His last day is June 19. There is a severance package that should help a lot. Next steps for us? Getting our house ready to sell because there's a 99% chance we won't be able to stay in Wichita. He has a phone interview with a company scheduled and has been looking at jobs for a few weeks. Next few months should be interesting.
So you all know that I love planning trips (half the fun of a trip is the planning I always say) but the cruise thing was new for me. Here's a blog post about 12 tips I would give first time cruisers based on our experience.
12 tips before boarding your first cruise ship
One of our guides in Belize told us that there is no racism in Belize. Everybody is equal. He hadn't ever experienced it until he came to the US and saw people grabbing their purses when he would get near them. I remember hearing something similar about Sidney Poitier who lived in the Bahamas until moving to the U.S. as a teenager.
"I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida," he says. "It was so blatant. ... I had never been so described as Florida described me."
But he wasn't having it. As he says, "Florida said to me, 'You are not who you think you are. We will determine what you are.' "
On Monday, I took Payton to get a physical at the pediatrician's office. When they called her name, I stayed in the waiting room because the last visit we had, I received a letter in the mail stating that teenagers should go back without parents. Payton went back alone.
Several minutes later, the doctor came out and got me to join them in the examining room. She said she wanted me there and I explained about the letter and she seemed confused.
Payton had her physical and afterward, she told me that before I got into the room the doctor was doing the normal lecture on drugs, alcohol and sex and Payton said the doctor also said "...and you know you should wait until marriage to have sex, right?"
Ok then. This bothered Payton and it bothered me. I have no problem with the doctor addressing the physical/biological effects of negative behavior but imposing morality for her future stepped over a line for me. I kept thinking about, discussing it with friends and coworkers and finally decided to call the doctor's office to express my concern that imposing morality (particularly one-on-one with a child) isn't really professional and that the doctor should probably stay with the biological discussion of various activities. They said they'd note it in my chart but I said it wasn't about me, it was about professionalism and boundaries.
Andy doesn't agree with me on this. He says that he sees nothing wrong with it. I see it as unprofessional and besides, the advice doesn't work. I think 18+ year olds should make decisions about their lives that are responsible and make sense for them whatever that may be.
What do you think? Was the doctor out of line? Or was it no big deal?
I would typically break our trip reports out by day and have multiple posts for the trip report. This time I'm going to summarize in just one post because I don't have the pictures I usually do and the days kind of ran together.
Getting There
We flew into Tampa the day before the cruise was scheduled to depart. We were picked up by our hotel and ate dinner at the hotel that night. We headed to bed and woke the next morning to be taken to the port by our hotel driver.
Getting on the Ship
We arrived at the port around noon to get onto the boat. People and taxis and vans EVERYwhere. Luggage was handled by our driver and we got in line to check-in. Multiple steps, lots of security and long lines. This was a frustrating and long process as thousands of us all were waiting to load the ship. I heard somebody say later on that it seems to work best to arrive very early (10 a.m.-ish?) or very late (3:00-ish) because most people seem to arrive right in the middle.
We are told we can go on the ship but our room won't be ready until around 1:30. We head to an upper deck to eat some lunch and have a drink. So. many. people. We weren't off to a good start as thousands of us were waiting on our rooms to be ready.
Finally in Our Cabin
At 1:30, we head to our room, cabin 7271. We have a balcony room on an upper level deck near the center of the ship. We were very fortunate as this is a good location.
The steward pulled the bed down from the ceiling and Blake had this bed, Payton had the couch below as a bed and Andy and I had the full-sized bed for ourselves.
Blake had fears of falling out of the bed so he strapped himself down.
Dining
Every night, we had an assigned dinner time of 6 p.m. and were seated at the same table with the same two servers. This was a highlight of the trip as we loved the food and our servers, Heshbron and Juan. They were delightful and we were spoiled by such great service.
Lunch was open buffet in various eating areas available on Deck 9.
Breakfast EVERY day was room service (included, no extra cost). Andy and I would often sit on our balcony and eat breakfast and chat while letting the kids sleep.
View from our balcony
Kids Clubs
The kids were enrolled in Kids Clubs on our arrival day. Blake participated in the Kids Club everyday at least for a little while. He's a challenge to keep up with 24/7 for a week and it was a nice break for everyone for him to have kids activities to do. He often opted to eat dinner with the kids club which was a kids buffet they got to eat from while Andy and I enjoyed a nice, lingering dinner with a bottle of wine.
Payton participated in her club off and on and met a girl who happens to live in KC that she would often do things with outside of the club.
Ports of call
- Cayman. Our first port of call was Cayman where FOUR ships were there at the same time and it is a tendered port so we have to take small boats to and from the ship. We just had plans to catch a bus to a beach this day so we slept in and avoided the rush from the early crowd. We were able to get right on a boat and get to the port easily.
Blake on the tender boat (he's sensitive to light and his old sunglasses didn't fit anymore. The first thing we did at the port was get him some new ones so he didn't have this face all day.)
Other ships also at Cayman when we were.
We got on a bus and took it for a few minutes to Seven Mile Beach (which is really more like 4 miles). Our plan was just to hang out on the beach and shop a bit on this day.
We ate lunch on the beach and Blake fed bread to the birds.
We all took the bus back to the port. Andy and the kids got on a tender boat to head back to the ship while I took a few minutes to shop. I got some rum cakes and headed back. 
- Belize. Ummmm....I have NO pictures of our day in Belize. This was ANOTHER port with four ships and also a tendered port except this time we had to get off the boat really early to be at an excursion that we booked. We were fortunate to be on the first tender boat and met our waiting van at the port. We got in the van and headed out to cavetube about an hour inland. It was fantastic and we had a great guide that took care of us considering our group had three kids under 10 years old. We floated on tubes on a river and went in and out of pitch black caves. Payton ate termites on our walk to the river (not kidding...she ATE TERMITES and they tasted like mint). Payton also swung from a rope into the river. No camera because I didn't want it to get wet in the river! I'm very frustrated to not have any pics. Anyway, great day and interesting experience. Highly recommend Major Tom's Cave Tubing.
- Isla Roatan, Honduras. Oh baby! This was our last port and the best by far. First of all, it wasn't a tendered port so getting on and off the ship was much easier. Secondly, the excursion I had booked was waiting for us and we headed out with Pirates of the Caribbean canopy tour to zip line through the jungles of Honduras. Andy was very irritated with me for booking this excursion because he said Blake would never do it. I had shown Blake the pictures and videos beforehand and he said he was ok with it. I wanted to try to push him to do something adventurous since he can be pretty timid.
So we get there and they talk us into trying the Extreme course rather than the traditional one.
The four of us, all suited up and ready to go.
We get to our first zip line and our guides give us some basic instructions and I go first. It was scary to jump off the platform but once I was going through the air, it was so beautiful and fun and not scary. Next up was Payton.
She said she expected to scream but was surprised how unscary it actually was.
Finally, the boys went together.
Blake wasn't scared at ALL. He loved it sooo much.
We repeated this process on 7 more zip lines of varying length and height. On two of them, Blake went alone because they were setup in a way that allowed him to make it all the way despite his small size.
Bare with me as I share several of these pics. We just loved this.
My baby boy, all by himself!
My two babies, going together.
At the end of the lines, there was this pet monkey that was kept there that, of course, was glued to Payton. It is a proven fact that all animals and children love Payton.
We wrapped up our time at the zip lines and I had arranged for our driver to take us to a beach for the remainder of our time in Honduras. This is where we were.
My baby girl. What a gorgeous place.
Kids kayaking
Ok, so this place was amazing. We sat in hammocks and Adirondack chairs, we had drinks, we walked the beach. It was amazing. The kids didn't want to go but the driver arrived and it was time to go.
Days at Sea
We had 3 days at sea where we didn't stop at a port at all. The first part of the week, we had a hard time getting into the groove of the ship. So many things scheduled and we weren't sure how to navigate it all. By mid-week, we had gotten into a groove and split our time between time together, time apart, attending shows, going to the casino, napping, etc.
Returning Home
Got off the ship at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday and then took a taxi to the airport where we had about 4 hours until our flight. Flew to KC, picked up our dog and got home around 10:30 that night.
Our thoughts on cruising
After all the fun we had, it may be surprising that we don't think we'll probably cruise again. It's just not really our way to travel. We'd much prefer to go to a foreign country away from Americans and learn to speak the local language a bit, eat local food and have a bit more cultural experience. I am thankful for this cruise though because it was a lot of fun and introduced us to Honduras which I am planning on making our next international trip. Can't wait.
Cruise trip report coming up soon but here's my new blog that I've started. I wanted something separate from my personal blog to contain ideas that I had. I will be posting twice a week on various topics including travel, technology and just daily life.
Here are links to some of the posts I've done so far.
Creating professional greeting cards. Many people asked me how I made our cards last year and this is a very detailed tutorial on how including the files I used to create them.
10 fun things to do on a family road trip. We've spent a lot of time in cars over the last 12 years or so and have some ideas for making road trips a bit more fun.
Couch to half marathon in less than 6 months. This is how I started from nothing and trained for the half marathon that I ran with Marcy last September.
Subscribe to that blog so you'll be notified of new posts. If you have any content ideas, let me know!
