Mom's Birthday

Yesterday was my mother's 80th birthday. This picture of her was taken at her confirmation in 1944. I have always thought she had an oriental look and in this picture it really comes through. Her ancestors came from Russia (they were Volga Germans) who lived in a small village raided many time by tribes of Mongolian soldiers. It would be interesting to know if one of those soldiers could be an ancestor. : )

This picture was taken a few years ago at my nephew's wedding in Denver.

Last weekend we had an open house to celebrate her birthday. She doesn't like being the center of attention and had warned us for the past year that she didn't want any big to-do for her birthday, but while Brenda and I were on the cruise, my sister Jennie and my neices planned a celebration. Mom wasn't happy about it at first, but she ended up having a great time. A lot of her old friends showed up as well as a large number of family members.

Mom's four kids and their spouses.

Ken, Bill, me, Brenda, Mom, Jim, Jennie and Dan.

Mom and Jim, her favorite and only son.

My granddaughter Taylor was mom's first great-grandchild. We took a four generation picture when she was little so we wanted another one with her all grown up. This is Taylor, my daughter Cami, Mom and me.

Little More of the Dream Cruise

Our stateroom was at the very back of this ship and the theater was at the front of the ship. We walked this really long hallway many times.

After we had been on the ship for a week I noticed that the bottom lights on the glass elevator changed colors. I'm very observant!

At the beginning of our second week we were surprised by this Bon Voyage basket from Carnival cruises.

This is Empress Bee and her husband Sarge from Florida. I have read her blog for a couple of years so it was fun meeting them.

Hannah and Johnny were another couple we met, first on the internet, then on the cruise. We had a lot of fun with them and plan on keeping in touch. We hope to get to Georgia to visit them.

Rich had a birthday on the cruise and our fun loving waiter, Julio made sure we celebrated in style.

This was another one of Julio's trick. He placed the glass of water on Duane's hands and then a spoon in his mouth. Try to get out of that one.

I don't know what Ken and Bill were yukking it up about, but whatever it was, it must have been darn funny.

Sue and Duane on formal night.

Brenda and Bill.

Rich and Maureen. New friends from Canada.

This is the picture going on my fridge to remind me to quit eating!

This is why I look like I do in the above picture. I really love dessert! I won 104 dollars on the 2 cent slot machine so I treated Ken to dinner at the fancy pay restaurant on the ship. It was an amazing meal topped off with this chocolate sampler. YUM!

The Dream - part 2

Our 2nd port was Roatan, Honduras. It was cloudy and overcast, but warm enough to spend the day at the beach and for Ken to get a pretty good sunburn. Mahogany Bay is the new cruise terminal and they have built a nice beach area. We spent the day there and didn't even get out to see anything else. We were some of the first on the beach, but it didn't take long for all of these chairs to be filled.

Ken loves to snorkel and found this pretty conch shell. He wanted to keep it, but our luggage was already close to being overweight so it went back in the ocean.

They had a chair lift to transport passengers from the port terminal to the beach area. A chairlift to a beach (?) not something you see very often.

When we started the cruise Ken said he wanted to buy a goofy hat. I think he accomplished that very well! (just so you know I did not pick out his shirt either) The next day was Belize. We booked a snorkel tour online for Ken and Sue. Duane and I went along as observers.

The snorkeling took place 21 miles from Belize City, near Cay Caulker. It poured rain on our boat ride. I had a rain poncho but Sue, Duane and Ken got drenched.

This was a channel through the mangroves, it was really pretty.

We made a quick stop at Cay Caulker before going further out for the snorkeling. Fourteen hundred people live on this tiny island. It was really beautiful, but can you imagine the isolation of living here, not to mention.....the fear of hurricanes.

While snorkeling a whole group of sting rays came right up to the boat. The guides were feeding them sardines so it wasn't too long before they were swarming the area.


I have to throw the flower pictures in for the color. I love, love the colors.

For some reason I am fascinated with cemeteries. I found this grave on that tiny island. It had a concrete book shaped marker with all the names of the family members buried in the plot.

By the time we finished with our tour it was really hot on that small island. I can't imagine what the weather is like there during the summer months.

I better wrap it up tonight, we have a busy weekend ahead of us. We're going house hunting in Billings. Exciting! Probably won't be posting again till Sunday.

The Dream Cruise - part 1

We left on Friday, Jan 22, for our two week cruise on the Carnival Dream. After the most turbulent airplane ride I have ever experienced, we landed in Orlando, crammed 6 large suitcases and 4 carry on bags into a Chevy Equinox and headed to Cape Canaveral. Sue and Duane flew from Billings with us and we met up with Brenda and Bill at the hotel. Sue's friends Rich and Maureen from Canada met us there also and we all enjoyed dinner at the hotel before boarding the ship the next day. The Dream is the newest ship in the Carnival Fleet and their largest. The atrium was really beautiful with it's glass elevators changing colors all the time.

We quickly headed up to the Lido Deck for our first meal. The pool area was bright and colorful. We spend a good part of our time soaking up the sun and forgetting about the cold weather we left behind in Montana.

I think this is the prettiest Lido deck of any ship we have been on. My only complaint is that it was always full of people. We could usually get a deck chair, but you had to stake your claim on one early in the day.

Of course Ken tried out the water slide as soon as he could. It was closed a good deal of the time due to windy conditions, but when it was open the lines were long and it was very popular with the kids (and Ken).

One of my favorite things when in the Caribbean is looking at all the flowers and plants. Montana is beautiful in the spring, but in the winter everything is brown or covered in snow, so I love all the vivid colors. It really helps me get over the winter blahs.

Our first port was Cozumel, Mexico. We have been here quite a few times so we just did a little shopping in the port, then went downtown for some lunch. There is food on the ship 24 hours a day so I don't know why we spent money on more food.

We had lunch at a small Mexican cantina. Lunch was okay, but the margaritas were excellente'.

The kids laughed at the picture below and couldn't believe I had a picture of a toilet. I don't think its odd at all, I had never seen a toilet bowl like this so of course I took a picture. The bathroom was a little scuzzy, but the toilet bowl was beautiful!

The pictures below show us acting like silly tourists. These are the pictures the kids like the most....... they think we are such dorks.

I still haven't caught up on my sleep, so I'm off to bed. To be continued..............

I need a vacation!

We're home after a wonderful two week cruise, but now I am so bone tired I need a vacation to recover from the vacation. Tonight I'm going to work on the pictures we took and see if I can find a few good ones to share with you. I'm really disappointed in them this time, I messed up the setting on my camera and out of the 800 pictures I took only a few turned out very good. The one above was taken on the ship as we boarded the Carnival Dream. Stay tuned for more on our Dream cruise.