Cruising: On Board

Have you ever received a gift that just knocked your socks off?  Just after Christmas I got a phone call from my friend Tannie inviting me to go on a cruise to the Bahamas with her entire family.  This was their Christmas gift from her Mom but Tannie's husband couldn't get off work and the ticket was non-refundable.  So they thought of me.  Wow!  I was totally blown away with this incredible gift and spending an entire week with Tannie and her family was guaranteed to be fun!  Of course, I agreed!

We left from the port of Charleston, SC.  I loved these little flags with the Aruthur Ravenal Jr. Bridge in the background.

Just after getting on board, I began working on my tan.  You can tell how serious I was about it by the amount of skin that was showing.

Before leaving port, we had a boat's version of the "exit drill".  This amounted to packing us into a room like sardines.  Telling us without visual aides how to put on our life jackets which incidentally were located in our staterooms (I'm throwing out cruise words like I'm an expert) - a long ways away from our lifeboat.  Hmm!

Then they moved us out onto the decks in front of our respective lifeboats where we stood around and took pictures.  Here's my favorite one I took of Debbie and her grandbabies.

I'm not supremely confident that had the boat gone down, I would have escaped but thankfully, I didn't have to find out.  We cruised for two nights and a day.  Plenty of time to enjoy a beautiful breakfast on deck

and this chocolate melting cake not once but twice.  It was simply scrumptious!

Most of the ladies dressed up for the formal dinner and here we are in our Sunday best.

And there was fun to be had in our staterooms as well.  Every night we came back to a cute little towel creature.

The beds were super comfy too.  However, the best part was that Katelyn's bunk was just above mine which meant that I was able to employ my long ago acquired (from K.A.) and little utilized bunk boosting skills.  You place your feet under the mattress of the person above you and push with all your might!  It freaked Katelyn out but not enough to stop her from doing this...

All I've got to say is never leave a Fifth Grader with chocolate unsupervised in the bed above you!

Next time, I'll be disembarking in Nassau.