# 37 - CHECK!

Number 37 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days was to take a cruise of the Caribbean region. Yesterday, myself along with 5 other fabulous people got back from a 4 night cruise to Cozumel. This was my first cruise ever and I had so much fun. I may be addicted to cruising now :)

Justin and I along with Tiffany and Trevor Lobdell and Sam and Shelly Morris (no relation if you don't already know that) left on the Carnival Fantasy boat on Thursday out of New Orleans to go to Cozumel. The trip is hard to put into words. I've never laughed so much in my entire life, that's for sure. We left New Orleans around 4pm, but we didn't get out of the Mississippi and into the Gulf until we were all in bed already. At about 3am, we could all feel that we were in the Gulf because the boat was swaying back and forth so badly. The weather on Friday wasn't wonderful. It rained most of the morning and afternoon, but cleared up in late afternoon and evening.

I have never been able to sleep late so I always woke up before everyone else. On Friday I woke up at 6am and went to go run on the track at the top deck of the ship only to find out it was pouring. So I had to settle for the ship's gym. Any of you ever tried to run on a treadmill on a boat when it's storming? It's hard as crap, let me tell you that! I could barely stay on the treadmill, so I only ran about 2 miles as opposed to my usual 4 or 5.

Here's a few pics:



This is Justin and I after we boarded the ship on Thursday. They had some excellent strawberry daiquiris!!!



The Lobdells



This is Justin and I at dinner. I realized at dinner that you can order multiple appetizers, entrees and desserts. Not good for a girl with a MASSIVE sweet tooth!



Our group after the first night dinner.



The girls laying out on the Lido deck on Friday after the rain and storm cleared up



The slides were so much fun! We all raced eachother down the slides. Most of the time Justin won. He's so freaking competitive...



Enjoying the beautiful sunset :)



The three girls on the way to dinner on formal night. Some people take "formal" to mean dresses and slacks and ties. Others think jerseys for a football team and jeans are appropriate.



I look like a fattie in this picture, but I promise it's because the wind is blowing up the dress. The boat got into Cozumel very early Saturday morning. The water was BEAUTIFUL. Pictures below don't do it justice.







When we got off the boat into Cozumel, the six of us went on our excursions. The Lobdell's and Morris' both went on the snorkel/drinking boat. Justin and I went diving...BAD EXPERIENCE FOR MARCIE.

After our excursions, we all met up to eat some appetizers and have some drinks at Fat Tuesday's. The best part of Fat Tuesdays was some stripper pole action that Mr. Lobdell had going on. There was a lady blowing up balloons and making them hats for people at the restaurant. We watched her blow up the balloons for the table next to us and when she was done, Trevor yelled at her that he highly expected our hat balloons to be way better than theirs. It's an understatement to say that he got his wish.



The balloon lady made Trevor and interesting looking hat balloon along with some boobs, to be completed by a dance around the stripper pole.

Here's a few more pics of us at Fat Tuesday:







After our good times at Fat Tuesday, we decided that we wanted to go to this place that we could see from the boat that had a slide running from it into the ocean. We knew we couldn't walk there so we started looking for cabs. We found a place with about 5-7 cab drivers standing around that we were trying to explain where we were wanting to go. A few of them said it was Margaritaville and finally someone in our group said "ok can you take us there". After those words, this one little mexican took off RUNNING! I have seriously never seen someone run so fast. He ran to get his cab and pulled around to pick us up. The slide that we were talking about couldn't have been more than a couple of miles down the road from Fat Tuesday, so after we had been in the cab for a good 10 minutes, we figured Margaritaville wasn't the place that had the slide. Needless to say, it was not where the slide was, but it was still pretty awesome.





There was a deck behind Margaritaville that went out into the ocean and a surfboard that was anchored to the bottom. We all took turns trying to stand on it. I won! But I'm sure that's only because I have great balance from dancing. I beat Justin and Trevor's time combined!



Boys will be boys

So as I put in my previous posts, Carnival does a Halloween Frightfully Fun night for all their cruises in October. Everyone was suppose to dress up and there was a costume contest and fun Halloween candy and everything! We got a little freaked out because during the Welcome Aboard Show, the cruise director asked everyone who brought their halloween costumes and I was fairly certain that our group was the only ones that cheered. We got nervous, but it turned out okay. Tons of people were dressed up!



I was a flight attendant and Justin was my pilot!



This is me and Tiff after we left the Halloween dance party



All the Morris'



This is of Justin and I when we were at the Beatles Tribute show. The dancers were awesome and the show was incredibly entertaining!



And the awesome view while sailing back home. Like I said, I woke up before everyone else, so I headed up to the top deck with my book in tow and enjoyed a couple of hours to myself :)

All in all, we had a blast on our trip. Justin immediately came home and started looking for cruises for next year. We're thinking a 7 nighter to the Eastern Caribbean so we can go to Nassau, St. Thomas, St. Martin, and Belize. Of course at some point I'll have to knock out the cruise to Alaska that's on my 101 list. However, I'm not so sure that one is going to get done before the timeline is up. It's a pretty darn expensive cruise!

# 70 - CHECK!

# 70 on my list of 101 things to do in 1,001 days was to go to a Hoover High School football game for kicks. On Friday night, Justin and I decided to go to the Hoover vs. Vestavia game. It was VERY strange to be at the met watching Hoover play. We felt so incredibly old! All the kids there looked like they were 12 and I couldn't help but wonder "did we look like that when we were that age"? I think not. I still have tons and tons of videos from when Jen (my sister) and I danced at half-time at the Hoover games (we were both Hoover Buccanettes all through high school) and we were NOT that small! I think we actually looked like we were seniors in high school, but maybe I'm bias.

I only was able to get one picture of the half-time show and it's kind of blurry because its from my phone. I must say, I was slightly disappointed in the current dance team. They weren't very entertaining at all. Things that Hoover's dance team was known for doing during half-time weren't done. The kickline in the center of the field in the front was no longer in the center, it was on the side and it lasted maybe 5 seconds. The signature "jump into the splits" that the buccanettes did at the end of their feature was also not done, probably because THEY NO LONGER HAVE A FEATURE!!!! Oh how much has changed in the last 10 years. As sad as I am to say this, the colorguard was WAY more entertaining.

On Saturday we went over to our friends, the Lobdells, house to watch the day games. About halfway into the Florida/Arkansas game, we all decided we wanted smores, so we came to our house (we have a firepit to cook smores over) and grilled some steaks from Mr. P's and then enjoyed the long awaited smores :)

It was so cold outside, that I had to pull out the old Snuggie :) We got this as a wedding gift (and as a joke) from Justin's old fraternity brother, Scott, who flew in from Dallas to come to our wedding.


We were jokingly talking about how we were going to go from wearing snuggies on Saturday to bikinis on Thursday for our CRUISE TO MEXICO!!!! We are so unbelievably excited. 4 more days!!

A Weekend Away in DC

So this past weekend was a REALLY long but incredibly enjoyable weekend! Justin and I went to Washington DC with our friends Bonnie and Andrew from Houston. We all flew in on Thursday and drove to a hotel in some no name town in Maryland. The first thing we did on our trip was knock out the state highpoints for Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia.



This is a picture of us from Pennsylvania's highest point, Mt. Davis



This is at Backbone Mountain, Maryland's highest point



And finally, we made it to the highest point in West Virginia, Spruce Knob

After driving into DC, we dropped our bags at our hotel, which Justin picked out that was two blocks from the White House (not to mention that we didn't pay a dime for it! Gotta love it when your husband works all over the country and racks up on Hilton points). We changed clothes really quickly and then started walking around to see the monuments.



This is Justin and I in front of the White House



I love this picture of us :) We're in front of the Jefferson Memorial



Justin being his goofy self in front of the Jefferson Memorial

We literally walked all over DC that night. All of us were in so much pain the next day from being on our feet for so long, but naturally we were ready to do it all over again the next day! So we got the next morning and headed to the National Archives so that I could see the Declaration of Independence along with the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta. I highly suggest for visitor's of DC to go to the National Archives building. Apparently it is not as frequently visited as some other places in DC, but there is SO much history there!



Here she is, the Declaration herself! I am so embarrassed to say this, but I seriously got slightly emotional when I saw it. And Bonnie said she got emotional too. Don't get me wrong, I by no means shed any tears or anything, it was just so amazing to be standing only inches away from a document of such importance. AND....this document, along with the US Constitution was signed by not one, but TWO Morris'. Mr. Rob Morris signed directly to the right of John Hancock and Mr. Lewis Morris signed towards the bottom. I wonder if we're related ;) Justin kept referring to Lewis as "Uncle Lewis" all weekend. It was funny!



After leaving the National Archives, we headed to the Washington Monument for our 11AM tour at the top. It definitely had some spectacular views and the tour guides were awesome at giving the history behind the building. I learned a lot for sure!



After leaving the Washington Monument, we grabbed some lunch at the brand new Visitor Center at the Capitol building. The had several different lunch options so we didn't have to all eat the same thing which was nice. Of course that didn't matter because Bonnie and Andrew and I all ate chicken fingers and fries (I know you are all surprised) and Justin was the only one that ventured out and got some barbeque. When we got done eating lunch we went upstairs for our 1PM tour of the Capitol Building. That tour was probably my favorite. I learned so much about the building and its occupants! After our tour, we took the underground tunnel to the Library of Congress.



This is Justin and I at the Library of Congress. This building was by FAR my favorite! I cannot begin to explain the beauty of the ceilings and walls and paintings all over the place. It is seriously the most gorgeous inside of a building I have ever seen!

After spending the majority of the morning and afternoon making more stops around DC, we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for Dana and Ed's wedding (which was the whole reason we went to DC in the first place). I unfortunately never got a picture of the bride on her big day :( Dana and Ed are currently on their honeymoon in Maui, Hawaii, which is also where Justin and I went for 8 of our 10 days honeymoon.



Bonnie and I at the reception



This is Justin and I at their wedding reception. It was incredibly gorgeous and the food was excellent!

After leaving the reception we headed to a sports pub in Arlington, VA to meet up with my friend Jeff Murray, who lives in DC. He's a huge Auburn fan and Justin wanted to try to get in the last quarter of the Auburn/Tennessee game, so we headed to Crystal City Sports Bar, which apparently is the DC Auburn Alumni bar, to finish watching what was left of the game.



He's like a kid in a candy store! The next morning we hit up a couple of the different Smithsonian Museums. The Air and Space museum was Justin's favorite since he loves planes and plans to be a pilot one day.

It was an awesome weekend with great friends and we can't wait for our next trip with Bonnie and Andrew which will also have our other great friends Sam and Shelly Morris and Trevor and Tiffany Lobdell too! We're headed to Cozumel, Mexico on a cruise on October 22nd! To see more of our DC pictures click here. Also, on an unrelated note, our wedding announcement was put in the Over the Mountain Journal this month! Click here to see that.