Spring Fling coming soon

This weekend is our town's annual Spring Fling. It kicks off Friday night with the bike races in downtown. My company will have a sponsoring tent so we plan on heading downtown to watch the races (& wrecks). The guys go so fast on their bikes around the sharp corners so someone always crashes. We usually miss the crash, but see the bloodied bikers walking around afterward. Two years ago, this was one of the first places I took Vince when we first started dating. He met several of my co-workers back then. We also ate chicken on a stick at the festival the next day (following my one and only mud run competition).

I like seeing all the vendors' booths & what crafts are being sold. The food is always unique and the music is great. I am excited that it's right here in town & it's free (well, not the crafts or food, but the event itself is free).

To gear up for this weekend event, I mowed the grass last night while Vince did the weed-eating. He also worked on his car & did some painting on the rotors and wheels last night.

There are several things in the yard I would like to improve upon, but haven't had the motivation yet to do so. One area is the hill. I would like to put some kind of weed barrier/mulch around the bushes on my hill. It's difficult to mow in & around them. Plus if I mulch around it & make the whole beds a bit bigger, I can plant a few flowers & have even less of a hill to mow. The other area is down at the bottom of the hill along the tree line. I planted 4 berry plants (2 blueberry, blackberry, and muscadine). These are just kind of in with the weeds & need some TLC around that area. The blackberry & muscadine vines also need something to climb on. So I'll be looking for something soon to help perk up that area a bit.

Speaking of gardening, we are hoping to get up to the Biltmore maybe this Sunday after church to see all the blooms going on up there. I wish I had a smidgeon of talent when it comes to gardening as the Biltmore gardeners do.

ZTA Gathering

I've been out of college for 14 years now. Some of my favorite memories included all my ZTA sorority sisters. I had several of them as roommates and best friends in college. Since moving to SC, I've not seen any of them in years. I've discovered many of them through Facebook, but it's different than being able to hang out & do ZTA things. Tonight I went to my first Spartanburg ZTA Alumnae gathering. One of the girls works with me & invited me to their alum chapter meeting. All the alums were so nice.

I also met a bunch of Wofford seniors that will be graduating in the next week into the alum world. We held a small welcome ceremony for them. It was so neat to participate since I never did that ceremony before I left TN. We also had some great finger foods.

At the end of the evening, I was voted as Historian for the alum chapter. I think it's because I kept snapping pictures of everyone. I look forward to getting to know the ZTAs here in Spartanburg. I'm in the pink shirt on the right.

1st Anniversary Cake

Late tonight Vince & I ate some of our cake from our wedding. We saved the topper in our freezer for the past year & got to enjoy it tonight. I took it out of the freezer last night to give it time to thaw out. It was really good & tasted remarkably fresh. I'm sure it's in part to Kaye wrapping it in saran wrap & putting it in an air tight Tupperware container. It was vanilla cake with a raspberry center and buttercream icing. I wish we had thought to keep some of the chocolate groom's cake as well.

Earlier today I cleaned up the house. I also cleaned out my desk in the guest room and put several things in containers and other paperwork in the file cabinet. I'm hoping to sell the desk soon. In fact, our neighborhood had a yard sale today so we put a big sign out front about the desk. We had one person stop to look at it, but said it was too big for their space. We will probably post it on Craig's List soon. Vince worked on his car some today while I straightened up the house.

Vince's parents drove over to our house this evening and brought Aunt Marie & Uncle Bobby with them. We all went to Wade's for dinner. Yum! After dinner, we came back to our house & showed them our video from the cruise trip. We had a nice visit with them.

Today was also my cousin Danny's funeral. We did not get to attend since it was in Florida, but we will miss him dearly. His mom & my mom's mom were sisters so he & my mother were 1st cousins. May you rest in peace, Danny.

Vince's Birthday!

Vince's birthday was on the Tuesday after our trip. I let him open his gifts on the Monday night before so he could enjoy them all day long on his birthday. He got a Wilderness belt that he had asked for and a few fun thing from me that he did not ask for. I got him a metal cat with marble eyes for the yard to distract the birds, along with a wind sock. I also got him a banana keeper that is supposed to keep 1/2 a banana fresh.

My parents gave him a PONTIAC decal sticker for his car, which he had asked for. But the surprise big gift was his personal Dell Mini laptop (netbook). I ordered it in white to match his car. I think I really surprised him! Happy birthday to the most wonderful husband in the world!

Carnival Legend Day 8

We woke up on the last morning of the cruise to a dreary rainy day. We docked back in Tampa sometime before 7am. We ordered room service the night before by hanging a menu tag on our door. Vince ate salmon and bagel along with yogurt. I had jelly & toast along with yogurt. We had packed our big suitcases the night before and put them outside the door by 12am. They took those bags off the ship for us. We got dressed, ate, and backed the last little bit in our carry-on bags. They finally called our area to disembark around 10:30am. We found our large suitcases in the warehouse & headed to the customs agent. He did not even bat an eye at my passport, nor did they screen our luggage. I've been through other ports that have dogs sniffing luggage. Not Tampa - easy breezy through customs - until we got outside. The rain was coming down & they did not have a covered walk way to the garage we parked in. So we tugged our 4 suitcases each through the rain to the parking garage.

We drove through the rain for about 2 hours until we got closer to Orlando. After that, it was sunny skies and no major back ups on the interstate. It took us about 9 hours to get home. My last picture of the trip was the balloon near Downtown Disney as we passed by.

Carnival Legend Day 7

On our last day at sea, I wanted to do two things on the agenda that day. 1. art auction and 2. kitchen galley tour. Well apparantly I had no idea that the 1pm art auction would last 3 and 1/2 hours. We missed the galley tour. But we did bid on a Thomas Kinkade picture & won it! I had never bid on art work before. I have been to several of the Park West Galleries art auctions on other cruise ships but just to learn about art. I also have never seen so many people actually buying the art as I did on this ship. One lady bid over $6000 for a collection of 4 pictures. Other people also spent thousands of dollars. This was NOT our plan. We bid on a nice Kinkade called Sea of Tranquility & got it for less than $300, plus 15% plus shipping.

Vince & I both have wanted a Kinkade painting for a while. We've been in several of the Thomas Kinkade galleries and usually the ones I want are over $2000. This one is a certified lithograph painting that comes with papers. Woo hoo! It will also go nicely with our other paintings in our living room. We will have to get it framed which will cost a bit of money, but I'm so excited to get it! It should be here in a few weeks.

We ate a quick hamburger on the Lido deck after the really long art auction. I was starving, but didn't want to eat too much since we were having our really nice dinner in the steak house this night. We dressed up nicely for dinner and headed to the Golden Fleece Steakhouse at the top of the ship on deck 10. It is normally $30 per person to eat there, but I had won dinner for 2 earlier in the week.
We arrived shortly before 7pm and had the best service. We had 4 different waiters/waitresses that waited on us and the food was soooo good. It really was unbelievable. They first brought us a tiny little pre-appetizer without us ordering anything. They brought me salmon corn chowder in a wee little pot that had about 5 spoonfuls in it. Vince had a cracker thing with something on top. My little soup was really tasty. They brought us 2 types of bread as well. I started with the baked onion soup, which is similar to french onion but 100 times better flavor. They brought the salad making station up to the table on a cart & made my caesar salad tableside. I passed on the anchovies. We both ordered the filet mignon & lobster tail. Of course, I'm allergic to lobster, so Vince had to eat 2 of them plus his steak. I also had a baked potato while he had the mashed potatoes. At this point, I was getting way too stuffed. People around us ordered the 5 mini chocolate desserts tray or the huge cheesecake, or baked apple tart. But not us! I ordered the cheese sample tray & Vince got the fruit cup. The lady really tried to get us to get one of their more interesting desserts, but we were already feeling fat and full after eating for 7 days straight. The cheeses & fruit were great! We also saw our usual table mates, Steve & Debbie as they were leaving the steakhouse.

The last show was a musical show that included guests that had tried out for some of the roles such as James Brown and Madonna. They did pretty good. We also played our last game of bingo, but didn't win the $1000.

Carnival Legend Night 6

I got a few pictures of Vince on the dock in Belize before we headed back to the ship.

This night was our 2nd elegant dining night. We dressed up in black and white. I had the beef shoulder. I also surprised Vince by pre-ordering him a birthday cake that they delivered to the table. It was vanilla with strawberry filling. After dinner, we went to the show which was a broadway-style show about New Orleans. After the show, we went to the lounge to listen to the Asian guys again.

Vince ate escargot as his appetizer & liked it.

This was our last night with our mediocre waiters. We had to remind them to get us drinks every night & usually never saw them to get dessert. Both of them were kind of moody & not very friendly.

Our towel was a dog (I think).

Carnival Legend Day 6

We arrived in Belize around 5am their time, 8am our time. We had to tender into the island to meet our shore excursion guides. We had over an hour's drive to get to our cave tubing excursion. Our tour guide gave us lots of history & info about Belize on the way there and back (such as Belize is made up of over 200 islands). I noticed all the schools are run by churches & one of them was the Church of the Nazarene. Since our bus drove by quickly, I mostly got video footage on the way back to town of the scenery.

Our cave tubing excursion was so much fun. Neither of us had done anything like it before. We hiked 35 minutes in the tropical rain forest to get to the water.

We had to cross this stream before we could use our innertubes.

This was our tour guide Suzie. She also guided us down the river along with Eliomar. He walked with us during the 35 minute hike to the water. He was in the Army and had gone through survival training. He showed us all the trees or things we could eat, what not to eat, what causes rashes, and what cures the rashes. All the tubing pictures were taken by their staff and then sold to us on a CD.

The tubing was difficult for me to navigate. They would not let us put our feet in the middle of the tube due to all the rocks. The tubes were so large that only about 3 inches of my fingers could reach the water, which makes it hard to steer or doggie paddle. I mostly grabbed onto Vince's tube & let him guide us. Then in the second cave, we linked with all 12 people in our group & let our two guides pull us through. The caves were amazing with lots of rock formations in the ceiling. Some of the rocks shimmered like giant diamonds. The caves probably at least a 1/2 mile long each & we went through 2 of them. It took us about an hour to get through them.

After the tubing, we changed into dry clothes. I bought 2 local meat pies for lunch. They looked like a dinner roll, but tasted like a pot pie with taco meat in it. We then boarded the bus for the long drive back to the dock.

The town was very poor and had been ravaged by hurricanes. They are still trying to build it back up for tourism. Their graves are all built above ground since they are below sea level. We did pass a Publix.

After the town tour, we made it back to the shops at the dock & got on the tender to get back to our ship.

Carnival Legend Day 5

We woke up to the sun coming up in Roatan. Roatan, Honduras has to be the most beautiful island I've ever seen on a cruise. It was so lush and tropical with rolling hills and flowers everywhere. They said it was just built & opened in the fall 2009.

We picked up the free tanzinite earrings from Tanzinite International and I found my ornament representing our cruise trip at one of the local stores. We looked through all the little stores at the dock and then took the "Flying Beach Chair" ride over to the beach. It was exactly like a ski lift except there is never any snow. And we saw an iguana hanging out in a tree from the chair lift.

After going to the beach for a little bit, we saw the captain of our ship strolling along & drinking a Coke. He is Italian & was so friendly every time we saw him. We had no idea that Roatan had a town to go to until later that night at dinner. I did want to do the zip line really bad, but Vince wasn't in the mood to zip around the jungle. We're going to try to do the zip line the next time we go to Gatlinburg.

We went back to the ship for lunch (and diet pina coloda cake). We then both crashed for about 2 hours. For dinner, I ate the pork chop and Vince had the rack of lamb. Before the show started, we played bingo and bet $3 on a horse race. We didn't win. The show that night featured a comedian. They had more comedians on this cruise instead of Broadway shows than any other ship I've been on. After the show, they split us up into blue & red teams based on even or odd numbered cabins. We were blue. We had the crazy wedding part on our team that all acted about 21 on their first night out. We sort of drifted away after doing karaoke with them and just hung out in the main lobby. At midnight, they had a deck party with dancing and a huge buffet of Mexican food and desserts.

We had a monkey towel that night.