November

November brought some fun and exciting things. 

Like snow

who knew it would be pretty much the only good snowfall all winter so far

i've said it many times before, but Niya loves the snow

the other day she told me "mom, its snowing! It makes me so happy!!!"

we also got to go to Mexico for thanksgiving

we went with my family and stayed in nuevo vallarta at the grand luxe. Its a really beautiful resort thats brand new. 

my parents took us all there. Thanks parents :) I wish i would have taken more pictures but i guess i was too busy just enjoying myself.

on thanksgiving day we had quite an "adventure". We chartered a deep sea fishing boat for 24 hours and went searching for some big fish. The men were over joyed the women and children were nervous to say the least.

the boat was not quite the "yacht" we were expecting. it was basically just bunks hanging on the side of a boat. Above are drew and niya in our bunk

heres the view of the entire "stateroom" yep there are 4 beds there. you might not be able to notice the 2 on the ground that you basically had to army crawl to get into.

this is the common area the next morning after going miles out to sea all night. notice sunny looks a little rough. she just might have been barfing over the side all night long. she was having a bit of a panic about being on the boat and wanted us to drop her off in some mexican town. that wasn't happening. she was not happy. Nerves were definitely in full effect and we were not without sea sickies. 

i didn't even think a 2 year old could get sea sick. well i was wrong. poor little niya barfed all over me, and herself and kept saying "mommy my tummy hurts sooooo bad" poor little thing

the kids were real troupers. there really wasn't anything much for them to do. By the next afternoon the trip was beginning to be a bit of a bust. we hadn't really caught any of the big tuna that we were after. We were almost getting ready to head back when we struck gold.

the tuna started biting like crazy. drew was soooooo stoked to say the least

every single one of us got to catch one of these beauties. i didn't realize how heavy they were going to be

this is my brother shawn. he's a man of the sea, and is the one that planned this whole fishing excursion. you can imagine how happy he was when we finally had some success

look at that beast

heres drew pulling it in

my brother billy with his loot

even the kids got to catch fish. Everyone was a lot happier when we started catching fish

spirits were lifted, we all caught fish, it was an experience of a lifetime.

we will always look back a laugh about all the crazy things that happened that day

this was our grand total. pretty grand i think. the crew fillet all the fish and we all went home with a ton of fresh tuna.

i have to say its the best fish i've ever eaten

the rest of the trip was spent just lounging around

taking a trip in to town

and just enjoying being together as a family