Weekend Top 5: Cruisin’ Along

Weekend Top 5 is hosted by Kristi at The Wheelz are Rolling

We had a really busy weekend, where do I start … ?

It all began with the Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster from Sonic Drive-In. In order to fully appreciate what I’m saying here, you really must click on that link.

Did you see the size of that thing?! I ate that puppy, nearly all of it (I left some of the toast, but the meat and trimmings? Gone).

I made a deal with myself: after I ate that sandwich, I would then start the summer stretch, which is what I call the time period between now and the moment I put on summer clothing.

It’s time to get back into shape. And now that we’re going on our cruise (more on that in a moment), I really MUST do something about this flab. It’s all about the vacation pictures my friends, let me tell you. Because I never really realize how bad I look until we examine the vacation pictures and I notice the gut, or the flabby arms or geez, could I WEAR anything more ugly?? And I don’t want to be immortalized like that so …

Here’s my plan: From now until we go on our cruise, I will walk four times a week. I will do Turbo Jam three times a week. I will not eat junk food, of any kind, except once a week (because if I cut them out entirely I’ll crave them so bad that I’ll binge and eat a whole bag of candy before I’ve come to my senses). I plan on eating an apple or yogurt at around 11ish (no food before then, because truly, I’m never hungry until that time), eat a late lunch, eat a small salad before dinner and then eat only half of my normal portion for dinner.

And of course, drink plenty of water. I plan on eating lots of tuna, whole grains, low-fat popcorn, animal crackers, and cheese sticks. Anything that will fill me up but doesn’t have a lot of calories.

It’s time to get back on the fitness wagon once again. I’m gonna look HOT in this summer’s vacation pictures.

If you didn’t catch it on Twitter – we booked the cruise. It’s a done deal.

The husband and I spent close to an hour running totals and different scenarios through the American Airline website until we finally settled on a cruise.

We’re sailing to the Caribbean. Here’s our route:

We’ll be leaving the Port of Miami and sailing to Grand Cayman Islands, Isla Roatan off the coast of Honduras, Belize, and Cozumel, Mexico. I’m really looking forward to going to Cozumel because that’s where we honeymooned and I’m looking forward to going back to see how it changed and to show the boys where their parents’ lives really began.

The first and last day we’ll be at sea, which we really like because it will give us time to sort of come down from our beach high.

Our ship is the Carnival Valor:

After deciding on our cruise, we nearly booked it online but we hesitated because we weren’t sure how big the rooms were and if they would accommodate four people. And we really thought the boys would be more comfortable in their own room but we didn’t see that sort of option online, so we called Carnival.

And I’m glad we did because the guy ended up booking us two rooms, side-by-side, and I’m ecstatic because now we won’t be falling all over each other. It cost a few extra hundred dollars, but we figured it’ll be worth the money to have our space.

We also ended up buying the insurance, which I was surprised the husband agreed to – he doesn’t normally buy into that sort of thing, but we did this time in case we have to cancel for some reason or something comes up and we can’t go, or we have a medical situation on board (like we get sea sick, which will likely happen with me and GD), or our baggage is lost, etc.

The Carnival guy couldn’t book our flight, so after we finally got off the phone with him, we went back to AA.com and looked at flights. Again, we ran several scenarios through the calculator but in the end, we decided to drive to St. Louis and take a non-stop flight out of St. Louis and into Miami the night before we are scheduled to sail. We’ll spend the night in Miami (because it will stress me out if we fly ON the day we go to sea and there’s some delay and we don’t get there in time to go through the RIGOROUS customs routine, more on that in a minute).

We’ll do the whole trip in reverse when we get back. We decided to fly from St. Louis instead of Springfield because to fly from Springfield would have cost us an additional $1,800. ZOINK! So we figured even with the cost of the gas to drive up there and the parking lot fee to park it for a week AND the cost of the hotel in Miami, we were still coming out ahead in the end.

Eighteen hundred EXTRA dollars to fly out of Springfield! Isn’t that insane!?

We’re not able to cash in any of our Advantage points BUT, we’re getting quite a few points from the cruise and charging our trip is earning us more points so next year we should have enough Advantage points to fly all four of us somewhere we wouldn’t normally go because the flight would cost too much if we had to pay full price.

We’ve already been throwing some places around *cough-Hawaii-cough*

Carnival told us we would have to have passports. Apparently, beginning June 1, 2009, the government is demanding a passport from all US citizens on this type of trip now. When the husband and I took our last cruise, in 2000, all we had to show was our birth certificates and our driver’s licenses, but now, that won’t fly – or sail, as the case may be. 🙂

But we understand. Things are different now and really, we’re certainly proud to prove that we’re Americans so it’s really not a big deal …

Only it is. In order to get a passport we have to:

1. Get passport pictures taken. (Which cost $13.00 per person! ZOINK!)
2. Fill out applications online, but not sign them, and print them off.
3. Make an appt. with our main postal office to submit the applications.
4. Show our birth certificates and a picture ID, along with our applications and passport pictures.
5. Pay $45 per person to get our passport cards, ouch. (The books are like, over $100!!)
6. Wait 8+ weeks to get them back. (So if you’re planning anything like this, you might plan WELL in advance!!

So now I’m sweating, do I even HAVE our birth certificates? I plan on making a trip to our safety deposit box after I publish this to check. I’m thinking mine might not be in there, and if it’s not, then I’ll have to get a copy, which takes even more time … *breaks into a cold sweat*

Here’s our passport pictures. The lady told us we couldn’t smile which is the reason we all look so pissed off. Or like a serial killing Brady Bunch family. (I don’t know why mine turned out so much lighter than the guys – I can’t even look good for a lousy passport picture – *sigh*)

Not smiling is harder than it looks! I kept giggling and the poor girl taking my picture had to take several shots before this one. The boys? Had no trouble not smiling. 🙂

The husband dragged me out shopping Saturday. *shudder* We had to go out anyway to get our grocery shopping done, but while we were out, he really wanted to try and find himself a leather jacket. And being the end of the season he figured we would find a good deal.

Boy howdy, did we find a good deal:

See these bad boys? The coats, not the boys, though they’re bad, too. *grin* Guess how much we paid for those two coats. No really, guess.

Give up?

One hundred dollars. For both. It was a buy one, get one free deal and though we only went in to buy the husband a jacket, HELLO?! we couldn’t pass up the chance to buy a real leather coat for $50.00! These coats are regular … are you ready for this?

These coats are regular $225.00!!!!! I nearly fainted when the sales girl rang us up and the husband was so excited about not only the coat, but the great deal, that he was actually shaking when we left the store.

I think I’m beginning to understand the whole shopping appeal thing. *grin*

One more thing and then I’ll shut up …

I finally figured out how to text on my phone. I know. I’m a major dork but I just never took the time to really learn it before. But now, I know. And not only do I know how to text on my phone, I now know how to text to Twitter via my phone. So this means, I can take ya’ll with me during the day!

Aren’t you excited!?

If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me over here.