On the Wall
I bought these shadow box frame things for the walls a couple of years ago from Aaron Brothers but never got around to putting them up anywhere. Since i’ve been pretty bored while on vacation the past few days i decided to finally put them in the living room on the opposite side of our wedding photos, next to our mirrors behind our couch. I placed the bird candle holder in one of them, and in the other a glass sea urchin vase i bought while on our honeymoon. I think the sand is left over from our wedding sand, and the dried roses are from my bouquet. I also took down our holiday decorations by the stairway, and since the wall looked empty i filled new black picture frames with a couple of engagement photos and a photo of a seal on the beach in Santa Cruz. I like adding these things to our walls to make it look more homey even though I wish i could be decorating our own house, not a rented apartment!
A Nuvi GPS
Jeff got me a GPS for Christmas! I am very bad when it comes to directions and since my original device (from like the dawn of GPS) conked out a while ago I was hoping i would get a new one soon! Angie invited us over for dinner tonight at her new house, so we decided to test it out. It worked good and is really simple to use. I wanted to get a picture of Emma to show how much she has grown, but didn’t get a chance. She has such long blondish hair now! She’s a cutie. I miss Angie being our neighbor but she has a wonderful Prunedale house that is much more fitting for her family.
No Butts… or Broken Tables
Jeff needs to quit smoking… yes?! It’s such a disgusting habit, and I get annoyed when he lets the butts pile up like this in our patio area. An empty carton and extraneous butts spilled over on the floor. My how appealing…
Also appealing is this wonderful marble (or slate or whatever stone it is) table! This is one of Jeff’s garage sale purchases back from his bachelor days that I made fun of him for. What is with the broken edges? It’s weird looking, so when we moved in together i told him the table could no longer live inside the house. So here it lays.
Resolutions 2009
I didn’t think I would have a new years resolution this year, but i thought it might serve me good to at least write a list of what i would like to accomplish this year. After i wrote these i forgot a big one - organize the files on my computer!
Our Hoppin’ NYE Party
Today we woke up at 4am eastern time to catch a plane from Orlando to San Jose via Denver. We got back to our house at around noon pacific time and were pooped from lack of sleep and air travel. I made spam musubis for my lunch (and dinner) and basically vegged all day. Butters meowed to us about how much he missed us, what all had happened while he was gone (who knew!) and how the pet sitter thought he was a girl.
Jeff and I watched the ball drop (oooh, LED style!) live for the eastern time zones at 9pm, then I passed out on the couch. Jeff stayed up a little later, but only long enough to snap this picture of Butters sleeping on my stomach with an unopened bottle of champagne (from last christmas, i shall mention). We went to bed at our regular bedtime of 11:30pm. How lame! Oh well, its just another day right?
(Hot) Cocoa Beach
Jeff and I slept in today, then took his dad’s Acura to go shopping at Ron Jon’s surf shop. After we bought about $200 worth of clothes, we stopped by Cocoa Beach and the pier. It was such a nice December day that i wished I had worn my swim suit and brought my beach towel to layout and tan! Jeff says this is the tourist spot. It was packed with people as far as i could see. We saw license plates in the parking lot ($5 fee to park!) for California, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas… all over.
Jeff wet his feet in the ocean and said it was about the same temperature as the caribbean water. I actually got a good shot of him without tons of people in it! Afterwards we went to eat at Oh Shucks where we had some Gyros and loaded tater tots (yum). I liked the carton on our table that held our condiments. It said, “Do you remember when you fell in love with Ketchup?” Oh, yes, I do. I was just a little girl and i mixed in it with my rice and i loved it ever since. Haha… I don’t do that anymore, but yes, i do love ketchup.
Sun, tree, lake, man
We arrived back in Port Canaveral early this morning. As soon as we got back to Jeff’s parents’ house we crashed out until the afternoon (we were up all night gambling, then playing DS, then watching a movie). I snapped this picture of Jeff sitting by a tree in the backyard. I told him to pretend he was fishing.
CocoCay, Bahamas
After a late night of gambling (we broke even last night), and drinking (just Jeff, not me), we woke up in the beautiful waters of CocoCay - Royal Caribbean’s private island.
We took the tender to the shore and found Jeff’s parents who arrived earlier in the morning. We rented our snorkel gear and after getting warmed up went in the water. It was a lot colder than we expected but we got used to it after a little bit. We swam around and saw lots of sea grass but no fish! There were a couple of floating docks so we swam towards those where a lady told us that there was a “plain” over one way and a “canyon” over the other. We swam, we swam, then we noticed a “sunken” airplane. OHH. I thought. Plane, not plain. Well that was cool because these were where the fishes liked to hang out. We saw a parrot fish, but mainly those yellow fish. A little bit further on our journey we saw a sunken canon. OHH. Canon, not canyon. (*Note: I didn’t “get” my misinterpretation of this until well after we left the Bahamas & Florida!) On our way back in from our snorkeling adventure we spotted a barracuda! He looked mean and was about 18 inches long.
After we toweled off, Jeff and I went around and explored the rest of the island which was pretty much deserted by now since it was almost time to go. We did some of the nature walk, but missed out on seeing the big iguana that was somewhere around there. Jeff and I posed for some hammock pictures and walked along the beach.
We caught the tender back to our ship, “Monarch of the Seas”. This picture looks like the weather was rainy, but it didn’t rain at all, the weather was absolutely perfect! The staff was saying how lucky we were to get such good weather - often times it is windy and a bit rainy this time of year.
We watched the sunset which was beautiful, ate a delicious chicken marsala meal for dinner, then went to a late night comedy show. Jeff learned how to play Caribbean stud poker, which is not very easy to win - it really takes your money and is kind of a rip off, but we told ourselves, hey, “when in rome”.
This was our last night on the cruise. Jeff and I had a great time on the ship but were ready to head back home. (We ended up losing the $185 we had won the first night — and them some!!) It’s a fun experience and exciting to do it for the first time. I would probably do one again, of course a different route. Maybe Mexico or Alaska? Who wants to come?
Nassau, Bahamas
Our ship docked at Nassau at around 11am as we were getting brunch. We left the ship and walked around the “downtown” area for a little bit. Most people booked “explorations” through the cruise ship company, but we decided to just play it by ear instead. None of the activities seemed too appealing and a bit overpriced.
I thought these vendors selling carved wood were interesting, but not enough for me to want to buy one. The only thing we bought in the Bahamas was these pink shell necklaces that a local convinced Jeff into buying (around Lisa’s neck).
We ended up taking a taxi to the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island. The hotel is enormous and impressive. A non-view room here is about $400/night. It boasts the a very expensive penthouse suite which the locals say cost $25,000/night with a 3 night minimum. Yikes.
The aquarium there is well done and included a shark, a couple of manta-rays and many other fish. We viewed only a small part of the it since we were not hotel guests. After grabbing some lunch, we tried to get to the beach, but kept being redirected by the hotel staff since we were not permitted through certain areas. After a whole lot of walking and getting lost, we eventually found ourselves at the public beach access, finally able to put our feet in the sand. Our stay was not for long, as the sun was about to set and we were too tired to go into the water. We hailed one of the waiting taxis and rode back to the cruise ship and called it a day.
All Aboard!
Jeff and I, along with his parents, Mike and Lisa, boarded Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas cruise ship this afternoon. Tomorrow at noon we will arrive in Nassau, Bahamas. This our first time on a cruise, however Jeff’s parents have been on one before several years ago.
Our stateroom was small, with no windows, but still quite cozy. We were all a little hungry so we headed up to the Windjammer for a lunch buffet. From what we saw, there was only hamburgers and hot dogs, along with a soup/salad bar. The food was OK. As we were finishing our lunch, the intercom alerted us that we had to get ready for our Muster Drill, which is to prepare us for safe evacuation in the event an emergency. That process informed us of just how many people were aboard the ship! We had to go from deck 12 where the cafe was, down to deck 2 where our room was with our life vests, then go back up to deck 7 where our Muster station was. The stairs where jam packed with people, all outfitted in life vests. If you are at all claustrophobic, this process will frighten you a great deal. Haha.
When the drill was over, we headed back down to our room to take off our life vests, then back up to deck 7 to watch our ship depart Port Canaveral. We hung out by the pool for a while with Jeff’s parents, then went to the casino until it was time for dinner. We had a 4-seat table to ourselves. The staff aboard the ship was very friendly and helpful. Dinner was better than expected considering lunch was not that great. I liked how we had more than a handful of entrees to select from, including appetizers and desserts!
After dinner we headed back to the casino. I was already up $40 from playing roulette earlier. Jeff hit double 7’s and wild on the quarter slot machine. I think he ended up winning about $40 from that. We both played craps until 1am and we walked away winning $185! Great way to start the trip!
