An Update from the Start of Our Trip...

We left for our once in a lifetime trip yesterday. We are staying in Los Angeles for 3 days, and on Saturday are leaving for our 28 day cruise to Hawaii, Tahiti, and American Samoa. I still can't beleive that I am fortunate enough to be experiencing this type of trip. I have a couple minutes of down time and wanted to give you all a shout out from not so sunny California! It's about 75 here today and cloudy with a bit of a breeze...yay, my favorite temperature. I don't like the heat. We had a great couple of flights out here, and then last night Chuck took me to the Queen Mary in Longbeach. It was so great to walk around this old cruise ship from the 1930's...so different from the beautiful new ones we are used to. There were pictures all over the ship of famous people that had cruised on her...Fred Astaire, Bob Hope, Robert Montgomery, Alexis Smith, etc. And they had the interior, including the shops, very much the same as it was back then. We walked around on the promenade deck, and then up on the top deck. The Queen Mary has 3 smokestacks, that look similar to the 4 on the Titanic. There were strings of lights that went across the top decks and when you looked up, and saw the smokestacks behind them, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the passengers on the Titanic to look up into the night sky on that fateful night, hearing the band playing in the background, and knowing their ship was sinking and they were in grave danger. It gave me chills to do that because it all seemed very real. We took a lot of pictures because the Queen Mary has been kept as original as possible and is quite amazing to see. We had a glass of wine to celebrate our first night of this amazing trip. Then we ate dinner in The Chelsea Chowder House. It had white tiled walls and orginial floors with a tin ceiling. The food was delicious, and we had a beautiful view of the Longbeach Harbor. Today, we went to visit my aunt who lives about 10 minutes from our hotel. As always, Chuck charmed her and she pulled me aside and told me I made a very good choice in him! I told her I definitely agree with her. Tonight we are having dinner with a friend of mine from high school, and tomorrow night we will be visiting with Chuck's son and his family. Then on Saturday, we will embark for the adventure of a lifetime. We are so looking forward to this time together...just the 2 of us without interuptions of the phone, emails, work, calls for rides from my kids, bills, etc. This will be a second honeymoon for us, and a start of our new life together now that my children are all on their own. I am not sure I will be able to get online to update this anymore before we come back, but I will be writing blog entries to post when we get back. I hope you all have a wonderful 4 weeks. I know we will!