Tuesday, June 30, 2015

They Miss Him

Whenever we go to Which Wich all the kids use aliases when filling out their sandwich bags.
JR and Reed are usually sports stars: JJ Watt or Payton Manning.
Kyle is usually a superhero like Captain America.
 
So I wasn't surprised when Reed filled out his bag the other day.
 
(If you're not a Houston sports fan, Jose' Altuve is our favorite Astro.)
 
 
But I couldn't believe who Kyle decided to be...
 
JR has been at Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw's for the week, and they are obviously ready for him to come home!

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Something (Super) Fishy

JR is constantly complaining about his feet.
Nobody wants to hear about feet, so I'll spare you the details, but when we passed by this "spa" in Cozumel, we knew it was right up JR's alley.
 
 
I call it a "fish pedicure", but I think the real name is fish spa.
 
 
JR is super ticklish, so at first he could hardly leave his feet in the water.

But he got used to it fast.



And quite enjoyed it.

I guess when they finish with your feet, they just move up your leg.
 
 
JR was impressed with his new smooth feet!
 
 

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Winners!

Our ultracompetitive family cleaned up in the on board contests.
All 3 of the kids were winners at bingo!

JR won teen bingo and won a Royal Caribbean water bottle. 
(No picture of that so here he is with the boat).



And out of the 4 games at family bingo, Reed and Kyle won two of them.
(Ok, to be honest, Grandpa Gary actually won, but he slipped his card to Kyle.)
Reed won a stuffed animal octopus he named Baked Alaska (his new favorite dessert)


and Kyle won a Royal Caribbean messenger bag.


Reed also won the kids division of poolside bean bag toss. 



And the 4 of us took 1st place in the Family Quest (like a scavenger hunt) and won gold medals. 
(JR was off at the teen club, but his team took 1st in the teen version.)


There were other non boat sponsored contests too.
These two might have been brought to tears in a family game of Apples to Apples.


And these two came from behind to beat Reed and me at shuffleboard. 
(Reed was not pleased with that outcome.)

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Boat Stuff

So here's a few of the things  we did while we were on the boat:
 
Everybody 12 and under climbed to the top of the rock wall.

 
 
Jason and I went on a kitchen tour. (FYI: they use 75,000 eggs a week.) 
 
 
Video games were played. 
They had a free hour for JR's teen club 2 of the nights. He won the entire Rambo video game.
 
 
Kyle danced at the pool
 
JR rode the flow-rider and got pretty good at it.
 
 
So did Jason.
 
 
 And we did a little relaxing too.

 
 

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Where We Went

We never really care where the boat is going.  
All of us prefer the onboard activities to the ports.
 
This time around we went to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and Jamaica.
 
I've been to Cozumel 4 times, Jason and JR have been 3, and this was Kyle and Reed's second trip.  It must be some kind of requirement that if a boat is leaving Galveston it has to stop in Cozumel...or it's just really easy to get there.
 
We skipped the beach we've been to every other time, and just did a little shopping around town.
 
 
Our next stop was Grand Cayman and everyone who had been there told us to go to 7 Mile Beach. 
We did, and we were not disappointed.  It was very beautiful.
 
 
In Jamaica we decided to take a city tour, which was actually pretty interesting...as long as you overlooked the Bob Marley and marijuana leaf pictures plastered on almost everything.
They seem to be very proud of both.
 

Monday, June 22, 2015

We Are Home

We had a fantastic time cruising last week!
I guess there was a disturbance in the gulf since I had lots of people who assumed we were just being tossed around like the opening credits from Gilligan's Island.
 
 
Our boat definitely took a different route than scheduled, as we were a couple hours late arriving into Cozumel, and we had a rainy morning our first day, but other than that, we had perfect weather.
 
 
It looked like this until about 2:00 on Monday, but the kids went to the kids club, so the rain certainly didn't slow them down.
 
But by the afternoon there was ice cream and pool time all around.
 
 

 
 

Monday, June 15, 2015

Excited Faces


I'm writing this on Sunday standing in line to check in on Royal Caribbean. 
We're just a little excited. We Ingys do love a cruise.
Be back to blogging next week. 

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Music Man Take 2

So, yes, JR was just in The Music Man at the end of May. 
But he was happy to do it again this week, this time with his brothers.
 
JR's part was easy since he was cast as Harold Hill again, and Kyle and Reed were townskids.
 
They all did a great job, and Kyle and Reed loved being in their first show.
 
I wasn't allowed to video, but I took plenty of pictures! 









Thursday, June 11, 2015

A Jail Break

School has been out for a week so I guess I better finish up blogging about it.
 
The school fair was cancelled twice for the rain.
We finally had it 2 days before school was out (this one was rain or shine).
 
Luckily there was shine...but also a lot of mud.
Of course the mud didn't slow the kids down one bit.
 
 
 
Trying to keep up with 3 kids and work a booth (mine was hand the kids a dozen cascarones and let them break them on each other) I didn't get many pictures.
 
 
Here's Reed ready to throw a "pie" at a 5th grader.


 Here's Kyle's snake on his arm.
 
 
Here's the one time I ran in to JR.
 
You'll notice JR's "jail" shirt.  The kids could pay a ticket to send the 5th graders to jail, then somebody else would have to pay a ticket to bail them out. 
 I guess kids started paying for other grades too because all of mine got sent to jail. 
 
I also heard over the loud speaker: "Kyle Ingersoll has broken out of jail without bail and needs to come back."  
 
Which didn't surprise me one bit.
 

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Not Winners

Last year Reed was a winner in the state of Texas beach contest. 
He won lots of great prizes, and I learned that there's lots of contests out there where you can win really good stuff (think tablets and trips).
 
 
He entered a few of them this year, but we (as in the family benefiting from his prizes) came up empty handed.  Some I wasn't surprised, but a couple I really thought he had a good chance.
 
 
So let's take a look at our non winners:
 
He started the year with the PTA reflections contest.  The theme was "The World Would be a Better Place if...." 
 Reed's answer?  If there were more pets to love. 
 
I knew that wasn't a "winning" response (maybe if he'd said "everybody had a rescue animal"), but it was definitely a first grade answer, and I didn't try to make him change it (look at me being a good parent).
 
He won a blue ribbon at school, but didn't go anywhere in the district contest.
Reed with his picture.

And the close-up
 
 
 
He entered the beach contest again too. 
I knew he wouldn't win 2 years in a row (plus this really isn't a winning picture).

 
These next two I really thought he had a chance.


This was for the Don't Mess With Texas (don't litter) campaign. 
How cute is that raccoon?  (And there's lots of coons in Texas...totally perfect!)
 
 
I thought this was great too.  It was a conservation art contest.
I love the rubber duck.
 
 
 
I guess these are cuter to his mama than art judges.
 

Monday, June 8, 2015

Summer

It is officially summer around here, and I feel like I'm on summer vacation myself.
So since I'm not feeling up to long-winded blogging, here's a picture of Reed eating a snowcone.
 
 

Friday, June 5, 2015

Fashion Fabulous Friday


You might have noticed Kyle, Reed, and their teachers looking a little Egyptian in the last post. 
Every year their school studies classical cultures, and each grade studies a different time period.
 
At the end they have a parade where everyone dresses up.



Kyle and Reed worked on their costumes in class, so I assumed JR was working on his in class. 
Two days before the parade I realized I hadn't heard JR mention his costume so I asked if they'd been working on them. 
 
His answer: No.
 
Fantastic. 
 
That left me one day to come up with a Renaissance costume.  
JR's teacher was "nice" enough to email us the night before the parade to say "just wear their middle ages costumes from 4th grade."  Well, that's awesome, especially since we weren't here last year!  
 
But by the time that last minute email rolled in, I had already whipped up a Renaissance costume. 
 I certainly could have come up with something better, but this is the best I could do in a day.
He has a "knight" themed dance at camp this summer, so I'm thinking this will work for that too!