Growing Up and Getting Away

It is so sad to see Aliyah grow up.  She is not a baby, at all, by any means, whatsoever, and yet...we still call her baby.  Here she is eating an apple like a big girl--just picked it up from the fruit bowl and started eating--and she loved it.  (and she'll pick up a new one without getting very far on the other, so I have to watch her!)

Here's Aliyah playing with Dave.  She told them where they were supposed to hide and then just laid their and snuggled together.

The Monday before Easter we had our Easter FHE lesson (Dave and I would be gone on Easter so we wanted to make sure we taught Aliyah a little something!)  I filled some plastic easter eggs with scriptures and candy and then "hid" them around the living room for Aliyah to find.  After explaining just once she knew what she was supposed to do and found all of the eggs (except one that even I had forgotten where I had hid).  She loved finding the eggs and putting them in the basket.

                    

                    

After she found the basket we opened all the eggs and read through the scriptures and talked about Christ's last week before His Resurrection.  At the end I asked Aliyah if she would follow Jesus and she said, "No."  We asked her why.  She said, "Because Jesus was crucified."  Uhhh, what! That's a pretty good reason.  We then explained about how Christ was resurrected, perfect, and all better, then asked once again if she would follow Jesus example so she could live with Heavenly Father again.  She said yes!  Whew...

On to the Getting Away part...Dave and I had to get away.  So over Dave's short spring break and in celebration of our 5 year anniversary, Dave and I went on a west Caribbean cruise.  We left Aliyah with Dave's sisters family. We were so sick to our stomach that morning we dropped her off!  We knew she would be fine, but she was out of our control...terrible feeling!  We got over it soon enough.  The 8 hours of flying/layover was even a welcome retreat as were able to relax, read, talk, watch a movie.  The hotel we stayed in not so welcoming.  The room was tiny, had tile floors (so we could hear people rolling their luggage down the hall at 3 and 4 and 5 pm) and thin enough walls to hear people talking on the other side! It was a rough night...but made the cruise itself even that more wonderful!

Here we are on the cruise ship with the Miami skyline in the background.  Do you see how happy we were!  We didn't even leave the port for another 4 hours after this...we just were on the ship, eating food, reading books, and getting burned...it was awesome!