Off and Running

2008 is here. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Did anyone see the Gator Bowl...Tech won.

The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy for Alexis and me. As many of you know, Alexis and I opted for a cruise over the Christmas break. It was an 8 day cruise with stops in Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. We had a pretty good time and really enjoyed the hot weather.

The ship was pretty new, about 5 years old. There were lots of families on the ship, but not too many little kids, and the boat was full. Even though all of the rooms were full, you never felt cramped, and I often wondered where everybody was. Our room had a window, that was a great surprise since I didn't think that we were going to have one.

Our first stop was in Jamaica. We planned an excursion to go on a jungle tour that included zip cords. The zip cords were great fun. They ranged from 150 feet to over 1000 feet long. Some were tree to tree, mountain to tree, and the last one (the 1000 footer) was from one mountain to another mountain as you crossed a river beneath you. We had a lot of fun doing that. The rest of Jamaica was not good. It's not really a nice place. Razor wire around the resorts doesn't say 'vacation here!' to me. Oh well, we were only there for a few hours anyway.

The next stop was in Grand Cayman. It was much nicer than Jamaica, which isn't saying a whole lot. We went parasailing that morning. Alexis loved it, I was terrified. Later that day we found a private beach and put that to good use. While on that beach we thought that it would be really cool to go to one destination and just relax and get to know the area a little bit. No more of 8 hours here then there for us.

The last stop was in Cozumel, which brings me to the best part of our cruse. We met these really nice people, and it was just the two of them. We got along great with the couple and we had so much in common with them it was weird. We spent a lot down time with them while on the ship. We would just hang out during they day, have dinner together, go to the bars at night. Anyway, they vacation in Playa del Carmen every year which is just a short ferry ride from Cozumel. So we cancelled our planned excursion for that day and headed out with them to Playa del Carmen. We had a good day with them just relaxing on a beach.

Here is some other stuff from the cruise. The morning that we arrived in Jamaica, Alexis woke up with Pink Eye. Gross. If you have ever had or seen it, it's not pretty, if you have not had it or seen it, consider yourself lucky. I will not describe it, my eyes are watering just thinking about it. Alexis also got what seemed to be a heat rash, and we both got sinus infections while on the cruise. I can't believe anyone actually hung out with us. Other than that it was a pretty good trip. I don't know if we will do it again anytime soon though.

Other news.

Since Alexis and I have no desire to keep up with Daryl and Diana as far as having kids, we thought to ourselves, "What could we do that would take the attention away from them and put the spot light on us, even if it is just for a little while?" So not to be out done, here is what we came up with... We got another dog!! Yep, two dogs now. Ace and Steve, but you can call him Stevie, Steve-O, or really whatever, he is just a puppy, he has no idea what's going on. We bought him on Saturday. He is an English Bulldog. He is mostly brown with some white markings. He's small, bow-legged, and ugly. Alexis says he is cute. Ace seems to like him, by 'like him' I mean Ace has not eaten him for a snack...yet. We are hoping that he won't get much bigger than about 50 lbs, but that is not up to us. We have tons of pictures of him, but we have not posted them yet. You know how good we are about posting stuff.

We will be taking requests for things to teach him, just let us know. Like I said, we should be putting pictures of him up soon, maybe we can put up some cruise pictures too.