Finally some pictures!

I have been meaning to post some pics of our cruise, but am just getting around to it. Here they are!!

This is our first stop, St Maarten, NA. Our ship the Emerald Princess is on the left and the Oasis of the Seas (Royal Caribbean) is on the right. 2 HUGE ships..

Lunch on the French West Indies side of St Maarten

This is Magans Bay, St Thomas, Virgin Islands. Beautiful Island, with lots of jewelry shopping. The weather was rainy, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

The Emerald Princess docked at St Thomas

The picture at the top of this post is Grand Turk Island. A gorgeous small island with crystal clear water. I hear it is the snorkeling capital of the world.

I hope you enjoy my pics. I am ready to start planning our next cruise!

Its been a week.. a whine

Its hard to believe it but it has been a week since we came home from vacation. And life goes on....

We continue to have drama at work, one nurse disrupts the entire dept, we now have our 8th manager since I started in August 2007, and our patient satisfaction scores are down. (dont get me started on this). Upper management is screaming because our scores are down, 80% of our patients do not pay for any services rendered and the world considers us a free walk in clinic. Something tells me that the staff is not the problem here...

It was just like walking back into a nightmare when I returned to work tuesday morning. I am really wondering if I need a change of career. Our hospital is laying off employees, and everyone is on edge. This is the first time in 16 years of nursing that I have really seen the economy affect our profession. What is going to happen when hospitals cannot afford to keep nurses on the payroll???

So, I finally have more than one day off. The house is cleaned and the laundry is done, maybe I will go watch a movie! LOL

Yes, I will take some cheese with my whine. I like gouda!

Land Ho!!

Sadly, we are back on land.. we docked at Ft Lauderdale early this morning and disembarked at about 9:00am. We had no problems leaving the ship, caught our shuttle with no problem and left our luggage at the hotel until we could check in around 2:00pm. we decided to take a taxi to the local mall and check it out, so off we went to the galleria mall. Then it started RAINING!

OMG it can rain in south Florida!! We finally took a taxi back to the hotel and got into our room. I guess the new cruisers have now left Ft Lauderdale enroute to the bahamas, at least they didnt have to leave in 30 degree temperatures.

The ship never rests. The crews on the ship do a 7 on and 7 off schedule so they get a chance to rest. What fun jobs these young men and women have. we noticed that the majority of our crew were from south american countries, we met people from India (Naresh our cabin boy was Indian) Hungary, South Africa, Peru, Philippines, and other places that I cant remember. They all loved their jobs and were very happy and content.

They do have a medical clinic on board, it is open limited hours and you wait until they are able to see you. hmmmmm wouldnt that be a novel idea for an emergency room? LOLOL

ok back to freezing Colorado tomorrow. I hear snow is predicted all week. I have a little tan to show off so, not bad considering all of the bad weather we had.

Back to work on Tuesday.. ARRRGGGGGG!

day 7

Friday January 15, 2010

"Margaritaville"


We found Margaritaville. The real Margaritaville. The story goes that Jimmy Buffet was visiting Grand Turk Island and thats when he wrote the song. No matter whether it is true or not, Grand Turk, British West Indies is the epitome of what I think of when I think "Margaritaville".

This gorgeous tropical paradise is an 8 mile long 1.5 mile wide island full of surprises. It is known for its amazing snorkling and diving opportunities and crystal clear water.

We docked in Grand Turk about 1:00pm under mostly clear skies and temps in the low 80's. The shopping in Grand Turk is about the same as the other islands except it is only 300 paces from where the ship docks!

We looked around at some stores and then went to the beach. Dana swam in the ocean and I laid in the sun, and then we shopped some more. And then we lounged in the beach chairs some more. All in all a great day.

It is sad to see our week come to an end, it has been an amazing experience and we are now planning our next cruise... to the western Caribbean.

Tomorrow we will get our bags packed up in preparation for our final stop in Ft Lauderdale, where we will spend the night.

Check back tomorrow for a recap of our final day at sea!

I have to leave you with one thought..... If you are in your 60's and have more hair on your back than you do on your head... A speedo is NOT your best choice for a swim suit.

Day 6

Thursday January 14, 2010

"Here a chick, there a chick....."

Woke up this morning docked in St Thomas Virgin Islands! The weather was partly cloudy and 79 degrees at 0800, so we ate breakfast and headed out for the day. Our excursion today was to visit a butterfly farm and to tour the "mountains" of St Thomas.

Once we got off of the ship it was clear that St Thomas is truly a shopping mecca in the Eastern Caribbean. There were TONS of jewelry and watch stores all around the pier, and promise of more to come once we were downtown.

We only waited a short time for our tour to begin, we rode a "jitney", which is an open tram car attached to a 2 ton pickup truck. This type of automobile is also used as a taxi and mass transit here in St Thomas. It is really apparent that St Thomas is US owned from the very beginnning. There are outlet malls, shopping malls and strip malls for shopping and of course the regular array of US fast food chains, ie.. KFC, Wendys, Burger King, Subway and Dominoes pizza. I did not see one single Mc Donalds but I am sure they were there.

The Island has several "mountains" and since they drive on the left side of the road (with the steering wheel of the car on the left just like in the US) it gives the impression of running head on into the oncoming traffic. The intersections are very weird.

Another thing we noticed is that there are chickens everywhere!! The chase cars, they are sitting on the lawns of the public buildings, in the parking lots of the restaurants, just everywhere! And right in the middle of the day you hear the roosters crowing like it is daybreak.

It started raining a little before noon and poured rain for a long time, so any thoughts we had of sitting on the beach were drowned out, we spent some time downtown but got tired of trying to find any store that wasnt a jewelry store so we came back to the ship about an hour before we sailed.

St Thomas is a beautiful place, not nearly as run down as St Maarten but not as touristy either. Tomorrow we are off to Turks and Caicos, hopefully the sun will shine!

Day 5

"We are waiting for WHAT????"

Woke up this morning and guess what?? WE SAW LAND!!!! Yep! there it was, St Maarten Netherlands, Antilles, right there in the flesh. What a beautiful island it is. We were given permission to go ashore 2 hours early, and that we did.

We got to do some duty free shopping, and the first thing I bought was a diet pepsi! LOL I ended up bringing 4 more of them back to the ship with me when we were done too. I cannot drink diet Coke in place of my pepsi, and thats all that Princess cruiselines has, so I had to get imaginative..

Dana and I took an island tour and it was fabulous, we got to see both sides of the island, stopped for photo ops and had lunch on the beach on the French side of the island. We didnt know it then, but it was a nude beach!! Found out quickly though. LOL

The tour was amazing, I am so glad we did it. We learned tons about the island, and since we werent shopping for jewelry, we didnt need to go downtown. There are about 5 jewelry stores for every other store, jewelry is big in St Maartens, and the tourists really feed into it.

The populated areas in St Maarten are very run down and the homes are very much like little shacks. This surprised me because it is such a huge tourist area, I guess thats normal for here.

We went back to the ship about 2:30 (we were due to embark again at 5:30) so we swam in one of the ships pools, we hot tubbed for a while and then went down to the dining room for a great italian dinner. During dinner (and 30 minutes AFTER we were supposed to embark) the captain came on and said we had to hold up embarkation because someone who obviously thought they were the most important people on earth, were going to be late returning to the ship. Like 45 minutes late! WHAT???? this Island isnt that big. I dont know who we waited on but I hope they charge them dearly.

Off to St Thomas tomorrow, we are going on a butterfly tour. I will post pics when we get home!

Bringing you up to speed on our cruise!

Note to readers: I have been keeping a journal since we left for our cruise, and it dawned on me today that I need to post it to my blog! SO... these entries are from last weekend up until yesterday. I will post a new blog daily until we get home. I hope you enjoy.

Alaska? Or The tropics??

Day 1

Saturday January 8, 2010

This is the day we have been waiting for since last June! The day we leave on our cruise!

Woke up at 4:15am when Danas alarm went off, thats the good thing. The bad thing is I had just gone to sleep at 2:30am!! Frankie was a mess last night, I think he sensed our excitement. We took him to bed at 9:30pm and he wouldnt settle down. I took him in the living room and he ate, drank, chewed on a twist and at 10:30pm I tried going back to bed. No go..

Bre was up so she took him until about midnight, then I tried again, he had me up at 1:00 and at 2:00 and finally at 2:30 he passed out!

I wasnt feeling bad when I got up, just a little tired. Breanna almost had a melt down because she couldnt find her keys. I found her keys and we finally left for the airport.

The temp in the grand valley this morning was -3! A tit nippley as our friends in PA like to say! Made it to the airport, hopped out grabbed our luggage, said our goodbyes and we were ready to go!!! Bre left and all was well. Or so we thought. Guess who forgot the folder with ALL of our paperwork in the Escape! Me.. well shit! I tried calling her several times but she didnt answer her cell phone, so Dana and I decided that we were going to have to wing it. And wing it we did! We made it through security, and to our gate, trying to remember everything we had in that folder. The most important items were our boarding passes for the ship and the luggage tags for the ship.

We got to our gate in plenty of time, and sat down to wait... and wait, and wait. Apparently the plane wouldnt start because it was so cold! 40Minutes later, we boarded and it was like a freaking freezer in there, but it finally warmed up about halfway through the flight. The flight was good, we arrived in Dallas only 10 minutes or so late, and guess what we found! A computer kiosk where we could print our paperwork. YAY!! So we printed all of the itineraries, and the boarding passes and headed up to the Skylink to find our departure gate. We finally found the gate, ate a sandwich from subway and then waited for the Ft Lauderdale flight.

The flight was great, a tiny bit of turbulence, but arrive in Ft Lauderdale with no problems, caught the hotel shuttle and checked in at the hotel. By the way, Ft Lauderdale had rain and 40 degrees!!!! A huge cold front moved in today and dropped the temps something like 35 degrees, go figure.

It was so cool to look out when the plane was landing and see the cruise ships all docked

at the pier here in Ft Lauderdale. I am getting excited for our departure tomorrow, I hope our luck is better.

Sunday January 10, 2010

Day #2

“Muster group A”

Today dawned cloudy in Ft Lauderdale, and COLD!! The temps dropped to 32 degrees overnight, hardly “sunny southern Florida”! Haha

The Floridians are not dealing with this frigid temps at all, I dont think they have warm clothes, if they do they arent wearing them. Dana and I had a light breakfast, then took a walk to kill some time. We walked to a local strip mall, and the only stores open were the Publix grocery store and an Ace Hardware! OK this is a tourist area, and the stores are CLOSED on Sunday? They need to take a lesson from Colorado.

Rode the shuttle to Port Everglades, lots of laughing, and loud people. I am looking for a little solitude and relaxation, hope these folks arent around the whole trip.

Checked in with absolutely NO glitches or delays. It seems like the Princess people know what they are doing. I am sure it isnt their first rodeo. Had our pictures take twice, I am sure the effect is going to be skewed since we were both wearing sub zero ski jackets and gloves and Dana had his hood up. LOL

The ship is breathtaking! It is the 2^nd largest in the princess line, only 2 yrs old and incredible. It will take us several days to check the whole thing out I am sure. Our stateroom is awesome and the balcony is too. We had a great lunch at the Horizon buffet and then went for our “Muster drill”. The Muster drill is where everyone takes their life jackets and we learn to put them on, it was held in a large auditorium (they divide the travelers into 5 different auditoriums) and took about 20 minutes. It was painless. Shortly thereafter we went to “sail away”

“Sail Away” was so fun, we stood at the railing on our deck and watched 2 other cruiseliners leave the port, then it was our turn. We were entertained by 2 coastguard

blow up boats as they spun and dove into the water next to our ship. They would wave at the crowd and turn those boats in short short circles then take them through the wake from the ship and fly into the water. A real site to see! The homes on the beach next to the port had several people waving at us as we went by. Off we go into the channel!

And then we hit the waves! Lots of waves, very turbulent water. There was no way you could walk (I know, we tried) for about an hour. Poor Dana got seasick. I took an antivert, gave him one and we laid down to rest. He fell asleep and while he was sleeping we broke through the gulf stream (which was causing all of the turbulence). We have been headed out to open ocean now for another hour and the turbulence seems to have settled down. Thank goodness. I was hoping the whole trip wouldnt be like that.

I am currently sitting here waiting for room service and Dana isnt keen on eating anything else so we are in for the night. It is cold out anyway.

More to come tomorrow! First stop... Princess Cay Bahamas!

Day 3,

Monday January 11, 2010

“ 5 foot Swells”

We had a wake up call from the captain at 0900 this morning (we had to set our clocks ahead another hour for the time zone we were in). We were currently under a frigid air mass that had temperatures in Princess Cay down to 60 degrees, with 40 mph winds and 5 foot swells!! Because we were unable to dock directly up to the island, we were originally going to go ashore via “tenders”. Kind of like big lifeboats.

With the swells that huge and the wind blowing that hard, there was no way we could go ashore. SO the captain decided to sail southward to see if we could get into some warmer weather. St Maarten here we come!

We spent the day lounging on the deck, the sun was out once in a while. In late afternoon

we came back to the room and took a nap. Then went to dinner poolside, and down to the casino for a while. After the casino we came back up and watched the movie G Force under the stars, it was fun.

The temperatures outside are actually getting warmer the farther south we go. The weather prediction for St Maarten on Wednesday is for clear sunny skies and temps in the 80's. Yay! We have an excursion set for St Maarten, we are supposed to do an island and beach tour, I hope the weather holds.

The accommodations are very nice, and the food is good. Too good, I can tell I am really going to need Jenny when I get home! LOL

Plans for tomorrow- another day at sea.

Day 4, Tuesday January 12, 2010

“Crack Kills”

Today was our 2^nd day at sea, not sure if we are just moving very slow or maybe not in a straight line, but what it was originally supposed to take one day to accomplish is now

taking 2 days because we bypassed the bahamas yesterday.

Last night we traveled through a couple of storms, I could hear it raining, and feel the the ship rolling a little. Dana slept through it all, which was good.

Today it was overcast for the most part of the day. We ate breakfast at poolside, and then went up to the upper decks to read in the sun when it was out. Dana played a TV theme song trivia game, and won. His prize was 2 decks of Princess cruises playing cards.

The sun had been out for about an hour and we were getting warm so we went down by the Neptune pool in the shaded areas and read for a while. This is when I started to do some people watching. Now, normally, I think people are the most ignorant/stupid beings on the earth. Since I have had some rest and am on vacation, they are becoming more amusing than aggravating to me, which is a good thing. I sat there watching them all lounging by the poolside, and sitting in the hot tub and have come to some conclusions...

#1. crack kills. If you weigh over 300 lbs pull up your swimming trunks! Plain and simple. I do not want to see your butt crack and neither does anyone else!

#2 if your back and chest hair resembles a fur coat from the roaring 20's, shave it! Or wax it or something! For the love of God PLEASE do not waltz around the pool like you think people want to sit in the hot tub with the Yeti! Massive amounts of hair is NOT charming. It is nauseating.

#3 If your stomach hangs 3 inches over your waistline, do not... I repeat.. do NOT think a tankini will cover it up. Its a lost cause. Wear a one piece and keep it covered as much as possible. Thats what I do. LOLOL

Yes, America. We are out of shape. Nay, we are FAT. I have seen so many fat bodies in alarmingly revealing swimsuits today that I am feeling thin. And I am not even in the neighborhood of thin.

Dana and I even established a scale for grading those women who THOUGHT they had bikini bodies. The end result... unless you are in your 20's, have never given birth and run every day or do cardio training. Do not think you have a bikini body. You dont..

Plans for this evening, since it is a formal evening and we do not do formal... we are going to the buffet for dinner and then if it isnt raining, watch another movie under the stars. That was fun. We have to be up at 0800 tomorrow morning, we have received permission from the Island of St Maarten to dock earlier than our original 1000 docking time. So we will be able to go ashore before our tour starts at 1000. We are scheduled for a tour of the Island, called “The Best of St Maarten Island tour”. I am excited. There is supposed to be some good shopping there, and I can hardly wait to take pictures.

Did I mention that the temps tomorrow are supposed to be in the 80's. YAY St Maarten!

T Minus 3 days!

The countdown has begun and the day is drawing near for our cruise to the Eastern Caribbean.

This will most likely be my last post before we go, because I still have tons to do and I am

running out of time! EEEK!!

My checklist is getting larger, cameras ready... check. Passports located... check. Went to the bank... check. Suitcase mostly packed.... check.

See everyone after the 19th!

I dont make resolutions!!

I know that this is the time of year that some people make resolutions. Decisions that have been declared with great certainty to be something profound, something that will be life changing for them for the entire year. I dont.

I have enough trouble just resolving to get up and go to work every day and face the people that I have to deal with on a daily basis. I simply cant commit to anything more than than.

SO.. with this in mind, I am declaring my "NON RESOLUTIONS" for the upcoming year.....

1. I do not resolve.. to lose weight. Those of you who know me already know I have been on Nutrisystem since July 24. I am seriously tired of eating out of a box, and the week before Christmas I took a break. We are going on our dream vacation next weekend and I have no intention of dieting. So I just might gain half or all of the weight that I have lost since July. If I do, I do. I am joining Jenny Craig when I get home, and thats a fact Jack!

2. I do not resolve.... to exercise. I hate exercise, no, make that LOATHE exercise. When I am not running my ass off in the ER for 12-14 hours without a lunch break and only getting to sit down when I go to the bathroom (twice in 12 hours), I want to kick back, relax, watch TV and play on the computer. I am a potato, and some day, in another life I will be a true blue exerciser. Not this year.

3. I do not resolve.... to save money. I love shopping, I love spending money, I like nice things. I am a cell phone whore, and I love electronics. I tell people that I dont worship money, thats why I never have any. LOL

4. I do not resolve... to learn to meditate. If I am going to take the time to close my eyes and reflect, I want to be in my sleep number bed... asleep!

These are some of my non-resolutions. I think I will be able to keep each and every one of them, with no trouble.

Oh and one more thing.... I dont make goals! I will save that topic for another post. hehe

what are your "non resolutions" for the upcoming year?