This is the date we took a red eye out to NY to start an adventure. Only a few days before we had to say a tearful goodbye to Nick, Ashley and Hayden as they packed up and moved back to Macomb, IL. Nick took a new job as an Asst. Director of Student Activities for Greek Life (sorry Nick if I messed up your title). Ashley would be starting a new job at the school as well, but at that time her title was not determined yet. I’ve just posted a few pictures of Hayden that Nick has been kind enough to keep sending. We video conferenced earlier so we got to see them “in person”. Other than a rainy 4th, they are all doing ok.

So we set out on a red eye for NY. We spent the first part of Thurs getting rained on ourselves. When it cleared up, we took a cab to Bella Luna to have dinner with Uncle David, Aunt Anita, Fern and Rob. I haven’t seen Fern or Rob in years so it was fun to catch up. The next day Rob was on a plane for Singapore for a 6 months stint. The problem was though that David and Laurie weren’t traveling into the city until Friday. This meant having a 2nd dinner with David, Laurie, Lea and Casey on Friday night. We had seen David and Laurie at Nick and Ash’s wedding 2 years ago, but it had a more years since we had seen the girls. Another enjoyable dinner catching up with family.

By Saturday we boarded our ship bound for Grand Turk, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and Bermuda. 2 ports we had been to and 2 we hadn’t. Had some rough weather sailing down and our “swim with the stingray” excursion was canceled. (Too bad that was the only excursion we had planned.) We did some good shopping on Puerto Rico though and really enjoyed Bermuda, where we took a ferry over to the capital city of Hamilton. We then took a bus around to Horseshoe beach. Too bad thousands of other tourists did the same thing that day. We had a tight channel to get out of in Bermuda and while playing bingo, we thought the ship was going to turn over. Even the bingo board slid across the floor as many people panicked. No cause for alarm – guess they had everything under control.

After 12 long days, we made our way home. After all, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…

Before I go, a big thanks to Elyse for taking a new family picture. Thanks also to TJ for using it as a new banner for our site!