Cruisin...

Starting on January 15 all the way through January 19, Tammy and I hopped on a big boat. Neither of us had ever been on a cruise before, so this was certainly a new adventure. Of course, in order for us to get on the boat, we needed a reason to do so. Maria was celebrating her 30th birthday, and Ed was so gracious to organize the event. We kicked things off on the morning of the 15th, heading to the airport nice and early to catch a flight to San Diego. After a couple of coffees and some burritos to start the day, we were surprised by Chris and Shauna. They were supposed to be on the flight after us, but their flight was canceled. Luckily, they got to the airport early and were able to catch our flight out.

In San Diego, we waited a bit for Ed, Maria and their relatives to arrive at the airport. From there, we headed off to Seaport Village to take in some of the tourist type attraction. Megan was able to meet up with us for a little bit before she headed off to work, so that was a nice visit. We farted around Seaport Village for a bit and stopped at Buster's where Paul and Jen caught up with us for some breakfast before heading over to the ship. The port was walking distance from Seaport Village so from there, we huffed it down with all our luggage.

After boarding the ship, we settled into Gatsby's Great bar for our first round of drinks. We couldn't go to our rooms yet, as they weren't all cleaned yet. Let the drinking begin! Paul, the sneaky guy he is, brought his own pack of 'water' to help keep us hydrated during the trip. From there, we finally headed to our rooms and found a nice surprise. A bottle of champagne, a plate of chocolates and a notice of a bottle of wine with dinner!

Okay, I'm not going to keep boring you with details of what was going on during the cruise so I am going to just hit some highlights from here on out.

Let me touch a little on the food. We had a nice arrangement for our dinner seating, in that we got to sit at a large table and we were able to sit with all of our friends. No need to small talk with a bunch of people you don't know. Quite nice. We dined in the Imagination Dining room (or was it the Inspiration dining room?) and their food selection at dinner was actually quite good. Probably the best thing on the menu though was the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake. Mmmmmm. I had one of those every night on the boat :)

Now, let me talk about the buffet eating on the Lido deck in Tiffany's. It was a bit to be desired. Some of the food was the expected buffet quality, but there were items (especially the desserts) that were just awful. They had one Chocolate Cheesecake that tasted nothing like cheesecake or chocolate. It was squishy. Since when is a cheesecake squishy??? Oh well, I guess Carnival isn't known for their awesome food.


One of the events that Ed put together was "Maria's Amazing Race." He organized an event where members of the group would pair up and race to locations on the ship given clues. At each checkpoint there were different challenges as well. Well, there were supposed to be challenges, but it basically turned into a 'who can get there first' race. Overall, I would say it was a success, where the only folks left racing were Tammy and Maria, Jen and Paul, and Shauna and Chris. Ed will be putting together a video of the race - now THAT should be interesting.

Our single port of call at Cabo San Lucas was a good one. Being that we only had about half a day to do various things there, we didn't do too much. One thing we learned though, is don't leave at 9:30 when the cruise states should be a 'low' departing volume level. From what we experienced, it was far from low. While in Cabo, we enjoyed a glass bottom boat tour of the Arch which we got for a stupendous price of $10 a person thanks to Maria's dad's awesome negotiation techniques. Too bad we didn't book a long excursion though - we would have had the opportunity to head out to sea to catch a glimpse of a humpback whale. Of course, Tammy wouldn't have enjoyed that very much :)

After that, we jumped on the beach and headed to the 'new mall.' Very americanized I must say. After a quick roundabout there, we headed to lunch at La Fonda. I must say this place was the highlight of the day! By the powers that be (Ed) we were able to be seated before the restaurant even opened. Now, let me jump right to the food. One word. AWESOME. If I had three stomachs, I would have filled them all up! I could go on and on about this place, but I will keep it short and tell you that if you are ever in Cabo, you have to go to this place for some grub. To top it off, we had mariachis entertaining us throughout the wonderful meal. Happy Birthday, Maria!

Reluctantly, we had to leave La Fonda, where we headed to Cabo Wabo for some drinks. We stayed there a few minutes to take it in and a few pictures before walking back to the port.

Now, the trip back. Not as smooth as the trip out. According to some of the employees, the trip back was the norm. So the trip out must have been extremely smooth. The motion of the boat even got me feeling a bit queasy, but we all made it back in one piece. We even got to enjoy a day of conference championship football (Way to go Cards!) and an evening of loteria and tres leches cake in the Romeo and Juliet bar.

Of course, we had to enjoy a few more hours of volleyball on the ship. The court was small and the net substandard, but it's always fun to get out there and play some ball.

All-in-all a good trip. I skipped out on a lot of the details, but then I would actually have to sit down for a good amount of time and catalog the trip entirely. Not gonna happen :) If we ever do a cruise again, we will have to pick one with a good rep for excellent food and possibly a bigger boat to try and combat the waves.

Next up - Robin Williams standup!

BTW, if you want to see more pics, check out my gallery (link on the right of the page)

Public High School

I was going to post about the cruise - but I will save that for a later date when I have a little more time.
Briana is getting close to finishing up with her 8th grade year at St. Mary Basha Catholic School. Automatically, you would think that we would send her to a Catholic High School to continue her education. We have decided to give her a choice in which high school she will go to, with some prerequisites of course.

Tammy and I have done a bit of research on the different public schools in the area, focusing on the testing scores and overall 'happiness' of other parents who send their kids to that particular school. We live in the Higley school district, so our default high school would be Higley High. I would have to say that reviews coming from that school are less than stellar, causing us to not even consider that as an option. Other schools on the list are Chandler High School and Perry High School.

Last night, I took Briana to the Parent Curriculum night at Perry High School. Perry has been around for 2 years now, and this is the first year they will have a senior class. With that, they are growing every year and will soon become a 5A school. Expected incoming student number is 500 - 600. Perry has a number of extra-curricular activities and clubs which would give Briana a number of options to expand her interests beyond just the core education. Perry has also done well in the testing area and provides a wide variety of electives, which are available to incoming freshmen students. It's a beautiful campus, but it's size can be kind of over whelming. Of course, I have been more accustomed to the smaller schools of St. Mary Basha and Seton High over the past years.

Now, don't think that there has been any decision made her in regards to where she will go. We have done all of the needed steps in order for Briana to get into Seton High. From the Catholic HS entrance exam to the interviews, it has all been taken care of. Seton is a smaller school now, but they are expanding to become twice their current size so student population does not really factor in anymore.

Opportunities are abound no matter what direction this goes - I just hope regrets are put to a minimum when the decision is made.