I liked the ‘random thought post’ so much that I thought we’d give it another go, so without further ado…. The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas
1. Carissa’s favorite holiday song is definitely ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Every time we get into the car, she wants to hear Rudolph. She can sing the whole song all by herself.
2. Our wonderful Tivo recorded a ton of Christmas specials. We got to enjoy watching everything from Garfield eating his lasagna to the Peanuts gang singing carols to Mickey and friends saving Santa. The favorite this season though was the old clay-animation version of ‘Rudolph’ from the ‘60s. She also really liked the sequel with the evil toy-taker. (She didn’t care for ‘Rudolph’s Shiny New Year’ though.)
3. Carissa had a fun party at her school that her Pa, Daddy, and Momma attended. She was being a little shy for some reason and wouldn’t sing with her friends at first, but she opened up (as long as I was sitting right next to her). She enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies, eating chicken nuggets and oranges, and giving us some Christmas pictures that she had made.
4. Travis made tons of Snickerdoodles once again, but this time with a little helper in the kitchen. Carissa has become a big fan of these cookies that are a tradition for us.
When making the cookies, Travis and Carissa were talking about our plans for visiting with his grandparents and he was explaining how she had a Grammy and a Pawpaw, but that he had a Granny and a Pawpaw that were her great-grandparents.
So, she started calling them Granny-the-Great and Pawpaw-the-Great. I don’t think they are complaining.
5. We kicked off the days of Christmas with a delicious dinner at La Cosana in Angleton (their cheese enchiladas are soooo good and worth every single calorie) with Granny and Pawpaw Slaughter, Grammy, Hunter, and Johnye Leigh and Steve. We then took a Christmas Light tour. (The best house being the Disney house in Lake Jackson.)
6. Christmas Eve was an early day as I needed to make a breakfast casserole for my Granny’s birthday, and we had to be at my mom’s by 8:30. (We made it by 8:45 which is pretty good.) We had a great birthday celebration followed by Christmas. Carissa got a Black and Decker workbench that she loved. She spent the rest of the day building things for everyone.
After breakfast with the Wilkerson side, the Cegelski side came over. It was a little weird being at mom’s rather than Nana’s for Christmas Eve (her house is still messed by from the hurricane). We ate a dinner of ham, sausage, and casseroles, opened more presents, ate desserts, played many games of pitch, and ate some more.
7. By the time we got home on Christmas Eve, Carissa had fallen asleep in the car. But, she has been so excited to put out cookies for Santa and her custom-made reindeer food that we tried to wake her up. Her little legs literally fell out from under her as we tried to wake her up! Poor thing!
8. Carissa got up early on Christmas Day, but had no clue what was in store. Wow, did she have some loot! (Travis was actually worried that she wouldn’t have enough. Please.) She got her Princess blanket and PJ’s from Santa (which she loved!), several art project boxes, a new Mickey doll, some new books, and I forget what else. She has become rather attached to a Clifford dog that her Aunt Beth and Marco sent.
9. After presents were opened, we packed up and headed down to Christmas lunch at Bobby and Vanessa’s. We did the Chinese Christmas gift exchange, and we really got some good stuff! I got a 30 quart cook pot and Travis got a gift bag of beer and wine. Poor Bobby got Paris Hilton perfume!
10. Then, we went over to Pops and Gramma Ronnie’s for more Christmas! Carissa loved the little table with a white-board-type top and especially her… roller skates. Yes, Carissa’s Pops got her some Lightning McQueen skates. Eesh.
11. Thought we were done, huh? Nope! After the Cherry’s, we went over to the Campbells. Carissa received a digital camera (!) and a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse play set that she insisted on opening right away. We shared a nice quiet time with Pat and Odie while we snacked on backstrap and watched monster trucks on TV. Carissa really liked it and is looking forward to going to see them live with Hunter next month. My little princess at the monster truck rally…
12. The weekend after Christmas we headed up to Ace to spend the weekend with the Wood’s. We always have such a nice time up there. The weekend was filled with domino playing, visiting, and, of course, eating! Carissa took a ton of photos with her camera. Most are of knees and the floor, but she is starting to get it.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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I really don’t have any good excuses for being lax on regularly posting here. It definitely isn’t for lack of things to tell you about! I think it is because I have been really busy at work the past few weeks and haven’t had much time to do anything other than actual real work. (How dare they – where do they expect me to write this? At home?!)
To catch you up, here are ten things that have been going on in our world…
1. We went to see Disney on Ice! It was such a great show. The story line centered on The Incredibles going to Disneyland, so they went through skits of all the big rides. Seeing Carissa’s face when Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, and the rest of the gang came out was priceless!
(Thanks goes out to the nice lady at Macy’s who helped navigate the available tickets on their Ticketmaster computer. I highly recommend going to Macy’s to buy any tickets rather than go through the Ticketmaster website.)
2. Speaking of Mickey…. We have booked a trip to Disney World for next June! I am so excited! Since Disney is running a great special right now, we even get to stay a full week at The Contemporary which is one of the hotels that I have always wanted to stay at! It is on the monorail and within walking distance to Magic Kingdom.
We will ‘give’ this to Carissa on Christmas Day. You all know that I am a Disney nut, and I am doing my very best to ensure that my daughter is too! (Poor Travis…)
3. We went to the Lake Jackson Christmas Festival with Grandma Ronnie. The highlight (other than Santa on the fire-truck of course) was that Travis procured a stick of cotton candy that was literally three times the size of his head! It was unreal!
4. I got to spend the week of Thanksgiving at home with Carissa while Grandma and Pa took a trip to Vegas. We had so much fun together! We went shopping, decorated the Christmas tree, ‘decked the halls with boughs of holly’, and even put together a pretty good looking gingerbread house.
5. For turkey-day, we had a huge spread at Grammy and Paw-paw’s with the Slaughter-clan. Carissa then got to spend the rest of the weekend at Odie’s parent’s house in East Texas. Even though she was sick, she still had a great time with her cousin (and best buddy) Hunter.
Carissa’s momma and daddy went to eat again that evening at Ryan and Valerie’s, and mapped out our strategy for Black Friday. (Guess who even went to Walmart?!)
6. Dee and I went to see White Christmas at the Hobby Center. It was a really good production! I’ll admit we both teared up a little bit at the end!
7. Santa visited Carissa at her school! Her teachers said that she was so excited and ran right up to him squealing! In fact, now when you ask her what Santa will be bringing her, she says ‘Well, he already gave me a candy cane… But he will bring me a Princess blanket and Princess PJs and Lighting PJs too.’
8. Carissa has started calling us Travis and Jonda. Especially when we aren’t listening to her. It really irritates Travis!
9. It SNOWED in Houston! Carissa loved it. She will tell you about how she threw snowballs at Momma!
10. We are planning to see Santa again tonight at my Dad’s KC hall. Hopefully we’ll have some good pictures for you to see tomorrow!
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Travis reminded me that I forgot to post some of our cruise pictures. Here is a nice slideshow of some of our favorites that my talented husband put together.
But, if you wanted to see all five hundred of them... Here are the links!
---Fort Lauderdale
---Aruba
---Cartagena
---Panama Canal
---Costa Rica
---Jamaica
---Ship
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Momma: Carissa, have you been thinking about what you want to ask Santa for Christmas?
Carissa: Yes, I want a blanket from Santa.
Momma: A blanket, huh. Do you want anything special on it?
Carissa: Yup, I want a Princess blanket.
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Day 9 - October 10 - Ocho Rios
Jamaica. Our last port day. The excursion we booked today was the Dolphin Cove mini-boats to Dunn’s River Falls. Our tour started a little later than usual so we had a later breakfast. But, we didn’t realize that we weren’t meeting in the theater like we did for all the other excursions. We were meeting at the dock. And, we didn’t realize that the pier to the dock was a mile long. So, we had a little jog after breakfast and just made it to the group on time.
We took the bus over to the Dolphin Cove which has some sea-creature shows, snorkeling, shopping, pet the dolphins and sting rays, dancing, eating, etc. We were escorted through the property to the mini-boat area. We boarded the boat with our guide and zoomed through the ocean to the Falls. The guide was very friendly and pointed out all the sights to see. Of course, in Jamaica, they are not shy about requesting tips. Their motto is ‘I treat you nice, you treat me nice. Ok, mon?” So, we tipped the mini-boat guide.
The Falls was a lot of fun. I had walked up the Falls several years ago with my family, but this was a little different since we were with a very small group. I think there was only about eight of us total. To compare it, other tour groups on the Falls had at least forty people. The small group really made the difference. We didn’t have to wait on a bunch of people to catch up, we got to ‘cut’ in front of the big groups for photo ops, and had some personal attention with the tour guide and the DVD maker.
The tour guide had collected our camera at the very beginning and snapped several great pics of us going up the falls. He treated us nice, so we treated him nice, mon.
After the walk up the Falls, we had to walk back down the adjoining stairs to collect our stuff. The gal at the bottom of the falls that watched our bags – yup, she treated us nice, and expected us to treat her nice too, mon.
When we walked back up, we went in search of the DVD booth. Guess what? A kind Jamaican merchant treated us nice and escorted us to the DVD booth. After that, he escorted us over to his shopping booth and presented us with a wooden turtle and carved Carissa’s name in it. Dude wouldn’t let us leave his shop without buying anything. He kept trying to talk Travis into buying a lime green shirt with the Jamaican flag prominently displayed or a neon orange T-shirt with palm trees. (Can you imagine? Totally not Travis at all.) We finally settled on a dolphin shirt for C… for $15. Travis gave the guy a twenty, and Dude threw in another turtle in lieu of our change. Oh well, we were happy with our purchases and more than ready to get out of there!
We took the bus back to Dolphin Cove, took some pictures, did a little shopping, and then rode the bus back towards the pier. The pier area in Ocho Rios has a nice shopping area attached to it. I think next time we dock there, we would be ok just hanging out there rather than another excursion. We spent some money in Del Sol, had Margaritaville for lunch and drinks, bought some cut-rate liquor, and headed back to the ship.
The show tonight was another production by the ship’s singers and dancers. The bad thing tonight was that it was in the Universe Lounge. This lounge was not very conducive to this show. We left early because we just couldn’t see anything.
The good thing about this though was that we found a great little trio band playing in the Wheelhouse Bar. I really wish we would have found them earlier. It was a piano guy, a guy on a cello, and a singer that sounded just like Norah Jones. They were really good and their show was just perfect. Laid back and romantic. Travis had a couple of Guinness beers and I had some gin and tonics while enjoying their sets. .
It turned out to be one of the best nights on board! We'll remember the side shows from now on when we cruise.
Day 10 - October 11 - At sea
Our last day at sea. So sad. Our trip is almost over.
Today, we went to see the culinary demonstration put on by the head chef and maitre d. They prepared a couple of dishes and desserts.
The highlight though was the tour of the galley that followed. It was really cool seeing the huge soup tureens, the salad set-ups, the wine cellar, and all the neat facts and figures they had set up for us to see.
We then had some lunch out by the pool – pizza and hot dogs. Also out by the pool this afternoon was the final scrapheap challenge. At the beginning of the trip, teams were created to see who could gather items around the ship that would allow a case of coke to ‘sail’ across the pool. The teams had gathered up buffet trays, string, balloons, all kinds of junk.
The final snowball bingo was this afternoon. I think we were two numbers away from a pot of $2500. Next time will be our turn to finally win at bingo! Right?
We had to get all of our bags packed up this evening for the room stewards to collect. Booo….
We went to have our last dinner and then enjoyed the Afternoon in Paris Trio and the piano guy in lieu of the formal show.
Ahhh... enjoyment of living the high life!
Day 11 - October 12 - Disembarkation
Time to go home! I could totally understand how that old lady decided to live on a cruise ship rather than a retirement home. True story, google it. That will be me.
Although we were both really sad that our trip was over, we were really excited to get home to our little girl! That was truly the only down side - not being able to see our Carissa Ann everyday. She is certainly first and foremost in our minds. Every port we went to, every time we went to the gift shop - it was always - what would Carissa like?
We had an early bus ride over to the airport for our flight at noon. We even had a little bit of drama at the airport. Some guy was being really rude and nasty to another lady, and this other guy stood up for her. Just a crazy scene where security had to come and everyone had on opinion and was sharing it to security, the Southwest staff, etc.
Very interesting - and I have been on A LOT of flights these past few years! For me to say it was 'interesting' means something!
Anyways... We boarded and flew home. Gathered our luggage. And... Met my mom and dad and... our Carissa Ann.
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What a wonderful trip! This was something we will always remember. It was indeed the perfect mix of history, entertainment, food, sports, theater, relaxation, and education.
Next up.... a another cruise to Cozumel - but this time with Carissa, courtesy of Grandma and Pa!
This next trip will also include Uncle Ryan, Aunt Valerie, Grammy, and Pawpaw! Plus extended family too - Aunt Diane, Uncle David, etc! It should be a great time!
This will be our first time on Carnival. We'll see how it goes. I have gotten just a tad spoiled with the Captain's receptions and all! Hopefully, there will be enough of us to tag along with for the free drinks!
And then.... DISNEY WORLD!! My absolute favorite vacation destination is coming your way mid-June! I can't wait for this one! Disney has some fantastic deals! And, Carissa is all about Mickey Mouse these days!
Just wait 'til I tell you what we have been up to these past few weeks! But, if you've checked out MyPics, you already have a pretty good idea!
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