Thursday, March 4, 2010

Caribbean Cruise!!

As most of you know Rex has been traveling for work for about 18 months now. He has been in Florida since January 5th.
Several years ago, we bough into a cruise vacation plan... it has been amazing to have and has allowed us to travel with the kids as well as alone.
WELL we figured that we would take advantage of his location and take a Caribbean Cruise! We had a Delta travel voucher, so I used that for my LOOOONG flight out.
I left Eugene OR. at 1:00pm on Friday Feb.19th and Flew to Salt Lake City.. I had a 4 hour layover there, So my Dad and Kris came and picked me up and we had dinner. It was nice to be able to visit with them a little.
Then I boarded a plane to Los Angeles.. yep how dumb is that... any way.. my flight to Fort Lauderdale left at 10:15pm and I arrived in sunny Florida at 6:00 am the next morning.. which I'll remind you is 3 hours ahead for my body clock.... and sleeping on the plane, well that didn't go so well.... BUT I was in Florida and just 4.5 hours away from Rex. See he was working in Key west, and HAD to finish the job before he could leave.. SO I rented a car and drove to key west. Let me say that was a LOOONG drive. Once I got there, I showered and took alittle snooze while I waited for him to get back from work... It was SO wonderful to see him.
We spent the night seeing Key West, and left the next Morning to drive back up to Miami to get on the Cruise Ship.. we were soooo excited.

Here is a picture of our ship. This day we were ported in Cozumel, Mexico!!! It was BEAUTIFUL!!!


We had an absolutely amazing time, just being together was fabulous! We had 4 ports of call
Costa Maya, Mexico - Bellize City, Belize - Cozumel, Mexico and this is a picture during our tender boat ride in Grand Cayman...


The sunsets onboard the ship each night were beautiful


We got some great pictures taken... but had to narrow it down to 1..they are not cheap...here's what we choose.


We met some great people, who will be friends for life now! Had so much fun with them! Phil & Debbie Scott
They actually live in Ohio, close to where I grew up.. we had a ton of things in common..It was great! We even spent a fun morning in Fort Lauderdale together before we dropped them off at the airport for their flight home.


We spent the rest of the day and night in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday. Rex dropped me off at the airport at 5am Monday morning March 1st. It was very hard to say goodbye after our wonderful week together.

We didn't have anyone stay with the kids this time. Figured they were old enough to handle things themselves... and they did a fine job. Andrea really took care of everything, especially Mikayla. She is an amazing young lady!
They were ALL SO happy to see me when I got home. It made me feel very loved and special.
The girls told me that they were hoping that I was going to surprise them and bring Rex back and not tell them... NO such luck, he flew back up to Jacksonville on Monday evening. Not sure how long he'll be there. Could be 3 weeks could be 6... It makes it hard not knowing when he'll be home. And even though I got to see him for 9 days, the kids are missing him, it's been 7 weeks for them.
I think we will be getting on Skype this weekend so they can see and talk to him.
I feel very lucky that I was able to go and spend time with him... and that I have wonderful friends here that looked over my kids while I was gone!!!

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