Cruise 2008.......the vacation that almost wasn't.

I haven't blogged about our first "real" vacation and really need to. First off we planned and saved for this trip for months, we had just celebrated 9th anniversary, have a baby on the way and figured the next 5 years we will be dirt poor so we had better go on vacation or it might not happen for years. We were set to fly out on Monday morning all arrangements made. On Saturday morning I pull out our mandatory birth certificates and find that mine is not what it needed to be......it was a copy. I call my Mom and she searches through all her stuff while I do the same. Oh bit pit in my stomach and I am so freaked out I can't even cry. We get online and try to figure out how to get a birth certificate and I pretty much was thinking well there goes that vacation and throughout all this very very stressful day my kind husband does not say a mean word to me. We finally come up with a game plan: Eric will leave Portland Sunday at midnight and drive to Boise and arrive at 8 am and beg, plead, for a birth certificate and then will fly from Boise to San Fran to L.A. to meet me. Oh Sunday was a hard day and that night I didn't sleep I was awaiting the phone call at 7:30 Pacific time that tells me to drop the kids off and catch a plane. Sweet kind husband asks for the birth certificate and the lady says we only do it for medical emergency and Eric explains our paid for cruise, plane tickets, long drive to Boise.....lady pauses.....and then okay. Yeah I will see you in L.A. later today. I get to airport and nice man tells me that my husbands plane was delayed due to fog in San Fran but not to worry he will make it. I meet up with Chad and Taun and go to the port to wait for Eric and another nice man comes and tells me my husband made it to San Fran but there were mechanical difficulties and his plane had to return back to San Fran and we hope he makes it. By this point I am thinking do I even dare get on that ship nothing has gone in our favor. Nice cruise ship people say if he isn't here by 4 then we can't get on, nice cruise ship people let me check us in and at 4:40 Eric gets there we show them the lovely birth certificates and get on ship....ship leaves at 5 pm. Whoa I need a drink of lemonade. Now to our cruise it was great! As my sister in law said it, "I got to go with my two favorite people, sorry Eric" and in my case I have to say, "sorry Chad". We just chilled, played Settlers, got a massage, and drank lemonade. The weather was perfect not too hot and not chilly at all. We departed out of L.A. woke up in San Diego the next morning which I really enjoyed going on a tour of this clean city and want to someday take my kiddos there. Day Two: I wake up and think I miss my kids ( I have never left them before) and then I look out my window and see this:



Oh! Guess I don't miss them. Welcome to Catalina Island. There are not really any cars on this small island and most people drive around in golf carts and so we rented one and took a tour of this island and fell in love. We went snorkeling and did some shopping.....I could have stayed much longer.




The next day we were in Ensanada, Mexico. Ensanda is not quite the Mexico I had hoped for, very poor and dirty but I am so glad that I got to see this. Chad had the bright idea of renting a golf cart in Ensanada and we were driving around this pretty large city with old beat up cars passing us and we putted around in our golf cart. I was getting sick from the exhaust fumes and Chad was taking us to all these scary parts of town and you know you shouldn't be there when people are take a look, double-take and then just stare. Chad let us all know that if we got jumped we would not be giving them anything we would fight. Nice. I did have some comfort because Chad spoke Spanish and Eric looked like a Mexican, a big one. We finally talked the boys into dropping us off to go shopping and they could go back to the ghetto with their golf cart. Taun and I bought some jewelery and met the boys to go out to lunch. We found a somewhat clean hole in the wall restaurant and had a Mariachi band come and play for us, but soon another one came to play and Chad told them no thankyou we had already been sung to in his well spoken Spanish. The man said I don't understand you and Chad asked him what language he spoke he said Spanish. Chad let the man know that he also spoke Spanish....I thought this was funny. We had such a fun time on the ship. Our dinners were some of the most fun times as we would all order our dinner and try our hardest to pronounce our order in the very most worst way. I took three books with me and didn't read any of them. I thought this vacation was going to be a sit by the pool and read, but we actually never sat by the pool and we were so busy seeing sights that we went to bed quite early, atleast I did who knows what the boys were doing. Can't wait for our next "real" vacation!