Back in the blogosphere

I have just returned from dropping my daughter and son-in-law off at the airport, the last of our kids to leave after our wonderful family vacation, a week-long cruise out of Galveston to the western Caribbean. I had been wanting to take a family vacation forever...seems like the last one we had was when the kids were in high school. My original plan was to do this when our younger son graduated from college in 2006, but then he didn't really graduate till 2007, and that was the year our daughter got married. Then there was the issue of where to go and what to do. Somehow I got the idea of a cruise. The appealing part of this was the simplicity of it all. We could drive to Galveston, get on a ship and just relax for a week...no cooking or cleaning or getting on each others' nerves because everyone would have their own cabin and time away from each other. The ground rules were that they all had to get themselves to Houston and pay their own bar bills on the ship! It was well received by all, especially those who were happy to get out of Minnesota in February.

Our itinerary was Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Montego Bay. Unfortunately, the weather was less than cooperative. It was mostly sunny, but also windy, which affected our shore excursions. We went snorkeling in Cozumel, but the sea was very choppy and definitely NOT the best conditions for snorkeling. The wind followed us to Grand Cayman and our "Stingray City" excursion was canceled. And it was so bad in Jamaica that the ship didn't even dock. But we didn't plan the trip to go on the excursions, we planned to spend time with our kids...which we got to do, and had a fabulous time! We all had dinner together every night, hung out by the pool, played board games and enjoyed every minute. It was wonderful to have our whole family together for a week, but now I miss them more than ever.

Update: I have uploaded pictures to my Flickr account here.