Flashback: Going on a cruise! (port: New Orleans)

In October 2011, Jared was approached by the director of the urgent care where Jared is an on-call option for the facility to help cover vacations and personal time, etc. They were losing one of their full-time PAs and the director wondered if Jared would pick up an extra 12 hour shift a week over the next two months while they hired a new provider.

This meant Jared would be working on Mondays, when I usually go to Jared's "real job" and help out at the clinic. Obviously, Jared's job and part-time one take precedence over anything I do. Technically, there are only a couple of time-sensitive things that I do at the office and while the rest is important, it can wait even if it makes (a lot) more work for me later in order to catch up.

Jared wasn't super thrilled about working a 12 hour shift on Monday and then another 12 hour day at his office on Tuesday for 2 months straight. So he said he'd do it only if the money he earned at the urgent care could be used to pay for a 15 year anniversary trip for the two of us. (How do you say no to that?? You don't!)

And thus began the plans for a long-awaited, first-time, just-the-two-of-us, pleasure-only trip. Jared was the mastermind behind all of it. He did a lot of research and finally decided we were going on a Western Caribbean cruise on the Royal Caribbean line (recommended by several friends and patients).

The beginning of that trip began one year ago today! And oh, how we wish we were getting ready for another cruise. February was the PER.FECT time of year for a getaway.

Jared had actually talked to my parents a year or so prior and "reserved" them for babysitting purposes. They wouldn't be on a mission, which isn't always the case with them, so we had to take advantage of them being in the country while we could :)

My mom graciously bought her own ticket to come up a couple days before we were flying out so she could read through my novel of notes and see the "family schedule" in action. Turns out, I was being honored at an American Mother's Gala 5 days before she was arriving. I had considered telling her about it, but because it would add almost another week on to her already self-less trip (and meant more exposure with the kids--we were going to be gone for NINE days as it was), I hadn't mentioned it ahead of time. Her invitation to the Gala came just days after she bought her ticket. As the wonderful mother that she is, I should have known that she would make arrangements to change her ticket so she could be with me on my special day. She wouldn't even let me pay for the difference in ticket price. But I did buy her dinner :) Thanks for coming, Mom!

The framed sketch of the mother holding her child was done by Walter Rane, who actually resides in Oregon. He spoke at a Women's Conference here in our stake a few years ago. Ironically, my mom was actually visiting that week and she came with me. He has a TON of pieces that appear in the Ensign, the church's magazine. Seems like every month or so, I see something else of his. I love his artwork.

A little off topic...there are only a handful of pictures that I like with me in them. It's not humility and I'm not fishing for compliments. I really don't like them. I'm not photogenic.At.All. But I think these pictures are okay. And I'm thinking, why? What is it about these particular pictures? Then it dawned on me...I actually have color in my face. Duh...I had been tanning!! Kind of funny....although what wouldn't be funny is to get really close to the equator and toast myself on the first day of my dream trip. So Jared and I both went tanning the month before we left to get our bodies ready for super sun exposure. (Something I thought of only because of my life in Alaska...that's what a lot of my friends did before they went on Spring Break to Hawaii or Mexico...you know, while I stayed home and enjoyed the dark and the white-out blizzard conditions.)

Tanning was a whole new experience for me. I was a little anxious about it, but once I got the hang of it, I was okay. You have to fill out a form about your skin type before you start. Based on the answers I gave them, my start time was 1 minute of tanning. No surprise there. I think Jared was 10 minutes. After we got our enhancing lotion (which was worth the money just because of the tropical smell :) they got my booth ready. Except that the computer wasn't cooperating. It wouldn't accept 1 minute. It didn't understand it. No one needs just 1 minute of tanning time. After we got a laugh over that, the gal suggested she'd put 2 minutes in and I could just stand there for 1 minute before hopping in. And that's what I did for the first week. We tanned every day except Sunday. Kind of made our schedules crazy because we were sharing the lotion, especially when it took 10 times longer to travel there and back than it did for me to actually tan. But the tanning salon was not far from Jared's work so it was doable. I went to 2 minutes of tanning the second week, then 3-4 minutes the third week. Then 5 minutes the last week with 6 minutes the last two days. Yay...I made it all the way up to SIX minutes of tanning! After only a couple of weeks, though, I had people comment they could tell I was getting color.

That was seriously, one of THE best things we could have done for ourselves in preparation for the cruise. I cannot tell you how many people we ran into on the ship who were red and purple on the second day because they burned themselves so badly. How miserable for them!!

We decided to leave from New Orleans, LA since it was a lot closer than Miami, FL and we scored on round trip airline tickets for $350 each! Our 7 day cruise itinerary was the following:
Sat. 2/25, Day 1: departure, at sea
Sun. 2/26, Day 2: at sea
Mon. 2/27, Day 3: at sea
Tues. 2/28, Day 4: Falmouth, Jamaica
Wed. 2/29, Day 5: Grand Cayman
Thurs. 3/1, Day 6: Cozumel, Mexico
Fri. 3/2, Day 7: at sea
Sat. 3/3, Day 8: port back in New Orleans in the morning; fly home

We flew to New Orleans on Friday, 2/24 to make sure we were there with time to spare. We left bright and early on a 6am flight. We did discover that a time does indeed exist when there is no traffic on the way to the airport...3:30 in the morning--in case anyone was wondering.

While we were at the gate waiting to board the plane to Denver, I noticed a mother about my age with her baby crawling around. When I got up to do something, I passed them and said hi and asked how old her son was. He was 9 months...just a little bit older than JJ who was 6 months at the time. The ticket agents announced that it was a full flight and they were looking for volunteers to check their bags for free at the gate. We jumped at that chance because we had a garment bag with our dress clothes that was no good to us on the plane, but didn't want to pay the extra $25 to check it. When we got up to board, they still needed volunteers to check their carry-on bags so we checked our second one also. Sweet!

We got to Denver uneventfully and only waited for about an hour. When we purchased the tickets our seats were in different spots on the plane, but we thought we heard our names over the loudspeaker and sure enough, they had rearranged it to have us sitting next to each other thanks to the request message Jared had added when he got them online. We were in the exit row to boot!

We slept mostly on this flight too. I noticed the lady with the baby from Portland was on the same flight as us. At one point we hit some wicked turbulence and just for a moment I wondered if that was going to be the end of us and that I was glad I had showed my mom where our life insurance policies and my last words for the kids were in the fire safe. (She didn't like it when I showed her, but it had to be done).

As we neared New Orleans, we started chatting with the gal who was sitting in the window seat. She was from Baton Rouge. We started talking about Louisiana and we mentioned that Jared watches the show "Swamp People". Turns out, she's actually friends with one of the main families the show follows. So she told us a little bit about how things are behind the scenes and answered some of Jared's questions. I enjoyed listening to her accent...from the BI-YOO. :)

A major miracle...all of our bags made it!

We got a decent taxi to the hotel, which was VERY nice, but a lot farther from the port than we thought.

I showered and got ready for our dinner reservation, which Jared did all on his own, just for me. I have this thing with Food Network. I really like it. Though we have a few shows set to record on our DVR, I'm not a die-hard junkie or anything. But I was REALLY excited when Jared told me we were eating at Emeril's Delmonico restaurant. So COOL!! The only bummer is that we had to drive all the way back across town to get there and taking a taxi ain't cheap.

We called for a taxi in the hotel lobby and while we waited, we noticed the wind was picking up outside and the sky was growing dark. Silly me....I just could not bring myself to pack anything longer than capris and short sleeved shirts for this trip. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Needless to say, I was a little cold that night. It was in the low 60s and blowing pretty hard.

The taxi was a very old Caprice something or other. It smelled of cheap smoke. The wind was blowing so hard, we heard the roof of the car buckle and thought it was going to rip right off and every time we idled, the car would shimmy. It was bad. I had a headache by the time we got to the restaurant from the smoke and I was really worried that's what I smelled like...which just totally ruins my image!

We were treated like royalty at Emeril's! We didn't see him of course, but it was sure fun anyway. It has great ambiance and we got to eat upstairs by a window. This restaurant was only a street or two away from Bourbon Street and there were still remnants of Mardi Gras which had just ended three days prior to our arrival. We noticed green and purple beaded necklaces in the streets and dangling from branches in the trees on the sidewalks.

David, on the right, was our main waiter. Scott, on the left, was the assistant...yes....an assistant waiter. They totally doted on us. It was great! I'm sure they were working for their tip, but they knew we were from out of town (did all the picture taking give it away?) and spent a lot more time conversing with us than at other tables. We are cool people, after all :)

I should have known I wouldn't have a clue what was on the menu...it was almost all French food. I picked some kind of chicken, because I knew what that was. I got some gumbo for my first course. Which was delicious and I think my very first time eating it.

Jared got a salad with his dinner. I LOVE this salad. It's ingenious! It's a thick chunk of iceberg lettuce sliced like a wagon wheel and all the toppings are on top of the "lettuce palate." Never would have thought to do that myself, but I just might now.

Okay, our dinner portions were GI.NOR.MOUS! and RICH. I think I had 3 bites. I was so sad that I couldn't finish it. This is Jared's lamb and sausage dinner. He did better than I did in clearing his plate.

Here's my chicken-something-or-other and a macaroni and cheese wedge. Seriously...it was the richest main course I have ever had in front of me. And I swear that's a whole bird on my plate!

And for dessert...beignets. O.my.heavens. These beauties were to DIE for. We inhaled them, which is why there's no picture to post. They totally melted in your mouth. They were the most amazing dessert. Ever. I think I fell in love.

We had a fantastic time. I just love that Jared thought of this for me.

The cab ride home: well, it was smoke free, but the driver wasn't from around here (meaning, not from our continent) and didn't know how to get to our hotel. He even had a GPS and the address that we gave him. He used his cell phone instead to call one of his cabbie friends for some help and even still we had to direct him the last mile or two. Because we used a credit card to pay for the ride, he had to call the card number in to some call center and all the while, the meter continued to run while we were sitting in front of the hotel. We racked up almost another dollar before he gave us the total amount to approve. (I know, I know, a dollar is no big deal. It's the principle people!) Needless to say, I pulled a "soup Nazi" move from Seinfeld and it was no tip for him. SO glad I don't have to make a career out of taking taxis.