March Madness

Go BYU Cougars!! Last weekend my family got caught up in March Madness and headed up to Denver to see the 3rd round of the NCAA basketball tournaments! BYU happened to make it there and we all caught Jimmer fever!

Here are my brothers Daniel, Travis, and Philip and my dad before the start of the game.

And here is the other side of the group - my dad, me and my mom. If you've noticed that Darren is missing....it's true. He was awesome enough to stay at the hotel with the kids and watch it on the big screen. And just as a sidenote, I did offer up my seat to my good hubby and he declined. He wanted me to be with my family:)

The people in front of us are looking for a wad money - he informed us that he doesn't lose anything - especially not money and was blaming the student section from the last game with whom he had "had words" for taking it. He was also anti-BYU and even more anti-Jimmer. It was pretty fun just to watch him sit and stew as Jimmer knocked down 3's all game! Ha!

The BYU flags.

Cheerleaders I took a picture of solely for my little Brooklyn. If you're wondering just how close we were let me tell you......row 5!!! We actually started a little higher than that but made our way down to a student section that had emptied out the game before - how awesome is that!

My brothers with the sign they made before the game. They were so hoping to get on TV and it so didn't happen! But the good news is that their sign made it on the Top 10 Signs of the Thursday, Saturday games! It came in at a respectable number 5!

On our walk back to the car I snapped this picture of the city.

The next day we went swimming at the hotel. The kids looooove to swim and the whole trip was worth it just to get to swim for an hour or so. Proof that Darren was here!

The girls with Uncle Philip. They can't believe they had to leave all of their fun, fun uncles and come back home with boring mom and dad.

The pool was pretty cold for little Jace and his lips kept turning blue but he refused to get out of the pool. So I turned on this pool shower for him and once he got in the warm water he never left it. In fact, I started to feel bad about all the water that he was using but he let me have it if I turned it off! I had to wait for everybody to get done swimming and then shut off the water, wrap him in a towel, run out the door and to the elevator. Lucky for him, he needed soap, so he got back in the shower once we got to the room........

We didn't pack anyone's suits so we ran out and bought the girls new ones for the summer the day before (which they needed anyway) but poor Jace just got stuck with a swim diaper. He didn't mind:)

What a cutie! The only thing that could have made this post better was if BYU had won their last game!!!!!!!!!!! Too bad, so sad. We had fun cheering them on while it lasted!

Fredette About It!

Carribean Fun!

Darren and I just returned from having a blast in the Carribean!! We went with some friends of ours from Utah who we generally only get to see once or twice a year so it was fun to get to spend an entire week with them!

Our ship departed from Puerto Rico so we were able to spend a good part of our first day hiking the rainforest.

Here we all are just getting started on vacation! We rented a car and navigated our way to the rainforest where we saw some cool waterfalls and a whole lot of tourists! This is me, Darren, Cortney and her husband Jeremy.

A watch tower that was built to keep watch......for enemies.

Actually I think that this one was built to for good karma - the Puerto Ricans are a very superstitious lot.


Darren and me on the trail that we hiked.

Darren with ginormous leaves!

Here we are still at the watch tower.

And here, what can I say? The picture says it all. Abby and Brooklyn did not know what to make of this. Jace just went with it!

This is our first day of getting off the ship. We were docked in St. Croix and had no plans. The ship offers all kinds of excursions as long as you're willing to pay. So we decided to go off the beaten path and wing it. It ended up working out for us because there are all kinds of taxis just waiting for people to get off the ship. We ended up saving tons of money by doing the excursions all on our own.

And so we headed to Cane Bay where we spent the day snorkeling. I won't lie. I'm not a big swimmer. I got seasick. We headed out quite a ways and the motion of the ocean started to get to me. So I headed back in - luckily I made it. I was woo-zy for a while but then I was ok. While I was resting up Darren and Jeremy just happened to be watching a baracuda attack an octopus. And eat it. From what they say it was pretty awesome.




This was one of the formal dinner nights. We sat at a table for 12 and we were by far the youngest people there. Heck, we were by far the youngest people on the ship! We didn't mind. We were able to hop off the ship and beat all the old people to the taxis:)
Anyway, our table was full of very knowledgeable people willing to give us young bucks some free advice about, well, about everything!

This was the casino. And no, Darren did not win tons of money.

This little monkey loved my ear. In fact, this is the only picture we got of the monkey not licking my ear. They were cute. Look at the little diaper!

This is at St. Croix. We took an island tour with taxi driver named Alex. These are the volcanic rocks and the place where we tried raw coconut. Not bad.

Botanical Gardens that we stopped at.

This was a beautiful stopping point. On the left is the Atlantic Ocean and on the right is the Carribean. And in the middle is us!

This was Emerald Pool in Dominica. It looked like it was right out of the movies. In fact, it is the island that Pirates of the Carribean was filmed. Now only if Johnny Depp had showed up in a bathing suit......

Just kidding, who needs Johnny when we have Jeremy and Darren! Jeremy was standing on a rock and Darren was trying to keep from drowning. Those waterfalls hit you harder than you expect!

We also went tubing and snorkeling at Champagne Bay. I don't have pictures yet of our tubing trip - our taxi driver took our pictures as we came down the river and he was using Cortney's camera. It was a fun tubing trip. They put us in a life vest and helmet and gave us a donut tube and sent us on our way. My tube unfortunately headed for every rock it could find and, in fact, got wedged between two big ones in the middle of the river. My attempts to free myself failed and I ended up having to get a new tube as the one I had fell apart (not permanently I don't think...).

And our snorkeling at Champagne Bay was very unique because the water had streams of bubbles that floated to the top. It was due to the sulfuric reactions taking place in the ground under the water.....or something volcanic like that. Anyhoo, it was very cool.

This was our hike in Grenada to the 7 Sisters waterfalls. We thought they were joking when they sent us out back to pick up our walking sticks. In fact, we asked if we could just leave them behind but they assured us we would need a them and I must say, they did come in handy.

These are the first two falls of the 7 Sisters. We actually didn't go see the others. Time didn't permit it. But these falls were awesome. And again, because we were on our own, we got to have the place all to ourselves for about a half hour before the next tour group came in. It was awesome!! There was also a guy named Super Butterfly who performed by diving off both waterfalls! It was crazy. And , we saw him smoking a joint after everyone else had left. I guess a suicide dive is better in a supernatural state.

Our ship from the view of a fort we visited.

Me on Pigeon Beach in Tobago. This was our last stop and last beach day. Notice the Kite Sufers behind me. We almost got nailed by one while we were posing.

We spent a good chunk of our time playing in the sand! We wrote all of our kids names in it but I'll just show Jace's. The girls names had a flower by it.

And last but not least - I heart the Carribean!! 'Til next time!