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Last Christmas I got a special Christmas present.  I got my sweet puppy dog King George.  I always wanted a wiener dog when I was a child, and I finally got one.  AND to top it all off,  I got a strange looking one!  Well, George is now nearly nine months old.

Well, George is growing up and now a big brother.  For some reason, my husband decided that the Griffin family needed a THIRD dog!  So today, Princess Penelope came home to meet the fam. Okay, so not the WHOLE family because three kids are away at camp, but she met #4, George, and Gizmo.

Penelope took George’s stick… he wasn’t very happy about that!

Then she played with his favorite hot dog squeaky toy.

Well, then she met Gizmo.  Gizmo is really not so sure what she thinks about having to deal with ANOTHER puppy!

Poor  little Penelope has been thrown in the deep end.  It should be a very interesting few days.

Victories come in so many different forms.

With our littlest guy, school is a struggle.  If you have spent any time with us, you have probably heard lamentations on the subject.  He struggles to focus.  He struggles to sit still.  He struggles with anything that resembles a classic education.

We have worked at this from a natural point of view and have even discussed with his doctor the possible need for medical intervention even though we have been so against it.

His recent concussion seemed to make things so much worse, and we have been at our wits end with him.  Our child who USED to keep a clean bedroom has become so disorderly is crazy.  School work has become worse than awful.

All the while, I have this delightful little soul to love on.  He is the most loving child!  He loves you with everything he’s got.  He is almost always smiling even if sometimes it is full of mischief.

When I was on my recent trip, he was able to have another visit with Dr. Grandma and we have been trying a new round of natural things to help alleviate the problems.  He received his care package from Grandma just the other day, and he has been faithfully taking his stuff.  He keeps telling me that he has to take his “lipoic acid to make his brain heal itself all up.”

Earlier this week, I had a fleeting thought that math had gotten done much quicker than normal, but I did not want to get my hopes up.  But, TODAY…

Today has been a GREAT day!!!!

Did you know that boy did FOUR lessons in math today?

Did you know that boy has figured out multiplication and division?  I introduced the concepts about three weeks ago!  Today he did 9 X 4 = 36 in his head before I could write down the problem. … 45 divided by 9… and.. OH MY!!! School work got DONE!  He squirmed about the whole time, but the work was DONE!!!

Then I started to break up the old sidewalk today.  He is always the first to run out and help with anything like this.  He loves to work.  I was not getting anywhere with the sidewalk and went inside to call about a jackhammer and get ready to go to the doctor.  By the time I was ready to go, he had the entire section of sidewalk pried up  with two pry bars and a mini sledge.   We did not have to rent a jackhammer!

AND THEN, when I took the man-child to the doctor, I left instructions for rooms to get worked in.  Considering he has the attention span of a gnat, my hopes were not high not his corner of the world

This is what I returned to.

Do you have any idea how long its been since I have seen the floor?!?

So today I celebrate these little, but MAJOR victories at our house.  Daddy and boy-child are at the store buying posters to put on the bedroom walls as a reward.

Our last port of call was Cozumel, Mexico.  We were quite excited about getting to see the Tulum Ruins.  Both Lyssa and I are history nerds so we knew it was the perfect trip for us!

Cozumel is actually an island off the Mexico mainland so we had to begin our journey with a ferry ride.  Lyssa was less than thrilled about this because she fights sea sickness, but she did GREAT 🙂

I expected the ferry to be pretty scary, but it was was nicer than I expected.This is me on the ferry before it was so hot that I almost died of heat stroke…

Look how happy I still look.  and calm… don’t I look calm?  There was air conditioning on the ferry.

After the forty minute ferry ride we  were guided to buses and got to ride those for another hour!  Thankfully they were quite nice and they had air conditioning too!  We even got a shopping stop.  I finally have my very own Mexican hammock, but I have to convince my dad to build me a stand for it.  I just have to quit having other things for him to fix, so he has time to build it for me.

The Tulum Ruins are an amazingly well preserved set of Mayan ruins.  They were absoluely beautiful.

In school this year, the kids studied Mayan civilization, and it was so neat to see this up close and have history right before my eyes. The guides talked about the same things we studied this year.

The skill of their architecture was amazing, and the way they were able to build so accurately in sync with astronomical cycles is mind boggling.

The building in the left of this picture looks crooked compared to all the other buildings but truly it is built so that the sun is visible through the different windows and doors during the summer and winter solstices sand spring and fall equinoxes.  What a feat!

One of the fun things (I thought) was all the iguanas!  They were EVERYWHERE.  I took a lot of pictures of iguanas.  By the time we were done, Lyssa was little tired of iguanas, but I still was snapping pictures.  They liked eating the hibiscus that were there.

The beach there was amazing, but Lyssa and I had not brought our suits out that day, and so we did not go swimming at Tulum.

The water seemed to have its own special color.

If it wouldn’t have been so STINKING hot there that day I could have sat and looked at this view all day long.

After the whole amazing thing, we took a TROLLEY back to the BUS which took us back to the FERRY…..

and then they did not even take us back to the pier where they got us!  They took us to downtown Cozumel where we had to find a taxi to get back to the ship.  So I took this oh so lovely picture of us to commemorate the occasion of our Mexican taxi ride.  I was HOT.  We were TIRED, and we were dumped in the middle of downtown where we did not want to be!

 

We survived the taxi ride, and  he took us to the right place! We made it and had a GREAT day in a beautiful place.

So, I am noticing that I am having more… um… senior moments.  I do not think it is fair, considering I am not even forty, but I don’t seem to be thinking as clearly as I once was.

I recently lost a whole set of keys and after waiting six weeks to make replacements, accidentally threw the replacement away in the outside garbage.

The cruise did not seem to be an exception. I was really hoping that all that relaxing was going to return me to my mental pinnacle, but it did not seem to help.

I locked myself out of my stateroom on more than one occasion.  I had to go get a new pass key once because of it.  I just LOVED having to traipse into the “Royal Promenade”  in my swimsuit and cover-up and announce that I was the  idiot who went to the pool without a thought of how I was going to get back into my room.  Thankfully the next time I locked myself out of our room, our steward was right there to let me back in.  I will not confess how many times this happened.

On one particular evening our little group was running about the ship, and I decided I needed to run to my room for a few things and I would meet up with everyone in the agreed upon meeting place.  We were in the elevator  carrying on about something and when the elevator got to floor eleven ( my floor) and the rest of the elevator occupants got off.  I ,of course, was too busy being ridiculous to think about my exit until the elevator was moving again.

It was decided that a little walk wouldn’t kill me, and I would exit at floor twelve.

I hurriedly made it to room 624 – my room- and stuck my key in the door.

It didn’t work.

I tried again.

It still didn’t work.

I knocked on the door, ya know…JUST in case Lyssa had gotten there before me, and could save me from getting ANOTHER room key.

No Lyssa.

I was fuming.  My feet hurt  because I was wearing dumb shoes that may of looked great, but were killing me.  I was slightly sunburned,and I am thinking I might have been a tad cranky.  So I stormed down the hallway and grabbed the steward.

It was not my regular steward, but he would do.

As I was dragging him to the door explaining my predicament, it hit me…

Yes there is a reason a key card won’t work in room 624.  When you are on the wrong floor.

SIGH.

 

 

When I found out about our cruise itineary I was most excited about the opportunity to go to Haiti.  I have always had a fascination with Haiti.  I was really hoping to be able to explore a little while we were there.

However, my dad made me promise I wouldn’t do anything dumb and I would stick with the tourists and stay safe. 

Well, I did not really get a choice.  We did not get to go to REAL Haiti.  We went to fake Haiti. Cruise lines like to lease islands or certain areas from local governments and make their own paradise for their clientele, and that was our Haitian stop.  We stopped in Labadee, Haiti.

Lyssa was in charge of booking excursions (which she did a fantastic job!) and she booked up for a walking tour in Labadee.

 

This was our guide.  It was an interesting tour to say the least.  We were never quite sure how much he was paid to say, how much he was made to say, and how much was true.

According to him, he is thrilled to have the cruise lines there because of the income for Haiti.  He has a job that can provide for his family because of it.  At our first three stops on our tour he told us that Haiti was NOT that poor, and at the last three stops he told of of all the things that other people had done that made the people of Haiti poor.  Like I said, it was INTERESTING!

The thing that blew my mind was the wall.  There was a nice concrete wall surrounding the area for the tourists.

I, being ME after all, wanted to see what was beyond the wall.

 

Real Haiti was beyond the wall.  Our guide had to come to work from his village by boat!  Haitians were not allowed in the tourist area unless they had a job there.  In the …however many years the cruise line has been coming there, there has never been an incident of crime within these borders.  It is just hard for me to wrap my mind around.  It is gorgeous without a doubt.

 

But it isn’t real.  It is the prepared canvas that they want you to appreciate.  I long to go back. My lifelong desire to Haiti has only strengthened.  I want to see REAL Haiti.  I want to see the real people.  I would love to go on a missions trip there.  It would be amazing!