So Much for those New Years Resolutions

Lots of stuff seems to distract me from updating this, so since my (one maybe three) readers will know when I add a new post I hope it is worth reading... We had a very nice Christmas Eve with the H families from up north, and with the H famuel from Buffalo, and woke up to a real live fresh snow on Christmas morning. I love Christmas Day anyway, but it is always especially nice to have our holiday dinner provided by Jeff and Debbie---yum.

It was hard to say goodbye to our grandboy and his parents when they headed back to the cold Northeast, but so nice to see all the fun pix Kristen emails or puts on her blog...

We had the annual staff Christmas party on January 11th---that is very relaxing as far as the Christmas exchange part of it, and the restaurants are happy to see us, and we don't have to squeeze it in with all the other social activities in December---I somehow got to do the planning and synchronizing of events, so this is what we did: I was able to find a theater that showed open captioning for the hearing impaired; we all enjoyed watching the sequel of National Treasure (actually liked it better that the first one...) It is a little tricky to come up with activities that the whole staff can participate in together, what with two male types, Michelle who is deaf, and the other Michelle who is diabetic, and Janet who had very recently been injured in her car accident (and still in a lot of neck and head pain even two months later.) After the movie (which was preceded by breakfast at IHOP) we went to a fun place called Bead It, and all assembled jewelry items of our choice, everyone did something very unique (Brian put together his very own keychain) and we all felt very creative...a late lunch/early dinner at Mimi's Cafe was very nice, then we drove back to the office through the Friday night rush hour from Park Meadows westward and exchanged gifts. Everyone seemed to enjoy the day.

Fast forward a month and now I'm getting more current. We have discovered over the years that the only way to get Brian away from the office is to leave town. He scheduled a week off during Thanksgiving, but it was too easy to go in each day, so then he gets no feeling of "vacation" ...

THEREFORE, since he had scheduled his post Christmas vacation at the end of January and we decided to change the week to one in February, we committed ourselves to leaving town by booking a cruise which took us to Cozumel, Mexico; Limon, Costa Rica; and Colon, Panama. We flew to Fort Lauderdale on the 15th and spent the afternoon with Darryl and Kelly, then stayed at their place that night. They drove us to Port Everglades the next day where we boarded the Carnival Liberty for an eight day cruise. I love cruises. We slept great every night, got to eat whatever we felt like eating, and went to interesting new places. I didn't get even a smidge of seasickness, and none of us have evidence of a cold after all the hubbub of traveling to a different time zone. It was great--we highly recommend cruising as a relaxing vacation. (Love those fun animals they construct out of towels to surprise you every night)



We have been to Cozumel before but it was nice to walk on dry land for a few hours, and the shore excursion was fun. Brian and I did a boat ride with an ocean view and saw coral reefs, two sharks, plus a lot of fish. It is incredible to see water so blue as it is in Cozumel...Michelle and her friend Amber who we invited to come with us went for a submarine descent and thought it was cool (I think we saw more fish than they did however)










Costa Rica was my favorite of the three stops. We took a boat, bus, and train tour, and during the almost 5 hours we were out we toured a banana plantation,(who knew that bananas grow curving up toward the sun--I always pictured the bunches curving down...), boated down the river and saw monkeys, sloths, a termite nest, an iguana, and lots of birds, then we saw some of the same rain forest/jungle by narrow gauge train. Everything was so green, the banana we sampled was terrific, we experienced a train ride in a country where there are no gates to stop traffic at train crossings so they blow their (loud, very loud) whistle to warn folks they are coming through...we stopped once right by the most incredible tree, a rainbow eucalyptus, and if you look at the picture I have added notice the very big gasoline truck that came to our same intersection...












The Panama canal was very impressive and I am glad I saw it up close, but the shore excursion to get there was otherwise very disappointing and way overpriced. We had a crazy boat ride to and from an "authentic"? Emberra Indian village, had a bus malfunction, and were less than impressed by our bus driver and tour guide. (or maybe another way to look at it was that this was the more authentic shore excursion, and we were robbed by the cruise line tour people instead of bandits...)






Brian tells me that the locks on the Erie canal are constructed identically, just a much smaller scale, so he was able to explain it all to us. We were fortunate to see the canal in action with a big cargo ship coming through. (There was one foot clearance on either side of the ship, so it was operating at maximum capacity, amazing to see.) Now that would be a cruise, one that traveled from coast to coast through the Panama canal...



Our fun ship brought us back to Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, a little behind schedule due to a medical emergency involving a passenger who had to be dropped off at Grand Cayman, and so we were "forced" to stay on board an additional four hours. We ordinarily would have disembarked at about 10 am or so, but didn't get off until sometime around 2 pm, amid a lot of chaos with all the people frantic to get to the airport to rebook their missed flights etc etc...so then we got to the airport at about 2:30 (5 minutes from the pier) and discovered that our 4:50 flight home was delayed to 8:30...the joys of traveling on a day before you have-to-go-back-to-work day. Never again (famous last words), but we didn't get home until about 1:30 in the morning, and B always gets up early, so he got about 3.5 hours of sleep. Anyway, now back to the same old same old... I'm still reeling about the news of cataract surgeries in my very near future so I'll save that for another day.