What Happens On The Cruise Ship...

Doesn't Stay on the Cruise Ship

It's Posted On My Blog!!

Friday, October 10th, 2008

Ensenada here we come!! We were so excited to be setting off for a weekend of relaxation. We were set to depart at 5:30pm from San Pedro. The day got off to a stressful start when Amber realized she lost Jeff's birth certificate and their marriage certificate. I tried to calm her down and tell her that we still had time to go to the County Recorder's Office to get new copies. After some searching, they found them. OK, we're back on track once again. They picked up Chris from the house and then they swung by my work and picked me up. We got down to the Port and had a toothless wonder help us with our luggage. He was seriously scary!! We get in line to check in, let me tell you, there are a lot of lines!! We are now up at the ticket window and the lady verifying our documents was taking forever. I'm thinking to myself "What the freak lady? Why are looking at my birth certificate like their is a problem? OH @*!#, because their is a problem!!" We have an abstract marriage certificate AND a regular marriage certificate. I didn't realize that we had two different ones. I grabbed Chris' birth certificate and I thought mine and our marriage certificate. Luckily when I was packing my ID, I had a feeling to pack my work ID. Another employee saw that we were having a problem and he offered to help us. He saw my work ID and talked to a manager. He said that if I could have a supervisor at work verify that I was in fact a US citizen and fax over that documentation they would allow that. Again pure luck, my Sgt. happened to be working overtime that day, I called her and explained the situation. She happily typed up a memo and faxed it over. The cruise line verified the memo and gave me the OK to board the ship, with strict instructions...

If anyone asks, you lost your birth certificate when you were on board!!

I think they are looking for a passenger that boarded without a proper birth certificate...

We always go prepared...
After doing "The Munster Drill", we walked around the ship and checked things out. We booked our trip late so we got put on the late dinner shift, 8:30 pm, so we hung out until it was time for dinner. Earlier in the day Jeff was saying what number their dinner table was, I thought he was joking (he said a different number than what Chris and I had) so I kept going along with it. It wasn't until we walked into the dining room and they tried putting us at different tables that we discovered the mis-hap. So we had to go to talk to the maitre'd and get switched. They put us at a table with eight other people and their were 3 seats together and one across from the others. I opted to be the loner and sat down. Jeff apparently didn't like this, so he once again when to talk to the maitre'd. We started ordering our dinners and Jeff comes back and tells us we got switched again to another table and to go with him. We didn't want to look like A$$es in front of the other table members, so we said "We'll just switch them the next night." The two other people at our end of the table started talking to us throughout dinner and we all got along great! After dinner we decided we didn't want to switch tables, we really liked them and wanted to hang out with them, so we headed over to the Comedy Show and got in a few laughs before turning in for the night.

The next morning we went and got a bite to eat. There we sat with an older couple and their grandson. They were on the cruise with their entire family, all their kids and grand kids, we didn't think to ask how many... Are we rude or what?? Their grandson at breakfast was in his early twenties and we nicknamed him "Breakfast Buddy". I'm not sure why, but whenever we saw him throughout the cruise we called out to him "Hey Breakfast Buddy" and he would come over and talk to us... (I really should have taken his picture) It was funny... I guess you had to be there...

We got off the ship and took a tour bus over to Mango Mango for a cooking class. Who goes to Mexico and takes a cooking class? Us, Apparently! Jeff & Chris weren't too happy with us... Your learning how to make guacamole and your gonna like it!! While there we heard a great song, the only words we understood were..."A Beep, Beep, Beep"

This is our bus driver trying to fix the step. It was his first day on the job and didn't know he had to pull up the step or it would get stuck on the street... After removing the step completely he took us on a tour of Ensenada. We were a little worried when he started driving up the side of the mountain on dirt roads. Where were they taking us? Oh, we get a better view from up here... The big Mango colored building is Mango Mango. We heard they have great guacamole today...

Before dinner we went Rock Climbing. It was a lot of fun. We determined Justin gets his climbing skills from his daddy. He scaled up the rock without even blinking.

After dinner we went to the nightclub for a little Karaoke. The "Tree Buddies" (that's the name they gave themselves) surprised us with their version of "Hey, Hey, we're the Monkeys". After karaoke we hit the dance floor and had fun mimicking all of the dancers out there.

Sunday was a day of relaxation. We hung out on the top deck, got some sun, and relaxed.

We really had a great time with each other and the other two people we met, Chris and Ben from Huntington Beach. Our dinner table was the loudest. It was like we thought we were back at Youth Conference and had to out do the other tables. We started chanting our waiters names and I think embarrassed the other people at our table. I have seriously not laughed that hard in forever. My stomach muscles definitely got a workout from all our laughing. Our waiters names were Putu and Su. So it was PUTU SU! PUTU SU! all night long.

We had so much fun and are grateful to have great grandparents willing to take all six of their grandchildren for the entire weekend. The kids had fun at Nana & Papa's house, they went shooting, miniature golfing and had fights with their marshmallow guns.