Amber, Craig, and Malorie McLaughlin

Hello All!

So, my lil man Liam turned 1 on December 29, 2010. I can't believe he is 1 year old already. Man, time really flies by when you are having fun. I love being a mommy to two beautiful children. I am so blessed in my life.

Since Liams birthday is so close to Christmas, we decided to just have a small get together at Chuck E Cheese on his actual birthday which was on a Wednesday. I say small but, we still had at least 20 people there. Mostly just family and some close friends. We had a blast. Liam loved the carusel. He would have been content just riding that all day long. I made cupcakes for everyone and Liam ate 3! Man, he loves mommy's cupcakes! He got lots of great gifts and he loved all of them.

Here's some pictures, Enjoy!

Liams BIRTHDAY BATH!

Liam having fun on the carousel.

Malorie having fun on the carousel.

The kids with Aunt Carrie.

Liam having some lunch. He kept on trying to pull off his Chuck E Cheese bib so I had to put one of Malorie's old bibs on him. Sorry for the pink bib Liam. LOL

Malorie and Liam having fun together.

Opening presents with Aunt Ally and Grandpa Rex.

Grandma Bonnie showing Liam one of his cool toys.

Liam "starting" to break down...

OK he's done! LOL

Mommy handing out the cupcakes to Aunt Megan and Aunt Ally.

Mommy bringing Liam his birthday cupcake so we can sing "Happy Birthday".

Malorie's friend Cash Collins enjoying his cupcake.

Mmmmm....

Cupcake coma...

I'll post another blog later today with the videos from the party. Bye!

Hello Everyone!!

Well, Craig and I used to travel a lot while we were dating and after we got married. Up until Malorie was born we had gone on a cruise once a year. For our one year anniversary we went on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. The cruise left from Long Beach and took us to Mazatlan, Puerta Villarta, and Cabo San Lucas. We had been on this cruise once before and decided it would be fun to do again!

The view of the Queen Mary from our ship while still in port in Long Beach.

It was so beautiful outside that we couldn't wait to get our suits on and start tanning on the deck.
The ship hadn't even left port yet! LOL

Because we had cruised with Carnival 3 times before this, they upgraded our room to a BALCONY SUITE for FREE!! The room was great! We've decided that when we do another cruise we are definitely getting a balcony. It was great.

Our Suite!

View of the control deck from our balcony.

View of the different ports from our balcony.

The ship was GORGEOUS! There was tons to see. We walked around the whole ship and took lots of pictures.

One of the lounges.

This was the "Sun Room". It was more of a Sun Hallway!

This was the view from the lobby looking up at the elevators. BREATHTAKING!

One of the many activity rooms. I think we did Karaoke in this room.

The GRAND staircase.

This statue was right in the middle of the restaurant. Something to...ah...stare at while you eat!!

There were some crazy parties out on the pool deck. This one ended up getting out of control and they shut down the pool. LOL It was a bunch of crazy Australians!

Our first stop on the cruise was Puerta Villarta I think, if I remember right. We had been there before so we already knew that we wanted to go to Las Callettas(sp?). You take a big party boat from the ship to where Las Callettas is. It feels like you are on an island but it's connected to the main land. It's absolutely gorgeous there. You can go scuba diving, zipline riding, hiking, kayaking, snorkeling, EAT, or just relax on the beach. They even had monkeys and parrots there for you to PLAY with. We got to hold the parrots. That was pretty cool. We scuba dived the last time we were there so this time we just hung out on the beach and snorkeled a little bit. My goggles kept on fogging up so I couldn't really see very well. As we were swimming around in the water I got stung by a jellyfish. Craig said that we had been swimming thru a swarm of them. I couldn't see them. I said I wanted to get out of the water but Craig said not to be a big baby and just keep swimming. So I did. I ended up getting stung 3 times!! Craig got stung ONCE and THEN he decided it was time to get out of the water. WHAT A BABY!! LOL Of course, because we were in Mexico, no one spoke english and that made it really hard to get someone to understand that I had been stung by a jellyfish and I needed something to stop the burning. Finally, someone understood me and gave us some cream. I was starting to think Craig was going to have to um...pee on me. EW GROSE!! LOL

Right when we got off the ship in Puerto Villarta they had this cool sign.

It tells you how far from everywhere you are.

Some of the beautiful houses we saw on the way to Las Caletas.

One of the beautiful beaches along the way.

BEAUTIFUL Las Caletas!

Our cute little table.

Me holding one of the cute little monkeys.

Craig holding one of the parrots.

Craig holding one of the monkeys.

I was scared he was going to poop on my arm. LOL

Our next stop on the cruise was Mazatlan. On our first cruise we took a tour of the city and that was pretty cool. There are tons of old buildings and lots of great architecture. We got to see some old churches and walk thru them too. I guess Mazatlan had been taken over by the French at one time and so a lot of the architecture there in Old Mazatlan looks a lot like New Orleans. The streets are VERY NARROW though. Our big bus had a hard time getting thru them. On this cruise we decided to do something different when we went to Mazatlan and so we went to the beach. Well, lets just say we weren't very impressed with the beach in Mazatlan. When we got off the little boat we got into this carriage that was being pulled by this horse that looks so skinny and weak we thought it was going to drop dead on the way to the beach. It was so sad. When everyone got into the cart the horse literally lifted up off the ground and the driver had to pull him back down. As we rode thru the little town we got to see all of the little mud hut houses and little farms. It was interesting. We saw some bathrooms that said they cost money to use. It was 5 pesos so it cost us only 5 cents. Once we got to the beach we just hung out and relaxed. We ate some food at the little restaurant and tried to avoid the water. As we walked along the beach we noticed HUNDREDS of dead jellyfish. We had to make sure we didn't step on any of them. One little girl had stepped on one and they sprayed WD-40 on it. I thought that was weird but she was right back to laughing and running around in no time. Apparently it works! We bought a few things from the ladies that were constantly bugging us. I felt bad for them. But hey, we got a really cool hammock chair for like $10! Can't beat that.

View of Mazatlan from the little boat we took to the island.

Craig and I on the boat ride over.

View of Mazatlan from the ship.

They had some fun activities. I couldn't ride this banana

because of the movie "JAWS". LOL

View from the beach.

The pavillion we hung out in and had lunch.

This is one of the MANY dead jellyfish that littered the sand.

One of the farms.

One of the neat little neighborhoods.

The last place we visited on our cruise was Cabo San Lucas. I like Cabo but, it's very Americanized. In Cabo we just walked around the first time we visited. This time around we decided to ride quads on the beach. That was pretty awesome. I didn't have any experience riding a quad before so it was kind of scary at first. Also, these quads were manual so I had to learn how to shift and drive at the same time. But, I'm a very quick learner and I had it down in just a few tries. We road thru the desert on our way to the beach and we saw lots of bushes and a bull. It was funny because we stopped right where the bull was and Craig was wearing a red shirt. He was freaking out!! LOL Once we got to the beach we were able to ride right up on the water and enjoy the scenery. It was the funnest day we had in Mexico.

Me on the quad getting ready to take off on our ride.

That's Craig in the red shirt.

Craig and I on the beach after our ride.

It was so pretty there on the beach.

That tree was so cool. It was growing up from under that massive rock.

We had a blast on our cruise. We even had time to get dressed up and enjoy the ship and the great food it has. Plus, every night when we got back to our room we had cute little towel animals to greet us. It was fun. We had a blast. We can't wait to go on another cruise once the kids are a bit older.