Family Cruise to Ensenada

With Erika leaving on a mission to Peru on January 17, 2017, we wanted to take one last family vacation before she left. After much waffling, we finally decided to book a cruise out of Long Beach, California to Catalina Island (California) and Ensenada, Mexico. We decided to go Jan. 1-4, since that was half the price of the week before.

The kids were on board with doing this instead of Christmas presents this year, so other than a couple of gifts from grandparents and one that the kids got for each other, the remaining presents were more of a white elephant gift exchange. (Like a Buzz Lightyear toy I had gotten at work as part of the "Infinity" team; and a slot car set that came free with our oven). As they opened each odd gift, I'd say, "Because that's the kind of Christmas this is," and we had a lot of fun with it. And it was perhaps the least stressful Christmas I've had in years, and oddly one of the most enjoyable for everyone. And to top it all off, we had a white Christmas.

As we packed for our trip, Kelsi modeled her traveling hat.

And so, on Friday, December 30, 2016, after attending the sealing of a dear friend, Katelyn White (who used to play with Kelsi when they were little), we piled into the van and headed south for the winter.

Bill and Robin Christensen were kind enough to let us stay with them in St. George for the night. Ben and Andrea were there with their kids, too, and it was fun to see them and get to know their great kids better.

Erika had a creative way of getting ready for bed.

Bill and Robin recently finished their back patio, which has a great setup for barbeques and campfires.

Linette tried to not be so short when hugging Erika, but it didn't work.

Robin and Bill were very gracious, and it was fun to visit with them. (Ben's little boy looks exactly like Ben did at that age, with the awesome curly hair).

As we drove to California, Kelsi, Jared and Erika practiced singing a Disney trio in harmony, and it was pretty entertaining. They decided to video it, and Adam and Sienna did spontaneous synchronized swimming-style hand motions in the back seat, which was hilarious.

At the risk of being strangled by my kids, here are the first and last "take". The first one falls apart at the very end hilariously. The last is a better overall presentation. You don't have to watch both. ("Or either," Kelsi might say.)

Take 1

Final take

We arrived in Long Beach, California, that afternoon, and walked 3 blocks from our hotel to the beach.

It was cloudy and a bit chilly (60 degrees), but it was still fun to see the ocean.

And here's the whole family just before the sun set.

When it got dark, we left the beach and walked back down the street, pausing for a moment on the teeter-totter at the playground.

Then we stopped to eat pizza and salad at a random Italian restaurant (called The Pizza Place) that turned out to be great, with fun Venice murals all through the place.

We went to see the movie "Arrival", and at 9pm we heard booms that we thought at first were part of the movie until they made no sense. Then we realized they were fireworks. (Long Beach does some at 9pm when NYC has New Years so that kids can go to bed; then again at midnight).

After the movie we waffled for a while about whether to kill 2 hours and wait for the other fireworks at midnight, or whether to go back to the hotel like smart people. We ended up sticking around. We passed some of the time by FaceTime-ing cousin Taylie and her family, which was great fun.

Facetiming with cousin Taylie

Finally the fireworks happened (a bit further away that we had expected), and that was that and we went back to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning Jared downed the last of the Martinelli's before we headed off to find a church somewhere.

The church meeting schedules had changed so it took a bit of doing, but we finally found one and enjoyed it. Kelsi and Erika joined the Spanish ward for Sunday School. Not sure what was up with Jared's hat selections...

On the afternoon of January 1, we were off to the cruise terminal and ready to hit it.

We were excited to get checked in and get going.

We sailed on the Carival ship Imagination.

From the deck of our ship, we could look down on the massive Queen Mary.

The ship had a water slide (which we never actually used--not steep enough to be fun).

Erika swam in the pool once. The hot tubs tended to be overloaded with little people.

The plaza was lit up and still decorated with Christmas decorations.

The ship looked cool at night.

Erika and Jared couldn't resist doing the Titanic "King of the World" scene.

I think the late night fireworks were catching up with us by the time we sat down to watch a performance that night.

We kept getting cute towel animals in our rooms.

All 5 kids were packed into one room, and it was a party in there!



Monday morning we awoke to find ourselves at Catalina Island, which is part of southern California.

Our room had a window so we could see out.

The kids' room was right across the hall from us, but didn't have a window, so they could pretty much sleep forever if left to their own devices. The first night, Linette said, "You guys can sleep in if you want. We could leave at, say, 9:10. Is that too late?"

Jared and Kelsi looked at each other with an uneasy look that said, "She doesn't know!" (what "sleeping in" means, that is. :)

Here Kelsi sports a pirate look (sunglasses were missing a lens, and she was looking stripey, so...)

To get from the ship to Catalina Island, we had to take a "tender", a little boat to shuttle us over. So we all took pictures of ourselves and of each other on the ride over.

We were soon at the dock in the harbor of Catalina Island.

I saw this pirate ship in a playground, with a skull off the bow. So I leaned up behind it.

The town of Avalon is the main city on the Island. I thought it was cool how the cute houses went right on up the cliffs.

We had no specific plans in Catalina, so we decided to wander towards a weird art gallery or something, making our own fun along the way.

We came across a playground, and decided to play "Groundies." Everyone gets on the play structure, and the person who is "it" is on the ground and tries to touch them. They can go on the structure, too, but only with eyes closed (careful not to knock out their teeth). Others can sneak across the ground, too, but if the one who's "it" calls "Groundies!" while they're on the ground, they're "it."

In this clip (about 1 minute in if you want to skip ahead), Jared climbs up with his eyes closed, Kelsi and Linette go down the slide, and then so does Jared. Then Kelsi and Linette both panic. Kelsi's natural reaction at such times is to roll into a ball. Linette's is to laugh so hard that she is paralyzed. Neither are especially helpful defense mechanisms. It was hilarious.

As we continued up the road, we hiked up a mountain to see what we could see.

There was a lot of cactus along the way, and a nice view of our ship in the harbor. We sat and enjoyed the view for a while.

When we finally reached the curious art place, alas, it was closed. But we could see bones hanging from a tree and stuff, and maybe that was enough.

The red hat tended to pass from person to person throughout the trip.

We sat at a park and played "The Great Dalmuti" (a variant of "Scum"), which was nice.

My sister-in-law Oriana recently posted on Facebook a clip of "Singin' in the Rain," and asked, "Why can't people randomly break into song and dance in real life?" As we were walking down the street in Catalina, I captured this evidence that this does, in fact, still happen. At least in our family.

We shopped along the waterfront and Sienna looked for a pretty rock. (Erika is up on the pier in this picture, too, which I didn't know when I took it).

Finally we tendered back to the ship. (Jared and Sienna were on the boat before us).

That night we watched a comedian tell about how things were when he was a kid. He said, "It's great to see you kids on this boat. When I was a kid, we didn't go on the boat. I'm not saying, 'When I was a kid, they didn't have boats!' They had boats. We just weren't on them." And he went on to talk about all the dangerous stuff we used to do: jumping off of the roof into a 4-foot above-ground pool; bike jumps without pads or helmets, and so on. I remembered a lot of that, so it was pretty funny to me, and he kept it pretty clean.

That night was formal night, so everyone got fancy, especially the girls.

Here we are in the atrium, waiting for dinner on formal night.

And here are Erika and Kelsi, pretending to talk and laugh.

Sienna ordered "strawberry bisque" as an appetizer. When the waiter served everyone else a full appetizer, he delivered this big bowl to Sienna with one little diced strawberry in the middle.

He was just kidding, though, and soon came and added the actual bisque.

That night it was elephants.

The kids ordered cheesecake from room service and breakfast in bed, because they could. (It's included).

The next morning we awoke to find ourselves in Ensenada, Mexico!

Sienna and I ran over to hold the parrots as we got off the ship.

We also heard the bark of some sea lions, so Kelsi and I ran over to take a quick look (and then ran back).

As we got off the boat, we found someone renting SUVs for $60, so we rented one to take us on our adventure to go zip lining at a place called "Las Cañadas," which was about 45 minutes away from Ensenada by car.

In addition to 5 zip lines, there were several bridges to walk across. Jared made sure this was as tricky as possible for Linette by rocking it back and forth the whole way.

Adam got many comments on his lightning cat hoodie.

The last zip line was about a quarter mile long. In this picture you can't even really see where it ends up. It was long enough that most people had to double up in order to make it down.

Here's a selfie video that Erika and Kelsi did. It makes it look like Kelsi is just hanging on, but they're really both harnessed in, of course.

And here Linette and I are zooming down in parallel. I started going faster than her, so I grabbed her leg and flung her down ahead of me for a while.

It was a fantastic set of zip lines. On the way out, we saw some horses, so we asked how much to ride them for a half an hour. It turned out to be ten bucks, so most of us went for it.

This guy came down to saddle up the horses, and put each of us on.

He didn't speak a word of English, so Kelsi translated for us. It was cute watching him explain to Sienna how to work the reins, and Sienna just nodded like she had any idea what he was saying.

Kelsi chatted with the guy for much of the ride, learning about his life and giving him advice on what he should do.

This random horse ride was one of the highlights of the trip.

And here is Erika, tall in the saddle.

And we all made it back safe! (Apparently they figure, "Helmets, shmelmets!")

On the way back to Ensenada, we stopped at a random taco shop.

The tacos were exceedingly delicious, cost a buck each, and nobody got sick, so it was good all around.

The guy was so fast at making the tacos!

Kelsi created this picture.

Back at the shore, we shopped a bit and then visited the sea lions again.

Here's a little video of them.

Kelsi just barely touched this one fence and it flipped over and startled the sea lions. Luckily none of them ran over and ate us or anything.

That night the kids had fun at the deck party.

There was much eating onboard. There was a burger bar, pizza bar, soft serve ice cream machine, and then the breakfast and lunch buffets and a sit-down dinner with 3 courses and all you want to eat. The main trick was trying to muster up enough hunger to enjoy eating again. Life's tough.

We played mini-golf on the deck, and I wish I had video of this shot like I thought I did, because Erika's ball is the middle of three that are all right up against the wall. She tapped it like billiards, and her ball ended up popping out and going into the hole!!

Erika's amazing trick shot. Middle ball is hers, and in it went.

That evening, Erika and Jared decided to dress up like each other.

Here's why we didn't really do the hot tub.

Wednesday was spent at sea, ostensibly traveling from Ensenada to Long Beach. Except that this only takes a few hours and could easily have been done overnight. I knew they were stalling when I looked down and saw a seagull in the water by our ship, barely flipping its feet, and still keeping up with us.

We spent the day finally relaxing, reading a book on deck and playing a couple more games. We finally had sunshine that day as well.

Here's what I saw when I woke up from my nap.

Here we attempt another panorama shot where people run around behind me and get back in the picture.

Since it wasn't as cloudy, we finally got to see a sunset that night.

The kids had fun goofing around on the red thingy.

That night we had fun listening to music in the atrium while we waited for dinner.

And here was my last dessert. I opted for the cheesecake plus apple pie a la mode. Remember that dessert that was better without ice cream? Me, neither.

And that night the waiters sang a nice good-bye song to us, and then pulled the kids up to dance "Gangnam Style".

Erika, Jared and Kelsi looked down on these singers, who happened to be singing a duet that Erika and Jared sang at a high school concert last June.

That night Erika and Jared decided to roam the decks in their tiger and Harambe outfits, respectively.

Sienna and Kelsi donned cat wear as well.

Thursday morning we had one last breakfast before departing.

My luggage with missing a foot. So I gave it a "peg leg" just before the trip.

After getting back on land, we had to go through customs. Everyone else had a passport, but Sienna only needed a birth certificate. The passport control guy asked Sienna what her father's middle name was, and she took just a second to think through that one, since I got by a nickname of my middle name.

It was a fun cruise, made fun mostly by the time we spent with each other.

Universal Studios

But we weren't done yet! Next stop, Universal Studios! We had bought annual passes at Costco (same price as a single day admission), so we went for two days. (Jared will also be going again with his choir tour in April, and Linette, Sienna and I will be coming down to pick him up on our way to a humanitarian trip to Mexico, so we'll go again then, too).

Here we are preparing for the 4-D "Minions" ride.

Next it was off to Harry Potter World in Universal Studios.

They have a fun town created there, along with a cool castle with a great ride in it.

Adam bought a wand so that we could use it at the magical spots in the area.

We also sampled the "Butterbeer", which is like butterscotch soda with thick whipped cream on top.

And there was a fun little hippogriff roller coaster.

We only had to wait 45 minutes for the main ride in the castle. (The next day there were wait times over 3 hours, which was just silly. My friend said in Orlando there was a 7 hour wait the day he went, which he dodged by getting in line when the ride was temporarily broken. No ride is worth 7 hours, IMHO).

The Universal Studios Tour included a flash flood.

I also liked the Flintstone's car.

We took full advantage of the unlimited refillable bucket of popcorn.

I always like the animal show there.

When the lines were especially short at night, we went on The Mummy ride, which was great.

It was a fun day together. Here's a view of the city lights from halfway up the escalators from the lower to upper lot.

That evening we met up with cousin Karen Merrill.

We had tasty burgers at the Hard Rock Cafe. Not sure how Sienna fit her mouth around this one.

Our friends Steve and Andra Duke let us stay with them for two nights. Their daughter Elyssa showed us her adorable little kitty.

Yikes!

The dukes had this nice little spot where I sat and read my book the next morning while I waited for the kids to wake up.

Then we hit Universal Studios again for a second day.

The haunted house there has been turned into a Walking Dead exhibit. Linette's not the biggest fan of zombies.

Here you can see that Adam and his hoodie have become one!

The second day we waited until evening to visit the Harry Potter land again.

Then we got in the single rider line to knock the 90 minute wait down to 20.

Everyone took turns with the wand to make things be magic.

We finished things off we a couple of last-minute runs through The Mummy and twice on the Jurassic Park river ride. There was no line, since only CRAZY people would go on a river ride on a chilly evening.

The ride was eerie at night.

Then we went home and played more games with our friends the Dukes. (I realized later that I didn't get a picture of them). They accused us of being ninjas for sneaking out in the morning before they woke up.

We drove all the way home Saturday, dropping Kelsi in Provo on the way up.  (When I checked the weather forecast, we all wondered if we shouldn't just stay in California...)

It was a really fun trip, and a great way to spend time together as a family before Erika heads to Peru for the next year and a half. The best part for me was just being together as a family, removed from the typical distractions of home, and watching and being part of all the hilarious interactions between everyone.