On an elephant hunt

Porter has just entered this phase where his imagination has exploded.  I love, love, love this phase!

The other day while in a store dressing room porter heard a sound. He immediately hushed me and in a whisper said, "I hear an elephant" with this look on his face.

 Slightly egging him on I asked where that elephant could be going. He crawls under the dressing room stall and immediately crawls back in with a startled look on his face and announces it is in the nearby closet.  We went and took a look in the closet and to porters absolute astonishment the elephant was gone! He then dragged me around the store chasing this elephant. As we left the store to go pick up Preston he continues to talk to me in a whisper so we do not startle this elephant. When we pulled into the parking lot porter says pointing to the bushes "there he is there he is!"", hurry mom, we catch him and play with him." Porter makes a run for the bushes exclaiming "I so happy!" and starts looking for the elephant.  But some how that sneaky elephant escaped us again.

I was lucky to have my camera in the car and tried to capture the moment with Porter.

Our Cruise

Which actually only turned out to be a cruise that never left the Port of Houston, so, I guess you could call it our dock vacation.  Matt suprised me with with this cruise on our ten year anniversary back in January. I spent my days dreaming of our snorkeling adventure and the scuba diving trip, and the river cruise though the jungle to some old ruins, ahhh it was going to be fabulous.

From that time on it was the thought of a cruise that helped me through the past months.  Every bad day, every tantrum, every day spent counting down the hours until bed time I had the thought of snorkeling, and sun, and alone time with Matt.  I love my two boys, and to be honest, I always am sad once I leave them.  For the 3 days on our non-moving ship I found myself wondering what they were doing and even calling them several times to check up.  But, every once and a while I need some away time. However, thanks to an oil rig colliding with a barge resulting in a sinking barge blocking the channel and a leaking oil rig with a nature reserve close by affecting the poor birds, our ship was not going anywere.

Matt and I did enjoy the 3 days on the ship.  We went to some dance and musical numbers, a comedy show, watched movies under the stars, took naps, ate whenever we wanted, exercised, slept in, and even attended a shopping seminar where a side of Matt I have never seen before surfaced and we won some free stuff a.k.a, junk.  We were able to have conversations that were not interrupted and we even dressed up for the formal night and felt fancy for a change.  It was fun, but it had to come to an end.  We decided to not waste all of Matt's vacation and we made our way home.

Even though the whole cruise thing failed miserably,  I did get to spend some time with my mother-in-law which is always a treat since I only get to see her 1-2 times a year.  And we went to Kansas City and wondered around and she watched the kids while Matt and I went to the temple. We do not get that opportunity too often and it felt so wonderful being there.

We attempted lego land but Preston had a bad case of the tired grumps/sick that we quickly abandoned that idea. After a nap on daddy's shoulders and a magical cup of gelato Preston was back to his normal happy self.