Cruisin' ... Day two

It's been a busy week; getting back to real life; Working on my garden (a whole other post for another day), laundry, taking the kids to the pool... pregnant mom's and births.

Now... Back to my regularly scheduled post:

On Day Two we docked at Key West: These are some pictures we took from our balcony/veranda as we pulled into Key West...
The water was so bright and clear. Gorgeous!
As we got close to Key west we saw the small outlying islands... Bill commented on how small the little islands are, and how MANY houses are on them, and how people build these amazing homes at the edge of the water, and when storms come and wash their homes away we are supposed to feel bad and jump in to 'save' the day... to help them.

It was very beautiful - The water, the sun, the Palm trees. The colors everywhere just seemed to be so bright!There was this large red building that would be impossible to miss, as we turned a corner from the dock area.This is actually the backside of the building.
(Over the years this historical building has served many functions to include a post office, court house, the custom house, and now the home of the Museum of Art & History at The Custom House.)

It had some interesting life sized (and larger) art sculptures all around outside the museum. A maintenance man sweeping up rubbish, a woman jogging, a 'photographer' taking a photo of an enormous elegant dancing couple. I actually thought the 'photographer' was real for a brief moment, when I first rounded the corner and was waiting for 'him' to take his picture, so I could take a picture next... ;-) There was a couple on the veranda looking through Binoculars.

And... there was this artist painting a picture of the other LARGE sculpture named, 'The Day Dream by: Mortimer Blake'. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheenachi/2542131056/ the sculpture is inspired by the painting by Henri Matisse - La Danse 1909. http://www.abcgallery.com/M/matisse/matisse91.html

(I didn't take a picture of the plaque that went along with this painter sculpture, but I believe it was called something along the lines of 'Copy write Infringement' or something like that).

(this is a link to another person who took a cruise and wrote about visiting Key West. He had some good observations. http://www.nowpublic.com/style/port-call-key-west).

We decided after Bill read some peoples reports that it was cheaper and just as easy to go snorkeling on our own. So, before we ever left we bought our own snorkel masks and snorkel, and fins. We had to pack that into our luggage, It took a bit of room.

We took a taxi (near the front of the Museum), to the Beach at Ft. Zachary Taylor. We had a fun time snorkeling, and saw some fish. It was sort of rough water that day, so with all the waves crashing into the shore, etc. the water was a little dark and murky... but fun. There were these rocky areas and we managed to climb up on the rocks for a little while. (Bill was goofing around, so I hurried to snap a picture) ;-) There was this Pelican just sitting on top of a post sticking up out of the water. I snapped his picture as well. I have decided if we do something like this again, we definitely need to buy a real waterproof camera to take pictures with, instead of the little disposable one...

Then we went back to the ship and cleaned up ate lunch and went back out to sight see a bit in Key West.

We went shopping... there are a LOT of Jewelry stores in the Islands. Bill was wonderful and bought me a Tanzanite necklace for our Anniversary...

Then we just walked around and found Duval Street. It pretty much goes from one side of the island to the other... there were lots of bars; Margaritaville, and Senior Frogs, and lots of others. We stopped and looked around in a few different Art Galleries. At one point we realized that we had gone a bit too far... and were in the interesting district. There was a man who had to be at least 6 ft. tall, walking down the street in black and red bustier, miniskirt and tights, etc. It was interesting...

We saw a couple of Roosters just walking around the streets, and then as we were walking back to the ship, I saw this Rooster, up on a roof. Then I saw the wharf full of boats. I think they are fishing boats with their fishing equipment hanging of the back. I thought it would make a cool picture.

As we were walking back to the ship we have multiple shore excursion people asking if we wanted to take a sunset cruise??? We would tell them all, we would be on our own SUNSET Cruise! ;-) So, as we left port, we went out on our veranda, and watched the gorgeous sunset, and some of the little sail boats who had wanted us to come on their little sunset cruise. :-)

When we got back on board, we found this towel origami on our bed. I believe it was a bat. I love how our room gal, would use my extra pair of sunglasses on the towel origami every day. Cute.

Macro (monday)...

O.K. I don't really know how to do macros like some of the rest of you guys - but these are my attempts. There were beautiful flowers and things to see everywhere.

I was also going to try to post it as Macro Monday... but with it taking me three days to get my first post posted, that jsut didn't quite happen. So, you can all just pretend to humor me right?

And here is a little sneak peak into some of our day tour/excursions and what we saw.

Cruisin'........ (Very Picture Heavy!!!!!)

We took over 800 pics this past week - I won't subject you to all of them!

I will probably break it down into days as well... (and it has already taken me three days to get this one first post done! I lost part of it and had to rewrite it and go back and find all the pics, etc...)

Months ago, my sweetheart asked me if I'd like to go on a cruise for our 20th Wedding Anniversary.

Of course I said,

YES!!!

(faster than I said yes when he asked me to Marry him... ;-)

So we made our plans and things went along as normal (is anything in my life ever truly Normal?) for the past months.

We made arrangements for a dear sweet friend,(AP) to come stay at the house with the kids. As she said, "someone to be Adult Supervision". The kids mostly took care of themselves and each other. AP helped with rides when people needed to be two places at once. ;-) Softball game and Karate. Amanda was very thoughtful and even offered to have AP take the Karate class, as it is inside and air conditioned, as opposed to outside at the softball game in the June heat and sun... :-)
We left on Friday May 29th, and flew to Orlando, so that we'd be there and just go to Port Canaveral straight in the morning (mid-day), when we could board the ship, instead of worrying about airplane transfers and if there were delays, etc. We did NOT want to MISS our Cruise!
We rode on the Disney Cruise Line Bus from the Airport to Port Canaveral on Sat. morning. We got more and more excited as we saw our first glimpses of the Disney Magic Cruise Ship.
Inside the Terminal, waiting to board the ship, they had these windows (that look like Port holes). I thought it was pretty with the clouds behind it.When we got on board, the first stop was upstairs in the spa. Bill had booked me a manicure and pedicure to start the week off with. :-)

While I was getting pampered, Bill went and ate lunch at the buffet, then checked out the room. He also wondered around the ship and took some pic's.

Then he came back to pick me up from the spa, and took me to see our room. (He had been reading Disney Cruise Line message boards, and saw that a lot of people like to Decorate their stateroom doors. They put special events, pictures and their names on the doors). When we got to our room, Bill had decorated our door. We heard often throughout the Cruise that people had been checking out our door, and they thought it was really great. We frequently came to our room to find crew members checking it out. I made sure to praise my sweet hubby, for doing it all by himself and surprising me!).

Throughout the cruise we would take a 'tour' around a different floor of the ship to check out other peoples doors... I wish we'd taken pic's of more of the doors, some of them were so fun! We were a little 'nervous' that people would come out while we were standing there taking pics... The only door we did stop to take pic's of was our table mate's door. And wouldn't you know it, right as we were there, the door opened and J was coming out! ;-)

When we got inside the room, there were several little 'packages'/displays... First was the Disney Castaway Club bag of goodies... this was a surprise freebie for going on a repeat (2nd cruise) with Disney Cruise Line. Then, there was the Romance Package that Bill had ordered. There was a DCL Ice Bucket, I don't really know when or why we'd ever need it, but... it's cute, has the DCL emblem on it, and the top happens to look a bit like a sailor hat. :-) Inside the ice bucket were two Disney Cruise Line bathrobes. Very Nice... and we had a bottle of bubbly (bill had requested Non-alcoholic, so we had Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider). There were also these cute white chocolate 'wine glasses' filled with yummy chocolates.

Something I remember from several trips to Florida, are the Love Bugs, usually they are a bit bothersome, but when they were out on our balcony/veranda, on this occasion I actually thought they were kind of cute. well perhaps cute isn't the right word... appropriate may be more appropriate...

Bill had ALSO ordered me a bouquet of beautiful flowers. He had gotten the Tropical bouquet. GORGEOUS!!!!!! The flowers lasted all week long. (He did have to point them out to me... I got a bit distracted with the view of the balcony... He said, you know, the flowers are not 'standard' in EVERY room! I ordered them special for you!) I think they also came with a bottle of bubbly, or something else did anyway, because we ended up with two bottles. ;-)

I don't know what the decor was in every room, but I also thought it was cute that the picture on our wall was of Walt and Mrs Disney on deck on a boat/ship. A cute couple...Also we loved the picture over the bed as the headboard. We LOVE this song.

I don't remember any sea sickness on our last cruise, but I think it hit me a little bit on this one. I got a bad headache right away and actually laid down and fell asleep and we missed the cast off party on deck as we left Port Canaveral... Oh well, Bill kept himself entertained checking out what was on t.v. actually they had some cool shows about the making of the ship and the refurbishing of it as well. They also had a channel that sowed current cruise info, time of sunrise and sunset for each day. Time of arrival or leaving of the port for the day. What the agenda was for the day and what activities were available. A map of what our route would be, and where we were at at any current moment. What our view from the bow of the ship was, etc.

That night we went to dinner. We had 6 people assigned to sit at our table. One couple did something else or ate somewhere else that first night so we didn't meet them until the next night. The other couple came and sat down with us, and we got to talking. They were actually on their 8th cruise! This however was their first cruise without their kids as well, and they have 5 children ages 4-17! We theorized that perhaps they actually put us together on purpose and wondered who the other couple would be and if they had a large family as well and were cruising without their kids too. We had a great time talking and getting to know each other throughout our cruise.

After dinner we did go to the Adult club - they played a newlywed/happily married type game. They got the MOST newly married couple on board (at the club that night), 6 days. Then they got the couple married for the most years - 62 years! Man... they looked so great! I thought at first perhaps they were 62 years old... but NO, they had been married 62 years!!!!! And then they got a married couple for somewhere in between - they asked for a wild and crazy couple... The wife got on her husbands shoulders, and they ran around cheering, so they got picked. They had been married 20 something years or so I think.

Dave the host asked questions like: who asked who out on the first date, and where did you go/what did you do? It was cute, everyone assumed that wih the older couple, He would have asked her out and when she answered it had been her... everyone in the room went crazy... Actually she had been having a New years Eve Party at her house and she invited him. The host asked if she had given him a kiss at the stroke of midnight ;-) she said, "Probably not". They were just so cute! When asked about 'the Magic'?... they both answered Rochester, NY! The crowd really went wild when he gave the same answer!!! They had two of their grown married kids (and grand kids) on board for the cruise. The son was filming the game and they were a bit embarrassed to say it in front of their kids (Graduation from college...), but it sure was funny. All you had to say was Rochester around the ship for the rest of the cruise and most everyone would know exactly what you were saying. ;-) too funny.

After that they teamed people up into teams, for a scavenger hunt type of game (we were just sitting back in a corner booth just hanging out, not really wanting to be actively 'involved'...). Each team was given a number on a big sheet of paper. In order to get points, someone on the team had to go up to the front to the Host (so he'd see it and call out your number), with whatever the item was.

The items ranged from a flip flop, a woman wearing men's shoes (one poor gal almost fell down trying to 'run' up to the front of the room with way too large men's shoes on her feet), a copy of that days 'on board magazine 'The Navigator', to a tattoo, and then a belly button piercing... The team directly in front of us only had THREE team members when the game started out. As more and more people came into the club (drawn in I'm sure, by the cheering, excited crowd), each team added team members.

We, or should I say Bill, GOT forcibly involved, at the point that the ITEM was a bald person/man... The team in front of us looked around, and Bill was the closest thing to bald (still has a military haircut... I have got to learn how to do a different haircut now that I am cutting the boys - Bill and Liam - hair, but only know how to do one thing really). So they grabbed Bill and dragged him up front! When they asked for an appendix scar, he almost volunteered himself for that one as well, and was standing up... but a gal closer in front of us got up instead. We found out the next night at dinner our table mate N almost considered showing her appendix scar, BUT... she was wearing a dress! We also found out that the last couple items, that ultimately got 3 men 'selected' from the loudest cheering by the crowd to do a little runway model/dance number wearing women's shoes, brassiere, and holding a purse... was the other one of our table mates.

Well, that is the end of most of the things on day one...

Graduation

Rebekah's graduation from Bob Jones High School was on may 19th, 2009. (So much has happened since then I just haven't had time to blog abt it yet.)

When we got there, and the grad's walked in... Rebekah couldn't find us in the crowd so in todays wonderful world of technology... She texted us a message. ;-) Bill texted back, and so it goes...

Suffice it to say, we watched it from the Nose Bleed section of the Von Braun Center Downtown. They had nearly 800 graduates in the senior class. It lasted for over 3 1/2 hours to hear the speaches and to call out all those names and have all those kids walk across the stage. It was nice.

The band plays pomp and circumstance as the Graduates walk in and take their seats. (and Amanda plays the French Horn in the band so she was there in full support of Rebekah's graduation).As the Graduation went along, and they got closer to calling Rebekah's name she was getting more and more excited and antsy... she was getting the other people around her antsy and excited too... they were all bouncing in their seats, and her hands were shaking and bouncing in her lap. She could hardly sit still until they asked for her row to stand and move to the front of the walkway at the stage.

Bill went around to the other side of the arena, since we of course were on the opposite side of the arena from where Rebekah was sitting. From the other side Bill was able to see the Graduates as they came across the stage and down the ramp and stopped for the Photographer at the end. He tried to get pic's of all of the kids we know from Church, and a few of Rebekah's other friends that we've gotten to know over the years as well.Rebekah's Grandparents (Bill's parents) came down for Graduation. (That is twice we got to see them in a few months. More than most years - Often we have not seen them in several years at a time even - mostly when we have lived over seas.)

Just a few short days after graduation, Rebekah went to Illinois to visit with her boyfriend Ryan and his dad.