what's cooking?

It's hard to believe-we're already back at home and busy as the proverbial bee.  I think we hit the ground running! 

We started (as you can see by my sunrise photo below) pre-dawn. I'm not much for getting up in the dark.  Super Shuttle couldn't seem to find us on the "map" so poor Steve had to drive me and our luggage up to our local Hampton Inn, drive home and then walk the mile and a third back in time to get our ride to Sky Harbor airport. 

The wonderful desk woman said to enjoy a cup of coffee while we waited. 

Our flight was bumpy, the seats undid the epidural (why or why do they make them for hunchbacks???) and yet uneventful.  We finally got to Miami at 6.  By the time the hotel van got us to our final destination for the night it was 6:45.

We stayed at Elements-a Westin spa hotel.  Let's just say, as Steve put it:  There were elements we liked and elements we didn't.  Lovely room, good treadmills.  Horrible neighborhood, blasé employees, terrible breakfast buffet and it was pretty expensive for a spa hotel without a Jacuzzi pool!

Thanks to Celebrity cruises-we arrived at the Reflection and were greeted and treated wonderfully!  As expected and is their norm-we were pampered and our anniversary celebrated almost everywhere.

First night out, once we left port, we went to the high end jewelry store.  You might remember my beloved 25th anniversary present (4 carat diamond tennis bracelet) was stolen during our home invasion in September of 2014.  We put the insurance money aside with the intention of replacing it.

Well, we did!!!!

Steve found a couple of very nice watches to replace a couple of the ones he had taken as well.

We were very happy with our new pieces.

As is usual for us, we went to the first trivia games and met 2 lovely couples and became the ship's best trivia players of the week!  One couple are Florida residents and new all about chemistry and medical things, the other couple were from England and were great at history and sports.  Steve and I brought up the rear with literary and entertainment facts.

Entertainment was really good!  Saw one of the American Idol finalists (do NOT ask me what season, I didn't watch it) and he was great.  The runner-up from Holland's Got Talent was on 2 nights.  Royal Music Academy grad and she was fantastic!  A pretty good magician and a very funny comedienne plus the original shows with the ship's dancers and singers.

Before we knew it we were off the ship and back on the plane home.

Somehow, despite Steve's hard work on securing my vegan meals-I was not given any food to eat.  Grrr.  I sent a rather "nasty note" to the airlines on this and told them it was lucky we used our points for those seats or I'd be more than hungry and miffed.

As we landed and Adam loaded us into his car and got us home-we realized that we missed the kids, the grandkids and especially our fur babies!  The last part were rather mad at us!  Lucky didn't want to sleep with Sam and Adam, Pepper deliberately peed on the floor a few times.  Well, he's 14 and I guess spending a week with 4 other animals, 2 kids and a house in a state of moving was just too much for him.

I'm not sure where the week went, but it really was one that Steve and I needed desperately. 

We are glad to be home!