Cruising with my Hubby smiles part 1- Catalina Island

We just got back from taking a short cruise to Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico.

We left on Monday, the day after Grampy’s birthday and we came home on the following Fri.

It was a double celebration cruise….. We were celebrating Grampy’s birthday and

me having my last (I hope) surgery procedure done. On May 14th they removed the stint they put in me last Feb. to stop the bile leak I got after having gall bladder surgery. It went from my liver to my intestine and had to be removed.  I was dreading getting that done. John thought that booking a cruise would give me something to look forward to. He was right… it did!

John knew I wasn’t physically up to flying anywhere so we just drove an hour to the pier to take a local cruise.  Our Ship was docked right next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach. We’ve cruised to Mexico several times, but it is still fun and an easy get-away.

We boarded about noon on Memorial Day. The ship had a big flag flying

and a Memorial Day tribute that evening.

That first day we found our cabin, unpacked, rested,  explored the ship and…

….Hit the buffet line of course.

Tuesday morning we boarded a tender boat,

left our ship and

taxied over to Catalina Island, CA

We took a Catalina Adventure Tour. It wasn’t much of an adventure….

…But it was a nice tour of the island with some pretty, scenic

views of the city and the bay. Can you see our ship in the harbor?

Our tour let us off at the iconic Casino Landmark. It is a museum now.

We learned some interesting facts in the museum… like…

The gum millionaire, Mr. Wrigley,  bought Catalina Island as a place for his Chicago Cubs to do their spring training…. and….it was where the young  Norma Jean (Marilyn Monroe), who lived there when her military husband was stationed on Catalina,  realized that men considered her to be really sexy from the reactions the soldiers had towards her.

After spending a fun day on the island,

we taxied back to our ship. We took it slow and easy all day but we were still tired and happy to get back to the ship where we continued our cruise. 

I’ll share the rest of our cruise story in my next post.

I hope that you are having a good time cruising through your week too.

Hugs, Grammy Lura

Happy Birthday Smiles for Grampy John

Well here I am again. I appreciate those who have encouraged me to keep blogging.  Thank you. I’ll keep going for a while if I can think of anything to blog about.

My sweetheart celebrated his birthday this past week. I’ll tell you about the fun things we did.  I love birthday celebrations…. actually I love all celebrations… but birthdays are special…. especially when you get to be our age.

His birthday started out with bacon wrapped cinnamon rolls before we hurried off to church. I got the idea for these treats from Facebook. They turned out nice.

After church we went to Pomona College where EJ was preforming in the Claremont Young Musician’s concert.

EJ was featured as one on the 3 soloists in the difficult Bugler’s Holiday piece. In spite of getting new braces on, EJ did a great job. We were very proud of him and the other 2 trumpeters. Grampy was a trumpet player in school so this was an extra special treat for him.

We ate  at the reception buffet after the concert. Mindy and I got off easy for Grampy’s birthday dinner. We only had to take one dish to share.

Grampy was so happy to get to go to EJ’s concert on his birthday.

After the concert and buffet we headed back to Mindy’s for cake and ice cream. Grampy is 72 but I got mixed up and put 73 on his cake….. uppps…. maybe I should just save this picture until next year???? Don’t tell anyone I did such a dumb thing.

Grampy insisted he needed help blowing out the candles and the family was glad to comply.

Then he opened his gifts…. but we got his (our) nicest gift … a car….earlier in the week.

We finally replaced the Prius we lost in our awful car accident  3 years ago.

I wanted another hybrid but John wanted a bigger car so we settled on a Ford Fusion Hybrid. We love it.  It is a bigger car but still gets good gas mileage.  It has all the bells and whistles and nice features in it. We think it is beautiful and we are both happy to be a two car family again. We surely hope it lasts longer than our pretty little Prius did. (Notice that we got a white car again. That is in honor of our white Prius that saved our lives…. and because I like white cars…. John let me pick the color.)

You might think that is enough celebrating for one birthday… but there was more to come. I’ll tell you about that on my next post.

Grampy enjoyed his birthday and felt loved. All of our Utah kids Skyped with us to wish him well. One of my good friends lost her husband recently. It makes us realize how fragile life is and how blessed we are to have this time together.  We are so thankful for each birthday…. each day we have. I hope we have many more years together.

I hope you had a good week too. Enjoy the blessings of each day.

Hugs, Grammy Lura