princess cruise trip ~ day 3

Sunday was our first full day on board the Crown Princess. We had the whole day at sea and the weather was gorgeous!! No more rain! Just sunshine and warmth...aaaahhhh!

Today was also Lauren's 15th birthday! Way back at the end of August, I had taken Lauren with me to visit our sweet friend Rebekah and her family for a few days and while we were there, we picked out t-shirts and cool material and asked her if she would make us birthday shirts for the cruise. I wanted to make sure to get a picture with Lauren in our shirts...and realized later I totally stood behind her in the pic so that you can't even see my shirt!! lol Um. Yeah. Wasn't thinking...obviously. Anyways, we loved wearing them and got several compliments on them. Mine has a cupcake on it...Lauren's has 15 on the back. :)

(And seriously?? There was a lot of wind on this trip! Lol My hair was struggling!)

Just looking down...at the water below...and some of the balconies. :)

That water was sooo bluuuuue!!! I looooved it!!!

This is what most everyone did all morning. I have no patience for frying my very pale skin...so I hung out for a while and then wandered around for a bit and came back.

When everyone decided they were getting a little too hot and were ready to cool off...we then had to decide which of the gazillion pools to go to. We chose the one called the Sactuary...only people ages 16 and up were allowed in this pool area. (Not because it was anything inappropriate about it...little kids weren't allowed just to make it quieter and more relaxing...thus...the name...)

Here are three different shots of it...one in the morning (taken on Michael's camera), one at noon, and one at night. :)

Obviously we were there around the noon time one.

I stuck one foot in the water. That was enough. This pool was FRREEEEEEEEEZZZIIINNNG!!!!! Seriously, I don't know how anyone else got in! Michael had to work up the courage to go under...and of course had to look cool about it after he had. :) Lauren went under too...and let us know how cold it was!

After a swim/dip in the hot tub, it was lunch time. There was a lunch buffet on the same deck and it had three thousand food choices! (ok, almost...) :)

Vegetable man!! :)

So I found something we have in common...we both L.O.V.E. chocolate!! She may or may not have eaten five of these in a row right here...! They were really good.

Beautiful view. With another cruise ship in the distance.

After another pool/hot tub session, I got to hang out with Lauren for a while. Each night for dinner you had to dress decently...but we had one formal night...Sunday night. Which was perfect since it was Lauren's bday! Her mom even let her get her hair done in the onboard salon. I went with her and we sat and waited for her turn and just chatted. Once she was settled (and I KNOW I took a picture of her getting her hair done...and I have nooo idea where it went!! :( ) I left to go get ready, then picked her up and we headed down to meet everyone for pictures (more of the ones they try to sell you the next day for at least $20...but it was free to have them taken...)

Tonight was a celebration all around - my bday (a little late), Lauren's bday, and Eric's graduation from med school!! He is officially Eric T. Meek, M.D.! So cool!

These guys had escargot tonight. I was not brave enough to try it. They all loved it. Ew. I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food (I did eat calamari at lunch one day and it was good.) but a snail? Couldn't do it.

She wanted pictures with everyone tonight. :) Doesn't her hair look beautiful?? So does she, of course. :)

Oh brother. These guys were being goofy. It took several attempts to get this pic!

Daniel wouldn't smile for her at first... so she told him he'd better smile or he would be banished from the table!!

....So he did...kinda... :} Lauren thought he was pretty hilarious. Which is true.

Catrina: Michael!! Are you wearing a DARK tshirt under your WHITE shirt?!?!

Michael: Yeah. See? So? What're you gonna do about it, huh??

:)

Aaahahahaha!!! I can't explain this pic...but trust me...we were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe!!

Our bday dessert! It was beyond crazy good!! and the little sign on the chocolate...if you turn it sideways...is the princess cruise symbol.

Picture time! Michael and his...murse??

Ha. No. Just being goofy with Catrina's little purse.

Oh yeah. They're cool.

Ok, first of all, notice Michael's awesomely cool purple tie. I love it. :)

Second, we realized that these five evidently got the memo to wear some form of gray or silver so we had to take a picture. I could see that Catrina and Anita were plotting but I didn't know what...so I just kept clicking away on my camera.

HA! They got him good! He got Catrina back later...and I sort of wish I had a picture of that too! Lol

princess cruise trip ~ day 2

A year and a half of planning...15 hours of driving...lots of music in the car...a SB run...and a Publix grocery store run later... and...

...we finally arrived!!! Sadly, we brought the clouds and rain with us, but it didn't last too long. By this time I was getting almost constant texts from my parents, brother, Lauren, and Catrina asking where the heck were we?! :) I finally just started ignoring them and focused on getting on board before trying to connect with them!

Just so we would remember where in the world we parked.... :)

After going through security and filling out a paper saying we were officially NOT sick...we were finally officially on board the Crown Princess!!!

We had somehow walked right by the place were you could leave your luggage to have sent up to your room for you, so we were the only ones lugging everything behind us. It turns out that that was a blessing because due to all the rain, a lot of people's stuff got soaking wet just sitting there waiting...but ours was perfectly dry!

Text pic from Catrina letting us know they were on board.

Oh my goodness...the hallways to the staterooms go on simply for FOREVER!! And they are as narrow as they look.

Our room!! With a balcony! (If you ever get to go on a cruise...most definitely get a room with a balcony!) The room is tiny...and even smaller at night when the third bed is let down from the ceiling (!)...but you are not in your room very much so it really doesn't matter.

Erin was our official paper-reader. There was a little paper holder outside our door and whenever Raul, our personal room guy (yeah...can't think of the right word for him...) would leave us information, Erin was the one to scope it out and let us know what we needed to know. She got started right away... :)

And she even brought the Princess Patter to dinner! She did this every night. It gave the schedule for the next day and let us know what activities were going on. Oh, this is our dinner table - table 133 (and 134...we kind of just switched around all week so everyone could sit with everyone).

The food was soooo goooood!! I am not a huge seafood girl...but I LOOVE me some salmon!!! I may or may not have had this salmon dish 4 out of the 5 nights we were there.... And that chocolate mousse heart was fabulous.

Exploring the ship.

Movie Under the Stars. So cool! There were a couple tables over on the far far right just behind the lounge chairs that we ended up hanging out at a lot - it was our spot. Soo many laughs at that table! :) (william?!)

Inside on levels 5-7 was the Atrium. There were shops on the sides and a little international cafe.

Live music. :) I wanted to play that white piano so bad!! We met one guy at the end of the week who played some of the live music. I asked him if he got to play the white piano and he said no, he plays the bass. I told him I was dying to play and he said, "oh, you play the piano?" Catrina jumped in and told him I play pretty well and he said, "oh man! we totally should have gotten you to play with us one time!" At that, I gulped, smiled, and said faintly, "ooh...yeah...that would have been...cool..." lol I may be able to play the piano, but I was classically trained - I don't play by ear...so there is no way I could have just sat down and played with them! But...no need to tell him that... :}

Looking down from level 7.

Looking up at the same staircase from level 5. (This is actually Eric's pic from his iphone.)

Don't ask...I don't know... :}

The Explorer's Lounge. They had a trivia game night in here that Erin thought might be fun so she, Anita, Michael, Eric, and I hung out for a while to see what it was all about. Yeah...turned out to be not quite as fun as we thought it could be...but still...who cared?? We were on a ship!! :)

So I had been standing in the Dollar Tree a couple nights before we left and I looked over at all the Christmas stuff and an idea hit me...after exploring the boat a little bit, we all headed back to our rooms for the night and we decorated ours for Christmas! It was fun and looked cool with all the lights off...which of course I totally forgot to take a picture of...oops. Oh well. :)

None of us had trouble falling asleep this first night! Having only slept a few hours the last couple nights, we were all pretty tired...not to mention the very gentle rocking of the ship...aaaaahhhh....soo nice!

princess cruise trip ~ day 1

Most of you who read this blog already know and have seen these pics on fbook. But for my own record of this trip, I am posting them on here. :)

So about a year and a half ago, I was talking to a friend about her 30th birthday and what she had done for it and started thinking that I wanted to do something totally fun and different when I turned 30 this year. So after looking at lots of options online and emailing lots of friends, I settled on a Princess cruise in December - that way my friends who were either teaching school or in school would be able to go on their Christmas break.

And honestly, I enjoyed every single minute of the anticipation leading up to it - starting a year ago even! I had decided I wasn't going to wish away the time until the cruise because then it would be there and gone. I was almost sad when it was time to leave for FL because I knew that in a week everything would be just a memory! :)

My family and Lauren, her mom and cousin all flew down to FL on Thursday since they found a cheap flight. Michael picked me up first thing Friday morning, Dec. 17th and then we went to pick up our friend Eric. This was my view from the back seat of the van for 7 1/2 hours! :) I would have taken a turn driving, but these two guys didn't mind driving and I was perfectly happy not driving. :}

Hi Michael. :)

I tend to get bored easily in the car usually. This trip actually went by pretty quickly though and it helped that I brought my laptop and sprawled out in the back seat watching dvds for a while! :)

We got to Savannah, GA in the mid-afternoon and picked up one of my roommates from college, Anita, at the airport and then headed to the old city part of Savannah to explore for a few hours while waiting for another friend to arrive and join us.

So beautiful...and so many cool spots for a photo shoot! If only Savannah weren't quite so many hours away.... :}

Boys..... :}

There were a lot of little shops like this one - kind of reminded me of Gatlinburg. I took this pic to show my kids - I could just imagine how big their eyes would be if I brought them here! lol

You're never too old to sit on Santa's lap!

My "ex". lol We were great roommates my sophomore year of college - and remained good friends even though we ended up with different roommates the last two years. (We jokingly called each other our "ex roommate"...which got shortened to just "ex".) She has a way of bringing out a side of me that not many people know exist...! No one else can make me fall asleep laughing at midnight...and then make me wake up laughing when we had to be up at 4:45am the next morning!! If you know me very well, you KNOW I am NOT a morning person AT ALL! So making me crack up when I first wake up...not to mention that early in the day...is amazing. :}

This is Eric. And the lights of Savannah.

After we left downtown, we wanted to make a last Wal-Mart run and while we were trying to trust our GPS to get us to the closest one...it was struggling! lol It ended up taking us through a neighborhood which turned out to be totally awesome because of this house! It had it's lights set to music and a sign in the yard telling you what radio station to tune your car to. Sooo cool!! I took a video...but it's too big to upload here. Oh well.

My friend (also from college) Erin is from close to Savannah. She had us meet her at her all-time favorite seafood restaurant for dinner before heading over to her parents' house to crash for a few hours before continuing on to FL. Eric and Anita both got something other than seafood. Erin and Michael shared this crab and shrip thing. Michael had never had this crab before....he might have loved it just a little bit. :) I got the best fried catfish I have ever had!! Mmm.

We arrived at Erin's parents' house after dark...and after sleeping for a few hours, we left again in the dark. Eric drove for a while and the rest of us slept some more. After the sun came up...mostly hidden by clouds and rain...we were up and ready to hang out and just enjoy being together. Since we all (except for Anita) had ipods, we played "guess this song" for a while and I grabbed the camera while Anita and Erin... well... you can see for yourself. :D

Day 2 coming soon! :)

pant, pant!!

Hi! I'm still alive over here. Just incredibly swamped lately!! Between birthdays, photo shoots, filling tutu orders in my etsy shop, I have hardly had time to breathe...oh yeah, and that's just my evenings. My days of course are filled with homeschooling, playing with my kiddos, and creating things out of huge cardboard boxes. So, I have multiple posts to catch up on...and I will...eventually! For now, I just wanted you to know I'm still here even if I haven't updated much lately. (I'm also way behind on my other photo blog....)

I will leave you with one picture from my most recent photo shoot. I will fill you in on this little beauty as soon as I can! (And I know her mother is dying to see the rest of these pics...hang in there! They're coming!!) :)