thesellers.net

I traveled down to Abita Springs, Louisiana. to visit my long-time friend, Jen, and her new hubby, Darren. I left early on Friday morning; we were all dressed and out the door by 6:45a!

When Jen asked if there was anything particular that I wanted to do (or eat) while I was in town, my answer was all about food! I miss that good La. food! Jen was a fabulous host and fixed gumbo on Friday night for dinner, yum!

Saturday, we ventured around Mandeville and eventually landed upon a local farmer's market. We then decided to stop into Fleurty Girl, a very cute "Everything New Orleans" boutique.

My prized purchase was a signed copy of In a While, Crocodile, a cajun slow-cooker cookbook with recipes like Corn and Crab Bayou Bisque, Flambeaux Gumbo, and Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler Shrimp Étouffée. Jen and Darren bought a copy too, so we've agreed to cook through it and update each other on the results. I'm going to hold you to it, you two!

After our shopping concluded, it was time for more great food. Crabby Shack is owned by the same family as Young's Steakhouse in Slidell, a restaurant my family frequented. Jen and Darren had not been to Crabby Shack, so my visit was a perfect excuse to try it. Darren and I got adventurous with our appetizer and ordered frog legs. "Tastes like chicken. Ribbit!"

I asked Chad's mom if there was anything she needed while I was in La. In addition to bringing her creole seasoning, she asked about finding Mardi Gras fabric. And man, did we hit the jackpot! Sew This is a local quilt shop with a great selection of fabrics. They had a boat load of Mardi Gras, LSU, and New Orleans themed fabrics. Beth kept asking if the amount she wanted was going to be too much to bring back. I had to remind her that it was just me traveling; I had plenty of room in my suitcase. :)

In one of late night chats, I asked Chad if he wanted me to bring home any King cake. He was only interested if it was from Ranzazzo's. Well, lucky for him, Nonna Randazzo's had two locations close to Jen's. So, we stopped in and picked up this beauty. We kept it a secret from the girls until I got home!

Since the King cake was off limits until returning to Maryland, we headed off to Café du Monde on Saturday evening for dessert. You can't eat beignets without making a powdered sugary mess!

Sunday started out nice and relaxing. We attended church at St. Timothy UMC, then ate an awesome brunch at The Chimes. We couldn't pass up the Boudin Balls, and I feasted on Eggs Benedict topped with crawfish, cheese grits, hash browns and sausage. So so good! We all brought half the meal home for dinner.

I took advantage of a quiet house and took a 2-hour afternoon nap. A pretty rare occurrence for this Momma, and it was a good thing I did! The rest of Sunday was a roller coaster.

My 8:10p flight back to BWI was delayed to 8:50p, 10:50p, 11:35p, Cancelled, then reinstated to leave at 11:50p. I finally boarded a plane at 12:00a, landing at 3:15a. A kind couple I met while in line to reschedule our previously cancelled flight offered to give me a ride home. We made it to their car around 4:00a only to find the car battery was DEAD! The car was jumped by the parking lot attendant and I was finally headed home. I climbed in bed at 5:00a.

I had a fabulous visit and an adventure that I will never forget!!

Grandaddy turned 95, and a celebration was in order. Since the girls have school (and we don’t like to skip school) and lots of other activities, we decided to just go for the weekend. And since flights to Savannah are both expensive and only at difficult times for those of us traveling with kids, we decided to drive.

So, we got Molly from school and hit the road. We made it as far as Florence, South Carolina before stopping for the night at a hotel. Then we woke up Saturday morning and went straight to the party which started at noon. The party was just for immediate family, but Grandaddy has got a lot of immediate family.

Time to blow out the candles.

Someone thought it would be funny to use trick candles that relit themselves. He persevered and got them out eventually, though.

Grandaddy and Betty have had some rough times this year, but they’re still smiling.

The party was held at the Sail Loft at the Savannah Yacht Club. It’s very nice inside, but outside is even more fun. Water and boats are everywhere. The girls especially liked watching the boat lift put boats in and out of the water.

After the party, we stayed the night at Grandaddy’s house. At 95, he’s still fixing his great grandkids’ toys.

Then we woke up early the next morning to drive all the way back home. Thankfully, traffic wasn’t bad, so we managed to make it in a little over 12 hours. Just in time to put the girls to bed to get some sleep, as they both had to be up for school the next morning.

There were several dining options on the ship, but we tried to go to the main dining room as much as possible (every dinner, most breakfast and lunch). It was like going to a fancy restaurant with impeccable service for every meal, and ordering whatever you wanted. This shot is from our last night’s dessert, and includes apple strudel, key lime pie, and pear mousse with chocolate chips and chocolate sauce.

We had the same dinner servers every night but one. Andy from Indonesia (right) was our waiter and Rosalio from the Philippines (left) was our assistant waiter. They were fantastic, and I hold Andy personally responsible for any weight I gained. He just kept pushing more food on us. For example, one night I ordered the prime rib (excellent), and he took it upon himself to order an extra lobster tail and shrimp entree so he could give me lobster and shrimp “on the side” of it. I frequently ended up with two appetizers, two entrees, and two desserts.

We saw lots of shows on the ship, but I didn’t photograph many of them. I did get a shot of an aerial performance from the last night. This was done in the Centrum, a central atrium reaching from deck 4 up to deck 8. It started off seeming like a cool show, but after the first song finished there was no second song. The entire show was only 6 minutes long.

Here’s another of the aerial performers.

All in all, the cruise was a great time for Jen and I to get away together. That said, I don’t think we’ll be going on another cruise any time soon for two main reasons. First, we both had motion sickness problems and side effects from treatments for those problems. Secondly, we didn’t get to really see Bermuda. In the future, I think we’ll choose to fly to our destination so we get more time there to do the things we want to do there. That said, I’ll miss the dining room on the ship.

Previous day

Our last day in Bermuda we got up early to go kayaking. I took advantage of being up early to get a shot of the sun coming up over the Great Sound.

We hopped on a boat and got a bit of a tour before arriving at our destination for kayaking. They were glass-bottom kayaks, which turned out to be a gimmick. You don’t need a window in the bottom of a kayak because you can see down all around you.

Tropical Storm Fay did a lot of damage. We saw a bunch of wrecked boats like this one as we paddled around.

As if that wasn’t enough, Bermuda got hit by a much bigger hurricane less than a week later. Thankfully, we were home by then. We hope Bermuda can get a break for a while to recover.

Here’s Jen in the back of our kayak. We didn’t see too much sea life, but we did see a couple of sea turtles swim by us. Most of the time, though, we were just covering a lot of water. It was a really good workout, which was fun but not what we expected.

We got someone to take a picture of us, but it came out blurry thanks to all the water covering the lens. Sorry about that.

Our kayak tour ran long, meaning we were running late to get back to the cruise ship before it departed Bermuda. So, our boat ride back was at top speed. Jen got a little wind-blown.

That afternoon we took a bit of a nap and relaxed after the early and exhausting morning. Fortunately, a cruise ship is a great place to relax (as long as it isn’t rocking too much).

Previous day | Next day

The next day was our one and only full day in Bermuda. We really wanted to go on the Hidden Gems excursion, but this Norwegian ship that was in Bermuda at the same time as us had booked all the spots on it. So, the woman running the tour put us on the wait list. Sadly, everyone showed up for the tour so we did not get to go. :(

Since we didn’t get on the tour, we made one of our own. For the morning, we wandered around the Royal Navy Dockyard area. Here’s Jen in front of the historic Commissioner’s house.

In the afternoon, we thought we’d check out the part of the Hidden Gems tour we were most excited about - Tom Moore’s Jungle. So, we hopped on a ferry to head out to St. George’s, then we hopped on a bus to get to the trail head. We rode one bus for a while, then hopped off to catch the bus that would take us where we wanted to go. We waited, and waited. Eventually, we asked a different bus driver where the bus we wanted was, and she said it was not running because the road we needed to go down was closed due to fallen trees from the storm. So, after wasting several hours, we hopped on a bus to go back to St. George’s and find a beach.

After a 20 minute walk, we finally managed to find a beach to relax on - Tobacco Bay beach. It’s a tiny beach on some water that’s protected by rocks, keeping it very calm. A perfect place for people (and fish) to swim.

A quick selfie of the two of us as we waded around the water.

Jen was befriended by a bunch of fish as she waded into the water.

There really were a lot of fish around. This came from me just sticking my camera in the water and clicking. They clearly weren’t afraid of us.

This fish gave me a dirty look when I tried to take a picture of it by Jen’s legs.

It was serene looking out from the beach as the sun started to go down.

It’s really nice as a photographer to be married to such a gorgeous model.

She’s too beautiful for me to pick just one of these. I had to show you two.

On the ferry ride back to the dockyard, I got another picture of our cruise ship. This one’s from the other side and a bit farther away to give a better perspective.

And to close out the busy day, we got a new towel animal - an elephant.

Previous day | Next day

Things took a turn for the worse during our second night on board. Tropical Storm Fay (soon to become Hurricane Fay) was headed right for Bermuda a little ahead of us. While we didn’t sail through the storm, it did mean we had 10-15 foot waves tossing our ship around.

We woke up Sunday morning to this and headed to breakfast. The dining room was crazy, as the carts of food kept rolling around and toppling over. There were barf bags strategically placed all over the ship. Jen’s Zumba class was cancelled. I was feeling queasy, so I headed to our room to lie down. Jen said she felt OK, so she went to the fitness center. She tried the elliptical machine, but it was too crazy with the boat rocking. She tried the treadmill, but she could see the ocean which made her queasy too. So she headed down to the room to lie down as well.

She lasted about 10 minutes before she lost her breakfast. We then spent much of the day lying down in our room (though we did leave to get a light lunch around noon). We probably napped for 4 hours that day, but it wasn’t peaceful sleeping.

Later in the afternoon things started to calm down. We were originally supposed to get into Bermuda at 3:00 that afternoon, but they closed the port due to the storm. We did end up getting into port around 6:00. We were scheduled to eat dinner on the ship at 7:00, so we didn’t really have any time to do anything that day. We did hop off the ship both to set foot on solid ground and to technically be in Bermuda. We took advantage of the opportunity to get a picture with our ship.

We were only off the ship for about 15 minutes, but it felt good none-the-less. We were happy we didn’t have anything else scheduled that day, as all excursions had been cancelled due to storm damage. Bermuda got hit very hard by the storm, which we’d learn about more as our stay continued.

Previous day | Next day

Our second day on the cruise went very well. We got up early so Jen could take a Zumba class on the pool deck. We played some cards. I played in the Adult Table Tennis Tournament and took home the bronze medal (they did actually give out medals). And all along our sea sickness patches kept working.

That night was a formal night, and also the night assigned to be our anniversary celebration. The wait staff sang to us and brought us an extra dessert with a candle. It was lots of fun.

Here we are after dinner. Excuse our odd color from all the neon lights around us.

We then went to the big show of the night - a Motown group that sang lots of fun old songs.

Our room steward would sometimes leave us these fun towel animals after he made the room up for the evening. I believe this is a floppy-eared dog.

Our second day at sea was a good one, and we were looking forward to getting to Bermuda the next afternoon.

Previous day | Next day

Jen and I did not take our usual anniversary trip last year due to the move. So, this year we decided to make our trip a big one. We decided to go on a cruise for the first time. Here we are atop the Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas ready to leave the port of Baltimore and head to Bermuda.

It’s a six night cruise, with a couple days at sea, a couple days in Bermuda, and a couple days at sea to get home. Note that there are no kids in this picture - the girls stayed with Grams while we got away (thanks again Grams!).

This was my first cruise, and Jen’s first since she was a preteen. So, we don’t have a lot of experience with cruise ships. That said, the ship had a lot to offer. Here’s Jen on deck 10, overlooking the main pool on deck 9.

The ship had a second pool with a retractable glass roof called the Solarium. This pool was adults-only, making it a nice calm place to relax. Jen’s checking her email with the last bit of connectivity before we left port.

Our stateroom was tiny. I had to use my fisheye ultra-wide angle lens to get a picture of it. But its size didn’t bother us. The tiny bathroom was a bit more challenging (think airplane bathroom with a shower the size of a garbage can tacked on).

A couple hours after we left port, we both started feeling the effects of the motion. Fortunately, Jen had gotten four sea sickness scopolamine patches from her doctor, each lasting three days. That meant she had enough for the both of us. So, we both stuck them on, and they helped a lot with the motion sickness. Unfortunately, we also got many of the side effects (dry mouth, blurry vision and dilated pupils, and bloodshot eyes), but that was better than feeling sick.

The first day was a good day, but there was much more to come...

Our final day in Alabama was not quite as busy as Saturday. We went to church in the morning. In fact, I even got to play guitar and sing there. Uncle J was supposed to lead a children's worship time, but he was sick and lacking much of a voice. So, he brought me along for a little help. He played banjo and harmonica while I played guitar, and we both sang. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

After church, we went out to eat with Great Uncle Ted and Great Aunt Jeannie. Then we headed back to the house to pack up and head to the airport.

As they always do, the girls made sure to study the safety information for our airplane.

Safety comes first, but silly comes second.

On Saturday, we headed to Auburn for the first time in 8 years. Our first stop was the Auburn Wesley Foundation, where Jen and I spent much of our time during college. Here we are with David, the director there that also happened to marry us.

The church next to the Wesley Foundation, Auburn United Methodist Church, is where Jen and I got married. We wanted to show the girls inside, but it was locked up. So, we got a picture on the front steps.