FAMILY BIRTHDAY FUN AND SAILING THE BRIGHT BLUE SEAS

Sometimes it's difficult to know where to begin. The last part of February was very cold, very busy and went by very fast. After all of our cold weather, we decided to take a short break and go to the sunny Caribbean for a week.

Several days before we left, we celebrated February birthdays with the family. Both February and October are very busy months for birthdays in our family. We had everyone over to celebrate Dayna, Rachel and Ethan's birthdays.

Boompa grilled wonderful steaks for all of us and we all made pigs of ourselves. He's become a marvelous chef (must take after our son)

After dinner, the birthday trio went to the little red monkey who was hanging from the ceiling fan in the den and got to pick their own $50 bill from the "monkey tree". Money always seems like a pretty safe gift since everyone can then get what they want for themselves. There's no exchanging for the wrong size or color as the color of green always works well.

It's hard for me to realize that Ethan is now 15 years old! Seems like yesterday that he was just taking his first steps. They grow up much too quickly!

The next day we packed and early Sunday morning we headed for Galveston and our cruise ship. The drive was easy and we were there by noon. I couldn't believe that we were able to get everything in these two bags (guess my teenie-weenie polka dot bikini didn't really take up too much space after all ;-)

Our ship was the Voyager of The Seas which was a Royal Caribbean International ship. We will be gone for 7 days and will stop in Cozumel in Mexico, Georgetown in the Grand Caymans and finally Montego Bay in Jamaica.
Since neither of us are water babies anymore, we are really going just to enjoy the ship. And a beautiful ship she was indeed!

The 138,000-ton, 3,114-guest Voyager of the Seas became the world's largest cruise ship when it entered service in November 1999.
She has an ice skating rink, rock climbing wall, a 9 hole miniature golf course, spa, casino, heaven knows how many pools and Jacuzzis and a full sized basketball court, just to name a few of the amenities.

She was the largest ship that we'd ever seen, let alone been on, and she was truly wonderful. I must also add that our accommodations were very nice. We were able to get into our suite as soon as we boarded and the luggage arrived to our quarters within 20 minutes. I couldn't believe how very efficient they were. Here's a quick look at our suite.

As you can see, we had an abundance of drawer space and we didn't need it this time. I would have killed for this much space on our last cruise that lasted a month! It was like having all the comforts of home at sea.

The bath was a little small but we survived. We somehow managed to stay out of each other's way. We had two sinks plus a tub and a shower on the last cruise and that was great.This time we only had a tub with a shower in it, but the water pressure was great. If we'd only had a tub, that would be an entirely different story. We would have had to call for help to get out!

We even had a walk in closet. It was so nice to have enough room to really spread out!

We had a lovely dinner and were blessed to have delightful table mates, Melinda and Jim, from Houston.

Our table was on the third floor of the dining room and we had great waiters as well. We had requested a table of 6 but there was only the two of us which worked out very well.

Since tomorrow will be a sea day, I'll take you on a tour of this beautiful vessel and tell you a few funny things that have happened along the way, so stay tuned.
XOXO, Pcasso