Our 4 Day Cruise

Clint and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year.  We had plans to go on a week long cruise with several good friends of ours this summer and the plans just fell through.  But our friends, the Thompsons, decided to do a 4 day cruise instead and asked us to join them and we really wanted to do something special for such a big anniversary so we decided to go with them.  It was just a short cruise, but seemed to be the perfect amount of time.  We had such a wonderful time.  It cost extra to use our cell phones so we didn't have contact with anyone and it was so nice to not have to worry about the kids.  It was a much needed relaxing vacation and it was so nice to spend time with just Clint.

Here we are waiting at our "muster station" the first day to go over all the drills if something was to happen to the boat.  Our station was at club Rex.  We obviously didn't spend much time at club Rex, but the times we did were pretty interesting.  We were entertained by the 60 year old woman and her husband and other gentlemen callers that would be dancing with her every night.

Here we are with the Thompsons at our dinner table.  Our waiter was Sandy whan (sp? is totally off, but that's how you say his name), he was so much fun and along with the other members at our table we probably had the best table.  It's too bad we didn't get a picture of the whole group.  We especially enjoyed Gloria and George Lopez, ha ha we didn't really know their first names, I know that's crazy enjoying a meal with them every night and not getting their names.  But Gloria, name unknown, reminded us of Gloria from Modern Family and her husband George Lopez, whom obviously reminded us of George Lopez were on their honeymoon and they cracked us up.  We also had a guy at our table that looked exactly like John Cleese.

Our first day we spent the day in Catalina.  Here we are being ferried out to the island from our ship.  Clint and I kissing with the cruise ship in the background.  I would say, "oh, how romantic" if Clint's eye's weren't wide open.

Matt and Kyra with the Casino in the back ground.

It's funny we were at a party our friends were hosting several weeks before and they were doing a scavenger hunt and one of the clues had to do with the "Casino" at Catalina.  Before now we had never been to Catalina so I had no clue what the clue was talking about.  So, Susie, now we know.

Kyra and I "taking the bull by it's horns".

We had a great time on Catalina.  One of the things that we did was rent a golf cart to go tour the island.  We did have an interesting experience though, Matt drove first and for a little bit he was driving crazy and this local made us pull over and was yelling lunatic ripped our keys out of the ignition and was so incredibly rude and then threw the keys back at Matt and made some other patrol guy follow us.  It was ridiculous.  The funny thing is Matt is a highway patrol officer, I felt he should have told him that.  He was just being silly for a second and no one was around and the guy yelling at us had no authority, it was lame.  Anyways, we still had fun despite our little encounter with the crazy guy.

Here we are at the top of the island with views below.

The last thing we did at Catalina was go parasailing.  I was kind of scared before we did it, but it was so much fun and not scary at all.  I actually thought it was relaxing.  We didn't even have to touch the water if we didn't want to.  Straight from boat to air back to boat.  Here we are taking off.

Clint and I way up in the air.

It was so much fun and I'm so glad we did it.  We did have him dip our feet in the water for a second and then they pulled us back up for a second and then pulled us back into the boat.

The Thompson's taking off.

I like this picture of the Thompson's in the air.  It looks like they are so high up there.

That night after Catalina was the Captain's dinner, so it was the formal night.  We weren't so formal but we did dress up.

After dinner it was up to the top of the boat for some silly pictures.  My camera wasn't taking great pictures in the dark, so even though the quality isn't that great, the pictures are still fun.  Kyra and Matt being silly.

Clint and I at the top of the ship. 

The next day we spent in Ensenada, Mexico.  The ship was going to rip us off for the excursions so we found someone once we got off the ship that took us to this place in Ensenada that did the tours and excursions for way cheap.  Here we are waiting for our bus to take us on our day of adventure if you could call it that.  We did get our taste of Mexico when we had to go get cash,  we had a local take us to an ATM.  It makes you so glad you live in the USA,  it was so gross walking on their streets downtown..  We past one shop that had this huge disgusting piece of uncooked meat on a stick just sitting out in the sun on a ledge.  Kyra and I couldn't figure out what it was, but whatever it was it was disgusting and I was hoping it wasn't there for someone to eat.

First stop was horse back riding on the beach.  Sounds exotic I know.  Not so much though, we had fun, but the horses looked sickly and you could tell that all they did all day long everyday was take tourists riding.  We could barely get them to trot.  My horse especially liked to sniff the other horse's backsides.

Clint with his horse.

Matt's horse was extremely hungry I guess. It would just stop every second it would see a plant and eat.  It was kind of amusing to watch.

Kyra the cowgirl!

After horse back riding we took the bus to La Bufadora.  There is a blow hole there where the ocean waves hit this place in the rocks and every 17 seconds or so water shoots way up into the air.  Here are Clint and I with the water shooting up behind us.

The Thompsons and us with and ocean view.  It's kind of weird being there with this beautiful view, but the area was kind of run down.  In the US this would be prime real estate with nice homes.  It was definitely interesting how different it was there.

At La Bufadora there was also a bunch of shops.  It was so crazy, I had never been haggled so much.  I couldn't even think.  I wanted to get something for our kids but I felt like I couldn't even browse.  They were all yelling at us screaming they had the best deal and pushing their items at us and how they would bring down the price.  It was absolutely crazy.  Definitely no my favorite way to shop, even if we could get a good deal.  I guess we got that true Mexico experience, I was grateful that Clint could speak Spanish, I felt he was able to talk things down lower because of it.  The Thompson did get some Mango from there that was amazing there and we bought some churros that were delicious.  After La Bufadora we headed back to the city to the tour place for a Mexican buffet, that was so, so and then back to the ship.

The last day on the ship was a day at sea.  We enjoyed lounging by the pool watching Kyra and Matt go down the slide into the freezing water (that actually might have been the day before). We enjoyed hot tubing and eating lots of food, the food wasn't excellent, but it was free and there was a ton of it so we had to just keep eating.  We also went to a couple of shows while on the cruise, and they were extremely lame so we didn't go to the one the last night.  We enjoyed the comedy club, at least the family friendly one, we attempted going to the later one, but they were just horrible.  And we enjoyed watching people sing karaoke.  Each room had these robes you could wear and buy if you wanted and Kyra and I were set on taking a picture of us all in our robes.  So our hubbies consented and we got a group robe shot.
Overall we had such a good time and we were so glad we could go with Kyra and Matt, they are such good friends and practically family to us and we had so much fun with them.

When we got back we picked up Mckynlee and Crew from my in laws and headed home and picked up the boys from school (they stayed at friends houses during the week).  They were so excited to what we brought them back.  Well we bought them these little guitars in La Bufadora, Dax and Mckynlee loved there's, but Brock was a little disappointed with his gift.  I don't know what he was expecting, but he eventually warmed up to it.