from Lexi Eddings... A couple of weeks ago we made a trip to northern Iowa to celebrate my sister-in-law's 30th anniversary of her ordination. It was like a mini-reunion for my DH's side of the family. He got to see 4 of his 7 siblings, and lots of nieces and nephews and their assorted children. There were four generations of my S-I-L's family in attendance, her kids, their kids & their kid's kids. Keeping track of who went with whom was a task of Herculean proportions. You couldn't tell the players without a program. But it was fun to see them all, some for the very first time.
I know you're not supposed to have favorites but I couldn't help being impressed by my great-nephew Ben. He's an active, fun-loving sixteen year old from California. Not only is he a dog magnet--that's my grand-dog Tiny Lu in the little carrier--but all his younger cousins adored him. They followed him like a flock of imprinted ducklings, down to the park, to the pool, anywhere Ben went was the cool place to be. And he seemed to love hanging out with them too, which was oh, so wonderful for those younger kids. He reminded me of my dear Uncle Rick, whom we lost to cancer a few years ago. Rick was seven years older than me, so when I was a kid, he was the epitome of cool. An Eagle scout, a football player, he even had the lead in his high school musical, in my eyes, Uncle Rick could do no wrong. Like Ben, he never seemed to mind having his little nieces clinging to him. He took us to the movies, the park, the corner grocery for treats. Even when his friends--who also seemed incredibly cool to us--were around, he never made us feel we were a bother. My sister Cindy and I used to love to wake him early in the morning by pulling off his socks and tickling his feet. One morning he was ready for us. He had put on six pairs the night before. We had a dickens of a time getting them off while he lay there playing possum and trying not to laugh. Uncle Rick was the best. I'm so glad his spirit of tolerance and good fun toward his "youngers" lives on in my great-nephew Ben.
I am addicted to travel. Have been since I was kid, when I camped with my family all over the western US. A few years later, I was extremely lucky in my choice of husbands. The DH went into travel IT and worked for several different airlines. Using his flight benefits, we took our kids on trips we never could have afforded otherwise. Then my sister, a travel agent, took me with her to Nassau on a "familiarization trip" and I was hooked on cruising. I'm in love with the romance of ocean travel, the sense of wonder when stars wheel overhead, and the fantasy that I'm actually minor royalty but only the ship's crew seems to know it. When a deck is rocking beneath my feet, all's right with my world.
Over the years, the DH & I have taken a number of cruises on several different lines--Carnival, Costa, Princess, Holland America, Norwegian, and even the now defunct American Hawaiian, and Dolphin Cruise lines. Not all cruise ships are created equal, of course, but we found reasons to enjoy all of them.
For a while now, I've been dreaming of taking a cruise around the world--a grand voyage that balanced bucket list destinations with the luxury of long, lazy sea days. At first I dismissed it as a pipe dream, but over the last five years or so, it started to seem a bit more real. I started talking to my DH about it. He was skeptical that we could do it, but he humored me by not saying absolutely no. I took that as encouragement. Then when he retired in 2015, I started thinking about it in earnest, haunting the Cruise Critic message boards and lurking on travel blogs of other world cruisers. I compared itineraries, the culture of the lines, and, of course, the price. Some were so far beyond the realm of possibility for us, I dismissed them out of hand. But a few looked doable. Maybe. In a few years. I set 2021 as my target. By then, I reasoned, we just might be able to swing it. In the meantime, I continued to monitor info about world cruises. I learned we'd likely have to book the cruise 18 months in advance because they tend to sell out. (Blame it on the Boomers!) I also watched for changes in itinerary. They don't go to the same places each year. And I was told that world cruise fares were seldom discounted at the last minute, like other cruises sometimes are. But hope springs eternal, and last week (on our anniversary of all things!) I saw that Princess's 2018 World Cruise fares had been quietly slashed. I mean, SLASHED! And if we opted for 94 days (LA to Ft. Lauderdale) instead of 111 (LA to LA), the savings was enough that all of a sudden, it made sense to go sooner rather than later. We aren't waiting till 2021 to eat our cake. On Jan. 22, 2018, we'll board the Pacific Princess in Los Angeles for the trip of a lifetime!
Here's our itinerary. We especially wanted to visit New Zealand (yeah, we're Lord of the Rings fans!) and Australia and the Pacific Princess makes 8 stops between those 2 countries. The ports of call in the Med are also a huge draw for me.
So now, we have 239 days till we board the Pacific Princess. There's a ton of things to do before we go (not the least of which is finishing A COLDWATER WARM HEARTS CHRISTMAS, my holiday-themed novel for Kensington Publishing!) We have to get visas, arrange for an extension on our 2017 taxes, figure out how to pack for such a long trip, set up ways to pay our bills from sea, look into vaccinations required, make sure we have enough of our prescription meds (I may need an extra suitcase for that!), decide what shore excursions we want to take, book pre-cruise air travel and hotel...the list goes ever, ever on! Oh! And pay our fare in full by September 24th. If you enjoy armchair travel like I do, I invite you to hop in my pocket and go with me on this trip. If you sign up to follow by email in the right hand column above, you'll receive my posts in your inbox. Until we embark, I'll keep you up to speed on our planning and share our adventures once we board next January. Of course, I'm blogging about it because I'm excited and can't believe it's real yet, but I'm also doing it because I want to encourage YOU. If you have a dream, no matter what it is, no matter how undoable it may seem, keep thinking about it. Keep talking about it. Speak that dream into existence. I'm rooting for you!
