Summer catch up....at least what I can remember of it for right now!!!!

So by now most of you know that we have finally officially moved here to Colorado. If you missed that email and need our new addy, just send me an email. Things have gotten pretty well settled in finally. When Scott and I first got up here, Leighanna and Eryk were staying with us for the summer until school was back in. It was fun getting a chance to spend some time with both of them. Scott adjusted to the move pretty quick and made several friends on the street here.
School started here the beginning of July. They are on an all year calendar here, so kids go to school for several weeks, then get several weeks off. It’s hard for me to realize that Scott is in 5th grade now! I have to consciously take a step back every now and then and remind myself that he isn’t a "little kid" anymore and that it good for him to do things w/out. I’ve enclosed a few pictures from the first day of school. Keep an eye out for future posts including: My little sisters wedding!!!, my entire families visit, Scott and his Saxophone, and our new business venture!

The end of the most dragged out story ever!

Ok…I’ve dragged this trip out long enough. So here it is, in condensed version so that I can move on to all the over events going on here!
Cozumel had probably the most beautiful water that I have ever seen! It was the magical bluish green that was just amazing. Since we had been kind of busy on the other islands we opted to take the day and do some shopping. While we did find a few shops that were neat, it was a jewelry haven. I was hoping to find some more neat pieces to add to my kitchen, but there were none to be found at all. After a few hours of this we decided to head over to the Senior Frogs we had seen when we got off the boat with the idea that more from our group would probably be there as well. Right we were. In fact when we get there the party was already in full swing! The rest of our time on the island was spent there hanging out. And there you go…Cozumel!
Our last day at sea was our horse race. After a week of parading this thing around the boat all day, everywhere we went it was time to see what it could really do. There were 2 contests for the horses. The first was best dressed. We had that stupid horse all decked out. On top of that our entire group wore our "team" shirts to the race and then created a hand tunnel for it to travel down. We had a group of 20 some people there with us, all screaming as loud as we could, but our rival horse came from a group of 30 some people, so no matter how hard or loud we yelled, they were able to out yell us in the end. Then it was time for the big race, and while it was a close one, we didn’t get that one either…but that’s ok, because neither did our rival horse!
Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and have our bags in the hall for the stewards to pre-stage for our exit the next morning.
So there you have it, our trip all said and done, months later. Tim and I really had a blast, and can’t wait to do it again! We met some wonderful new friends (look for a future post on a visit with them). We had a chance to relax and hang out with friends old and new, some that we hadn’t seen in a few years, some we hope to see for years to come. So to everyone that was and is a "Sea Monkey", we would like to thank you all! Each and every one of you added something to our trip helping make it one of the most exciting things we’ve ever done! We hope to do it again someday soon!

Grand Caymans

This was the day that we had been looking forward to for months. The Caymans were the only island that we had planned an excursion on, and we did that months before the trip to make sure we could get in. After we had gotten on board a few others were still signing up for their trips, and we found out that Brian and Marci were signing up for the same trip we were on. It was nice having someone to share the fun with. Our day started off with some breakfast in the WindJammer while we waited for our tender number to be called. On this island we had to take a ferryboat to the actual island, as we could not dock right at their shores. The morning started off a bit overcasted and there were some threats of rain. We were reminded of the fact that the trips either continue rain or shine, or if canceled due to the weather we were SOL.
Once on the island I was captured by the old fashion charm of the main strip there. It had a very distinctive French quality to the building fronts. We had to shuffle around trying to find our meeting location. When our driver showed up he was much more then I could have hoped for. I was thinking that he was just a driver that would point out a few details along the way, but he was the entire package!
Our first stop along the way was a turtle farm where they are in the process of trying to boost the turtle population. Here they have established a beach for the females to crawl up onto to lay their eggs. If your not familiar with how the sea turtles work, the females lay their eggs and bury them in the sand, then crawl back to the ocean and are done. The eggs will then later hatch and the babies (about 2" in size) then have to find their way back to the ocean and take their chances of not being scooped up by birds or other animals. Oh yeah, they also have the problem of birds and other animals eating the eggs prior to hatching. So of a deposit of say 50 eggs, maybe 2 will make it. So this farm lets the females lay their eggs and then will dig them up and place in incubators till hatching then they will be raised in different tanks till ready to either add to their collections, or release back into the wild. Once we walked into the place our driver went into the full story of what this place does, and how it works. He also shared with us all the information of the turtle lives, how to tell the ages and the sexes of the turtles. The main tank with the adults in it was huge and the turtles were in huge quantities! They were just about stacked on top of each other. Some of the turtles there were up into their 70’s in age. The next tank we visited held the youngens that were about 6 months old. These were about a foot in diameter, and maybe 20 pounds or so. Here we were able to reach right in and pick them up. The turtles have a built in drive to be in the water and swim, so when you pull them out of the water you have to turn them away from the water right away, or else you’ll end up getting splashed as they try to fight you. After we left that tank we wondered around a few other tanks where they are working with other types of turtles other then the Sea Turtles. Before we knew it, it was time to run through the gift shop and then back onto the bus and onto our next stop…the rum store!
When we got to Tortuga Rum Co. I don’t think I have ever seen chaos like this before in my life! It was a small little store that had about 100 people in it and 1 cashier. They had a great business going, but needed to stagger the bus arrival times a bit better. All anyone needed was about 10 minutes in there to be able to get a good buzz going. They know how to sell booze there! They had about 10 different bottles open that they were giving samples out of, and they handed out as many as you wanted. Right next to there was a station of rum cakes galore for the taking. Being part of a ship trip though we could not carry our bottles on. Actually we didn’t even get to see our bottles of choice at all. We had to take our luck that they delivered it to our ship in time, and that it would make it to our room from there. Just as the place was clearing out a bit and we had some breathing room to look around, it was our time to go as well. Our next stop was Hell. This is a very small town on the island that got its’ name because of the exposed jagged black coral reefs. This reef field is about the size of a football field if that and very neat looking. In front of the reef is a little shack that sells all kinds of crap souvenirs to us gullible tourists. I couldn’t believe how bad it was in there. For all the neat Hell sayings that there are, they used none of them. To top all that off then, they were charging crazy high prices for the stuff. Most of the t-shirts there were about $35 for really bad artwork. We were able to send post cards off from there though, so the kids got cards postmarked from Hell. This stop seemed to last all to long before we finally loaded back up and headed over to the ocean again to meet up with our boat for the last leg of our excursion.
This last stop was the one that I was the most excited about. In fact I had thought about it since I had gotten a pack from our travel agent that had a letter from someone talking about it. Swimming with the StingRays. To me it just sounded like the coolest thing in the world to do on our trip. Our boat ride out to StingRay City was about 45 minutes or so. The boat tour had a videographer on board going around getting pictures of everyone on board, they also had this wonderful fruit punch that they were serving. Once we got closer to our destination we were given briefings on how to properly feed and touch the StingRays. We got to our area, threw out anchor and the videographer went into the water first to get some underwater shots of them swimming all around. A bit of history on the area before I go one with the story. Back in the day, a long, long time ago the fishing boats would stop in this area to clean fish and their boats. The sailors would just toss all the guts and what not into the water. Sting Rays love this type of stuff and soon learned to associate the sound of the engines with dinner. Over the years someone got the idea to make it a tourist stop. I’m glad that they did! Once we were in the water we had a bucket that had holes drilled all around it so that the squid juice inside of it was able to leak out and scent up the water. Before we knew it there were dozens of these amazing fish all around us! No matter where we stepped there was a StingRay. Some were under our feet there, some were swimming around our legs; all of them were looking for a free meal! We had been told to be careful of the squid juice and not wipe it on our legs or anything as the Sting Rays are scent eaters and will try to suck the juice off us leaving us with giant hickeys. So knowing this info Tim grabbed a big squid out of the bucket and rubbed it all over my stomach in hopes that one would latch onto my stomach. Of course I wasn’t his only target. Brian didn’t seem to thrilled with this whole idea of fish swimming around us and in mass quantities. So he was staying off to the side by the boat, far enough away to be away, but close enough that Tim was able to keep throwing squid over to the water around where Brian was standing forcing the Sting Rays over to him. We had been told that kissing a StingRay was years of good luck, so everyone that I could get a hold of I was kissing, I should be set for life now! We were able to grab a hold of them a few times for pictures and as we had to head back to the boat our one guide grabbed one and had it climb up my back for a StingRay massage. It was the oddest thing ever! Too quickly it was time to board back up and head back to shore. On the way back they had some rum punch for us to indulge in, so good…I could have gone through gallons of it if they had had it!
Tonight was our second formal night for dinner and we were all excited to see each other dressed up again, and share our stories of adventures from the day. We all met at the main staircase to get a group photo. The guy that was setting it up was really ticking us all off with his complete incompetence, and general rudeness. Rod had been waiting for this night, as he had rented himself a James Bond tux to wear. So there we are, all dressed up, carrying a horse on a stick with us to dinner, every bit the picture of high class! When dinner was done Rod had set up with a different photographer to do a few special pictures. There Rod was in the center with Tara and Mimi looking at him lovingly hanging onto his shoulders, and Loraine and I were clinging to his leg looking up at him. It was just too funny to see us there in front of a waterfall, and Rod posing with his best James Bond look! Afterwards Tim and I went out on the deck for a bit to enjoy the night air and then headed over to the casino to meet up with everyone. Tim sat down at the Roulette table to play, but there wasn’t anymore space there (was a small table) so I went over and sat down to play video poker. By the end of the night we had won over $100 between the 2 of us.
All in all I would have to say that this was my favorite day of the trip. This is the day that I think about when things get crazy….my new happy place!

Jamaica Mon!

So here it is finally a trip update. Sorry that it has taken this long, but right when I got home I was in a whrilwind of school work to do as it was time to wrap up everything for the year. Anyways, it's summer break now so no more excusses (unless I don't finish this before the move then I have that one!) So on Wednesday we finally made our first island stop. We made port in Montego Bay early that morning. By the time that Tim and I got up to meet with everyone for breakfast we had already docked. It was nice seeing land and birds again. Most of the group all met up at Windjammers (the informal dinning area) for breakfast and chatted excitedly over are days plans. We were all going to be heading to Breezes for the day. For those that haven't seen the comercials they are a private type resort that is "all enclusive". After swiping our cards and leaving the boat we were swarmed by taxi drivers. We got lucky with a really nice guy named "Ward". Hows that for a Jamacian name for you? Anyways he took us right to where we needed to go for less then nothing per person, and refused to take any money until he came back to pick us up!
So now that I've gotten us to the front door of Breezes, let me back track a few weeks to tell you the story of how we ended up going there....Tara, who pulled this entire cruise together has parents that also like to travel alot and called Breezes for us letting them know we had a good sized group coming into town and what could they do for us. Well a deal was worked out that we could show up that day and for $45 each get in and enjoy the resort, and the bigger the group, the better the discount could be. Tim and I talked about it and figured this was a no brainer...private beach, drinks, and food all for $45, an unbeatable deal in our minds. It must have seemed that way to most of the group too as there was about 16 or so of us there.
Now lets go back to the story of us walking in the front door. As we walk in we see a mimosa station right by the door. Were still all hyped up and talking about our day to come. Tara went to the desk to tell them about the deal the main office gave us, and we got a look like we had just landed there in a space ship! She explained again about the deal we were offered and we were told 'not a chance in hell' would they let us in for that price...if we wanted in we needed to pay the ship price of $98 each. Yeah right...double the price we were told. Now everyones excited chatter is slowly turning into angry mummbling. Well as were sitting there getting steamed another group came in. Come to find out they had been there earlier in the day and had been told by THEIR front desk to come back after 10:00 am and they would let them in for that $45 price we were talking about. So now there are about 25 irked people standing around. Tara is on the phone with the main office and still getting no where. Next thing we knew a 3rd group walked in and ran into the same problem, only difference was that this group had a travel agent in it. So a pow wow was held in an office and a bit later Tara came out saying that they wern't going to budge at all on the price. We said the heck with it, and since Doug had drained them of their mimosa station we left. So out their door walked between our group and another one, more then $2000 that they could have made that day. We would find out later on by a spy that stayed behind waiting for others in the group to meet up with us, that the group with the travel agent was let in not long after we left at the $45 rate.
Right down the road from there was a semi private beach, as in there was a cover charge to get in and use their stuff, but still resonable prices. We got some chairs, and an umbrella and set up camp. After changing we headed to the water for a little football play. Some had rented snorkle gear and exchanged it amongst the group to play around at a reef that wasn't too far away. They also had these awsome gaint trampolines out in the water to hang out or play on. At one point one of them only had 2 people on it, so we saw it as our chance for a "Seamonkey Invasion". After awhile though the sky started to cloud over so we headed back to our chairs and started ordering buckets of beer. On the ship a six pack bucket of beer was costing about $27 w/their tip built in...on the beach they were $10 each. As it got closer to lunch time a few from the group went into a restraunt/bar that was right on the beach. Tim, Marci, Brian, and I however deceided that we were going to head a few doors down to Margarittaville. This is a Jimmy Buffet owned theme restraunt. As we walked in, I realized that there wasn't going to be much of a chance to eat there as it was packed wall to wall. Within a minute of walking in the DJ there was anouncing a chance to win a free t-shirt. That's all I needed to hear...the word free and I'm there. Well next thing I knew I was up on the bar getting ready for a dance off! As I looked out at the crowd there was my husband telling me to "take it off!" Brian even came up to "tip" me a dollar! While we were dancing the bar tender was spraying us down with water from the soda hose they have. The bar was so slippery! Well I didn't take first place, but I did get a free "Longatude" beer which is Jimmy's own brand for these restraunts. We all agreed that food was out, so headed up to the top floor to ride the water slide that they have there. Tim was the first brave one to go. He asked the attendant there about the drop to the water. (read in your best Jamaican acent) "oh mon, you come right out on the water, it's smooth" . So off Tim went, followed by Brian. I should mention that by this point it was pooring rain outside. So Marci and I sat in the rain to wait for the guys to come up and watch the gear for our turn. After what seemed like forever we started looking around only to see that they were hanging out on the trampolines! I guess that they were looking for a Kodak moment there. Anyways they soon came to join us with the warning that there was a huge drop to the water and make sure we keep arms and legs crossed for it. Well with the liquid courage that we had been working on all day I took off. Let me tell you that this slide, short though it was, was FAST! I hit the water a bit stunned, swam off to the side and turned to look for Marci. I saw her heading out the tube, and honestly she looked like a bullet from a 45. We must have traveled at least 5 feet in the air before hitting the water 3 feet below!
We made our way back to the group laughing and glad that we had stopped over there. All to soon though it was time to call Ward and let him know that our pick up location had changed and we were ready to head back. Ward picked us up early enough to do some quick shopping in one of the centers there. Tim and I had bought a coupon book on the boat, so we checked out what we could get for free there, and found ourselves right in the middle of where we needed to be, so we did some quick shop hopping for free earrings, free stones and that type of thing. Then back to the boat we went.
After a shower and a quick nap it was soon dinner time again. Today after we had gotten back to the ship, Rod had aquired a few coffee mugs and had Brian taking the horse around while he and Marci used the cups to make hoof sounds (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Needless to say they made quite an entrance to dinner that night. Afterwards we took the horse on a tour of the boat while Rod acted as the papparazi for our horse taking hundreds of "pictures" of it

every step of the way!

Memorial Day

I wanted to take a moment before I continue on with our trip adventures to say thank you to all that have served, and are currently serving our great country. Many soldiers and civilians have died to give us the freedoms that we have over the last 231 years, please take a moment to say a prayer for them. Also when you see a soldier or a vet make sure to say a kind word to them.

Lost at Sea....Days 3+4+5 (or should it be 1, 2 +3?)

I awoke very early this morning not sure if it was from stress of no passport, or just excitement. I knew there was no way I was going back to sleep, so I grabbed a few things and headed out to the balacony to enjoy the sun rise (when I say early...I mean it!). So there I sat enjoying the perfect weather, sun rise and quiet. I spent the time catching up on my journal. Now that I sit writing out my posts, I'm really glad that I did keep a journal. We crambed so much into each day that it sometimes seemed as if it were 2 days instead. Tim was up not long after I finished in my journal and we quickly changed and headed over to the beach to enjoy the rest of the sun rise from the water front. It was nice there. The beach was freshly cleaned, and there was only a few people out there (some looked like left overs from the night before). We strolled along the beach for a mile or so before heading back to the hotel for breakfast (still no Texas shapped waffles though). After breakfast we walked down the road a bit to a Jack In the Box. If you look close at some of the pics, you'll see Jack making his appearance, however by the time we reached Montigo Bay, he had had way too much to drink and didn't leave the stateroom again! So we grabbed out Jack antenna topper and some Subway for back at our room later. Then went back to pack. We called for our taxi around 12:00 to head on out of here. I was getting sicker and sicker the closer we got...I was still having that fear of them laughing at me for using my b/c telling me not a chance. Once we got at the processing terminal a porter grabbed our bags right up and we went to stand in line. We walked in the door and couldn't believe the size of the line. It went all the way over to the doors that we had just walked in! Tim had one beer left from the room and he didn't want to pack it, as taking booze on the ship is a big no no (tell this to everyone in our group!) anyway, he figured now was as good time as any to get rid of it, so there he stood in line to process onto the ship, with beer in hand. If I didn't have my hands full, I would have gotten a pic of that classy scean. Almost as good as him walking into the restraunt last night for dinner with one in his hand from the room, we thought we were going to have to wait and he wanted to be ready...the waitress had a hard time with that one. Anyways I have to say this, processing so so fast and so easy! I think that we maybe waited 30 minutes to get through everything. Next thing I knew we were walking down the gang way to our ship! We headed straight for our room, grabbed the camera and went exploring. After checking everything out we went back to our room and changed to join everyone at the pool. We had a manditory life boat drill at 4:30 so arrangements were made to meet at the upper most part of the ship as soon as it was over for the set sail party. The boat drill seemed to take forever to finish, but finally we were heading to the meet up location. Finally a bit after 5 we cast off. Everyone was yelling and smiling and having a great time. After we past the last of the breakwalls we headed down to the pool deck again to dance to the music of "gentelmen" somehting or other...these guys were great though. Before long the drinks were a flowing and the naturally good mood everyone was in, was quickly elevated. Before dinner the deck was about empty as the first seating was already gone, and others were getting ready for second seating. Not us though! We took that casual dinning seriously. Soon a few of us had hopped into the hot tub, and quickly the rest of the group joined in (keep in mind that there ended up being 28 in our group), so there we were with almost 30 people in the hot tub some way or another when we saw these boys wearing speedos in another tub...after a bit of yelling we managed to coax them into our tub as well!
Finally it was time to leave to rise off quickly for dinner. We had also made up "team" shirts so we had everyone stopping by for their shirts before dinner with orders from the "captian" to wear them at dinner that night. So there we are a group of high spirited people in pirate shirts walking into the dinning lounge. Well there are 2 floors to the dinning hall. Apparently the upper floor is for the snobs as when we walked in we honestly were looked at by the staff there at the door, down their noses. I had heard of this many times, but was funny to see it happen to us. As they looked down their noses they looked at our sea cards and we were stiffly told that we wanted the 4th floor entrance. "well smell you" is all that I could think off as we laughed our way to the floor below.
We were simply blown away by dinner. We're talking gourmet food with elegant settings and very professional waiting staff. It was so cool, I did feel a bit under dressed then with my jean shorts and Sea Monkey shirt on! After dinner we all headed for the night club on board. The Viking lounge would become the sceen of many moments for our group. As time will tell. Finally well after midnight we tumbled into our room exghusted.
The next day (Monday) was our 1st full day at sea. Tim and I were up early so we went to check out the gym on board. I stayed there to do a bit of bike riding, and Tim went ahead and jogged the outside track. Then we went to the Windjammer cafe for breakfast. This was the secondary dinning room on the ship, and a lot more laid back with the dress code. Our dinner restraunt did offer breakfast and lunch, but the idea of getting all dressed up to eat didn't thrill us much, so we were quite happy with the buffet that Windjammers had to offer. After breakfast we headed back to our rooms to change and go poolside. Tim went off with Alyan, Phil, and Peter to a ping pong competion while I stayed at the pool to watch the mens sexy leg competion, and womens bicepts. Rod and Alex joined in (or were conned into) the mens competion. All the girls in the group were right there with cameras posed and laughing so hard we could barely get clear pics. Alex danced his way across the deck and had the girls all going wild for his dance moves and then up came Rod using his "famous" Borax voice he started to dance his way past the judges and somehow managed to slip a dollar bill to one of the judges to put into his speedo, so as he danced he half dropped his shorts to reviel the speedo for her to "tip" him! After was the womans biceps contest. We all convinced Michele to join in on this one as she is quite the buff one. The women did a good job, but I have to say that the men were just hystarical! Michele did win "biceps you least want to mess with" or some title like that! Not long after the end of that Tim came back and told me that the Sloss twins took first and second place, and that he would have done a bit better had he had his glasses with him. I guess that glasses would help for something like that! Around 3 or so Tim and I left to go and play alittle bingo. We had gotten a free jackpot card earlier when we attended a shopping show that they had, so figured we'd give it a try. They hadn't called by 5 numbers when we found ourselves with a bingo. I figured that we had won maybe 25 or so...but the first game was actually worth $126. Not bad. Helped to pay for some of our pictures we bought onboard. After we finished up the rest of the games and cashed out it was time to get ready for our first formal night. Everyone was so dressed up and looking sharp, and the compliments were flowing like crazy. Tonights dinner offered escargo that Tim got, so I gave it a try. Not great, but not bad. Kind of like a chewy garlic butter really. Somehow a conversation was started about how much Rod hates when restraunt staff sing birthday songs. Well that set Tim into action, and while Rod was talking with us, Tim asked our waiter to do a birthday deal for Rod. So here come our desserts, and a few minutes later the staff came out singing Happy Birthday to Rod....he was so ticked off, but the effect was great! After dinner was over a bunch of us headed to the theater for the prefomance of "Panio Man". Once we sat down, all dressed up, the guys all deceided that they wanted a drink so ordered a "bucket of beer" to have. Talk about a classy group! All of us had great expectations on it, only to have Simon Cawl echoing in our heads..."that was so cruise lineish" it really was kind of bad, like watching a kind of talented high school production. After that show was done there was a quick break where most of our group went ot the casino, but we stayed to watch the comic that was coming on. He was so good that I feel sound asleep not 5 minutes into it!
Tuesday was our 2nd full day at sea. We were all getting a bit anxious to see land again. For the most part it was more pool side fun (to include a belly flop contest) and Swing dance lessons. After the lessons Tim and I wandered the shops a bit to get ideas, then a few of us sat around one of the lounges waiting for dinner time. Right before dinner we went to another dance class to learn a few 70's style line dances for the disco night at the club that night. At dinner we had a new guest, horse number 1. They did this auction at pool side while a bunch of us were in the swing dance class to take owner ship of these horses till the end of the trip when they would have a big race, the horse that one would take the money raised from the auction. This horse would soon been seen EVERYWHERE! After dinner it went to the disco with us where it lined danced to the hussel and was the center of our dance group. They also had camera crews all around to document the trip for us and they loved our horse! We kept changing the lyrics to the songs to sing them to the horse. Like "Shes a brick horse" Love shack had a line that went "bang bang on the horse baby" and then "Tin horse rusted". I don't remember what other songs we changed, but if we could, we did! Finally it was time to turn in as in the morning we were going to be on land for our first stop in Montego Bay, Jamaica.