Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Day One-The Carnival Before The Carnival

I won't be going back and blogging about all of 2011 (probably mostly likely a possibility that I am leaning towards the outcome that I may or may not), but I HAVE to blog about the cruise I went on.  Mostly for me.  That's why I blog- for me (and my mom). *cue awww*  It is just the most delicious icing ev-vah on the cake that you all read it too!  So, to help us all get through the week I will be having "Get Away Wednesdays"!  (Goodness knows I need it this week for sure.)  A little sunshine and vacation pictures should help us all feel a bit more refreshed?

Josh and I had been talking about going on a cruise for years!  We always said we would go for our 10th anniversary (If I wasn't prego or nursing again).  Well, our 10th year came and went and so did our 11th, no new baby on the way and no nursing, but no cruise either. With our 12th anniversary approaching, one time while Josh was home I decided to get going on our goal. I even filled out all the info online and all I had to do was put in the credit card info and it would have been set. I called Josh over to the computer to confirm the funds, but he freaked out at the last second exclaiming something about needing to make sure he had vacation from work available during that time.  Bahahaha! FINE! I guess that's important. whatever. :)  So I disappointedly clicked on the "x" in the top right hand corner of my computer screen window wondering if we would ever get our much needed time away. 

However, I truly think all that "paperwork" wasn't in vain. It helped the reality of actually going on a cruise take a hold of his brain and a few months later after confirming funds, a 9-day babysitter (an all too pleased mother in law to spend time with her grandkids), and the so VERY important work vacation time, Josh was the one to fill out the cruise information online and hit the "submit" button!   I was so proud of him on that day, and in still in complete disbelief that it was actually going to happen. My life experiences up til about 2 years ago taught me to not put much stock in things that seem too good to be true.  I have an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude when it comes to mankind. Men (and some women) are so full of hot air sometimes. Why yes, my middle name IS Jade! How did you know?

I noticed this cynical attitude really dampened my initial excitement.  Either that or I am more mature than I thought. Are those mutually inclusive?  I mean, I was excited, but I wasn't jumping all around  and squealing like I had always pictured.  So maybe it's just my imagination that is full of hot air...
  It would be our first time in 12 years being away , just the two of us for more than a day and a night so even with my ingrained skepticism, I began......shopping.

Yes, that's right!  You can't go on a vacation with out some new digs!
We picked a 7- day cruise down the Mexican Riviera sailing out of Long Beach with Carnival Cruise lines.
We decided on the middle of September for our ocean vacation.  Josh's birthday fell during that time AND most kids are in school AND it's still pretty summery down there still.   I got a few new summer beach hats, a few skirts, (I was way into skirts that year. I blame the production of Oklahoma that I was in.), some sunglasses, a couple of formal dresses (a periwinkle one from D.I. for 8 bucks. I LOVED it!), few new pairs of sandals, accessories...etc ....
I'm pretty sure Josh got some new swim trunks...pretty sure.

Needless to say I had a lot of fun with that aspect of cruise prep.  The part I did not have fun with was getting the house ready for me to be gone for over a week and having my mother in law living there.  I wanted it to be as easy for her as possible.  I was so grateful that she would help us with the kids.  I stocked up the freezer with quick meals, got the laundry caught up, and wiped the pee off the toilet seats.
  I also sent a message to all of Josh's other siblings that we would appreciate if they didn't ask her to babysit for them or hang out at our house while she was helping us.  I just really did not want it to be harder for her and I wanted my kids to be first priority that week.  I felt more at ease leaving with that knowledge that I had at least put my request out there.

We also got our passport cards (much cheaper, but not as cool as an actual passport), stocked up on 5 hour energy, reserved a hotel room, and tended to the van.


We figured we could drive to CA in our van.  It's cheaper than flying and we bought a dependable vehicle for a reason,right?  Before we left, Josh took it in for all the checks and fluid changes and for my birthday the year before, my dear friends had given me a coupon for them to give my Ms. Periwinkle a detailing.

I finally decided to use it before they followed through on their threats that it would expire if I waited too long. :)  I felt kinda bad because it was really messy.  I mean I have 5 kids, I let them eat in there and cleaning out the car on a regular basis is NOT on my priority list.  Seriously, how do you have kids and drive around town for more than an hour and NOT let them eat in there!? But I digress...  My friend, Sean, he loves to do stuff like cleaning cars, so I tried to look at it this way:  If he dies from the fumes of month old corn dogs and the now air-born formaldehyde from the McDonald's hamburgers, at least he dies doing something he loved. When he was done, the van looked and felt so amazing.  It was like taking my Ms. Periwinkle home for the first time again.  *happy sniffle*  Thanks Sean and Katie!
Tweets from my Twitter (Most of the dates and times are off on, but I am leaving them to still give a sense of time. My phone was struggling with staying in the right time zone and then it wigged out):
  • Hi my name is Amy and I put suitcases away in the back of my closet on the day before I'm supposed to be packing for my vaycay *facepalm*
    Fri Sep 16 04:46:52 +0000 2011


I have a very bad habit of pulling all-nighters the night before a trip and this one wasn't any different!  I was working on the house until the last minute and so the last minute packing was dreadful and took forever. (I slow down so bad in the wee hours of the morning.)  I had to repack several times and take things out to make our luggage manageable and I actually ended up still having enough clothes to wear on the trip-imagine that. :) Josh tried to stay up and help with all the last minute things, but at about 1 o'clock in the morning I insisted that he just get some sleep since he was going to be the one driving most, if not all, the way.

Nana arrived before the kids woke up, as planned.   I wanted to slip away calmly and serenely with our good night good byes being our only good byes... Alas, it was not to be.  Even with my all-nighter we still left a few hours late and the kids were awake.  There was drama and consequently discipline.  Nana just wouldn't let go of my legs!  HA! i kid.  I wish our departure had been smoother, but we kept in contact with the kids throughout the drive and sent them pictures of what our drive looked like even though there wasn't much to see which made me feel a better about it.
I think this was when they wanted to see what California  looked like...
I am like the WORST travel photographer ever.  Some people do cute little side of the road state sign pictures and landmarks and such.  Not me.  *sigh* maybe someday I'll grow up to be like them.  I think the reason I'm so bad is because I usually AM so tired and sleep most of the way.   Which is what I did on this trip too.  When I wasn't sleeping, Josh and I jammed to "Mammals" by The Bloodhound Gang which we decided was the theme song to our road trip.

I was feeling partly coherent when we arrived in Vegas for a late lunch. (The palm trees made me so happy!) We wanted to eat somewhere good, so Josh did a some internet research on best vegas buffets and came up with the  Carnival World Buffet at the  Rio Hotel/Casino   Not really knowing where we were going we took the wrong Vegas exit (one of the first ones) and ended up in a shadier section of town. I felt like I was about to watch an episode of CSI happen right before my eyes.  The roads there all had U.S. state names, but we were smart enough to know that just because that street was named Utah street, didn't make it safe.  Yeah, not gonna get out of the car for a photo op on that one..  It was actually pretty entertaining to drive through it and make our way forward to the "safer" roads.  Eventually and with our gps set to an actual destination (which was our problem before ) we made it to the Rio.  Half of the ginormous back parking lot was taken up by the San Gennaro Festival and the other half of the parking lot was actual modes of transportation.  After searching for a bit-even driving around to the front of the hotel and looking for a spot there, we drove back to the back and decided we were just going to get over it, park already and walk a ways.  It was so great not being on any time restraints.  Yes we did leave a bit later that morning than we wanted, but not worrying too much about time made all the potentially stressful situations non-existent. We avoided the festival, although I thought it could be fun, Josh wanted a real meal, a nice meal, a Vegas meal, not a carny-carnival meal, but a Carnival World Buffet meal-dagnabbit!

 So we traipsed through the parking lot enjoying the ideal temperature, (I was seriously in heaven.) curiously glancing every so often over at the festival. We worked our way through the jungle of money sucking machines, hypnotized bodies and followed the signs to the buffet.  We then waited in line so long that I actually had time to think about taking a picture of us and then actually take it. (see above) It was also a long enough wait that the lunch time prices had turned into dinner time prices and just to clarify, that means they went up.  Oh well, this was our "anniversary" dinner and if you think we were gonna go wait in line somewhere else, you are seriously wrong.  The internet claims that it was the #1 buffet were very difficult to argue with.  Although I have had better flan before, everything else was so good and they had huge selection of dishes from all around the world. Yup, just like the title! :D  I especially enjoyed the crab legs. Josh still claims it was the best food he's ever had.  Even after the cruise and Texas Roadhouse. ;)


 We had talked about going on one of the roller coaster rides, but we didn't want to get to our hotel too late, so we got back to our traveling.  I was slightly relieved.  I mean I really like roller coasters, but the ones in Vegas are like on top of the high rise buildings.  THAT'S INSANE!  I know I would've enjoyed it once it was over, but that was about an hour of anticipation anxiety that I didn't have to worry about anymore.  Holy crow, just thinking about possibly going on one of those rides is making my pulse start to race right now! #yellaliveredchicken

On the drive, I called my neighbor and fellow blogger, Robyn, (the pictures on her blog slay me with how good they are) to confirm preschool pick up while we were gone.  She mentioned that she had been on that same cruise a few years before and gave us TONS of tips and a few ideas of places to go.  Didn't realize how helpful it was until we were actually using her advice later.
 It really was a pretty uneventful trip except Josh just reminded me he had a bit of excitement as I was conked out and he was chugging 5 hour energies.  A car hit a tire in the road, it went airborne and hit our van causing a big crack in our front driver's side bumper.  poor Ms. Periwinkle.  I totally forgot about him telling me this and saw the damage just last week and wondered where it had come from.  I'm so clueless and non-observant when it comes to cars. All I knew was that I hadn't done it. HAHA!

Another pic for the kids as the sun was going down.  I think this was the lights around Bakersfield, CA? or some other place that starts with "B" in CA.
 Arrived in Long Beach a few hours before we expected.  The drive didn't take as long as we thought and we forgot about the time change.  We were still full from the buffet and so dinner was some travel snacks and some sandwiches we brought from home that Nana made for us while I was finishing up the packing. (she so nice)
 Josh was the one who actually reserved the hotel room at the Holiday Inn in downtown Long Beach, so
I actually really loved the look of the rooms. (not our actual room, but close.  picture smaller beds.)

when we arrived at the check-in desk and the receptionist confirmed our two- bed room, I flipped a little bit...
2 doubles!? Not a queen bed?! It was too late to change it though and so I got over it pretty quickly especially when I realized that we could both fit on one of the doubles and then use the other bed as a luggage rack. Haha!
 With Sunday being the next day and we knew we would be busy boarding the ship too,we drove around downtown Long Beach looking for a few last minute items.  Not too far away was a Walgreens and Wal-mart that were both still open. The Wal-mart had underground parking and Josh felt a little nervous being the minority in the area, but the cashier was really nice and helped me find a travel sewing kit for some alterations I had planned on doing,but never got to. I was also looking for stamps and a post office or a place to drop off a postcard for the kids and some of their medial insurance cards that I had left in my wallet.  None of the workers I asked were much help and gave me weird looks.:D The post office was closed of course and didn't have a lobby" mail it yourself" station. (I love those and how does a post office in the year 2012 NOT have one?!)  I did find out where a street mailbox was, figured I could get some stamps from an ATM machine the next day when we were getting our cash monies.  In the last few minutes of Saturday, we drug drove ourselves back to the hotel.

Oh was this post supposed to be about the cruise???  my bad.

Posted by Amy at 9:22 PM

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1 comments:

natalie said...

loved this, amy!!! you are such a great writer! I felt like I was there;)

March 1, 2012 7:51 PM

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