It's about time...

We have been home from our cruise for about a week now so I guess I'll take the time to blog about it. This may be long, but we had quite the adventures that I want to share...

We left on Saturday afternoon after Brooklyn went to Abbi's bday party. (It was so cute by the way...they decorated crowns that turned out so cute and the girls loved them!) We drove down to Hurricane and stayed the night there, went to church the next morning, and got back to my mom's house in time for Tallan to start throwing up. I was totally hesitant to leave a sick kid with my mom and sister, but my mom talked me into it anyway. We said a tearful goodbye to the kids, and Tim and I headed down to San Diego. What a peaceful drive that was without kids! Well, until about an hour from San Diego when I started to not feel so good myself. We got to Tim's aunt's house JUST in time! I almost didn't make it to the bathroom and pretty much stayed there most of the night. Yuck! We boarded the ship the next afternoon and set sail. I still wasn't feeling very good so I didn't eat anything that first night and poor Tim...I fell asleep right after dinner and even though he tried to wake me up, I was completely out!

The next morning we woke up and went to have breakfast and not long after that, the captain got on to make an announcement that a passenger had gotten so sick throughout the night that he had made the decision to turn the ship around. We had been heading two hours back towards San Diego to meet the US Coastguard where they had to do a helicopter rescue of the sick passenger. It was just like the movies! They lowered a guy down on a rope and he helped the passenger get into the rescue basket thing so they could raise it up into the helicopter. They were pulling the basket in when it slipped and swung out a little bit, but he got safely in. We found out later that he had a heart attack, but was going to recover. His wife had to stay onboard though until the next day when we arrived in Cabo San Lucas so she could fly to San Diego where he was in the hospital.

Well, because of our delay at sea we only had about 4 hours when we got to Cabo. We walked around the port, went to get some ice cream and a coke, and then Tim paid some locals to take us out in their glass bottom boat. It was pretty ghetto and I was scared to death at one point if you can't tell by the pictures. It was very pretty, but we were in this tiny little boat in the big ocean and it did not feel very good to be rocked around like we were! At least I didn't go into labor though! I wasn't very impressed with that part of Cabo though. A lot of poverty and a lot of very young kids trying to sell us stuff every few feet. So sad!

We were back at sea and heading north again to Ensenada. While there, we went on a safer tour to La Bufadora. It is one of 3 natural blowholes in the world and it was pretty amazing. We had a really good tour guide who gave us a lot of history and stats about the town. It was very interesting and very depressing at the same time. It was so hard to see rows and rows and graffiti covered shacks that were government housing and then across the street see this beautiful building all landscaped and kept very nice that was the government offices. Our guide told us too that minimum wage there is $5/day and that was what those people were supposed to live off of. They work 48 hour weeks and don't get any health care. I still don't agree with illegal immigration, but it definitely makes a lot more sense as to why they do it. We spent a couple of hours walking around the flea markets, bargaining with the Indians, to get some fun little things for the kids.

We left Ensenada and were back at sea heading for San Diego. We were both very anxious to get home at this point because we missed our kids like crazy and were sick of being on the boat. Because of our delay, we were only off of the boat for about 10 hours total the whole week! While they do a lot to keep us entertained: bingo, blackjack (we won $150! Yeah!), shows, dance lessons, etc, there is only so much you can do of those things. We met some interesting people and enjoyed reading our books and getting some sun in the warm weather.

Next time, we are going to recruit some friends to come with us, bring our kids, and go on a cruise with more ports instead of so many days at sea. A HUGE thanks to Val who took care of the kids all week, even though they all got the flu and John had to be in Denver all week for work. We owe you!