Tonight Tristina, Char and I threw Lani a baby shower. We were deciding between a little man shower and a lil' slugger theme. I think we made the right choice for these two. We did a concessions stand with Sliders, mini hotdogs, nachos with real nacho trays, and a french fry bar (didn't seem to get a photo of any of those), mini egg salad sandwiches, (Grrr! I couldn't find my edible marker to make the ball lace lines!) and a baseball diamond fruit tray with fruit dip.
Over at the candy concessions we had salted peanuts, personalized labeled hershey's nuggets, boston baked beans, kettle corn, buttered popcorn, licorice, chocolate covered rasins, gummy coke bottles, Baby Ruth, and Double Bubble.
At the Game table we did 4 activities that people could do as they wished. (I was sick of telling people at showers in the past to play my organized games when most people just wanted to chat and mingle.) We had a "What's in the Bag" game where people would guess the contents of the 7 white bags, Guess how many Double Bubble are in the container, Unscramble the baby words and write an encouraging note on the diaper to Lani and Hock for those late night diaper changes.
Then we had bags of Cracker Jacks with either a big Baby Ruth or Big League Chew for everyone as they left.
All in all, I think it was a pretty successful night. My brother-in-law was quite impressed and appreciative of my ability to throw a baseball party despite my lack of enthusiasm and knowledge for baseball.
About a month ago, my sister called and asked if we wanted to join them on an Alaskan cruise. So fun! Mike and I had been trying to figure out where we could go on vacation that would get us out of the Cary heat. Alaska seemed to be the perfect answer. So off we went. At the last minute my mom and Grandpa decided to join us. There were 10 of us at the table:
Mike and I
My sister Amy and BIL Wayne
My sister Charise and BIL Bill
Our good friends Carrie and Steve Collins
Mom and Grandpa
We cruised with Holland America on the Zaandam ship. We had lots of fun playing on the ship. We played many team trivia challenges, Golf, Ping Pong, Name that tune, and a digital scavenger hunt. Each time you win an event, they give you a prize. Most of the time it was pins. Every once in a while it was a shopping bag. At the end of the week, we finally won mugs!
Along with the challenges, there was dancing, food, towel animals, the facial I won in the Spa drawing and a 5K for the cure that Carrie, Mom and I walked in.
The food in the dining room was so yummy! They had beautiful presentation too. We loved our waiter Bedi. He was darling. On the first day, we had really yummy sundried tomato bread. On the second day, we showed our disappointment that there wasn't sundried tomato bread. Every other day, we arrived to 2 fresh warm loaves of sundried tomato bread. We tried to eat new foods each day. The photo below is me eating escargot.
Our first day was a ship day. We did the Glaicer Bay. The ship passed 3 glaciers. They were incredible! At the last one, I even caught the calving on video.
It was a very cold, beautiful day!
Day 2 we went to Haines, Alaska. My main wish was to go do the bear watching tour. But that wasn't until the evening. It was $89 per person to do the bear watching tour thru the ship. My mom had done the tour the year before with her brothers and sisters. She said we should just rent a car and we could go do it on our own. So we did. We rented a car for $60 total that had seatbelts for 8. So we had a car for the day. We went to the Eagle Observatory, the Hammer Museum, and the Eagle Preserve. Then Mike and I went for a hike thru the woods. The hike ended along the beautiful beach. It was a geourgeous hike. We even saw fresh bear skat!
Speaking of fresh bear skat...at 5:30pm we loaded 8 of the 10 of us into the car in search of the bears. We pulled over at "the spot" that the cruise ship tour takes you to. We saw some bald eagles. Mike and Wayne continued up the road and over a bridge. What they didn't know, is that there was a bear right under the bridge. At least they didn't know until the bear came up THRU the gard rail and onto the bridge with them!! By this time, we had gotten back in the car to find another search spot and started across the bridge to pick up Wayne and Mike until they waved us back. Once I realized why, I had to get out of the car to take some photos. Mike was very calm despite the words we read of "what to do if you see a bear" in the local guide book. I wish I had a copy of those suggestions. The 2 I remember were to
1) "wave your arms up high over your head to appear larger then you are." and
2) If a bear should attack, lay flat on your front to protect your face and innards.
Then Mike livened up a little for the sake of a good photo...
Wow! What a thrill! Glad I didn't pay $89 per person to go on the ship's tour!
The next day in Juneau, we went Whale Watching. We researched on trip advisor and found a little company called Harv and Marv. We decided to go with them b/c they take smaller parties of 6 out. Whale Watching was incredible. We sighted over 20 whales! We even saw orca whales! They say they see humpback whales 100% of the time. But they only see Orca's 10% of the time. It was quite a treat. At one point in the trip, we saw a family of 4 Orca whales on one side of the ship, and 5 humpbacks on the other. It was pretty cool! On the way back to the ship, we stopped by the Mendenhall Glacier (bottom right) and the fish hatchery. The top right photo is all salmon. The Collins and Dittbrenners were supposed to take a float plane tour. It got cancelled due to the rain. Crazy! We didn't see any rain! Poor things.
This video gives you an idea of how active it was...
Our last stop was our most uneventful stop. It is where we did our shopping. Ketchikan was the last city to have legalized prostitution! YEA! Let's go visit that city! The top left is Mike in front of a totem pole, the top right is Mike and Wayne in front of Dolly's House (a prostitution house). We did go to the lumberjack show. That was kinda fun.
Thanks babe for a great trip! Thank you to Bill and Carol and Kelly who watched our children so we could enjoy ourselves w/o worrying.
