Home from Vacation!

Hi Everyone, I'm home!

We had a great vacation last week! I think that it would have been impossible not to. The weather was perfect, the travel was relaxing and the company couldn't have been better. This ship, the Celebrity Summit was our home, docked in Kings Wharf Bermuda. You can see our room in this photo, up on deck 8 mid ship, two floors above the lifeboats.

This is the view from the balcony of our cabin looking out over our temporary backyard! Not bad, not bad at all.

Not that I saw much land in Bermuda. The boat was just a way to get to the island. This trip was all about the scuba diving. It was a dive trip for my husband and myself, just the two of us for an entire week.

I think we spent as much time on a dive boat headed for a wreck or a reef or 40 feet under the water as we did on land.

You might be wondering what possesses a woman of my age to strap on what feels like 100 lbs of equipment, including a weight belt, to make her sink to the bottom of the ocean just too look around. I do it because it is great fun and because my husband LOVES to scuba dive. I also do it because I can, and I know that someday I won't be able to say that.

That is my gear at the back of the boat and that is my husband standing in the middle of the boat watching the island get smaller and smaller. (Martin is the other diver on the right side of the boat and at this point I am praying that he doesn't loose his breakfast all over my gear. Martin was a bit queasy on the boat.)

Before you begin to think that I am a fabulous self-sacrificing wife, I should point out that this photo is of Julio, part of the Dive Crew on the boat. Behind those Ray Bans are some of the most gorgeous eyes Mexico has ever produced. He and his wife travel, island to island, season after season working as crew on dive boats. They have been all around the world. Great life! No 401K, but he didn't seem like he was worried about it at all.

He also has a great personality and really knows his stuff. It is nice to feel comfortable with the people in charge of your air supply!

There are absolutely NO photos of me from this vacation. I made absolutely sure of that. We were at the dive boat at 8:15 each morning after a 20 minute moped ride from the ship. Then I spent 15-30 minutes on the boat getting to the dive site, almost 2 hours on the ocean floor and another 15-30 being whipped around on the boat retuning to shore. Then it was another 20 minutes back to the boat on the moped before I could hit the shower. It gave new meaning to "bad hair" day.

If it OK with you, I will just insert this publicity photo of Jacqueline Bisset from the movie The Deep. I look exactly like this when I dive...

OK, I look nothing like this when I dive. The only thing I have in common with her is that we actually explored the sunken ships that the movie the deep was based on.... and I was cold too.

Now it is back to reality. The Western Pennsylvania Shop Hop starts this week and I have to get busy with my 9 Patch Blocks!