Early Snow! / Cruising!

We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow!

 

 

This is very early for snow here where we live in Texas!  We have already had several days of colder than normal temperatures.

 

In preparation of the upcoming hard freeze, Tom stripped all the pumpkin, pepper, and tomato plants in the garden.  Oh boy, what a harvest!  If we could have had a week or two more of warm weather all these tomatoes would have had time to ripen/turn red!

 

 

We made a big tub of green tomato salsa, and will probably make another batch before we are through.  We shared a lot of tomatoes and peppers with our coworkers.  We are so grateful for the bountiful harvest this year from Tom's gardening skills.

 

 

CRUISING TO MEXICO

 

Sunday Oct. 19 - Embarkation Day

After attending our Sunday morning Bible Study Class, we hit the road, heading south and so excited to be going on another Cruise!  Have I mentioned "we love cruising"!  {By the way, on our way from our house to the church we noticed we were getting a flat tire on the rear passenger side!  We happen to have a partial can of Fix-a Flat still in the trunk so Tom squirted that into the tire and drove the few blocks to J's Store to get more air into the tire.}  We then went on to church, very grateful for all our many blessings in life!

When we came out of church, SURPRISE!  The tire is holding up alright!  Yippee!  Away we go!

Our first stop along the way is in Palestine, almost Noon, the donut shop is out of coffee, so on to a convenience store for me a cup of coffee, then we continued on to Willis.  No one is home at my son's place except my daughter-in-law Sissy.  Great to see her!  My son Darrell is working in Baton Rouge, La. at the moment, and we really missed getting to see him!  We took Sissy out to lunch at their favorite Mexican Restaurant in Willis.

Unbelievable growth in the area surrounding Willis!  Darrell and Sissy recently listed their property (where they have lived for almost 20 years) with a Commercial Real Estate Development.  The highway department recently expanded I-45 (which fronts their property) to six lanes, concrete pavement, lots more traffic, service roads are now one way!  They are ready to move!

Following our lunch with Sissy, we navigated our way south thru Houston traffic, so thankful we don't have to do that everyday.  We thank God each day that we are fortunate to live in the "country" and work in the "country".

We made our way to Tom's brother Mark's place in Dickinson, where we planned to spend the night.  We enjoyed the great hospitality at Mark and Janie's home!  Mark was out at sea (ship engineer) however Janie welcomed us into their beautiful home for the night, fed us homemade broccoli/cheese soup and chocolate pie for dessert!  What a treat!  It was so nice to get thru Houston on Sunday, less traffic that way, and just wake up on Monday morning at Mark and Janie's home in Dickinson, which is only a short 20-minute drive to the Cruise Terminal in Galveston.  Thank you, Janie for taking us into your home for the night!

I have a question.  Have you ever been to a Bucky's? 

No?  Well I haven't either until today!  Oh my goodness!  It is like a Wal*Mart Super Center inside a convenience store!  It is huge!  I don't even remember how many gas pumps there were , but there had to have been twice as many (I lost count after 40!) ice containers/boxes lined up on the sidewalks surrounding the building!  Even on the hottest of Summer days, I don't think the Texas City Bucky's will ever run out of bagged ice!

Then we went inside!  There was an enormous deli counter plus aisle after aisle of food, gifts, and anything you can imagine that you might conceivably need while traveling to the beach, or anywhere else for that matter.  Can you tell that I was astounded by the enormity of the Texas City Bucky's?  We filled up our little red car with their cheap gas, I picked up a cup of coffee, Tom picked up a tiny tube of super glue (the sole on one of his walking shoes is flapping this morning), then we fled this mega-store.

It was a glorious sunrise this morning, and we are so thankful for the privilege of going on this 5-day Cruise together!

We were so excited to get there that we actually arrived in Galveston just as our ship, Carnival Triumph, was just pulling into the Terminal.  We knew it would take a little while to offload the current passengers, so we had a little time to kill.  We drove along the seawall.....

 

 

...stopped at Wal*Mart's McDonalds and had a sausage biscuit, drove along the Strand and thru downtown.  I always enjoy coming to Galveston, the place of my birth.

 

Back to the Cruise Terminal, got checked in immediately, no lines this early, took a seat in the large waiting area.  I glanced at my Sail & Sign card (serves as room key and charge card) which we had just been issued, and was surprised to see the last name "Broussard" along with a different cabin # on my Sail & Sign card!  I say "surprised" because we had just been talking about how incredibly efficient carnival Cruise Lines is, getting 3,000 passengers plus their luggage off the ship, loading 3,000 new passengers plus all their luggage on the ship, in an orderly fashion,  not to mention all the "behind the scene" loading/unloading of food, fuel, and tons of other supplies, all being done in a methodical seamless manner.  AND this whole process takes only about 7 hours!  I am always astonished how smiling and happy all the Cruise Line folks are thru all this "controlled mayhem".

 

Anyway, we immediately alerted the nearest Carnival employee about our "wrong" Sail & Sign cards.  She calmly took our cards and our boarding passes back to the agent who had checked us in, quickly corrected the mistake, brought us our "correct" Sail & Sign cards, apologized smilingly, asked if there was anything else they could do for us.  So courteous and gracious!  That's what keeps customers (like us) coming back!

 

We were on the ship enjoying a great lunch from the Blue Iguana Burrito Bar by Noon.

 

  Our cabin was ready for us by 1:15 p.m. and our luggage was delivered to our cabin by 2:00 p.m.  Such Carnival efficiency!

 

Tom had a little surprise from me.  In celebration of the 17th anniversary of our first date, in which he took me to the Texas State Fair, and also stole my heart, I had ordered our cabin to be decorated "Bon Voyage".

 

Tom loved it!  And I love him!

 

We walked all over the ship getting acquainted with where everything is located.

 The ship's Library is always a nice quiet place to go read a book or play games.

 This jumbo outdoor movie screen played the morning news, football games, movies, etc.

Tom is planning a trip down the giant water slide the following day at sea.

Before we set sail, we saw an unusual occurrence, one Coast Guard boat towing another.

 

The Galveston Shipyard is a busy place.

 

We have "8:15 p.m. Assigned Dinner Seating" for this Cruise.  At dinner this evening we met the other two couples seated at our table: Cookie and Huey Johnson, newlyweds from Houston....

 

...and Sharan and Steven White, who are also from the Houston area.

Super nice folks, fun to be with!  We are all about the same age (I was probably the oldest) so we had enjoyable dinner conversation each night. 

 

We had a wonderful waiter team led by Head Waiter Milan (the one in the middle), from Serbia.

They entertained us nightly with song and dance!

As always, the waiters are so attentive to our needs/requests and as always exceeded our expectations! 

 

We enjoyed the "Welcome Aboard Show" after dinner and by the time that was over I could hardly hold my eyes open!  Nighty-night by 10:00 p.m.!

 

More to come......