We are the Krause's

I think Mas is pretty much the champion ice cream maker!
Kyle had a few issues with his cone tipping over!
Emils had an awesome one going until it all fell off of the cone!
Kelsey was pretty proud of his masterpiece!
Mas got to celebrate his 15th birthday while we were on the cruise. My parents ordered him this fun cake and all the the waiters came and sang to him!

This was probably the kids favorite part of the cruise was doing the Florider in Grand Turk. It's a man made surfing machine. Here's Kyle working on standing up.
And here's Kelsey getting the hang of it.
Emily was so light she had a hard time staying on the board. The waves just kept pushing her to the top!
Mas got the hang of it really quick and was getting ready to stand up here.
Here we are just as we got off the ship.

Here we are on the castle wall. The view was awesome! But I think this is truly the hottest place on earth! It was so humid, we were all sweating to death!
Then we found this cool little park with millions of birds. We bought some bird food and had fun feeding them right out of our hands!

Mason got to go twice, once with me and once with Kelsey so that no one had to go alone! He was excited!


Kyle and Emily went together and had a blast splashing each other when the driver dipped them down into the water!

Just check out this beautiful beach...need I say more?

The Bahamas are one of my favorite places to go. The beaches or absolutely gorgeous!
Here we are at the famous Atlantis Resort. This is one of the blown glass sculptures. They are so amazing!
And here's Titans chair! We had a great time exploring before we headed to the beach!

So on our way to our cruise we decided to take a little detour to Carlos Bakery. Of course the lobster tails were a huge hit and it was fun the be there with everyone. So the only bummer ended up being that when we got to the airport to continue on to Miami our flight was cancelled and a huge storm was coming in so we had to rent a van and drive all the way from New Jersey to Miami. 29 hours later we arrived in beautiful Miami!!!

The beaches were so beautiful. And because it was pretty chilly there was hardly anyone there.
Emily found this cool little starfish. She wanted to bring it home with us but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made it all the way back to Phoenix alive!
Since we basically had the beach to ourselves Emily and Mason decided to do some practice driving. They had so much fun cruising up and down the beach!
I can't believe Mason will be getting his permit in 6 months! I'm not ready to have 2 teenage drivers yet!

I just have to say that I had one of the best birthdays ever this year! Kelsey and the kids did nice things for me all month. And they surprised me with a trip to Corpus Christi, Texas. We toured the USS Lexington aircraft carrier and it was amazing. While we were walking around Kelsey was telling us that his dad had served in the Navy on a ship like this. He called he dad and was talking to him about it and come to find out it was this exact ship that his dad had served on. It just made it that even more memorable for us. We had such a good time exploring the ship, the beaches and relaxing in our hotel.

Lauren decorated Kyles room with pink streamers and pink balloons. He had to find the balloons that had little soccer balls with letters on them. Then he had to pop them and unscramble the letter so see who was asking him. He was so excited when he found out it was Lauren!

Kelsey and I love being the nursery leaders together. We call this the "secret path". It's a little walkway right up next to the church. The kids love to follow Kelsey along the "secret path", it's like follow the leader and they are all so cute! We have a couple kids that cry and all we have to do to get them to stop is have Kelsey stand across the room and I throw marshmallows at him and he catches them with his mouth. The kids love it and it usually makes them stop crying!

Here's Kyle with his Homecoming date. It was a costume dance so they went as bloody surgeons.
And here's me...at work they had a costume contest and I won the grand prize!!!

Here's Emils feeding me a piece of cantalope.
here's my mom feeding my dad a piece of a strawberry.
Kyle had more fun feeding the fruit to Kelsey and rubbing it all over his face! We were all laughing so hard!
Here's Mas feeding Kyle a piece of Mango. That was a hard one to identify.
We decided as a joke to feed my mom a piece of pickled garlic. It was super funny!
Here's me feeding Mas a piece of kiwi. That was another hard one to guess.
Emils was a little nervous but decided to play anyway. Here I am feeding her a piece of honeydew.
Here's the plates full of all the cut up fruits. We had such a good time. I think the food contests were some of our favorite times!

And the picture you've all been waiting for. The Kissing picture. Well, here it is. Enjoy!
The kids absolutely love jumping the waves and playing in the ocean!
Mason and Grandpa decided to race on the beach. I love watching them have such a good time together!

Kyle and Mason raced too. I actually think they ended up doing a few races. One of my favorite things about family vacations is watching my kids play and bond together.