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Big Family Vacation Day 2025, Day -1

Saturday morning, I was up with the daylight, my brain being on Eastern Daylight Time. But the restaurant was on Pacific Time, so I sat by the window, admiring the view, before showering and dressing for the day. We went to Bacco for breakfast at 9:00, texting Scott our plans. They were just waking up after their late arrival from DFW, and would grab something to eat before our first activity of the day. Scott and I don't get as many visits with each other as we'd like. He plays Beer League hockey on several different teams every weekend (at least, that's what the frequency seems to be from 1,200 miles away). So getting out to visit with him in Texas requires a lot of scheduling magic. In late November of 2023, he met a woman who swept him off his feet. He was fifty years old at the time, and I have never seen him that happy in his entire life. And he just seems to get happier and happier with every passing month of the relationship. Which, of course, makes Mom happy. As ...
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Big Family Vacation 2025, Day -2

The alarm rang at 3:30 and we were on the 4:30 shuttle. The ticketing area at CLE was insane at 5:00 a.m. Where are all these people going?!!! After standing in line for about two minutes for PreCheck, a security person got the attention of the person ahead of us and told us all to follow her. She knew another PreCheck TSA line that was not at all busy, and we were placing our bags on the belt in a couple of minutes. But then we saw a TSA official grabbing one of our carry-ons. Yes, the dreaded search. Most cruise lines have noticed an uptick in Norovirus. I've been following the accounts in the various Holland America and Alaska Cruise groups on Facebook. Out of an abundance of caution, I stocked up on Clorox wipes and the travel size of Lysol spray. Unfortunately, the only Clorox wipes I could find was the 75-count container. Y'know, the one that weighs about a pound-and-a-half? Yep, that's what the three guys peering into the scanner screen were trying to figure out whe...
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Big Family Vacation 2025, Day -3

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Here's the wine rack in the 2019-renovated kitchen of our 1927 home, decorated with an early birthday card my lifelong BFF sent. Her granddaughter picked it out, having never met me, and it has musical notes on it!!! I'm seventeen days from turning 75 years of age. I've spent the past nineteen months planning this trip, a terrific adventure for my sons, myself, and our people, as they say on "Grey's Anatomy." The boys' father and I divorced when they were around ages 8 and 6. Now they are ages 52 and 50. We three have not take a "family" vacation since they were teenagers. If I spend too long thinking about this upcoming trip, my eyes fill with tears. These two men have become wonderful adults: ethical, loving, hard-working. I am very lucky to be their mom. I'm going to enjoy this trip so very much. For this trip, rather than be anxious about leaving my old house empty, I've asked a recent YSU graduate, a theatre major whom I accompanie...
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Daily Activities Agenda on Holland America ms Eurodam

Western Caribbean Cruise, Jan. 3 through Jan. 13, 2024 I saved all the Daily Activities handouts throughout this cruise with the intent to scan them and share with my [adult] children. We'll be a party of seven in June, 2025, cruising from Seattle round-trip along the coast of Alaska. I got them scanned today, but now I can't figure how to embed them in Blogger. So I put them on my Wordpress blog, where I know my way around. If you'd like to read them, here's the link . Happy daydreaming.
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Heading Back to Snow

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Disembarkation, Saturday, January 13, 2024, Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Photo above: killing time, cruising very slowly into Port Everglades. We don't want to be early to the party! And right on time. I don't sleep well when I have an alarm set. I wake up every hour or so, checking to see if I slept through the alarm. I finally gave in and turned on my reading lamp to write some more. At 5:45, I got into the shower and dressed, then went to the Lido Market for breakfast at 6:00. Back to the room at 6:30, finishing last minute things and finding hidey holes in our carryons to tuck in PJs and my toothbrush. At 7:45, as expected, our number was announced on the television and we shouldered our carry-on bags and headed out. Photo: Goodbye, Eurodam and wonderful crew. We'll see you again on June 6, 2025. 🚢 Holland America (and maybe other cruise lines) has a program called "Luggage Direct." For $25 per person (and any applicable airline baggage ch...
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Port Day #6

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Day 10, Friday, January 12, 2024, Bimini, Bahamas, and Heading Back to Port Everglades Here's the story of me and Bimini. It explains why I'm happy to visit Bimini today. You probably know I'm a musician. My primary instrument is piano. As a child and young person, growing up in Orlando, I also learned to play organ, clarinet, oboe, guitar, a tiny bit of banjo, and—wait for it—accordion. I was asked several times, probably 1964, 1965, and 1966, to travel to foreign countries for Seventh-day Adventist youth conferences to play my accordion, accompanying worship services. First to Guatemala. I thought it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I was 14. The next year, over Christmas break, the conference was on a little island off the coast of Miami—Bimini. The next year I made my first trip to Europe and I was bitten by the travel bug. I've jumped at every opportunity to travel ever since those trips with my accordion. I don't remember much about that trip t...
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Sea Day #3

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Day 9, Thursday, January 11, 2024, At sea, somewhere between Cozumel and Bimini Today is our final sea day and tonight is the second and final Gala dinner. Jas and I had reservations for dining in the Canaletto (Italian) restaurant on Friday night, but I cancelled those in favor of one extra night with Hendra, A.A. and Dwinda. This morning we went to the MDR for breakfast again, and were seated in A.A.'s section again. I had a wonderful bowl of steel cut Irish oatmeal with bananas, raisins, brown sugar, toasted almonds, and walnuts. Yum! Jas had buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and a bowl of berries. We hurried back to the room afterwards to grab our masks and get to the World Stage to see the a multimedia presentation detailing what it takes to run a cruise ship. "A City on the Sea" presented videos and live interviews with various crew members of the m.s. Rotterdam, as a representation of the entire fleet. It showed how each division functions. The engine room,...
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