Bree freakin' Ann: That Vacation -Chapter 1

As mentioned in my last post Blake and I were in desperate need of a vacation!

We ended up deciding to go on a Mexican Cruise!! You don't need a passport to get in and out of Mexico and we knew it would be warm. PLUS, I'd never been on a cruise before....

I booked the cruise the Wednesday before we left, (we shipped out on Sunday) because we're crrrazy like that and we had a blast!

I'm realllllly disappointed I didn't take more pictures. I always get so caught up in what we're doing and having fun that I forget to take pictues :( I'm going to make it a goal to start taking more and blogging about them.

Ok, so this post is really long... sorry it's probably boring pointless information to most of you, but one thing I love about blogging is its like a journal/scrapbook that I can type up real easily, so I want to write down everything that way we don't forget it. Maybe I'll break it up into a few different posts so it's not so long!

ALlllright... DAY 1.

Sunday March 21st 1 AM: Leave to Cali.

Yes. We pulled an allll nighter. I must say, I was realllly impressed Blake was able to stay awake so well! It is normally realllly hard for him to not get his sleep. But he just turned on his book on tape, broke out an energy drink and drove for about 6 hours! I fell asleep just after 1 and slept for about an hour. I did that for about 3 hours, I'd fall asleep and then like clock work wake up in an hour to see how Blakes doing and if he was ready to trade but he didn't, he just let me sleep! Sweet guy. He drove for probably 5 or 6 hours until we traded and I gave him a chance to get some sleep. He slept for a good two hours, then when he woke up it was light outside and so he couldn't fall back asleep.

Once Blake woke up he just couldn't resist pointing out all the things I should do different while driving, so I (graciously of course) moved over and was happy to let him show me how to drive the right way. ;)

We decided before we left that instead of going straight

to Long Beach (where we were to sail out) we would make a detour through Redlands. Redlands was Blakes first area on his mission and one of his favorites. We got here around 9 and drove by the apartment he lived in and took some pictures which we sent to Ben Printy. (who along with his wife, we make sure to hang out with at least one day of our weekend every week) Ben was Blakes first companion and they served together here for a good little while. (I'm can't remember exactly how long) after Blake had been in the mission for about a year they were companions again and were district leaders together.

Blakes first home in the mission field! Redlands, CA

Then we stopped by the Olive Market just down the street and took a little walk. The weather was beautiful and everything was sooo green! I loved the houses in

that area, they are all so vintage looking! After a little while we decided we were hungry and decided it was time for some breakfast at ihop. We actually had a lot of fun in Redlands! Sooner than we would have liked, we had to leave and head to Long Beach to board our ship!

I just need to say freakin' GOOD thing for GPS! Finding the right port for our boat would have been 1000 times more difficult without it! Eventually we made our way to the ship and waited for what seemed like forever to board. Once we did we walked around a little bit got some lunch, found out what was on the schedule that night all that good stuff. At this point it was 5 PM and we were SO tired! We went back to our cabin and seriously passed out. We'd intended to wake up in about 2 hours to make it to dinner which was at 8:15, but nope! Either our alarm just didn't go off, or we were so out of it we turned it off in our sleep, so when I woke up and looked at my clock and it was 3 AM!!! We basically missed that whole day on the ocean. Haha Thats ok it was worth it we needed that sleep! It was really weird because when we fell asleep we were still at the dock and everyone was still boarding. When we woke up it was pitch black outside and there was nothin' but ocean surrounding us. That was a crazy feeling, but it was cool cause we were pretty much the only ones awake so we got to explore the boats all by ourselves :) Since we'd missed dinner by 7 hours we were pretty hungry, so

we went down to the grill and got some pizza and brought it back to our cabin to eat while we watched a movie. The pizza was actually really gross but it was fun anyway!

Ok, so I just realized that this day STARTED Saturday night and ended Monday morning. I guess it's time to start day 2...

DAY 2: Monday, March 22: Day at Sea

So after we ate pizza and watch a movie we decided to go back to sleep. Haha

The next day we explored the boat. I'm not really into laying out ALL DAY like a lot of people. 1. I don't want to risk getting burned. 2. It's boring. haha We laid out for like maybe a half hour before I started getting fidgety.

Our ship was fully equipped with a mini golf course, water slide, 3 pools, 4 hot tubs, food galore, basketball court, ping pong, spa-steam rooms, saunas all that jazz (that's all I can remember right now..haha) the point is we kept ourselves busy!

What sticks out to me the most on this day was dinner, because it was "formal night" we got all dressed up for dinner and had lobster. Then we went to a musical show. It was really fun! I always love getting dressed up! Again, I wish I'd taken more pictures rather than just a few face photos that we took ourselves! But oh well! Here's what I've got..