martinzoo

Today was a fun day at sea. We spent the day lazing it up at the pool, reading, eating and in the boys’ case hitting the casino. They really loved the casino. J ended the week by earning several hundred dollars. Jabem started the week with $6. and at various points in the week he had gone up a couple hundred dollars and down to breaking even. By the end of the week he had broken even, but since he’d had a whole week of gambling and fun, he felt like it was totally worth it. J, on the other hand, was made for poker. He was a shark (!) and ended up buying all his family’s souvenirs with his earnings (several hundred dollars worth) and still keeping a couple hundred for himself.

Before the dinner preparations came underway, dh and I went down to the dining room (see pic below) and made reservations for the supper club for our anniversary dinner. The dining room is spectacularly opulent, and I could tell that my parents and the kids were really impressed with the surroundings and the unbelievable food. But the supper club is a level above even the dining room. I’ll post more about that later.

This is a picture of our room before we had messed it up. One of the cool things about cruising is how clean everything is. They clean your room at least twice a day and they are ALWAYS cleaning the public areas. Because let’s face it, people can be quite pig-like at times. Give them an unlimited buffet and they pile it on like they’ve been starving for weeks. If I were an employee of the ship that would gross me out. Since I was a patron of the ship, I took advantage of it! ……………LOL!

This was the view from the tippy top of the ship. You can see the water slide and a little bit of the pool down below. I never made use of the pool or the hot tub because there were just too many bodies in the water. But laying on a deck chair and reading a book with the ‘tropical breeze blowing through my hair’ (name that song) is my kind of paradise!

GB came shooting down that slide so fast than none of my action photos came out. But I love this photo of him getting off the slide.

This is my brother’s youngest son, B-man. He was loving the slide too.

After our fun in the sun, we came back to the room and went for dinner and the show. I liked this show a lot better. GB went with Aquagirl and Gymbabe to the arcade while we watched the show. This one was a ‘Rocking through the Ages’ theme. So there were lots of songs that I could sing along with.

When we came back to the cabin we were greeted by this little guy. And GB got a cookie from Camp Carnival. He went there for a couple of hours earlier in the day because they were having a video game tournament. But he deemed it quite lame because the only games they had were racing games. He likes war and action games. So he never partook of that service again on the cruise.

We began this day early by heading over to the Kennedy Space Center. We couldn’t board the ship until after noon, so we thought we could spend a few hours learning about space travel.

Our kids with the Kennedy Rocket Garden in the background.

My dh and GB stand in front of a full-sized NASA Space Shuttle replica -The Explorer. We saw this as we came out of the mock space shuttle launch. It was a very cool simulation, but not nearly as cool as the one at Disney World. I thought it was going to be the same thing because when we went to Disney a few years ago they said there was another one at Kennedy. But this one was a much tamer version, which suited my dh much better. He has problems with spinning rides, they give him head aches. But GB really enjoyed it, and it set the mood for the visit.

Here I am in front of the Mercury rocket.

You will see Gymbabe and Aquagirl in lots of photos, not because of them, or me, but because GB was being anti-photo, and Jabem and J oftentimes went off to do their own thing. So, here are the girls in the Gemini rocket.

………And the Apollo rocket.

Dh was a little freaked unexpectedly by this dude………..LOL!

Sometimes I work my camera to get maximum effect.

And here the girls were viewing a full-size Space Shuttle from the inside.

This is a very excited dh embarking on the Carnival Glory. Doesn’t he look thrilled?

Here is Aquagirl with passport and cruise documents in hand.

Jabem embarking. I like this photo. Doesn’t he have great eyebrows? I love good eyebrows. I don’t know why people would want to make them smaller. He’s a little camera shy too. But I could just kiss that face!

Ah! Jabem’s friend, J. For someone who doesn’t show much excitement, he looks pretty excited.

This was the lifeboat drill that is mandatory for all guests on the first day. Oh Lord! We were squished! If I had claustrophobia I’d have had a fit.

GB doesn’t do discomfort well. He just wanted to go explore the ship.

What a beautiful shot this turned out to be. That’s Cape Canaveral in the background, and we are sailing away. This was during the sail away party.

J is the only happy camper in this picture. See that storm in the background? Well, we left it in Florida! We had great weather the whole trip!

Gramma and Grampa came with us, along with my brother and his family, and my aunt and uncle. Here Grampa and I are having some fun with the cameras……….LOL!

The first day of our cruise happened to coincide with Gymbabe’s 21st birthday. So this was her first ‘legal’ alcoholic drink. Aren’t they cute?

This was my first meal on board ship. I know it’s cheesy to take pictures of food, but it wa so yummy. My steak was a perfect medium rare, and that is mac and cheese in the little dish; best darn mac and cheese I ever had. Even those peas were delish! I’m not sure what was in them, they were a tiny bit spicy, but mmmm!

Here, our waiters, Anthony and Zosimo are surprising Gymbabe with a cake and a song for her birthday. Can you see how red her face is? Oh, we all had so much fun with that!

Our dinner seating was at 8:15, so right after dinner dh took GB out to explore the ship and I went off with the family to see the nightly show. No pictures, because of copywrite laws you can’t take photos during the show. I really liked the lead girl singer, but the lead male singer was too weird for me to like. And the dancers were pretty good. One or two of them really stood out.

After the show, I was pretty tuckered and went back to our cabin to fall into bed. Dh was there with GB and they were watching the Olympics. Each night we managed to squeeze in a bit of Olympic viewing. I love the Olympics, especially the swimming and gymnastics.

We started our trip EARLY on Friday, August 8th……8/8/08……..It had to be a good omen right? Well, it was. We had an awesome trip!

In our car we had my three kiddos, Aquagirl and her best friend, Gymbabe. Jabem brought his friend, J, who was very quiet and tolerant of our car antics. GB was in the center seat, and my dh and I were up front taking turns driving. The kids played all kinds of car games. But the highlight of the trip was my secret learning activity. I made outlines of each state that we were going through, and got a picture of our van from the Toyota web site, and put velcro on the back of all the pieces and stuck it to the inside roof of our van. And for every state that we went through I had one person open an envelope that had cool info on that particular state; the name, capital, state bird, state animal, and state flower, all with velcro so that they would stick to the roof of our van near the state we were going through. Surprisingly, they were ALL excited about this, and they all couldn’t wait for the states to pass so they could open a new envelope. See! You’re never too old for learning games!

This next photo was taken next to the gas station that we stopped at. They had these HUGE elephants out in the parking lot and Aquagirl and Gymbabe thought they were quite funny.

We got to the Radisson Resort in Port Canaveral, Florida around 9:00 pm, which left plenty of time for the kids to check out the pool. I’m not very good at night photos, but the pool at this hotel is truly amazing. It has a hot tub, a waterfall, little rocky alcoves and amazing scenery. The cool thing about this hotel is that you can stay one night and then leave your car for the week while you cruise. They even provide a shuttle that will take you to and from your ship….for no extra $$!

Jabem and J in the hot tub. I know, it’s a terrible picture. I’m sorry…….

Aquagirl and Gymbabe with kilowatt smiles!

This is my dh and GB in one of the little alcoves of the pool. Dh likes to toss GB across pools. I don’t know why… they just think it’s great fun! And since GB only weights 60 pounds, he gets quite a bit of air! Check out that amazing waterfall that separates the alcoves. And I’m up on this cool bridge that overlooks the alcove.

GB was enjoying the sleep number beds that the hotel uses. I had never heard of such a thing. But underneath the typical mattress there is an air chamber that will inflate/deflate to your own firmness desires. GB enjoyed a 65 firmness, while we employed an 85 firmness. I would have preferred it to be a bit softer, but dh likes it firmer.

After driving for 12 and 1/2 hours, and then frolicking in the pool for a couple of hours we were SO ready for bed. The next day we would board the cruise ship after a little trip to the Kennedy Space Center.

Well, it’s Tuesday, August 19th………….. And we’ve been back since REALLY late on Saturday night……..try 1:45 am. Ok, technically that’s Sunday morning, but you knew what I meant. We had a rough car ride back from Florida, so we spent ALL of Sunday vegetating. Is there such a thing as “ship lag”? Well, if there isn’t, there should be. Because we all felt it. In fact, when I went to bed on Saturday night (Sunday morning), I could swear that the bed was slightly rocking me to sleep, just like on the ship. I loved it.

Yesterday was Monday, and we spent all morning and afternoon getting Jabem ready to go back to college. His other room mates moved in at the beginning of August, but Jabem had to wait until yesterday because of the cruise. Awww! Poor baby! We were supposed to move all his stuff in to the house on the 3rd of August, but when we got ready to go, we were informed by the landlord that the house wasn’t ready yet. What the heck? The boys paid for ALL of August. Why is it not ready? When we went to check it out, it was a royal mess! There were lots of broken railings, doors, floors, appliances. Good grief, I’m scared. Anyway, we got all his stuff packed up yesterday, arrived in the city of Richmond with furniture, clothes, all-valuable computer, and many personal items to turn this crazy all-guy five bedroom house into a home for Jabem and his room mates. And guess what we discovered when we got there? NO ELECTRICITY! The power company couldn’t turn on the electricity because the landlord had the keys to the back yard, where the meter gets read. So these boys had been struggling to coordinate between landlord, Realtor, and power company since the beginning of August! I only ask ONE question……. Where are these boys parents? I would never let my child live in the middle of the city with NO electricity, windows WIDE open, and the freakin’ doors are still broken! Two of the room mates live hundreds of miles from here, so they had no choice but to stay in these primitive conditions. So I told them all that they should gather their stuff and come back to our place last night, which they did. And today my dh is going to raise a little hell on the telephone! Pardon my french!

After we left the boys’ house we went to see my favorite rocker, Bruce Springsteen, at the Richmond Coliseum. We had unbelievable seats, and I was so psyched to be so close and see my fave. There was NOT ONE single person between my seat and the stage (except stage roadies)! That’s how good my seats were. We were a little behind him, as you can see from the pictures, but he came over to our side of the stage several times. And he even nodded at me. Yes he did! Everybody else was doing the fist-pumping move in the air to the beat of his music, but when he came over to us, I was the only one who gave him a real wave…. a very energetic wave…. yes it was….. but that’s why he noticed. And then ….. he nodded…………. Sigh!

And it WAS really cool, but the Coliseum had to screw us over somehow, and they did it with the sound. My man was muddy all night. The bass on the drums was so over amped that I felt my heart booming along with it. The lyrics were so hard to discern, even if you knew most of the songs. And I’m telling you that the Boss was really in the house last night. He worked that crowd like a master! He brought three kids out of the audience to hug and sing along with him. He gave high fives and palm slaps to just about everyone on the front row, and he took signs from audience members who had suggestions for the next songs. Bruce even trusted the audience with his life and crowd surfed a bit! Jealous? Oh yes! I would have loved to have been right there when he lay on those audience members hands…….. Wow! We heard lots of his oldies, but goodies, and all his new stuff too. He had an eight song encore (who else does that!?). And even brought up another local legend from the audience to sing along with him, Robbin Thompson.

Here are my favorite pictures from the night. Shhhhhhhh! Don’t tell! We weren’t supposed to take pictures. And from my vantage point I was in double danger. Especially when the local cops decided to camp out right by our seats to watch the show themselves.

This was towards the end of the show when we were all idolizing him……… sigh! I borrowed this picture from our newspaper’s website.

This was my view from my seat. Dh and I figured he was about 25-30 feet away.

I love this picture. Look at the standard Bruce grimace on his face. Such fierceness!!

Great night!

Now, I’ll get started on my cruise posts. They are gonna take a while because the cruise was just that awesome and I want to do it justice. So, it may take a few days to get my posts finished. But it will be worth it. Because in the end, you can say that you came right along with us. Ok?

This week I have not been posting much because we have been getting ready for our BIG vacation. We are taking the whole family on a cruise to the Western Caribbean. I’m extremely excited, but at this point a tiny bit frazzled. I’m sure I’m gonna forget something.

While on board my dh and I will celebrate 25 wonderful years of married life! And since my college-aged kids, their friends, my parents, my brother, his wife, and his kids, AND my aunt and uncle are all going along, we should have plenty of babysitters so that we can have some couple time.

We’ll be seeing some Maya ruins, going cave tubing, horseback riding, snorkeling, beach bumming, and of course, shopping! I can’t wait to see the shows on board the ship and watch GB play on the enormous water slide. My daughter is 21 now, and of legal drinking age, so this should be interesting. And my oldest son is intently curious about the casino. So there will be lots of firsts for us.

So stay tuned. When I get back, I’ll have several nice long posts so that you can experience our cruise vicariously through the internet!

For now……… I’ve got lots to do. See you when we get back!

Pray that we make it through the car trip with our sanity intact!

I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago from GoShot Camera’s online site. We are going on a cruise next week, and many of the activities we will be doing involve water. And you all know me………… I want pictures! And I love my camera, so I want to use MY camera. This underwater housing allows me to use my camera in wet conditions without damaging the camera.

Cool!

So, today GB and I decided to give it a test run up at the pool. It does everything it says it’s going to. We had a blast taking underwater pictures with it.

Look at that grin! I could just eat him with a spoon!

This one has kind of strange colorations. I’m hoping that as I get more comfortable with the housing (it is a bit bulkier than I’m used to) I’ll get clearer pictures. You’ll see that the following pictures actually get better. That’s because I was getting used to it.

How funny are those air bubbles? He’s just hamming it up. This was one time that he wasn’t shying away from the camera. He was just too darn curious about what he’d look like under water….LOL!

I may be partial, but I think this is such a sweet shot. Don’t you?

Look at that troll hair! This picture cracks me up because it reminds me of my baby sister. She used to always hold her nose when she went under the water. It became a habit that she had a hard time breaking. And boy did she look silly grabbing her nose every time she jumped in!

For $35. I think this is way worth it! To buy a throw-away underwater camera would cost about $15. - $18. Plus, you have to get it developed. Plus, you don’t know what you’re getting. Since it’s not digital, you could have a bunch of shots like the ones I’ve already deleted.

Plus, with my own camera, I can take video! How cool would that be? Can you imagine me, off the South American coastline, swimming in the coral with my camera capturing the whole thing?

Oh! I can’t wait!!

My sister is a Physical Education teacher at the local middle school. Recently, she went to Aquagirl’s college for some additional career training seminars. And while we were at brunch on Sunday she gave me a new fear. She was telling us that lots of teachers use candy and dry cereal as incentive for kids to do little things quickly. And at the seminar they were explaining how bad that is for the kids.

The focus was on the dye that is used to color the candy and the cereal. In particular, was Red 40 and Yellow 5. She said, and I’ve found supporting data, that the dye is only used to make the food more visually appealing.

I think I’ve kind of heard of this before, but not in an extensive way. My sister was telling me that these dyes are made from, hold on to your shorts, petroleum distillates and coal tar! That’s just sick! She said that animals instinctively know what is bad for their bodies and if you were to put out a dish of fruit loops and another of raisin bran (no artificial colors) the birds would eat the bran, but not the fruit loops.

Well, I had to try that. GB and I put out dishes on Monday to see what the birds would try.

They didn’t touch either one. So, I guess that proves nothing. Or, it just proves that the sunflowers are too distracting…LOL!

****Update: Since this post was written, I noticed that the squirrels and birds have totally eaten the bran cereal, but continue to ignore the Fruit Loops.
But I wanted to do more research on the subject. And I was really not happy with what I found. There are studies that suggest artificial color have an effect on our children’s behavior and of course, they can have an effect on our health and how our bodies function. Some people are allergic to certain artificial colors. And other studies link tumors to certain colors. Remember when they finally took Red Dye #2 off the market and how many thousands of products contained that dye? I really missed that red M&M.

This is the FDA’s response to whether certain food dyes cause hyperactivity or learning disabilities:

Although this theory was popularized in the 1970’s, well-controlled studies conducted since then have produced no evidence that food color additives cause hyperactivity or learning disabilities in children. A Consensus Development Panel of the National Institutes of Health concluded in 1982 that there was no scientific evidence to support the claim that colorings or other food additives cause hyperactivity.

This was on the current FDA web site. But that study was done in 1982! What about now? We know a lot more now. So how about a current statement?

In the UK the British Food Standards Agency is asking food companies to voluntarily get rid of color additives in food products aimed at young children.

Here is what the New York Times had to say on the subject of the British study:

“Common food additives and colorings can increase hyperactive behavior in a broad range of children, a study being released today found.

It was the first time researchers conclusively and scientifically confirmed a link that had long been suspected by many parents. Numerous support groups for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have for years recommended removing such ingredients from diets, although experts have continued to debate the evidence.”

You can read the rest of the article on the NYT’s web site.

And there is a good explanation of the study here.

Going through my refrigerator and my cabinets, this is what I found that contained Red 40:

• Mott’s strawberry applesauce
• Hawaiian Punch
• Pillsbury Grand’s Biscuits (what! why is red 40 in biscuits?)
• Fizzix Lowfat Yogurt snack
• Froot Loops (I bought for the experiment)
• Lucky Charms
• Cinnamon Life cereal (why?!)
• Cherry Poptarts
• Doritos (no surprise here)

These items contained the Yellow 5:

• Mountain Dew
• Pillsbury Grand’s biscuits (again!)
• Jello pudding snacks (vanilla and tapioca)
• Dr. Oetker Tiramisu
• Doritos
• Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
• Pringles
• Country Time Lemonade

Sadly, my family is going to find fewer of these items making their way in to my shopping cart. Because I don’t want to take any chances.

I swear! The more you learn - the more you fear. The internet can be like a double edged sword. I want to know, but when I find out things, it makes me feel as if we are slowly being poisoned by everything we ingest.

So this year I’m going to try and make my focus on our meals be more healthy. I want to learn more about organics and incorporate them more in to our diet - even if our food bill goes up. I’m not buying the bottled water anymore. I’d rather use a filtering product. And now thanks to my sister {sarcasm} I’m going to try to eliminate these unnatural dyes from our diet, because I don’t want us to eat petroleum OR tar!

So, thanks Aunty B! Really! {genuine}

Last night GB went to his first sleep-over.

You will think I’m an over-controlling, compulsive, buttinski but I was terrified all night. I literally couldn’t sleep. Visions kept running through my head all night. I was worried about GB. And I was so concerned for the mom-in-charge. There was a total of seven boys with two other smaller children. And in my book that’s a lot of kids spending the night. It could be a recipe for chaos………. Not that I wanted to jinx the night.

My memories of sleep-overs are that someone always feels alienated, tempers flare, and I was always the last person still awake. It’s scary to be in a strange house and everyone is asleep, and there you lay. But the lasting impression was one of fun. I still wanted to go. I just didn’t want to be alienated, annoyed, or the last person awake. You know?

I was fully expecting a phone call all night to come and get him. And you may laugh, yes you may. But I’ve been through this before. When Aquagirl had her first sleep-over we got the phone call at 2:00 a.m. She was still awake and she was scared. She desperately wanted to come home. Luckily, we lived only three doors down, and it was an easy transition. I still felt terrible for the other parents, though.

Jabem never had qualms. He would go and have a blast, get no sleep, eat atrociously, and come home and grump for the rest of the day until he’d readjusted. He loved it! It gave him uninterrupted video game time with lots of friends. He’s almost 20 now, and when his friends come over, I still find some of them sacked out on the sofa in the mornings.

But I didn’t know what to expect with GB. He is my overly compulsive child. Everything must be the way it always has been. Here is another laughable tidbit; the child still insists on sleeping with his nursing pillow. He doesn’t know that that’s what it is, but he loves it, and he WILL NOT sleep with anything else. Trust me, I’ve tried. I have this image of him going off to college and dragging his ratty nursing pillow with him……………LOL! So I just wasn’t sure what his response to a sleep over was going to be.

Want to know how it went?

It went great! He had a blast. He ate terrible. He got no sleep. He played video games, had Nerf wars, and he introduced the other boys to his new passion; those teeny, tiny army men that you get 100 of them in a bag from the dollar store. This is not to say that they didn’t have drama, because they did. One of the birthday boys, they’re twins, was having too much birthday. And he experienced at least one, maybe more, of my fears. GB came through exhilarated and unscathed, but I can’t say the same for this birthday boy. His twin brother was having a high time, but I think the crowd was too much for poor W.

I think that *when* GB decides to have his own sleep over, I’m going to restrict the number of guests. Because I’m 44, I need my sleep, and more importantly - I’m not as brave as the twins’ mom. She gets big props from me!

I’ll bet GB sleeps well tonight!

***Edited the next morning: Just wanted to update you on GB’s sleep status. It is now 11:00 a.m. on the day after the sleep over, and GB is still asleep. It’s been 12 and 1/2 hours since he went to bed. Does it make me a bad parent that I’m letting him sleep? Too late now.