Our Vacation... March 11&12

For those of you who didn't know, CaraLee and I went on a kidless vacation. I figured that I wouldn't make note of it on our blogsite until after we had returned. (Call me overly-cautious, but I didn't want to advertise that we'd be out of the house for a week.) Long story short, it was amazing... but when have I ever missed the opportunity to make a long story... long.

The pre-vacation...
CaraLee spent the three weeks prior to our trip "nesting". Although we are blessed with family around us to watch (and spoil) our kids, CaraLee didn't want to take anything for granted. She couldn't rest until she had all the kids' clothes packed, a schedule made, and a gift-a-day for them to open - complete with a pre-written letter to the kids for each day. I thought I had it rough with report cards... oh yeah... CaraLee had 27 report cards to do just before we left as well.

The journey to Fort Lauderdale...
After dropping off the kids at Grandma & Grandpa Bear's (the kids were happy to see us go) we made one more stop at Grandma & Grandpa Buzza's to drop off more clothes. Then it was off to... Guildford Mall! We had to make a pit stop for lunch and to get CaraLee some sunglasses. (Oh yeah, we had to buy a replacement charm for her bracelet as well - story for another time.) We felt more than comfortable about the amount of time we had left ourselves to get to Seattle. That was, until we hit the border. It was a madhouse... we were there for well over an hour. We did make it to our "Park and Jet" lot where we were going to save billions by leaving our car off-site and hitching a free shuttle to the airport. (To save words, let's just say that we do NOT endorse Park and Jet... at all.)
We casually entered the airport and found a place to grab dinner before our marathon plane rides. We didn't realize that we were supposed to check-in to the desk because we had purchased our tickets online. We almost lost our seats. We did end up sitting in the same row. CaraLee was between two people and I was between two others. Our connection in Los Angeles was tight, but we made it. This time, we enjoyed a romantic 5+ hour flight with two aisle seats "together".

In Fort Lauderdale...
We arrived at 5:30 am EST. Our luggage arrived (via Chicago) at 10:30. It was our first frustrating experience with losing luggage. The good news is that we didn't really miss anything, because we couldn't check into our cruise until after 11:00am EST. That connection went smoothly and we were on the boat (pictured above) before we new it.

On the boat...
We were actually on the boat by noon. Before we were even out of port, CaraLee and I had wound down completely. It was unbelievable. We sat in the sun, sorted out our room, had an amazing dinner (more on those to come) and enjoyed a comedy show in the theatre. We went to bed full of expectation for the week to come.