Sea Turtle Rescue

On the Isle Majerus they have a Sea Turtle Rescue. It was pretty neat they had an incubation beach were they put the sea turtle eggs after they are laid. The center then puts the hatchlings in tanks until they are big enough to survive the wild. There were some turtles of all sizes that were really fun to watch as well as an albino one (that one stays at the center forever because it would not survive the wild).
There was a holding tank that had a few animals that the kids could hold and pet. We could not touch the turtles.
Baby ones.

Starfish

These starfish were all over in the area that is called King's Bath. It is a tide pool that is at the resort, it is very full of all sorts of sea life. We saw sea cucumbers, sea worms that looked like fuzzy caterpillars. There were sea fans and coral formations as well as tropical fish that would eat out of our hands. Side note to that Gemma learned that fish have teeth and do bite! She was feeding saltines to the fish and one of them got a bit aggressive it bit her thumb & caused a bit of stress for her since it was bleeding and it left grooves from it's teeth down her thumb nail.
There were sea urchins ans stingrays about the size of a large dinner plate. In the crevices of the rocks there were these starfish at first I thought I found an octopus, but after I fished it out of it's hole we realized it was a starfish. They are really neat! It is flexible and soft and can move very quickly.
I didn't get a picture of Jade with the starfish she found, but this on is the same size.
Jade and Cisco found these two starfish while snorkeling at the resort.
Gemma walked out and picked this one up. It was neat though because it kept sending out it's "sticky feet" and sticking to Gemma.

Mexico

This is where we stayed for the second week of our trip
Jade and Gemma sitting with Grandpa and grandma on the dock, Jade and Grandma and Cisco spent the day snorkeling
Gemma's habitat, all of the seashells are hermit crabs, there was also a little red crab in there too. She spent all morning catching the hermit crabs and then watching them crawl around the bucket. we let them go at the end of the day.
Gemma with her habitat.
Jade in the Ocean.

mexico

We went on a Pirate show dinner cruise, more about that laer
first day on the beach don't you just love the blue water?
SLC airport

We were very fortunate to be able to spend 2 weeks in Mexico this month. We left on December 13th and returned on Christmas Day. Please be patient with me as it will be a few posts :-)

My in-laws have a time share in Cancun on the Isle De Majerus and they invited us to spend a week with them there this year. Since James and I are very independent we decided to add a few days to the trip and go early to see Cancun before we were to meet his parents to go to the island. We had a fabulous time! It was warm and beautiful and really who's going to complain about spending an extra week on the beach? We stayed right on the beach in the Hotel zone in Cancun Major.

Hair

Jade's hair is so dark it's kind of hard to see but Gemma's is done the same way.

Turned out way cuter than I thought it would.

The kidlet's 4!!

I cannot believe my baby is 4! I guess it's a good thing that 4 is still pretty little! Gemma was born on Nov 21st, 2006 at 6:57 a.m. She was born on her due date and I was not induced. She was 8.5 lbs It was kind of funny but she looked like I had expected Jade to look... so I was surprised because after Jade was so different than what I expected and so surprising, that then I figured Gemma would look like Jade did. Silly I know.
A little bit about Gemma at 4:
Her favorite food is spaghetti so we took her to "The Old Spaghetti Factory" for dinner, (and yes I was buggy to the hostess because Gemma wanted to sit in the trolley, so I insisted, it was her birthday after all.)
It is really fun to spend the day with her every day and she has her own schedule that she adheres to every day. On day's that she doesn't want to go anywhere she won't change out of her pj's. She can work the TV, DVD player and DVR without any help. The kidlet cannot read but somehow she can find the list of recordings on the DVR and find Go, Diego, Go and then knows which ones she has watched and the new ones! She will change the TV without any trouble at all and feels that it is her choice on what we are watching at any given time. Silly kid. She loves to play with her princesses she has a bag of the little 3-4" ones that are like polly pockets, they keep her entertained for quite a while. She loves puzzles and ART!!! She loves to draw and cut and tape and glue and color! I keep a stack of computer paper on hand just for her if her's is gone she steals it out of the printer.
She loves to help me bake and cook, her current favorite is making frosting and getting to choose the color's.
For her birthday she really, really, really wanted a "Singing Weasel" AKA sing-a-ma-jigs. So she was excited to get two of them.
She likes old fashioned candy, like candy corn and cola bottles. She wears some form of frilly skirt every day, and not because she thinks she's a princess or is dressing up like one, but because she knows she is beautiful and she thinks the skirts are beautiful.
A few of her cute Gemma words:
Houses are "Castles"
her fingernails are "Shells"

Hairdo

Having fun with Gemma's hair