Swimming with Sharks

Have you seen the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?  If not, you really should. I could relate to Walter Mitty because I too am a daydreamer and --not to give anything away--but I too found myself swimming with sharks just last week!

Every January, when the snow isn't pretty anymore and wool socks are a must, I dream about tropical vacations. (actually, I do that every month of the year) This January my dreams came true thanks to my new job as coordinator. I got to go on a training aboard the Disney Dream ship to the Caribbean.
My kids were so stinkin' mad that they couldn't come. "What kind of mom goes on a Disney cruise without her children???" they cried....for like days. I'll never hear the end of it but it's been worth it for many reasons...not the least of which are these...

After a day at sea we arrived in the Bahamas
I shopped at and practiced my bargaining prowess at the famous straw market where locals sell their handicrafts. Popped into the Pirate Museum, and took a 5 hour 3-stop snorkeling excursion.

The last stop was to a shark reef. I had no idea you could snorkel with sharks! so I just had to take advantage of that!

 Once our little charter boat arrived, sharks started circling , the dorsal fins cutting through the surface of the water. If that doesn't send tingles up your spine... A box of bait was lowered 20 ft. down and while the sharks were distracted, some of us crept into the water very unassuming like and watched them through our snorkels, while they swam below. These were 5-6 ft. reef sharks and we saw a half dozen or so. I snapped away with my underwater camera.  Minutes later we were instructed to get back in the boat. Some leftover fish were thrown overboard before we headed back to shore and those sharks came at lightning speed to devour them: Lesson learned. There is no out-swimming a shark.

 Unlike Walter Mitty I didn't have to wrestle the sharks and I only came away with some blurry photos and a new respect for their speed.
The other stops included an old plane wreck, a barracuda, trumpet fish, parrot fish, brain coral, fan coral, and some other colorful fish that will have to remain nameless due to my ignorance.


2nd stop Castaway Cay--What could be safer than a Disney cruiseship? A Disney private island.
I was super excited to go parasailing here. Walked off the ship and saw this...

You can see the disappointment in my reflection!!
All was not lost however. I was on a private island, afterall and I was going to make the best of it!  By this time in the trip I had made some good friends. We walked around to explore and when we came here we knew that was where we were going to plop for the day. Disney's adult only beach had plenty of room, a buffet of fruit, burgers, and ice cream to eat and soft white sand between our toes. I went snorkeling and swimming here too.

Plan B turned out pretty great. These are some of my new friends, also coordinators. Minnie is even thinking of joining our team.

I made the most of the last day on ship. I had an exciting ride on the aqua flume, swam in the pool, and sipped a pina colada in the glass-bottomed hot tub.  I took in the evening show with the rest of my group. Disney really knows how to entertain. They pulled out all the stops for their Disney's Believe show. I realized I hadn't missed my kids until they started showing movie clips from tender Disney moments like Bambi nuzzling his mother and princess Ariel embracing her father...

 We had another fabulous dinner with loads of good desserts like creme brulee and peanut butter chocolate mousse and merengues with fruit salsa.  In the 5 minutes we had before dinner, I challenged everyone to a photo contest. Who could go around the ship and take the best selfie? The photo of me sliding down the banister didn't turn out too well. Instead,  The Belgian exchange student pictured in the middle was the winner with her photo sitting on the leiu! Good thing this cruise was only 4 days! We were having way too much fun.

We debarked and took a shuttle back to Orlando. I spent so much time in this airport I feel like I became good friends with all the photo ops, like Snow White.   The most exciting thing that happened on this leg of the journey was that a woman on my flight collapsed. A request was sent out for any doctors on the flight. 3 of them leaped up. In a  a few minutes, the woman regained consciousness to the applaud of everyone aboard the aircraft.  If I were Walter Mitty, I would have been the doctor leaping over the seats to save the woman from sudden death with my awesome CPR skills and my pocket defibrillator. All I could do was offer a little prayer and continue reading my book.  The lady was fine but as a precaution some paramedics met us on our layover in Cincinnati, where it was 2 degrees by the way!

I did my best to buy back my kids' love with souvenirs. I think it worked;) Hooray for fun winter getaways!!
Back to Utah and winter and work and daydreams!!

My Favorite Reads from Around the World--A Review of 2013

What could be better than discussing great literature with witty, bright, good souled women? Discussing it over lunch! As I've probably raved before I love my book group.  This year we decided to do book lunches instead of book nights because everyone needs to lunch, right?  and evenings are kinda...well...sacred. We also decided to cover the globe and focus on literature that represented different countries or cultures. Hooyah! (my favorite genre) Whoever had the turn of hosting made lunch from the country of our book selection. Let's hear another hooyah! because ethnic is my favorite kind of food! Is all this excitement lost on anyone?
Here's a summary of our great year:

In January we kicked off our international theme with 10 Souls I Want to Meet in Heaven by Michael Wilcox.  This book covered some of the author and scholar's favorite historical heroes. It covered the gamut from Buddha to Mohammed, St. Patrick to Darwin and more--6 more to be exact. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about each of these great souls and how they magnified their lives to benefit humanity. I am looking forward to meeting them in heaven as well for...some great discussion over lunch, perhaps!

If there was a book that I think should be required reading for everyone it would be February's selection Wild Swans.  This book covered 3 generations of women in China--from the Imperial era to Communism to the horrific Cultural Revolution of Mao. The author didn't shy away from the daily details of life and all of it was real! When I finished I wanted there to be a book like this about every country. Utterly fascinating.

In March we went to India and then floated for days in the middle of the ocean-- Yann Martel's
Life of Pi.  I hosted this one and couldn't decide whether to serve flying fish or raw sea turtle?  I decided to go with Indian cuisine. Life of Pi is one of my top favorite reads. The first 100 pages are their own brilliant essay about religion and life. Then you take off on this unbelievable survival tale. It's everything I could want in a book.  

In April we learned about the Jewish culture with The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I am finding out that books that I read in high school are a lot more interesting as an adult.  I came away wanting to be a gentle wise parent like Mr. Malter. From Reb Saunders the strict Hasid Jewish leader, I learned about the amazing capacity of the human mind to memorize scripture, know it so well you to pick it apart and put it together again, and argue every side of it inside and out. I have new respect for those guys with the curly locks.

The next month we gathered for High Tea and partook of English vittles while discussing Silas Marner by George Eliot. What a heartwarming classic about love, humanity, and redemption. I think this lovely quote sums it up: ...but yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.   I see another parenting theme for me here.

The quickest of all the reads for me was June's A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kahleid Hosseini. This novel was gripping, it was shocking, it made me angry and unsettled and it was beautiful. It's about the triumph of women under the male dominated Islamic Afghanistan. Did you know under the Taliban you could be beaten for keeping parakeets? Not sure if that is evil or just ridiculous but either way I am sooo glad to be a woman in America.

In July we ate empanadas from Latin America and discussed  In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez as well as a poetry selection from Chilean Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda. The first one was based on the true story of the 4 Mirabal sisters who spoke out for freedom in the midst of Trujillo's brutal military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.  It was terrifying to read how seemingly effortlessly evil men can come to power and take away the freedoms that make life...well, worth living.

When I tell you what we chose for August you won't even blame me one bit for not finishing it... War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. See? Now you'll totally understand when I admit I didn't even START it. I wasn't about to snuff out summer with a long cold Russian tale of war! Shame and disgrace,  I still went to lunch.  I chose instead to visit the steamy Congo and read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I did admit this to everyone, probably while snarfing down a deliciously seasoned Russian meat pie.

September's choice was also grueling but much shorter so I read it and was glad I did: The Long Walk Home was about a Polish prisoner of war who was tortured by Russians and sentenced to 25 years in a Siberian work camp. He and a few others escaped and survived seemingly insurmountable obstacles like the Himalayas and hunger. The author and survivor Slavomir Racowiz felt compelled to share his amazing story "as a warning to the living and as a moral judgement for the greater good."  I thought whoever hosted this one had it pretty easy as far as a menu goes. We could just not eat lunch at all!  Thirsty? go suck on a rock.   We had Mongolian beef with rice instead.

We couldn't neglect Australia through all of of this. So, in October we read Mutant Message from Down Under.  The author shares her first hand experience on a walk-about through the outback with a special tribe of aborigines called the "Ancient Ones."  Along her journey she loses all physical possessions and contact with the world. She eats all kinds of disgusting things and learns that there are no accidents only "mysteries not yet revealed."  A lot to learn from this book--namely if you find yourself lost in the outback you better pray to get rescued by an aborigine. For our lunch our hostess had very cleverly cut up and arranged vegetables into frogs, caterpillars, and beetles. Amazing.

November's read could have bumped itself up as my new favorite book: The Rent Collector by Camron Wright. This novel is set in Cambodia at the dump where gangs roam, where children are abandoned, and where the poorest of poor eke out a living. Even in this most hopeless of all spots of the globe the author creates an inspiring story that just made me want to sing.
"Words are not only powerful. They are more valuable than gold."

We didn't have book club in December but I couldn't get enough of my favorite genre. I sneaked in a few other international reads throughout the year:

Girls of Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Japan) Secret Daughter (India) Motherhood, adoption, and the good and ugly sides of India.
Inside out and Back Again--Beautiful prose about life in Vietnam from a little girl's perspective.
A short story, The Big Wave by Pearl s. Buck (Japan) short story about villagers courage to live in the shadow of a  volcano and with the threat of tsunamis
I am currently reading The Cellist of Sarajevo
Next in my pile is The Power of One about Apartheid South Africa.

This year we are sticking a little closer to home with the theme "25 Books That Shaped America." But, I will never be done traveling with books so send me your recommendations!!





   

Christmas Memories

Last Sunday we had our Choir Christmas Program. I am the music director and Brandon is the choir director so we were in charge of coming up with said program. We themed it "Christmas Memories" A few people from various ages from primary kids to grandmas  took turns sharing their special Christmas traditions, a favorite gift, or what Christmas was like when they were a kid. These were intermingled with musical numbers. It turned out really great, as they always miraculously do,  and I was reminded how much I enjoyed hearing about how other people celebrate this joyous holiday. I decided to come home and free associate my own:

We always had different people living in my home from  year to year, relatives or exchange students or whatever. Also my mom's health wasn't too stable and neither was my parents financial situation  so our Christmases were a little different each year depending on the situation. Some things were for sure: a fire in the fireplace, roasted pine nuts, and lots of people.
My first Christmas memory was my brother and I running up the steep stairs of our little brick Tudor style house and seeing the Christmas tree with 2 dolls under it--a Raggedy Ann and a Raggedy Andy.
We always bought a real tree from a tree lot and decorated it with a mishmash of decorations from things we had made in school or at church over the years. The coolest part were the lights. We had bubble lights that I've never seen on anyone else's tree before or since. They had a bulb at the bottom and a glass stem filled with red, yellow, or green liquid. When the lights were plugged in, bubbles would flow up the glass stem--like a little lava lamp. They were quite mesmerizing to look at and after they had been on for awhile they were warm to hold. We didn't have a lot of presents under the tree beforehand so it was extra spectacular to wake up on Christmas morning and see what seemed like such a huge pile there. Some years there would be unwrapped stuffed animals on top of the presents for each of us and I really loved getting those. We weren't allowed to open presents until after everyone had eaten breakfast which was usually oatmeal (sometimes my mom made it festive by putting red food coloring in it and cinnamon flavor) We were allowed to go through our stockings, though, and those were always the best part. We always got an orange, sometimes a watch,  a ring or necklace for the girls, and tons of gourmet candy. Secretly, I wished I could just get some regular Hersheys or Hubba Bubba instead of Belgian truffles but my parents owned a gourmet chocolate store and were therefore chocolate snobs. Nothing less than Cadbury was allowed in our house. For a joke one time my brother and I bought the largest box of cheap grocery store chocolates we could find. We thought we were so funny. When my mom opened it she tried to act pleased until we let her in on our joke. The most memorable stocking stuffer I got was when I was a teenager. I opened an envelope to find 2 tickets to see Yo-Yo-Ma in concert at Symphony Hall.

We usually drew names in our family. My siblings were all quite a bit older than me so most of them had families of their own. If my brother Allen had your name you were in for a real treat because he always went way over budget and always got something from his work, Nordstroms. I got a really nice warm pink coat from him one year. But my favorite was when I was eight. My parents opened the front door and there on our porch was a brand new yellow banana seat bike--my first bike ever!
Every year Allen brought a bunch of nice outfits from--you guessed it--Nordstroms. The ladies in the family would go hog wild with excitement picking out dresses and sometimes fighting over them. When he married his second wife--who worked in the cosmetic department--makeup and perfumes were added to the loot.
I worked really hard one year in 5th grade to make a present for everybody in my family.  I put together a book of "holiday poems" that I wrote, complete with illustrations, on colored paper. With the $10 to my name I bought a 24-pack of drinks and gave one with each of my poem packets. I gave one to my teacher too. Like Ralphie presenting the fruit basket to his teacher, I thought I had given the best present ever!!

A couple of Christmases my mom was in the hospital. She had a few health problems. I was around 16 during one of these. My mom was not able to do the Christmas shopping so my Dad took me to the mall and gave me $100 with the charge to buy everyone's present. I was the youngest and my siblings all lived far away with families of their own except for my oldest sister. She moved back home after a divorce and I mostly grew up with her around and her four kids who were just barely younger than me. I remember going to ZCMI and finding a little $10 gift in the clearance section for each person with the money my dad gave me. I really felt at the time that it was a tender mercy that ZCMI had that clearance sale.  One of those gifts I remember was a little glass nativity set.

A couple of years we were were the "sub for santa" family of our neighborhood. Those were the most exciting Christmases of all because we got way nicer gifts than we were used to! We opened the door one Christmas Eve to find our porch heaped with beautiful packages. I got my first cabbage patch doll from that experience. He was a boy with curly brown hair and his name was Lester. I would have preferred a girl but I was so elated just to have any cabbage patch doll at all. Another Christmas when I was very young we opened the door to find a box with a very exquisitely handcrafted doll inside just for me!

Usually, for Christmas we were allowed to pick out one $25 gift.  My mom was solely in charge of all the Christmas festivities.  She made things fun and exciting. We attended lots of Christmas concerts, the festival of trees, and any other event that was happening in town. My mom was maybe not the most organized person. She hid gifts throughout the year somewhere in her dank closet which I never dared go in. Sometimes she couldn't find a present and she would use her favorite cuss word, "Oh spit, where is that present for so and so?!"  One year, when I was a teenager, all the presents were gone under the tree and I still hadn't opened one. When my mom realized this she said, "Oh spit. Somebody find something for Lar."  She ended up pulling a tiny package out from the back of the tree. It was a watch that I had wanted earlier that year at the State Fair. I was grateful that I wasn't totally forgotten.

When I was really young we had a Christmas Eve party with my Dad's only brother and his family. We had a big potluck dinner. My mom always made her famous fudge. When it was at our house, Santa would show up. What was awesome was that even the adults had to sit on Santa's lap. Everyone got a unique present. I think my mom helped him by gathering stuff all throughout the year.When it was at my uncle's house in Provo we had a white elephant gift exchange. I still remember the laughs that Uncle Terry's gift brought--a used toilet seat. The drive home from Provo felt like an eternity to me when I was young. I remember looking up into the night sky on Christmas eve and being sure that I saw the lights from Santa's sleigh twinkling in the sky.
 A couple of years probably the ones when my mom was sick we had to eat Christmas dinner at a restaurant. It was a real challenge to find a restaurant that was open on Christmas day. My brothers ended up getting some takeout from Alberto's Mexican Restaurant on 33rd south in Salt Lake.
My dad loved Christmas. It was the only time of year that I really saw him in a lighthearted mood. When I was newly married my Dad had a stroke just before Christmas and was in the hospital recovering during the whole holiday. We went with my sister and her kids and sang Christmas songs to him. Christmas music was his favorite and our singing made him a little emotional.

Now that I have my own little family we are creating our own memories and traditions. One of those is to read "The Night Before Christmas." So, with that said, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!

Adventures Aboard: Caribbean Cruise

It's always a good idea to have your passport handy,  in case, say, your sister who works for a cruise line calls and needs someone to go with at the last minute. Call on the neighbor friends, rearrange a few things, beg the husband, and yep, I was good to go.

All I have to say is prayers are answered and wishes come true in the most wonderfully unexpected ways. Mine were something like this: Please let me be able to explore the world and learn from all the people in them. This trip was just exactly that!  I loved it and I have to believe my parents have a little pull on the other side. 

Thus began our pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming 11-day free exotic Southern Caribbean Cruise! 

Day 1: New York City

My sister and I flew in from our various locations. Both our flights were delayed putting us into NYC very late at night. We spent the rest of the time in the airport and that was just the beginning of our adventure.  Do you know everything is hysterically funny in the wee hours of the morning? 

Central Park

We took a taxi from the airport to the cruise port where we dropped of our luggage and then before embarkation we had a couple of hours to speed walk zombie fashion due to our sleep-deprived state, through this exciting city. We walked through Times Square, Central Park, 5th Avenue savored a slice of famous NY pizza.

Settling into life once on board the ship wasn't hard at all-- Room service, all you can eat everything anytime, and every kind of entertainment imaginable from karaoke to comedy?  We met our assigned dinner mates and enjoyed the view of the Statue of Liberty at nightfall as we dined on 3 delicious courses. 

Day 2 at Sea: The rough waters may have made others queasy but it put my sister and I to sleep instantly. After a great night's sleep we breakfasted and took our books to have a relaxing read on the sun deck (these are the things vacations are made of) I took my book about Australia and who should we run into but a family of Australians? We got to chatting--for like hours! and learned about life down under from politics to healthcare education. Fascinating. It seems Australia has many the same political and immigration problems we do? 

Day 3 at Sea: More dining, reading. We went to the evening entertainment in the garrish theatre, went to a comedy show and sat in on the most pathetic karaoke you have ever seen. Not to worry-- we livened it up with our rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. We soon found out that our cabin was directly under the karaoke bar. Wouldn't you know it but someone had to belt out "New York, New York," every stinkin' night!!! Oh the hardships of being on a cruise. 

Day 4: Grand Turk

 We booked a "power snorkeling" excursion, which is like regular snorkeling except with jet packs. Our driver told us all about the island on our way but with his thick accent (he was from Haiti) so we couldn't understand a word! Something about the salt industry and wild horses roaming the island which we did see, although they were small and thin and maybe more like donkeys. Locals rode them anyway.
Our snorkeling excursion took us on a small boat to a spot in the ocean where the sea floor dropped 7000 feet. We snorkeled along the edge of it and saw myriad fish including Dori from Nemo and coral formations that could rival any earthly garden. Coolest thing I saw was brain coral, a squid and some jelly fish. Not so cool was that my sister got stung by those jellyfish. But, we didn't find that out until the next day!

Day 5 at Sea: We both woke up with major sunburns. All the sunscreen in the world could not prevent these white girls from the effects of intense tropical sun glare. To our great surprise, our very black friends were also sunburned.  Aloe was the word of the day here--and I'll tell you the cruise gift shop  makes a killing on the stuff.  To boot, my sister's ankle was swollen and purpley red, so much so that it made walking difficult and painful. It could only have been those jellyfish! The other word of the day? Vinegar. That, folks, is the only way to neutralize a sting we learned and luckily she got a bottle free from our waiter. The smell of it will wake you up like a punch in the face.   After many generous applications, she went straight to bed and well, I snuck out for fresh air as well as take in a show and dance with my Aussie friends at the club.

Day 6: Aruba

 Beach day all day. Need I say more?

We took the public bus to this beach and plopped ourselves right on some resort chairs. Happy as clams.

Day 7: Curacao (pronounced Ker-uh-sow) or Karakwa if you're my sister. 

We walked around town through an old fort turned shopping mall, walked to the floating market where we bought fresh off-the-boat tangerines. More than 100 different ethnic groups reside here but they are subject to the Dutch King, hence the quaint well-kept painted buildings.   We were just off the coast of South America at this point so I shouldn't have been surprised my Spanish came in handy when asking for directions. Dutch is also spoken as well as a unique language called Papiamento which is a mix of all the above.

 You could pay for a $50 excursion from the ship and arrive at Mambo Beach and drink some margaritas--OR as we found out after talking to the locals you could take the mini bus for $2 and go to the same beach for free. We ain't no fools.

This beach was my heaven--a reef enclosed it like a private swimming pool and had the added benefit of providing great snorkeling! We were glad we brought our own gear.

Day 8 at Sea

Besides the Aussie's we made a few other fun friends. That is the great thing about cruising is that you can meet nice people from all over the world! We had Louie the master diver, Vinny the family man from Brooklyn, and Frank from Florida who was enjoying his 72nd cruise. His advice to us was that if you want someone to remember you "kick them in the shins." (He somehow became successful anyway). There were our three table mates who lived in New York but were originally from Grenada, St. Thomas, and Jamaica.We had our South Carolina friends, our Canadian friends, and the most charming gay couple from England who also lived half the year in France. They were fascinated to find out about our Scottish ancestry and told us more about our family history than we ever knew. Finding out we were Mormons was equally fascinating to them. They wanted to know all about it and after we took turns explaining they agreed, "We love Jesus too!"

Life on the boat was grand. We got dressed up for fine dining every night, sat on the front-row of the evening shows, and came back to a tidied up cabin with chocolates on our pillow and towel figurines. The staff was great. 

Day 9:  Jamaica

80% of the country is lush green rolling hills and although it looks beautiful,  I have to admit I was not looking forward to this particular stop.  My last memory of being here was of being yelled at and harassed for not tipping enough and again for not buying more local wares. After this new experience however, I  turned an about face. Our Canadian friends had wisely arranged for a private driver to take them all over and kindly invited us to join them! We had a lovely time driving through the fern gully, where the road was lined with natives selling their handicrafts from wood carvings to painted shells, to Bob Marley t-shirts. Beyond them loomed steamy hills of lush vegetation. We stopped at Dunn's River Falls which is spectacular to view and thrilling to climb. Here you can scale up waterfall after waterfall that spills into a beautiful beach below. 

  We were introduced to Jamaican ginger beer which is like ginger ale with non-alcoholic kick. The spicy soda turned out to have a nice medicinal effect, settling my stomach through those windy jungle roads.

Our driver is what really made Jamaica fantastic. He said "ya mon" a lot which we found very charming. Also, he taught us how to bargain with the locals. It goes like this:  whatever price they give reduce it 60% and that's the fair price. We had our first chance to put this into action when a guy walked over to our van selling handmade motorcycle figurines from wood. "$25," he declared. "How about 10" I said? "15", he countered. "$12 no more" and with exact change in my hand the exchange was made. Everyone is happy! That is how it's done gringos.  

Oh the things people will do for a tip.

 We may have gotten a little carried away with the ginger beer.

We spent the afternoon being well looked under a cabana at a private beach. Kayaks were begging to be used so we once again used our bargaining powers and got 2 for less than the price of one...and honestly we had no more cash to give! Our day in Jamaica was wonderful. If you ever go there, ask for Richard. He is the magic word around here.

Day 10:  Grand Cayman

When we got to port we didn't have a plan except to get to the famous 7-mile beach with snorkel gear in tow. But, after some browsing around in the shops, we came across a tour offering a visit to Stingray City as well as snorkeling a pristine coral reef! My sister doesn't much like to share her swimming quarters with living things, especially after the jellyfish episode.  But my excitement convinced her to take the adventure of a lifetime and swim with sting rays!! It was an unforgettable experience and I loved every minute of it! Apparently you can bargain here too because we got a great deal. There were no excuses now. I think this picture says it all...

Snorkeling was awesome. I saw and dodged lots--o-jellyfish which our guide assured us were the harmless kind but big sister wasn't takin' no chances. She stayed cozy in the boat. I went off on my own a bit so I could see more than Japanese tourist legs.   The reefs were amazing with purple fan coral, large brain coral  and again fish in all their color and variety. A gentle spotted eagle ray glided past. Deep down in a crevice I spotted something very creepy looking and began to feel like I had wandered maybe a tad too far out on my own. I swam back and asked the guides about the strange creature. They knew exactly what I described--a moray eel!  Our guide dove in and brought me up big beautiful Conch shell. So cool! I have been working to de-stinkify ever since. (there is something to be said for buying them at the gift shop)

Can you believe this water??? An afternoon downpour forced us back to port and on the ship, otherwise I may never have left the Cayman Islands!

Day 11:  Last Day at Sea

Had a read-a-thon on deck while soaking up our last chance for tropical sun. Enjoyed a wonderful chocolate buffet and participated in the Thriller dance lesson on the Lido deck. Ow! 

Day 12: Debarkation in Tampa, Florida

With our trip ending on the Gulf side of Florida and a few hours before our flights took us home, we decided to end with a bang and visit the Top Rated Beach in the Sunshine State!... rented a car for the day and drove here:

As the sign says, this beach had it all--fun shops, warm water, shells for collecting, and you could see the fish swimming around you. Most remarkable of all  was the sand. It was like walking in powdered sugar!!

 There's nothing like being on the same boat for 11 days to mend a relationship. My sister and I did have a rough patch when our mom died last year but we have forgiven and moved on and that is life. You don't have to spend a vacation together but you do have to forgive. In our case it's a good thing too because we make excellent travel buddies. 

Back home I spoiled the family with t-shirts, dolls, and nick-knacks. Of course I've been sharing ginger beer with anyone willing to try. The time has come to retire the suitcases for awhile.  I've exhausted my friend equity for one lifetime and anyway the best place of all is in the loving arms of my husband and kids. Awwww. They missed me and I missed them!

Conference at Our House

When you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints it is a special occasion when you can stay home on Sunday, wear your PJ's and watch church on TV! It deserves special celebrating with family and treats--lots of them.

 I realized when I took all the kids to the candy store with instructions to pick out their favorite goodie that I have totally turned into my mom!

The veggie tray is my own contribution to the tradition. Surprisingly they got eaten!  Besides good food, we cherished this conference as a time to spend with family and enjoy inspiring messages from men and women and our Prophet. I have to agree with President Monson that this was a most inspiring Conference!

Be meek and lowly of heart  control your temper  Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith  Member and missionaries must work together  Slow down, rest up, replenish and refill (or you'll get sick) 15 million members strong For those with emotional or mental illness: God expects you to get a Priesthood blessing AND the best medical help available. For those who know or care for those with mental/emotional illness--be merciful, non -judgmental and kind.  Be bold in sharing the Gospel--pray not to be afraid.  It is impossible to fail when we do our best.  80,000 missionaries

Take someone by the hand and introduce them to Jesus Christ. ASK, SEEK, KNOCK.  Know the desires and dreams of your spouse's heart--be ONE.  Courage not Compromise  Man's laws cannot make moral what God has declared immoral.   Lay aside the things of this world and seek for a better.   Then don't stand idly looking on, the fight with sin is real. Come help the good work move along put your shoulder to the wheel.  To be in spiritual shape, like physical shape, takes DEDICATION, PERSEVERANCE and SELF-DISCIPLINE.

Live a life of selfless service. Patience is required.  Were it not for challenges to overcome and problems to solve we would remain as we are, never progressing.  The stronger the wind the taller the trees. How we preserve TIME for FAMILY is vital issue--Let's be on the forefront.    Attend all three church meetings wherever you are.  10 Commandments. Look up

 I am a Child of God  Chastity before marriage, complete fidelity in marriage.   Marriage protects the powers of procreation. 41% of births in U.S. are outside of marriage.  LOVE.  The Savior is always near, especially in sacred places and especially in times of need.