Girlfriend Cruise 9/09

*****This post contains A LOT of photos & is quite long*****

We started off in a caravan at 5 am to Mobile, Alabama to board the cruise ship Carnival Holiday! It was fun stopping at gas stations and 20 something women getting out of cars to go use the rest rooms.

Sunny & I in downtown Mobile.

Sunny, Nicole, Shawna, Michelle & me on the deck before the ship set sail.


My roommates for the week. I still can't believe 4 women shared that small cabin and we didn't argue...and we were all ready on time for dinner every night!!! Oh, we also had 1 blow dryer!


1st dinner in the Seven Seas dining hall. We had 4 tables in all for all the women.


Diana and I taking a dance lesson on the Americana lounge stage. That was a lot of fun. Diana stepped on my foot twice...I almost fell off stage when I was spinning around....good laughs!

The next day we laid out by the pool for about 5 hours. Before the pool though, Michelle and I went and got a facial, head, neck & shoulder, & foot massage. That was wonderful!


Formal night....free drinks in the Americana Lounge. (L to R) Me, Michelle, Anissa, Sunny, Stacy, Tammy, Becca, Shawna, Nicole, Sommer & Kathleen!

We were waiting in the stairwell for the dining hall to open. I love this photo...I think it came out pretty....but what cracks me up is the look on Shannon's face behind Shawna. See, Shannon had told other woman that she wasn't gonna hang with "those girls" cause they are to "fruo frou"! Seriously, are we in Jr. high?! HA! So all week we kept on taking out our mirrors and putting on lipstick or primping our hair, etc. It was fun! :)

Formal night fell on September 8th....the 3rd anniversary of my Dad's death. It had been a tough day....not being able to call my mom was hard. At dinner Shawna came up behind me and gave me this rose and told me she loved me and was sorry....she knew how I felt because her Daddy passed away 5 months after my daddy did! I started crying and that made every other woman cry!! There were older woman in our group who had lost their husbands so it was an emotional moment all around. I'll never forget it either....Shawna, I love you for thinking of me and for being a good friend!!


So after dinner we went to the karaoke bar. Those folks in there were SO boring!!! Most of them were older and were singing, Patsy Cline, Crystal Gayle, anything country....nothing wrong with that but they just stood there singing looking at the monitor and didn't interact with the crowd.....the crowd was boring....so we girls livened it up!! First, we called the HOGS!!! Woo pig sooie.....:) you can't be from Arkansas and not call the Hogs! We would clap and scream real loud for the person singing......then Anissa decided that some of us need to go up and sing Madonna's "Like a virgin" and we did!! The crowd didn't make a sound! Old farts! There was one young couple that we ran into all week....they were adorable....they loved us!

Acting goofy

I think we shouldn't have had that free drink!

First port of call.....Cozumel. This was taken right off the ship.


Sunny & I taken in the sun at Chankanaab Lagoon beach.

This is the swimsuit I worked my a$$ off this summer to get in to!!

This was the view from where I was sitting.



One of the many towel animals.

My favorite meal!! I actually had 2 lobster tails because crazy Shawna doesn't like Lobster.


Not a chocolate fan as most of you know....but I had this for my girls. Chocolate Melting Cake.....OMG! It was GOOD!!!! Hmmm.....maybe I'm starting to like chocolate.

2nd port of call.....Calica....or Playa del Carmen. Some of us bought an excursion to Cancun! I am SO glad we did! It was amazing...I can't wait to go back and spend more time....we only had about 4 hours there.

Off the bus in Cancun we were walking around and saw this restaurant. Wow, you can get drunk & stoned at the same place! :))

So Shannon...the one that doesn't like frou frou girls....said, look that's where Tom Cruise's movie Cocktail was filmed. So we were all like...Cool, and took pictures. Later on the bus Michelle was looking at the pic and zoomed in to this one....it say's was NOT filmed here! HA! If you click on photo and enlarge it you can see the sign and see the guy waving at us! Too funny!!

We had been talking about Beetlejuice over lunch....you know where they sing the banana boat song around the table....Day-O!! After lunch we were walking to the beach and look what I spotted!!Beetlejuice.....Day-O hahaha So I jumped on his lap for a picture. How ironic is that?!!



This is Coco....she was crossing the street with her owner. He said she was 24 years old. Someone asked if we could take a picture and he said he charges for that.....we all put our cameras away. She had a sock in her mouth. He told her to wave byebye to us and she did!

The water in Cancun was the clearest water I have ever seen. It was so may shades of blue. Just gorgeous!

SUPER STAR!!!!



Besides my hair doing a Gene Wilder this pic came out cute. You can't tell in photo but we had all been sweating like pigs.....Cancun was HOT!!! I seriously think I lost 2 pounds sweating.

We did some shopping in Cancun. I bought John some sculptures. These were made out of fish bone.

We had played a game on the drive to Mobile via text message.....one of the questions was what is another word for talking someone down in price. Our car said, Haggling.....the older folks said, Dicker.....so all week we Dickered with the Mexicans!! I dickered and ended up paying $20 for the top sculpture and $23 for the bottom one. Not a bad price at all.

The last day of the cruise was so much fun....we laid out by the pool for 7 hours....had front row seats to the hairy chest competition....that was FUNNY!! Went back to the room and got ready for dinner......THEN the fun stopped for me......a powerful storm evidently hit the gulf of Mexico.....the ship started rocking...I mean to the point where you would walk down the hall and bump into the wall. There were barf bags hanging in the elevators and stairs. We went to dinner and I sat down, my appetizer came, I took one bite and knew I'd be sick if I continued to eat. I had never felt so dizzy and weird in my life! So sad but the last evening I laid in bed.....Becca gave me a motion sickness pill and he knocked me out!!

The ride home was chocked full of girl talk! Oh my some of the things we talked about....we laughed so hard!!! At one point I thought I was going to have to pull the truck over I was laughing so hard!

We plan on making it a yearly event! We will add more girls (and take some away)! Next time though I will make sure that my motion sickness patch is still on behind my ear. I think if it hadn't fallen off I wouldn't have been so sick.

I experienced vertigo off & on after getting off the ship. I'm still getting it once in awhile. Not as bad though as the first 4 days off the ship....I was having vertigo so bad those days that I would throw up. Apparently this is a very common thing....you still have your sea legs. It can last up to 2 weeks! It is a weird feeling...I don't like it at all.

But It won't stop me from going on another cruise! I had way too much fun!!