Birthday Weekend

This past weekend, Scott and I flew to Chicago. Scott was helping to plan and organize the Southwest portion of the Magnificent Mile Light Festival - and since it was my birthday on Friday, I tagged along as a volunteer (and also because who wants to be alone on their birthday).

On the plane ride over, one of the flight attendants spoke into the intercom and announced that they had the privilege to fly with someone special this flight.

Everyone looked around and I was focused on my knitting - not really paying attention - and then they said my name. I got up out of my seat, face beet red, and made my way up to the front of the cabin which seemed miles away as everyone clapped and cheered like I had won a gold medal in the Olympics.

Scott had secretly told the flight attendants about my birthday when he told me he was going to the bathroom. Oh Scott. So sneaky.

When at the front, the flight attendants crowned me with peanuts, gave me a "birthday cake" made from a roll of toilet paper and led the entire cabin in singing Happy Birthday. The entire time my face was the color of a tomato, but it was fun.

Several people said Happy Birthday to me while walking back to my seat, and even in the airport because they recognized the crazy girl with the peanuts on her head.

Oh Southwest Airlines! I've never felt so special, LUVed, and so embarrassed on a flight before.  A great memory and what a great way to kick off the birthday weekend!

When we got to the hotel, there was a FedEx envelope waiting for us (my birthday present) and I think Scott was surprised that I made it up to our hotel room before I ripped it open. Inside were two tickets to see Les Misérables that night!

I had never seen Les Mis before, so I was pretty excited. And it was fantastic! I had read the book not too long ago so I new the basic frame of the story, but other than that, I was a Les Mis newbie. It was an amazing birthday present and a great surprise!

The next day, the weekend got better with the opportunity to be in the Magnificent Mile Light Festival Holiday Parade! Southwest Airlines was parade sponsor that year and the team of parade volunteers from SWA got to walk in the parade and bring Rudolf down the Mag Mile!

And of course, after the parade we topped the night and the weekend off by getting some Chicago Deep Dish Stuffed pizza - because its what you do. And it was as delicious as ever. Scott managed to eat two slices, which is amazing because I tapped out after one. It was just so filling, so good and a great end to a fantastic birthday weekend!

Grand Caymens

Our final stop on the cruise was in the Caymen Islands, which means one thing: another dive excursion!

We enjoyed this dive, but we had some problems. Scott was struggling a bit with his mask. It kept leaking and wouldn't seal properly. This coupled with the water pressure on his mask resulted in an uncomfortable dive and some popped blood vessels in his eyes.

We don't have an underwater camera,  and on this cruise, a fellow diver offered to take pictures of us underwater and send them to us.

Aside from the problems in the dive, we enjoyed it. There were a bunch of coral tubes that we were able to swim through, which was exciting and different. It felt like we were swimming through these coral canyons and trenches.

Diving the Grand Caymens was pretty good, but felt like the diving in Cozumel was better and more enjoyable. The sites in the Caymens had a lot of hard coral structures, but didn't have as much soft colorful coral and fish as Cozumel did.

We really enjoyed our cruise. We had so much fun and definitely would enjoy taking another one. It was an easy and relaxed vacation and we loved every minute of it!

Belize & Roatan

Belize was our second port. We didn't have a planned excursion for this stop, so we got off the boat when we were ready, and then explored the area. Outside of the port dock, we met Michael and he was willing to drive us around the city.

He told us Belize's history as well as the history of the city we ported at. It was fascinating seeing how things were built, and you could see a drastic difference between the commercialized area right at the port dock and the run down city outside of it.

Scott and I enjoyed driving around and learning about the country from Michael, as well as walking around after the tour. We enjoyed stopping at Belize. 

Roatán, Honduras was our third port. We LOVED Roatán. It was lush and green, and the ocean views were to die for. We met another couple while walking around, and decided to team up with them on another tour around the island. 

On our island tour in Roatan

The entire time we were there, Scott and I talked about what it would be like to move and open a dive shop here with the family. We heard the diving in Roatán was great, and the entire island is surrounded by dive spots. It looked like divers paradise. 

The view of Roatan from our room

Cozumel

Our first stop: Cozumel, Mexico. Hello scuba diving!

Cruise excursion companies lined up

Scott and I are both certified scuba divers and we love being under the water. So the only cruise excursions we planned and booked were dives in Cozumel and the Grand Caymans.

When we arrived in Cozumel, we walked around the little port town before finding our diving company.

Cozumel was beautiful. The water was crystal clear and bright blue. The visibility was perfect. You could look down from the boat and see coral and shapes that were 60 or more feet under the water. The diving was enjoyable and relaxed. We jumped off the boat and made our way to the bottom. These two dives were drift dives because of the current. We were carried slowly along the coral and were able to see amazing soft and hard corals with a variety of fish.

We loved the Cozumel dives.

On the first, we saw a giant sea turtle swim by us and then soar up to the surface to take in some air. It was beautiful and was flying in the water.

We saw a couple rays - one white and brown, and the other was larger and gray. The gray ray that we saw had a fish swimming with it, gliding with its back. Where ever the ray turned, the fish would recalculate its course to be with the ray. Yellow trumpetfish hid in the coral as we found eels poking their heads our of their coral caves.

Carnival Liberty docked at Cozumel

We loved Cozumel so much that we are trying to figure out a time when we can go again, and maybe work on our advanced scuba certification there. This was one of our favorite memories from the cruise. We will definitely come back and spend some more time in Cozumel.

At Sea

There were two sea days on the cruise - one at the beginning and one at the end. Because we were at sea, we took some time exploring the boat and soaking up the rays.

The day started out by finding the breakfast buffet and it was delicious. The buffet area was packed and completely filled with people. There was a breakfast grill that would change menu items. Every day there would be scrambled and boiled eggs, toast pastries, and oatmeal. Depending on the day, the grill would also serve pancakes, waffles, french toast, sausage links or patties, bacon, and various forms of potatoes. It was delicious.

After breakfast, we found a couple chairs on the upper deck and enjoyed the warmth and the breeze. It was just a lazy, relaxing day. We laid in the sun, ate when we wanted, slept when we wanted and were finally able to enjoy having the wedding stress gone and both be done with school.

The Lido Versailles Pool

The Lido main pool deck filled with people at the Sail Away party

The Journey

Scott and I have been offline for the past week - we were kickin' it up Caribbean style on a Carnival cruise. And we are ready for a little vacay! So let me start recounting the stories from the trip.

The cruise was from August 11th through the 18th with two days at sea and stopping at four ports: Cozumel, Belize, Roatán and Grand Cayman. We were ready for some sun, sand, and sea. Well, it seemed like the cosmos was pitted against us and tried to foil our plans of making it to Miami. 

Our flights were originally scheduled to leave Friday night out of SLC at 11:59 pm - gross - with about a 2 hour layover in Charlotte, NC. Then arrive in Ft. Lauderdale and take a shuttle to the port. Not that ridiculous of a schedule.

Well on Friday, Scott got a call from US Airways, saying that the flight was delayed until 1:30, meaning that there was a short window of time now to make our connection. To be on the safe side, we changed the flight from Charlotte to leave just a little bit later so we wouldn't have anything to worry about.

A few hours later, the airline called us again saying the flight was now delayed until 3am, so there was no way we would make the new connection. We changed our flights completely to accomodate. We would now leave at 8pm Friday night, stop in Phoenix and Philadelphia before getting to Ft. Lauderdale - with lengthy layovers. 

When we arrived at the airport, our first flight was on time and no longer delayed. Of course.

But at long last we made it. Let the cruising begin!

Carnival Liberty