Some Final Highlights

Just a few more things about the boat..

I mentioned the broadway shows were terrific. We loved the singing, and I particularly loved the dancing. But the couple that preformed the scarf routine was amazing!! I have a background in dance so I understand how hard some of the moves they did where. Add that to being suspended in the air and it was breathtaking.



The main dining room was beautiful..

Our waiter Mr. Yum Yum (a nickname he earned for his fun way of describing desserts)
was our favorite.



The ship had some very talented food carvers on board. We were always finding carved fruit at the buffets and parties..

They are already planning the sbi get together for next year, right now it is being debated in the forums, but most likely will be an all inclusive resort or European destination, depending on what is decided. We can't wait!!!

Cozumel Mexico

Our final port was at Cozumel Mexico. We decided to be a little adventurous when we saw jeep rentals that cost the same as a 3 hour cab tour. So we rented a jeep and took an island tour with some of our new sbier friends. Sveta from Montreal, Canada and Linda from Spain.

We wanted to see the mayan ruins, but found out the big ruins that people come to visit were on the Cozumel mainland (a 3 hr round trip) excursion, so we decided to skip it and take in the local ruins. We took a tour of the coast of Cozumel and it was beautiful. There were all kinds of little stands on the side of the road, the further away from the city the better deals we saw.

The ruins were really interesting. The ones we saw were 1200-1600 A.D. and they had offering stones all over the place.

Randy took a minute to reflect on it...

Then we came by an old highway with a upside staircase design on
an arch. I decided it needed a little support...

The longer I held it up the easier it became. I must be stronger than I thought.

I'll spare you from the beach pictures, but here is one of the ruins.

Georgetown, Grand Cayman Islands

This was by far our favorite island to visit, mainly because of the Stingray City. The excursion through the boat was $69, but we had heard that there were plenty of tour companies waiting for tourists that were a lot cheaper. We ended up doing the excursion for $25 each which included 3 hour tour of the stingray city and snorkeling.

The island is made of coral rock, so it was really flat. We took a boat out to a reef area where there is a family of stingrays. We were told to shuffle and not step down so the stingrays can swim through and no one will step on the stingers. It was really neat.



Randy was a little more brave than I was. It freaked me out to have them so close.


They also had us kiss the stingray in a picture. They said kissing the stingray brought good luck, but french kissing it brought good luck forever. Wait...do you see Randy's tongue out there!!!Yuck!!

Overall, we give this tour a big Thumbs Up and say Ya Mon (new jamaica term) it was great!

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

The second stop was definitely a new experience for us. The taxi drivers and merchants definitely had a different idea of what personal space was. They were in our faces trying to get our business. We were trying to get to Dunn River Falls to climb the falls(a must do for Ocho Rios we have heard). There was an element of untrust on our part, since all of the fences we saw had barbed wire on them. We were afraid of getting in the wrong taxi and getting mugged.

Luckily, we met a very nice guy who took Randy to get what he wanted, sunglasses. Since he was not in our face and overbearing, we immediately warmed up to him. His name was Radcliffe Jarret and he was a wood carver by trade. He told us a lot about the area, showed us his calloused hands from carving and took us to look at his carvings.

We picked up a family tree for my mom with hand carved birds that go into them. Nine total for the nine members of the family.

He even did a custom stain job for us when we couldn't decide on our favorite. It was wooden angel fish that he had carved.

To the left of Randy is a huge wooden fish Radcliffe had made. Also behind Randy is a giraffe that is almost as tall as he is. There were lots of cute elephant and giraffe carvings, but Randy didn't want those since neither of those animals are found in Jamaica.

We were planning on climbing Dunn River Falls right after shopping, but it started raining so we decided against it. Too bad, we heard it was an awesome excursion.

The people from our group that did the city tour got to see some interesting things. There are huge mansions on the hill. But they got to drive past them and they are just shells of a house, some missing roofs, others missing the second floor. Jamaica is so expensive to live that they ran out of money before finishing their homes. We had a waiter from Jamaica on the boat and he said that most Jamaicans never own a home because it is so expensive.

Labadee, Haiti

This was the first island stop on the cruise. White sand beaches, blue waters, tiki huts...it was a tropical paradise. Royal Caribbean owns this portion of the island and there were tall fences and guards with machine guns on the outside edges to make sure passengers did not venture outside the boundries.

Hmm...I have a feeling it was more for our protection than anything else. Scary!! We did a zip line excursion for this stop. Since the island was owned by Royal Caribbean, the prices were fixed and pretty steep.

Ready???
Here we are as we get ready to take on the longest zip line in the world. It goes over the water and beach. They had a practice course so it was not that scary when we did the actual zip line. Actually, it was a little too smooth for me. I was at least expecting a drop in the stomach feeling, but all I got was a slow ride with a cool breeze.



We also enjoyed lounging at the beach. And thinking of how it was snowing at home. Sigh!

Animal Infestation

One thing they do not tell you went you go on a cruise, is the problems they have with animals. We found the animal infestations to be horrible. In fact, we found a new creature in our room every evening when we returned from the evening activities.

As if that is not bad enough, the animals had a problem with thievery. Even going to the point of stealing our sunglasses. We know there were a whole lot more animals on the ship than we saw, since it was a daily discussion topic at dinner. Here are a few animals that were kind enough to pose for pictures.

A Dog
A Swan
A bunny rabit
an armadillo
A baby...hmmm, maybe I can use this one on the site!!
Even a monkey!!

I guess with all of the tropically places the ship visits, they are able to smuggle these animals on board. Crazy!!!

The Caribbean and Back Again...

Well, our cruise has come and gone, and we are glad to be back (although we could of stayed on that ship forever!!We loved the pampering!!). Some highlights of our cruise. We went on the Freedom Of the Seas by Royal Caribbean. It is the currently the largest ship in the world. Their next ship will be out in 2009.



We left Miami on a rainy and windy day. It was also a lot WARMER than the Utah weather so we were still quite happy.



We were quite pleased with our room, we were surprised how much they packed into it for how small it was.

Both Sunday and Monday were wet and windy, until we got further into the Caribbean were the weather was warm and sunny.

During our days at seas, I went to seminars for my website, and Randy relaxed and wandered around the ship. Since the cruise was half for business and half for pleasure, we were both happy. Here is the SBI group we were cruising with...

Notice the little boy in the front left hand side. I think he might be the youngest sbier with a website dedicated to Star Wars. It was amazing meeting other people with websites and also finding out the nitty gritty details of how much traffic versus income they make.

I got to meet Ken Envoy, owner of Sitesell. He is a brilliant, amazing person, and so down to earth. I was very impressed with him.

I also was able to put faces with the names of the moderators in the sbi forums. Natasha might recognize some of the names. Here I am with Debs from debtsteps.com and Jim from jugglenow.com


One of my favorite parts of the cruise was the entertainment. They had Broadway shows and comedy segments every night. The cast was extremely talented and we both really enjoyed watching them preform.

Silly Connor!!

Connor is doing really well with his preschool. He is starting to say words like crazy! They are still jumbled and if I don't understand what he is saying I just have him show me what he wants. He said Jesus yesterday and I almost dropped over. Randy had watched him the night before and taught him it.

The other day he wanted me to take a picture so he said "Say Cheese" "Picture". He was wearing a coat. So I took the first picture.

and showed it to him. Then he did something really funny.
He took off his coat and wanted another picture. So I took one.

When he saw the picture...he took off the sweater and wanted another.

What a funny kid!!

We've Got Shelves!

We've owned our house for almost 7 years now, and we finally got shelves in our cold storage. I was so excited when Randy finally decided to do it. There is so much storage now!! It has 3 shelves that go all the way around the cold storage. We we able to clean out the garage (which has been holding all of the storage while we are finishing the basement.) Great Job Randy!!