Autumn Cruise Vacation Part 2: CRUISE DAY 1

We left early Monday morning (Oct. 12th) stopping to fill up gas and grab some Starbucks carmel apple spice and hot chocolate. We drove to San Diego and followed the GPS Dustin’s parents let us borrow, but was kinda weird. We parked at a Park and Ride and were shuttled to our big boat. We didn’t have any tags on our luggage and for some reason did not know where to get them, so we brought all our suitcases and everything into the check in because that’s where we thought we needed to go… after going through security and all that, we found out that you were supposed to drop them off before even entering the building, so we were stuck with EVERYTHING and couldn’t put them into our rooms for another hour… oops. Made it a little crazier for when we got on the boat and EVERYONE was there getting some lunch. Dustin stayed with the luggage while I grabbed some food, then I stayed with the luggage while he some food. I felt a little retarded, but whatever. It was kinda fun playing “spot the Mormons” while watching everyone run around the Lido deck to get lunch. Ha ha ha. I guess we’re pretty easy to spot.

Finally 1:30 rolled around and we were able to put our luggage in our room and unpack in our little home for the next 4 days. I thought our cabin was pretty spacious actually… much bigger than my first cruise. We were at the front of the boat and had 2 port hole windows that were pretty cool. After unpacking and relaxing, we wanted to explore a little, so we did. We found that our ship had a water slide (which Dustin really liked) and a mini golf course which was pretty cool. Before long we had our little lifeboat drill so we grabbed our life jackets and headed to the Mikado Lounge (their big theater) because that was our muster station. I thought it was weird that we met inside instead of outside…. But when everyone was ready, we got to go outside to the lifeboats… which were on deck 8 and are a LONG way down to the ocean…. Not quite sure how they lower them full of people, but it really was a long way down!
After putting of life jackets away, we went to the Lido deck to say goodbye to San Diego as we left the port and headed out to the open sea. Our dinner was the late seating, which I wasn’t happy about at first, but then we realized we could eat TWO dinners, one early in the buffets, and then the nice seated dinner. Ha ha ha. Constantly eating on the cruise… best part ever. Hahaha. It turned out that the later dinner was a good thing anyway because we got to make friends with a nice young married couple from Riverside, CA named Ryan and Nicole, only 21 and already married for a year…. Not your typical out of Utah scenario. :)
The first day for dinner we ate a LOT. I was SO FULL….so full that after dinner, pretty sure we went to our cabin and laid there dead. I couldn’t move. Dustin couldn’t move. So that ended our day 1.

Autumn Cruise Vacation Part 1: Let's Start at the Very Beginning

So… we’ve been back from our trip for a week now and it was wonderful! I’m breaking the trip story up into smaller parts so that I can find time to just do a little at time :) So if you’re reading these all, you’ll have to start here and work your way back up.

We left Saturday October 10th and headed off to Vegas. We checked into our hotel, which was the South Pointe Hotel and Casino, which is a ways off the strip, which was kinda nice… Except the lady trying to check us in couldn’t pull up our reservation. Good thing Expedia sends hotel confirmation numbers. After checking into our room and finding that we had the best view in the hotel (please see pic. below), we changed into BYU garb and headed off for the game!

Traffic was a little crazy, but not too bad. We took some “secret” back roads (they had signs that led us that way) and ended up getting into the parking lot from the backside… and no one was there to take money or anything, so parking was free! Which we thought was great. We got our Rebel dogs for dinner and found our seats… which were RIGHT BEHIND two rows of Max Hall’s family… seriously, his mom was right in front of us. Max looks a lot like his mom… and his little brother looks just like him too, sticking out ears and everything. The game was SO MUCH FUN. Like seriously, I think that was the most fun I’ve ever had at a game! I don’t know if it was the fact that there were more BYU fans there than Rebels fans, or if it was that UNLV returned a kickoff for a touchdown which meant that EVERYONE in the stadium got free chicken, the fantastic win we had, or maybe it was just that we were on vacation, but it was SO FUN. Loved it.
We went back to our hotel and got some real dinner food at the Coronado Café where BYU fans trickled in, which was fun to see. The next day we checked out and went to a single’s ward with Curtis Millette, Dustin’s mission buddy. It was weird being in a singles ward…even just to visit. And you know what, I was able to go to Relief Society for the first time in a WHILE since I’m in Primary all the time now… and I got BOO’d. That’s right. I said I went to the BYU UNLV game and I was boo’d by one girl and told to go back to Utah. Such a poor sport… just because we kicked their trash. Meh.
After church, we went to Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers to get our FREE CHICKEN from the game. It was just a kid’s meal, but it was pretty dang good...and it was FREE, which made it even better. Then we went down to the strip with Millette to check out the Bellagio gardens (I’ve never been there in the fall, I really liked it), watch a couple fountain shows, and get some divine dessert crepes inside Paris.
That was the end of our Vegas stay, so we headed down to Primm. Oh yes, we stayed at Buffalo Bills. They were able to easily find our reservation, gave us our room keys… we went up the 6 floors… and found someone else’s stuff there… Seriously, I was tired and knew we were waking up early the next morning so I was a little upset. We went back to the front desk, explained our dilemma, and was given a new room. This one was safe… yes, we walked in and found our 2 queen beds. Ha ha ha. I showed Dustin which one was his. Ha ha ha. Definitely not our favorite hotel we’ve ever stayed at, but hey, for $18, you too could have 2 queen beds and a moldy bathroom. :)

Friday on My Mind

Seriously, I wish I could just skip over today and go straight to Friday.... I am so ready to go on vacation! There is still a lot to do at home to get everything ready, but I just want to skip today and make it Friday. At home I have laundry to do, get packed, clean the house and the fridge, finish getting lesson plans together for my piano subs, and do some reg cards which I might not ever think about until I get back. I don't want to teach piano tonight, I want to work on everything else I need to do! And then I just want to leave.... go vacation... and never come back... live in complete cruise bliss forever and ever. Ha ha ha. It will definitely be a nice break. SO EXCITED!