left and the lady let her buy it anyway. So far she hasn't tried the strategy at Walmart... yet. The necklace was popular at first but was quickly misplaced until her very dutiful and loving aunt Kendall found it in her bag.Finally the Shoppers came to Lover's Beach to give much needed food and clothing to the Swikers. We all chilled for a bit on the beach. Which was mostly just a lot of sitting and picture taking...

Getting back on the water taxi was an adventure. One of our favorite parts about sitting on the beach was watching all of the workers try desperately to get large tourists hoisted up onto their boats to get them off the beach. The water came in fast so it was usually a one shot effort to get them on or off. Sometimes it took two or three people to get a particularly large tourist back into their boat. A blooper reel of some of the fantastic wipe outs we saw.... well it would be legendary.

And we laughed about it up until it was our turn to do the boarding. The water had picked up speed and our boat was having a really hard time staying close to the shore. Us smaller people were literally tossed onto the boat while the more fragile ones (well pretty much the pregnant Kacey) had to time well and pray with all their might that they would not be making any other beach walkers blooper reels. We all made it, Rhode told us that was the best part of the day, and we sailed back to the ship. Back to our 5 course meals and chocolate melting cake.

Earl Family Cruise Day 3

Brad will be our Day three emcee.

Day 3 of the cruise was our first day in Cabo San Lucas. Everyone but me had already been to Mexico multiple times so there were different levels of excitement for being in Mexico. We planned to go to Chilleno Bay, which is about 15 miles from Cabo. Jon warned us about all the merchants that would be bothering us as we walked down the docks and, for being such nice people, I would say we did an excellent job of ignoring just about everyone in our path.

The only distraction we had was the "Take a picture with a lion and tiger." It's not everyday you see a baby tiger. We were able to say no for now but that didn't last long. Kristy knew that she had to get her picture taken with that tiger before she left, but more about that later. We were able to find some taxis big enough to take us all over to the beach thanks to the espanol skills of Dad and Trevor (emphasis on the Trevor part of that duo). Mom likes to joke that mine and Jon's mission experiences are totally useless to the family. I just say we need to go on some bigger vacations to Eastern Europe and Korea. But anyways, we got to the beach and had a great time. We found some great snorkeling spots and just hung out on the beach. Luckily only Jon and Trevor were stung by sea creatures and none of the wimpier people (myself included) had any problems with out aquatic friends. Here are some pictures from Chilleno Bay:

Scarlet found some seashells while swimming in the ocean

Lookin good guys

Chilleno Bay

Courtney and Kylie enjoying the waves

"This will protect me from the hot Mexican sun" -Buster Bluth

Scarlet was loving the water. We couldn't get her out of it!

Courtney and Kylie even entertained us with a little synchronized ocean swimming

But it's all fun and games until...

Someone drops their older sister on their head.

After we had enough of the beach we took taxis back to the city and got dropped off at a local place that made some really good pork tacos.

Then we got back on the ship, enjoyed a very funny prop comedy routine (so funny even Scarlet got a few of the jokes) and passed out. It was such a fun day but that Mexican heat really took it out of us!