Saturday, January 3, 2015

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2008. As you maybe able to tell, Mattie wasn't feeling well. He was running a fever and was going to be admitted to the hospital. However, that day Santa and Mrs. Claus were visiting the kids at the hospital and bringing toys. Mattie wasn't able to visit Santa, so Santa came into the clinic room to visit him and with Linda (Mattie's Child Life Specialist) and Jenny's (Mattie's Art Therapist) help, Santa picked toys that would be of interest to Mattie. The pillow in front of Mattie was where he had his head resting. But when Santa came in, Mattie made his best attempt to lift his head and take a photo!


Quote of the day: The best part of life is not just surviving, but thriving with passion and compassion and humor and style and generosity and kindness. ~ Maya Angelou

One of the major challenges of taking a cruise from my perspective is disembarkation day. Despite the fact that the cruise line is very organized and makes it go as smoothly as possible, one has to remember that 3500 people are transitioning off the ship and only a few hours later a whole new set of guests are coming aboard. It truly is a feat! It is hard enough to imagine this happening with one cruise ship, but today in port, we were ONE of EIGHT other large cruise ships. So around 24,000 people transcended on Fort Lauderdale today (that is just those like myself coming into port from a cruise today, this number doesn't account for those flying into Florida to take a cruise today) and in all reality it is almost more than their airport can handle.  

The cruise ship literally wants you up, out, and off the ship very EARLY! I was up around 5:30am, and when we looked out the window, this is what we saw. Peter captured a whole series of photos. In essence there was a caravan of cruise ships coming into port with us!!! As you can see, everything around us was pitch black except for the other ships floating around us in the distance as we were cruising into port. 

Peter captured this lone buoy, which I absolutely LOVE! I can see why such a beacon would be so vital and a welcomed sign in the dark.

On our way to Fort Lauderdale, we passed the city of Hollywood off in the distance. 

One of the ships in tow with us was Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas. Which is considered one of the largest cruise ships afloat now.... holding 5400 passengers and 2400 crew. 

There were 8 other ships with us in port. These three were ahead of us this morning pulling into post. 

Peter captured our ship sailing into Fort Lauderdale and you can see the blue lights of the other cruise ships off in the distance of the horizon. 

After we docked and the sun began to rise, this is what we began to see. The glorious colors of the sky, cruise ships docked near us, and in all reality we were docked in the same berth that we had left from last week!  

In honor of Mattie, the drawbridge
right near our ship went up today. So we snapped a photo of it. I did this last week right before our sail away! It only seemed fitting to do this today too! I can almost imagine Mattie with me and his excitement over seeing these drawbridges! Mattie LOVED Fort Lauderale and every drawbridge!!! When on vacation, it was an afternoon tradition to walk to one of these bridges to watch them go up and to see the boats go by. 

Though I have aspects of my trip home to share with you, I am too exhausted from my FULL day of travel. I hope to be able to share my insights with you tomorrow. 

However, I wanted to share this photo with you! When ever Peter goes on travel, he brings me back a magnet. I have quite a magnet collection on my refrigerator. We even collect them together when we go on vacation. We added to our collection this week!!! We got a magnet from each of the places we visited: Fort Lauderdale, Grand Cayman, Roatan, Tulum, and the Bahamas.