Cruisin' With The Riches

Let's begin by acknowledging the fact that we are completely spoiled and indebted to my in-laws for this fabulous trip. (As well as many others.)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Jesse and I spent 4 weeks apart while he traveled for work prior to our trip (essentially all of July), so it was thrilling to be reunited again. 

Of course the days leading up to it were crazy while I worked three days, managed my two hooligans and my mom's dog I watched for the month, and packed up everything for our respective trips; the boys to my parents and me and Jesse for our cruise. 

We survived the packing and journeyed down to St. George on a Friday as early as we could get going, which of course wasn't overly early. It wasn't a bad drive, although I've had better. 

Our stop in Beaver was a little rocky. The boys needed diaper changes and I had to use the restroom, so unfortunately I had to take the kids into the gas station with me to take care of business. It had been raining so while I was griping their wrists for dear life so they didn't run wild, they were jumping through all the puddles spraying all three of us with dirty rain water. But we finally made it into the gas station and I pinned Briggs down to change him while I threatened Ian not to move. We then switched roles and after chasing Briggs down back out in the gas station, I herded them into the bathroom so I could take care of my business, and not 20 seconds go by before the door was opened and I was hollering at my children "CLOSE THE DOOR!"

This is why we don't go places.

Anyway, after everything was taken care of and we somehow made it back to the car and got strapped in, it was time to let the dog out for a potty break as well, so I parked over by some weeds and let her out, and of course the first thing she does is run through a belly deep puddle. Ugh. So then continued our journey with a wet dog in my car. Luckily she dried out fairly quickly.

I dropped off the boys, who by the way, just said "BYE!!!" and wouldn't even give me a kiss before I left. (They have way too much fun at Grandma's house.) And off I went to Vegas to meet my sweet husband.

Then about 12 hours of traveling later, we finally made it to Puerto Rico.
(And just to prove I still had no idea of where I was going, I am pretty sure I said I was glad we made it to Costa Rica.
Obviously I need a geography class.)

We met up with a chunk of our group and headed to the boat.
Oops, I mean ship.

Our first stop on Sunday was St. Thomas.

We had a nice Sunday Devotional on the ship, and then hoped off to visit the butterfly sanctuary.

We of course went as a matching pack of red shirts so as not to lose anyone.

The butterflies were beautiful.

I especially liked this table they set up for them to have a snack.

Can you spot the green butterfly above Jesse's head?
Camouflage in action.

The little kids took some time to fish with leaves in the sanctuary.
I don't know how they come up with these things, but it's rather awesome.

Well, now that it's been like 2 months since we cruised, I can't quite remember, but I think we had a formal night the evening of St. Thomas. 

 

Our next stop was St. Kitts.

We hopped on a bus and headed off to a black sand beach. 

 Our bus ride took us to this overlook for the view

It was rather windy up there. 

 And this might have been my favorite thing up there.

Well besides the actual "fun donkey."

Oh and here's the donkey's friend monkey from the ledge too. 

And then we hit the beach.

 Which happened to be on this particularly steep slope.
I might have laughed out loud when I walked down to it. It caught me off guard.

 My brother-in-law was awesome and participated in a soccer game on the ship.

He then still had the energy to play with the three youngest kids on the trip.

Our next stop was Aruba and we went to a gorgeous beach there. 

The water was so blue and clear, and it was just breath taking. 

My BIL and SIL rented some paddle boards for an hour or two and let us all take a turn. It was harder than we anticipated to stand up and paddle, but we sure had fun sitting and paddling.

Our last stop was Curacao. 

Jesse and I went out with my sister in law and her family and took some family pictures first thing in Curacao, and we had a blast. Curacoa was beautiful, but this was quite possibly our favorite part of the day.

 

We took a bus tour around the island and enjoyed the bright colorful town. 

 These four ended up being rather matchy matchy that day.

And our bus tour, might have put a few people to sleep. 

Our bus driver took us to the outside of this aquarium place to see the seals (or sea lions? I can't ever remember the difference. Jesse says it has something to do with ears.) And it was beautiful. 

One cute little nephew dropped his shoe over the edge and a worker had to get it out for us before it was eaten and lost forever.

Luckily they were also willing to scoop out the stuffed turtle our niece dropped down there as well.

It was such a fun week with these folks.
We met daily for devotionals, ate our dinners together, played games, saw shows, ate loads of food, and relaxed. It was so fun!
And Jesse and I completely enjoyed our second honeymoon.

July and August

Alright, I'm behind the times, and this post has been sitting forever, so I'll just go ahead and publish it.
{B}                      {I}

The boys still point out airplanes every time they see them. And instead of just saying Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah when they see them, they can now actually say airplane!

1. Briggs goes up the stairs one leg after another like an adult instead of just double stepping and going up with the same leg. If that makes any sense.

2. Everything is labeled as big/mama or baby. One day I found the boys in Ian's bed with the giant giraffe and a little stuffed giraffe and they just kept saying "Mama Raffe!" "Baby Raffe!" And again the other day Ian had the big giraffe and started walking around the house saying "Baby Raffe... Are you??" Once it was found, Ian played with the mama giraffe and Briggs played with the baby giraffe. Then at some point Briggs hit the big giraffe with the baby giraffe and Ian hugged his mama raffe and said "Watch Out!"

3. Ian puts his sippy cup down the side of his crib between the slats every time he has it in bed.

4. The boys have turned into little helpers (sometimes). They say "clean up" in the most adorable way while they tidy up toys. 

Ian was helping me pack for our cruise and tried on my hat and I couldn't help but love how adorable he looked.

5. I had a rather impressive beanie baby collection when I was young, and my mom has saved them for me and sent a giant bin up with me one weekend and my boys have loved it! One day they got a kick out of burying me in beanie babies.  

6. Briggs is still obsessed with bath time and requests a bath daily. Usually I oblige, and give into the request for bubbles too.

7. They have impressive jumping skills. Briggs can clear a pillow, they can both jump up onto a curb, and they are obsessed with jumping on the tramp.

8. Oh yeah, have I mentioned we got a tramp? Jesse's parents gifted us with a tramp since we didn't take the boys on the cruise. I'm pretty sure we got the best ends of this deal.
{Although this is picture is not our tramp. Ours has an awesome enclosure that keeps the kiddos in. Except for the times we forget to zip it and one of them goes flipping off and lands on his back...}

9. Ian says "Woo Hoo!" to anything that he is proud of or excited about.

10. Ian (and maybe Briggs too, we just haven't seen it) can reach the light switches and turn lights off and on.

11. They are taking off in their language skills. They copy everything we say and don't stop talking any more! It makes for some fun conversations. You definitely become conscious of the things you say because they start coming out of your children's mouths.

12. {B} loves his pillow and blanket and packs both of them around the house on a regular basis. 

13. The boys were lucky enough to spend the first week of July with my parents and it was delightful for everyone. I got a ton of random little things done that I had been needing to do for months as well as enjoyed some alone time with Jesse, and I'm pretty sure the boys were in heaven at Grandma's house. We need to ship them off to Grandma's house every year.
And I know they sent me a ton of pictures but I'm too lazy to dig them off my phone. 

14. We had my parent's dog London for a whole month in July/Aug. She was pretty good although taking her for a walk with my boys in a stroller is a nightmare some days. She liked to walk around lots of poles so I would have to park the stroller and untangle the leash, she had to choose the route we would take and would stop at any given time if she didn't want to go that way, and of course my boys fought over who got to hold her leash. My boys love London and were so cute with her. Briggs in particular loved to play with her and growled while he shook her toys.

She thinks she's a human.

She also loves sunshine and will find any tiny bit of it she can and sit there.

15. They love helping me cook.

16. I had a rough go one day with {B} awhile ago where I had to laugh at how ridiculous my life was. It all began when I changed his diaper in the morning and he did NOT want it back on. Normally I do not let my children run around naked, but they went straight outside so I figured it was no big deal for him to run around naked outside for a little while. That was until I heard a little wimpery cry and found a lovely pile of poop {B} had left and in turn, stepped in! YUCK! So I scooped him up and took him straight to the tub, but as soon as I started the water the power company showed up at our door to pick up our dead fridge. Thankfully the day went uphill from there.

They can give each other a High 5, and it might be the greatest thing ever.

These boys are awesome. 

I love how full our life is with them.

Eternity and The Flatlanders

Husband Post. Be warned. Seriously, though. This one's... out there.

I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a few years that I've never put into writing or really been able to discuss at length with anyone. Since your perusal of this blog is voluntary, I can ramble without the usual guilt I associate with cornering some poor soul and unleashing a barrage of my random thoughts at them. So here goes:

There's a book called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. If you haven't read it, read it. It's fantastic and it's free (public domain). Here's a link to a free download. If that's too much for you, the Wikipedia article hits the high points. I'll give you an even shorter version:

A Square narrates his daily life living in the 2nd dimension (Flatland). He is then visited by a 3rd dimensional Sphere who proceeds to blow his freaking mind.

If you'd rather get the quick version of what I'll be talking about (as well as a similar mind-blowing experience) watch the following two videos, entitled "Imagining the 10th Dimension" parts 1 & 2:

Or watch the movie Interstellar a few times back to back.

Anyone still reading? Just the two of you? Ok, then let us begin:

In a two-dimensional space, all you see are lines. Imagine a penny on a table, then lower yourself to be looking at only the edge of the penny. That penny's edge, reduced to infinite thinness because there is no thickness in the 2nd dimension, is the essence of being a Flatlander. You see the edges of things and that's it. If you're looking at a Square, it's a line. A circle's a line. A triangle's a line. You get the idea. Without "feeling" the edges, you have no idea how many sides a shape has because they're all lines. If there's a triangle behind a pentagon, you see the pentagon and not the triangle because they're lines.

Looking from the third dimension you can easily distinguish a circle from a hexagon or triangle. You can see several of these shapes at once, even if they're hiding "behind" one another, because of your third-dimensional view. You could even look inside a shape to see his "organs." You could see into the privacy of that shape's home because you're looking down into it rather than from the side like a Flatlander would. This seems trivial to us, but would be unfathomable to someone in Flatland. A Flatlander would understand forward, backward, left, and right, but wouldn't even be able to imagine such a thing as "up" or "down" because those directions don't exist in the 2nd dimension.

Still with me? Just the one? Oh, well I'm sure the other guy had somewhere to be. Now it gets a little hairy...

If a Sphere were to visit Flatland, he would be perceived in the same way a circle would. Our narrator, A Square, "feeling" the sides of the Sphere would find a smooth circle and that's it. The difference would be that a Sphere could change the size of that perceived "circle" or even disappear entirely depending on how it moved through the plane of Flatland. Imagine the sphere rose up through Flatland. Its existence would be perceived by a Square as starting at a single point, then growing larger until it reached its equator, then shrinking again down to a single point, then popping entirely out of existence. In reality the sphere merely made an appearance in the dimension that the Square could perceive.

While the Square struggles to understand what just happened, the Sphere looks on in amusement at the limited perspective of those in a dimension lower than himself. He can see inside, outside, behind, around, and on every side of a shape simultaneously while the Square is flipping his lid trying to understand "up." The Sphere's motility and powers of observation seem magical and unbelievable, even though it's the simplest thing in the world depending on your perspective and dimension.

Next, the Sphere takes the Square on a journey through the third dimension, known as "Spaceland." The Square is shown things that his mind couldn't even imagine. Spheres, cubes, and polyhedra of every type are suddenly made visible. He's introduced to impossible concepts and beings of seemingly incredible power. These beings turn, rotate, float, and move in new, mind-boggling ways. Light and color now have surfaces to reflect from. He can see the entirety of shapes that before he could only see or feel one edge at a time. In reality, the Sphere merely allowed the Square to see and move through a dimension one higher than his own. He could still be comfortably seated in his own house but now he's looking up, which was impossible before.

Now imagine A Square describing this to people who didn't see it for themselves. A voice introduces himself, then a being appears out of nowhere, grows, shrinks, then disappears. This being could also see everything. Even when you hid in your closet, he could see you plain as day. Then he takes you somewhere not far from your home but completely unreachable and introduces you to shapes whose powers seem mystical and unbelievable.

In a universe such as that of Flatland, as a being is raised from his own dimension to a higher one he is able to perceive and do things that seem impossible to those below.

Anyone left? No? Well I'm gonna finish anyway.

Now imagine a being in the 4th dimension looking at us. Such a being could see things hidden from our eyes. He could see and travel through walls, appear and disappear at will, and interact with our reality in ways we've never seen. His "body" might touch on our plane of existence, but we would only be seeing the 3-dimensional part of him that he allows to appear. In the 4th dimension the x, y, and z axes are all joined perpendicularly by the w axis. Directions like up, down, left, right, forward, and backward would be joined by ana and kata, directions only traveled in the 4th dimension or higher, directions that we simply can't wrap our heads around because all we know are three dimensions.

A being in even higher dimensions could travel through time. A being in dimensions higher than that could see events from the past, present, and future simultaneously. Space and time would be just eight of the dozens of directions in which this being could see and travel. The details of our entire lives, our whole universe, would be laid out as plainly as the blueprint to a building.

I submit to you that the power and omniscience of God are, in part, derived from His residing on a dimension much higher than our own. Think of how God's omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence are described in scripture:

The Lord’s eyes see and know all men’s works: D&C 121:24

The past, present, and future are continually before the Lord: D&C 130:7

All things are present with God: Moses 1:6

The eyes of the Lord are in every place: Prov. 15:3

Now this "higher-dimensional being" theory would seem to contradict one of the core beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because we, as Latter-day Saints, believe that God has a tangible body of flesh and bone. I liken this to the Square seeing a circle when the Sphere visited him. God has a body like a Sphere has a circle. Yes, the Sphere is a circle, but that is only a part of the entire being. That's merely a protrusion into observable space. The fact that there's more doesn't negate the fact that the Sphere is a circle or that God has a body, it's just that so much of him is unobservable to our natural eyes limited to the 3rd dimension.

Look in 1 John 3:2.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

In order to see God as He truly is, our bodies must be changed and our perceptions altered. A transfiguration must take place. The dictionary definition of "transfigure" means "transform into something more beautiful or elevated" (emphasis mine). It seems that transfiguration, the process by which man can perceive the true form of God and withstand his presence, is an elevation of our form to a higher dimension.

We, ourselves, are also higher dimensional beings in a way. Our spirits are made of higher-dimensional matter chained to our three-dimensional bodies. Even Joseph Smith said something very similar:

"There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter" (D&C 131:7-8 emphasis mine).

Everything is matter, but some matter can't be seen by our natural eyes. That sounds like a Square being pushed into a higher dimension to me. Moses spoke of such an opening of the eyes as the heavens being opened:

"3 And it came to pass that I turned and went up on the mount; and as I stood upon the mount, I beheld the heavens open, and I was clothed upon with glory;

4 And I saw the Lord; and he stood before my face, and he talked with me, even as a man talketh one with another, face to face; and he said unto me: Look, and I will show unto thee the world for the space of many generations" (Moses 7:3-4).

Look! That word! If our spiritual eyes are allowed, through transfiguration, to look in the right direction we can begin to see dimensions beyond our own, even the one where God Himself resides.

I believe that attaining permanent residence on such a dimension is the whole point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation. In order to progress and rise and expand and grow to be able to perceive and move through these higher dimensions, we have to prepare ourselves. Not just our bodies, but our spirits. A process that is totally beyond my comprehension is in place to purify our beings in preparation for our ascension to the dwelling place of God.

The funny thing about all of this talk of dimensions, though, is that it doesn't matter at all. In the grand scheme of things this is all just tiddlywinks. Everything I just wrote about could be 100% true or 100% false and it wouldn't affect the Gospel of Jesus Christ one iota. If the Gospel and the Plan of Salvation are the roadmap to eternal salvation, this whole idea I just wrote about is similar to meditating on the metallurgy behind the signs that tell you where the ducks cross the road. It may be interesting to some, but it's so insignificant when compared to things like Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, not to mention the thousands of other principles that still escape us. They'll never teach this idea in Sunday School because almost all of us are still struggling with the most important stuff. I figure those who make it to the Celestial Kingdom will study this all in depth at some point when it might actually be useful.

I do, however, think of this stuff every time a scientist starts pontificating about the idiocy of a bearded wizard in the sky creating everything. "How preposterous! There is no God and you're an idiot for thinking that an invisible being in any way affects the goings-on of us important people here on the 3rd dimension!" When I hear things like that I just chuckle and think of A Square.