Queen of the Cards

Hubby and I played some cards tonight. I've had the directions (along with a deck of cards) for "Kings Corner" and "Crazy 8s" in my purse for a while. (You just never know when you might want to play a card game...ha.)

We played four games of "Kings Corner" and I won THREE games. (I very rarely beat Hubby when we play games.)

Ha.

Hoping That Comedy is Good Medicine

We are waiting to see Mr. Bill Cosby in that seat! I've always wanted to see him. I will add that it's a little bittersweet to be here. The tickets were my parents', and my dad graciously offered them to us since my mom can't go.

I am planning on some good laughs tonight.

In The Midwest

Hubby and I are going to spend the weekend with my parents.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've seen my mom and I'm looking forward to seeing what she's learned in therapy.

These giant windmills are a typical sight along the way. They're a little eerie at night when all that is visible is a red light blinking.

The Last Day

One last day at sea.

I don't know about the rest of my family, but when I woke up that last day of the cruise, I felt quite sad. Sad to have to go home to the cold. Sad to not have my bathroom cleaned for me a couple of times a day. Sad to have to cook my own food. Sad to say goodbye to the good times with my family.

I decided I didn't want to be in the sun at all. Hubby and I had breakfast with my mom and dad, then found places around the ship to read. We even tried to win a five carat sapphire. Grin. (We didn't win, of course. I never win anything.) We saw the movie Argo in the big theater on the ship.  (Missed the first fifteen minutes because of the aforementioned effort to win jewelry.) We both enjoyed the movie. We were college students when those events (American hostages in Iran) unfolded. We remembered bits and pieces of it, but mostly we were oblivious college students.

At our last dinner together, the wait staff honored my mom and dad's anniversary with a yummy piece of cake. (Mom and Dad passed it around for us all to get a taste.)

I just loved the smiles on my parents' face all week long!

Allan, our waiter, posing for a picture.

The fancy dessert for that night was Baked Alaska. The waitstaff made a big production of bringing the Baked Alaskas into the dining room. (I didn't get a decent photo of that so I won't subject you to the blurriness.) (Your welcome.)

Hubby joked about getting the half a cake that was left over and Allan, the waiter, jokingly put the serving plate in front of him. We had a good laugh.

After dinner we all went to the show in the big theater. The entertainer was an impressionist and was quite funny.

Most of us spent the rest of the evening getting our bags repacked. The cruise people collected the luggage from the hallway overnight so we didn't have to drag them off the ship. We claimed them in a warehouse after we disembarked. We were given colored-coded tags to put on the luggage. The luggage is then arranged in the warehouse according to color. Makes it pretty simple to find the luggage!

Once off the ship and through customs, we waited for a shuttle to take us to the airport. It was sunny and pretty warm (hello Florida). I was dressed in jeans (because I knew what I was flying back to) and wanted to wait in the shade. Hubby stood in the sun and motioned for me when the shuttle came.

Once off the shuttle came the usual: find the right line at the airport, get your boarding pass, pay a stupid amount for luggage (Hello -- who would travel with no luggage? I find that fee ridiculous), hold you breath as they weigh your luggage (we sneaked by with only two or three pounds to spare), figure out where the security check point is, stand in line, undress (well almost) to go through the metal detector, be annoyed with TSA, find your gate, then wait.

(Good grief! No wonder flying stresses me out!)

I sat down to drink some (stupidly expensive) water and call my son and Hubby went to get us some pizza. As I was talking, I saw my brother-in-law walk by! He and my sister were flying back to central Illinois. We sat and talked with them until it was time for us to board.

Once at the proper altitude, I plugged into my iPod and listened to one of my favorites: Christy Nockles. Hubby was laughing at me because I was lip-syncing to beat the band. ;) (At least I wasn't singing out loud!)

I had the shade on my window down most of the flight but opened it as I felt the plane descending into Minneapolis. Hubby and I looked out and groaned. We saw snow everywhere. What a let down!

We had a fabulous week and have both stated that we think my parents' were genius to come up with this idea of all of us helping them celebrate their 60 years of marriage by inviting all of us to go on a cruise with them.

THANKS MOM AND DAD!

The Anniversary Day

The last two days of the cruise we were at sea making our way back to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Thursday

Thursday we enjoyed a yummy breakfast in one of the sit-down restaurant on the ship with my sister, brother-in-law, brother and sister-in-law. We breakfast in that dining room the last three mornings on the ship. Different family members joined us. The food was outstanding and the service was even better. I loved the waiters walking around saying "Morning!" so cheerfully and offering muffins or pastries from their trays. The food was plentiful and made me want to eat a light lunch. (Which was actually quite doable at the buffet. I would fill my plate up 2/3 with lettuce and veggies.)

(The first morning we went to this dining room, it was just me and the hubby.  The hostess asked if we wanted to join a table or be seated by ourselves. We said by ourselves. This introverted-not-morning-person had a mini panic attack at the thought of eating breakfast with strangers and having to make conversation. So glad we had the option!) (ha)

Thursday late morning, Hubby and I  donned our suits and headed for one of the pools. This ship had several. On went the sunscreen and out came the book/Kindle. We both took a dip in the pool. So refreshing! I think I lasted all of one hour. I get bored laying in the sun and I am way past wanting to have a tan.

My sister is in this photo.

Hubby was sweet and got me a couple of glasses of water to keep me hydrated.

After lunch, (where we ran into more family members!) I showered and took a lovely nap. Hubby went back to the pool and read a bunch.

That evening was a formal night for dinner. Which means we had to dress up all fancy like. It was neat that one of the formal nights coincided with the actual date of my parents' 60th anniversary! Dad asked us all to meet early so we could have some photos taken of us. (You wouldn't believed all the photographers that are all over the place on a cruise: When you get on the ship, getiing off the ship at the ports of call, before dinner, during dinner...)

This was a perfect opportunity to have a professional photo taken of all of us. We were all together and we were all dressed up.

(I was reminded of my grandma and how she always wanted to take a picture of us grandkids when we were dressed up for church. She would beg for us to wait and change out of our Sunday clothes until she could get a picture of us.)

I scanned into my computer the photos we ended up buying. This one is of my two sister, my brother, my parents and me.

I don't think my parents look like they've been married for 60 years. They were a mere 21 on their wedding day!

Here's a picture of us all with our spouses:

Aren't we fancy? :)

We had dinner that night in a very nice Italian restaurant on the ship. Such a fun evening we all had!

We are waiting outside the restaurant

Sister, Mom, Sister-in-law, Brother

Dad

I took a  picture of the appetizers on the menu because there was Calamari on it and I though the description  was humorous. "Baby Squid in a Cone."

Interestingly, we were given these as a complimentary treat. I tried it and even liked it! (The only other time I have had calamari was in Singapore and it was very chewy and not very good. Our Singaporean friend called it Chinese Chewing Gum. ha.)

And now, I have just got to get some food photos in here.

Nine out of ten of us ordered this Lobster dish. So funny!

In keeping with the theme of a cruise that you don't have to do anything for your self, the waiters took the lobster out of the shell for us.

The waiter saw me taking a picture and decided to ham it up for the photo.

My dessert. A citrus tart. YUM!

Here's Mom and Sister checking out the M&Ms we gave everyone. (I posted about those here.)

The wait staff brought Mom and Dad a piece of chocolate cake and sang to them:::

I just love the huge smile my mom has on her face. :D

After dinner we changed into comfy clothes (come on -- we can only pretend to be fancy for a while before we go back to our "normal" selves!) , and we all converged on my mom and dad's stateroom. It was cozy for sure to have ten of us crammed in there.

We shared cards and notes and talked for a while. Dad shared how the two of them becoming Christians made a huge difference in their dating relationship. This verse describes why:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:The old has gone, the new is here! 

2 Corinthians 5:17

Because of Christ, they have a marriage that has lasted 60 years.

I have seen this verse displayed in their house, but until last week, I didn't know why it is significant to my parents.

One more post about the cruise to come.....

One Happy Island

Wednesday of the cruise was spent in Aruba. The motto for Aruba is One Happy Island. I think it would be difficult to not be happy while you are there. It is one beautiful place!

See how excited Hubby is for our day? He's checking out the map.

We traveled around on a bus and were able to see quite a bit of the island.  It was a pretty hot day and the bus we were on didn't have a very good working air conditioner. Thankfully the driver made arrangements for us to switch buses for one that was much cooler. I still was pretty darn hot and sweaty by the time I got back to the ship. (But I still say it beats the cold dreary winter weather of the Not So Great White North.

Our driver was quite chatty and took us all over the place to see rock formations....

Hi Hubby!

 the north shore...

 an old light house...

It was so flipping bright when we were at the lighthouse, I couldn't see what the screen on the back of my camera was showing. One photo was a bit crooked:

Aruba is considered a dessert island. I was surprised to hear that. But there were cactus all over the place:

 I think my favorist (is that a word?) stop for the day was at an ostrich and emu farm.

Two toes.

Ostriches sure are odd creatures. I tell ya, God has quite the imagination!

I think this guy was in time out. He never left the corner. All the other ostriches were very curious and came to look at whoever was nearby.

My only disappointment for the day was that we really didn't have time for shopping. Our excursion was supposed to include that, but there just wasn't time.

(And I need to throw in here something I want to remember when I read back through this someday down the road.)
As the bus driver was making his way back to the cruise ship, I was watching out the window and spotted something that made me very excited. So much so I smacked Hubby and said, "Look! Look!" There was a restaurant called Delifrance. This was a restaurant that was in Singapore. We have a joke in our family about Delifrance. One Christmas when we were living in Singapore, I was out shopping for a present for Hubby. He called me at lunchtime and asked where I was. I thought that if I told him which mall I was in, he would guess what I was shopping for. I happened to be eating lunch at a Delifrance and was looking at the paper place-mat that listed all of the outlets on the island (of which there were more than 40) So I told him I was at Delifrance, knowing he would have no idea where exactly I was. To this day when one of us is somewhere we don't want anyone else to know (likely because of shopping for a gift) we just tell others we are at Delifrance, which is code for none-of-your-business.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program....

After dinner we wandered around the ship and looked in some shops. We went to a show in the big theater on board. We did that several nights and heard a comedian and a couple of different impressionists. After the show, we ended up in a lounge listening to a piano player and entertainer. He was quite good. One of my sisters and her hubby were in the same lounge. Still kind of interesting how, on such a big ship, we could run into family unplanned.


More to come...

More Cruising

Bored yet?

Too bad. I have more to write! :)

Monday and Tuesday of the Cruise

Monday was a day at sea. We were headed to a couple of islands just north of Venezuela. The seas were a smidge rougher today. But overall, there wasn't a lot of big waves during the week. I find the slight swaying of the ship to be comforting. Hubby found the slight swaying to be a little challenging when he was running on the treadmill in the fitness club on board. :) But he loved the view. The treadmills looked out over the front of the ship.

I slept in on Monday. After I got up, Hubby showed me the fitness area and I made an appointment in the spa for a massage later that evening.

We hunted around for the rest of my family. They were on one of the upper decks laying in the sun with the incredibly strong winds. We hung out there for 20 minutes or so and I had had enough of the wind.  Hubby and I went to the buffet for some lunch.

We listened to a band in the main part of the ship and read. I read a total of three books on the cruise and Hubby read 2 1/2 books. Hubby gave me a Kindle for my birthday and this is what I brought with me. I just loved using it! It was great to have 25 books in such a small device!

I told my dad that he and I had a date on one of our balconies. I gifted him with a little baggy of blue jelly beans.

 Random, huh?
 Back story needed:
When I was in junior high and high school we spent most spring breaks skiing in Colorado. I'm sure more than one of those was near Easter so Mom would bring some jelly beans along as a snack. I remember riding up the lift with my dad munching on the jelly beans. On a whim, I tossed a white jelly bean into the snow below the chair lift. Dad asked me what I was doing and I said I wanted to see if you could see the white jelly beans in the snow. Silly, I know, but Dad and I joked about it for years afterwards.

As I was getting ready for this cruise, I was remembering the spring breaks my mom and dad celebrated their anniversary on the slopes, which then reminded me of the white jelly beans. Suddenly I had an idea and was off to the store to see if I could find some blue jelly beans. Why blue? Well, because the ocean is blue! My  plan was to toss the blue jelly beans into the ocean.

Silly, I know, but Dad and I had a good chuckle. :)

We decided to not toss them over the side since the balconies on the levels below us stepped out and we didn't want to wing someone with a blue jelly bean. :)

Anyway...

Monday night after dinner I went off to have my massage. I enjoy massages, but also find them to be incredibly awkward. (For obvious reasons.) (This was no exception.) I was a little annoyed at the end when I realized that the spa people were more interested in recommending products than anything. I had $150 worth of products "recommended" to me.

After the massage I drug myself (I was terribly relaxed) to the upper deck to find the rest of my family. Most of them were up there so we could watch a movie. The ship had a big movie screen out there to watch movies under the stars. So cool. We watched Life of Pi. I really enjoyed it despite the wind. Although, I wondered about watching a movie about a shipwreck while on a ship. :)

(This is a shot of the movie screen from a couple of nights before when the movie showing was Skyfall. We had better seats when we watched Life of Pi.)

Monday was a late night to bed, but we didn't need to be off the ship until after noon the next day, so it worked out okay.

Tuesday found us docked in Curacao (cure-a-sow). Such a pretty island! (I think I said that about Eleuthera, but was true for Curacao, too!)

Hi Sister-in-law and Brother!

These islands are part of the Dutch Antilles. You can certainly see the Dutch influence in the architecture. We loved all the colors of the buildings.

Our excursion today was on a semi-sub.

What you can't see from this photo is what was underneath.

We all stuffed ourselves under there and had great views out the windows to see the amazing underwater world.

 Not the best quality of photos since they were taken through windows. But they remind me of what we saw.

Our guide said he was going to go feed the fish and and next thing we saw was him in scuba gear along-side the boat!

The fish sure knew what he was up to.

I have to admit that I got tears in my eyes looking at this wonder. I considered it such a privilege to be able to peek into this under-water world that God created. I felt like He was overwhelming me with blessings to see this part of His world. What a mighty and creative God I serve!

It was nice excursion. Our bus driver drove us around and told us a lot of the history of the place. We always enjoy learning the history of a place we are visiting. The bus we were riding in was soooo small! The aisle was so narrow that everyone had to turn sideways to get down it. And I will just say it's a good thing that I am married to the guy sharing the seat with me... ;)

At the end of the tour we were dropped off near a shopping area. We sat and watched this ship heading out to sea.

 Can you see the man climbing down the ladder on the side of the ship? He eventually got on the smaller boat that was along-side. Yikes!

 This was a late night departure from Curacao, but Hubby and I were back on the ship for dinner. We were about a half and hour later for the seating, but since it was just the two of us, it didn't really matter. We enjoyed even more personal attention from the waiter. :) I finished my meal with the best lemon sorbet I have ever tasted!


I was amazed at how we would run into other family members on the ship. There were around 3,000 people on board, but we would inevitably find some of the family.

Next stop was Aruba.

More to come...