Cruisin' it up...

A few weeks ago we went on a four day, three night cruise to Catalina and Ensenada Mexico with our good friends, the McDowells. We had such a nice, relaxing time and enjoyed each others company. It was so fun having just adult time for four days straight and just doing whatever we wanted to do (not what the little munchkins wanted to do) Not having to be responsible for a few days.... no taking kids here and there, waking up on our own time table, no fixing meals, grocery shopping, making beds, doing dishes.... oh, it was heavenly! Just thinking about it makes me want to go back! Not that I don't love my life, but I do love a break from it :)

We always enjoyed meal time. We ate constantly on the cruise. We decided we liked breckfast, their deli bar and the melting chocolate cake the most.We had a fun group that we sat with at dinner. Wish we would have got a picture of the whole group, but we just got one with our buddies. After dinner there was show time. We sat through show time two nights and then decided we wouldn't torture ourselves anymore. The shows were absolutely horrible! It was hard not to laugh and cry at the same time.

The second day was our stop at Catalina, which is so close to Long Beach that everyone joked that the ship went in circles waiting till mornign to get there. We just enjoyed walking around Catalina and being tourists.

The one bad experience of the trip happened when we rented this little golf cart. Matt started driving around a little crazily (as crazy as you can be going 5 mph) and he didn't stop at a stop sign. In fact, he even swerved and pretended he was going to hit a pedestrian, but the pedestrian was facing the other way and never even knew. But, apparently someone who rented the carts out saw and followed us yelling at Matt to stop. He was such a punk and lectured Matt for along time and even went so far as pulling the keys out of the ignition and saying he didn't think he was going to give them back. He called secruity and asked them to keep an eye on us because we were "being stupid tourists." He then made sure Matt was going to drive more safley and then THREW the keys back at Matt and drove off. I have never been treated like this in my life! Even as a teenager. I was so ticked off. And, while a part of me is proud of Matt for keeping his cool, a bigger part of me wanted him to just sock the guy in the face. I mean seriously.... who treats people like that? Even if they do run a stop sign going 5 mph?! See, just thinking about it and I get all fired up again. So, after this guy who has all sorts of power control issues (obviously) got done harrassing us we finihsed our tour of the island, but I was in a bad mood for the rest of the tour.

After the tour we went parasailing. It was very pretty and relaxing. I thought it might be a little scary being up so high because I am afriad of heights (I think the rope was 800 ft) but it wasn't at all.

That night on the boat was formal night. We enjoyed dressing up a little (though I refused to wear a dress) and taking some cheesy romantical pictures.

Niki and Clint- so cute. We had such a great time with them! We were always laughing (or eating) one of the two...

Our final stop was Ensenada, Mexico. We decided to go horseback riding on the beach. It sounds nice right? It turned out to be kind of lame. We go these horses who looked like they were in no condition to be taking us on rides and then they just followed the horse in front of them and walked along; no running or anything exciting. And, the beach wasn't a pretty beach either. Oh well, we can claim we were adventurous (or tried to be)

Matts horse was big and pregnant and would just wander off into the bushes to eat. Matt felt so bad for the horse, being big and pregnant and all, that he would just let her do whatever she wanted.

After the magnificent horse ride we went up to La Bufadora, a type of geyser in the ocean. The way down to the geyser is surrounded by markets with people yelling things like "99% off today" or "Practically free," stuff like that. We avoided the shops on the way down but stopped in some on the way back up and got a few souvenirs for the kids, vanilla, churros, mangos and coconut. Matt looked at a pair of glasses in one store. They started out saying they usually sold for 75.00 but they would give them to Matt for 35.00. They kept going down, and by the time he walked out of the store they were down to 10.00! He still didn't get them though.

Our last day was a day at sea. On the boat we enjoyed laying out and reading, playing ping pong, shuffle board, watching karaoke and the comedians, going down the slide (Niki and Clint refused), going in the hot tub, making friends (Demetri?), and playing mini golf. We had a great time! Can't wait for our next getaway!