a visit with my family

My parents, sister Misty, and our nephew Hayden managed to make it up to visit us over the weekend. They came up on Saturday and left yesterday. It was too short of a visit if you ask me. We went to the pool on Saturday and got in the cold tub with the little guy. (for those of you who don't know, our pool has two hot tubs, one is kept hot and the other is known as the cold tub) He seemed to enjoy it once he got used to the water. After swimming we went to grab a bite to eat at Cheddars for dinner. It was delicious as usual. After we got back from eating, I put the new ice cream attachment to our mixer to work and made up some home made cookies and french vanilla ice cream. I was really happy that it turned out so good. Ian and I are going to try a fruit sorbet next time. After the little guy helped his uncle Ian play on the computer we played a new board game we bought called, "Smart Ass" and that was a lot of fun. We laughed so hard, I ended up getting a headache. (Don't worry mom and dad Faas, we will be bringing it with us on the trip because it's that much fun) We played two rounds of it, and then called it a night because at this point it was midnight. We crashed and everyone slept in until about 8:30 the next morning. The family left around noon and I was sad to see them go. I got some cute pictures of Ian and the little man playing computer together so I will post those next.

On the road again...

Ian managed to get the time off so we can go to CO this year. I am so happy and excited. We got our plane tickets booked last night so it makes it feel even more real. We are going to be meeting up with Ian's parents in Las Vegas, NV where we will stay through to Monday. From there we will be heading to Flagstaff, AZ for an overnight stay there. Then on to Durango from Tues through to Thursday. We are doing the narrow gauge train trip to Silverton. So excited about this. We were supposed to do this last year, but since we had to miss out on the trip, we didn't get to. Then on Thursday we will head on to Lake City. We will be there until Tuesday the 5th when we have to catch our plane back to reality. As you can tell, I'm really excited. It should be an enriching experience!

As for other news, we are taking the pictures to be framed on Friday. I am looking forward to seeing the finished project and hanging them on our walls. We are going to get some really nice frames for the animation pieces Ian bought as well. We are going to frame those two pieces ourselves though. That is all our news for now.

~hugs

In the coming weeks......

Ian and I are going to be busy bee's in the coming weeks. We are taking our art to get framed this coming weekend. We went up to Deck the Walls at our local mall on Friday to look at their frame options/matting options/glass options, etc and to get a price quote and they have been the best deal we have found. They told us it will take around a week for the three pieces to be framed so I'm really excited about that. They told us we caught them on a slow point in the year. So they might be done by the time my parents, Misty and Hayden come up the following weekend. I am really looking forward to visiting with them. They have only been up to our place once since we moved here so it should be nice. I told them to bring their swim suits since the weather might be nice enough out for us to use the pools. They are looking for some sort of ring float for the little man. Speaking of, I haven't posted any of the new pics my sister sent me so I will add those at the very end of this blog. He is getting so big, and he has the biggest laugh. So cute!

Then the first weekend in April, I am going to accompany our grandma to visit my sister's family in Oklahoma since she can't do that drive by herself. Plus I have been wanting to see her for a while now. It's been since Christmas since we have seen any of our families. That is way to long. Hopefully we will get to see Ian's folks soon as well but it might not be until we catch up with them on vacation.

Speaking of which, I am really looking forward to this vacation. And I hate to say it, I'm more excited about this one than I was of the cruise. I guess because when we go to Colorado I already know what to expect, and I enjoy every minute I get there. It also is a pretty non stress week, where you get to sit out on a lovely deck, in the sunshine, with the gentle breeze blowing, a good book to read, or a great conversation to be had. Plus, I am going to get to see some new parts of our country that I have yet to see. Hopefully tomorrow, Ian will know something as far as time off goes. He tried to put in for the time off, but since the new schedules aren't out yet, it would only let you put in up till the end of March, which is when the current schedules are through. He is going to talk to his manager tomorrow about all of this. Cross your fingers for us.

Up next pictures of Hayden.




He is such a cutie!

Sad news and some Good news

As I'm sure most of you know by now the OK move is canceled for now. They do not feel the need for the growth as of right now and will keep evaluating the situation and when the growth warrants it, they will move the teams. We are bummed about it but everything happens for a reason, right?

Now on to the good news. The art we won in the auctions at Sea came via UPS today. Now we just need to find a good framer in the area to get our beautiful pieces of art framed. Once that is done, we already have the spots on the wall picked out and will hang them. I can't wait for everyone to finally see what we have been raving about. That is all our news for now.

~hugs

Departure morning

We had to be out of our room by 7 am so we had the alarm set for 6:10. We headed up for breakfast and watched as we docked into Galveston. It was much cooler than we were expecting, but I think it's just we were spoiled by the warm weather and the breeze. I am going to post some tips in the next blog for anyone thinking of a cruise. The only complaint we had was we went to the purser's desk three different times trying to get our sail pass card worked out. We had set it up on a Discover card with every intention to pull it to ours on the last day at sea. Every time we explained it, we were told they would work on it. The purser's had a difficult time trying to figure out what it was exactly we wanted them to do. So on the morning of departure, we go up to the purser's desk because we never received our final copy. She showed us the charges and it still wasn't fixed. So, we weren't too happy about that because we were told on all occasions the main purser(whatever he's called) would be able to do it. I never would have set it up the way we did if I would have known that. Oh well...Lesson learned!


My top tips and what we will do on our next cruise!

1) only buy one soda package and that's if you drink at least 3-4 soda's a day. You get tea/lemonade/ coffee and water for free. We bought two and half the time Ian would just drink off of mine and you get free refills.

2) When setting up your sail pass card(this is where all the charges are made to that is linked with a credit card or a cash amount) either use the credit card you intend on settling the balance with for the reason mentioned above, or set up a cash based one because you can add extra cash at any given time.

3) I was worried about taking our good high spf sunblock to Xcaret because I was told they search through your bags and confiscate it and give you the biodegradable stuff(that does not work well). They apparently aren't strict on this because we saw people using the good regular stuff.

Those are my tips for now. When I think of more I will post more to this.

This concludes our trip report for now. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed the vacation. I will be sending out the more of the pictures to everyone so they can see all of them.

Final day at Sea

We woke up Friday Morning a little later than we had been. We were a little sad to know this would be our last full day on our beautiful ship. We ate breakfast at the windjammer and went back to our to look at the schedule and figure out what we wanted to do and what we would pass on. We decided to go to the casino and do a little bit of gambling. I won about $50 on a nickel machine. When we finished in there it was about time for lunch so we hit the solarium pool area to get a grilled panini sandwich for Ian and I had a strawberry filled crepe for lunch. Yummy!!! We then went on down to the centrum area for the grand final art auction. We fell in love with the blind bid prize. We got three beautiful pieces and one animation one that Ian liked of Speed Racer signed by the voices. We got to learn a lot about some of the greats like Picasso/ Rembrandt/ Max, etc. It has definitely made me have a greater appreciation of art. After the art auction we went back to the room to pack up our stuff since we would have to leave our bags outside our room between 7pm and midnight. After that we went to the ballroom fever show. Then grabbed a bite to eat in the windjammer for dinner. Then it was back to room to go over the room once more before setting our luggage out. We crashed about 10 pm.

I forgot to post our other towel animals we received each night so I will post those now.

The Rabbit on the last night
Hanging Monkey

Cool dog

Costa Maya

We were late pulling into Costa Maya this morning because we were having high waves 5-7.5 foot waves and near gale force winds. The captain was going to take us back to Cozumel but decided to try for it. We ended up making it and had the port to ourselves today. The Carnival ship was going to try as well but by then it was too late and we were having gale force winds. It was like being in a hurricane. We had a beach day reserved at Tequila Beach club but because we were a little red from the day before we decided not to go. We got of the ship and walked to the port area where they have it set up like a resort with a swim up pool bar, restaurants, and shops that were duty free. We bought two big bottles of pure vanilla and some tequila that Ian likes. We walked back to the ship and it was tough because we were walking into the wind now. It took us more than three times as long to back on the ship because of this. We got back into our room and dropped off the stuff they allowed us to bring back to the room. We went to grab a bite for lunch and then to lay down to take an afternoon nap. We had an art collecting seminar we wanted to go to but we ended up sleeping until 5:30ish and missed it. We must have needed the nap though. When we woke up we were already on our way back towards Galveston. We went to the show tonight but they ended up having to switch tonights show with what would have been Friday's because the water was too rough for the dancers to perform safely. We crashed by 10:30 tonight. Pictures of Costa Maya next.

As we were docked at the pier


Looking towards the port resort area from the pier
Swim up pool bar

The aft of our ship with a good view of the rock climbing wall