Cruise Day Friday-Sewing at Sea!

 SEW excited to be sewing at sea!  Got a photo with Bonnie in front of the Garden Party Quilt!

 We started working on the alternate block--the chain.  Really fun block too!

 Lunch in the dining room with a large group of gals and Bonnie and Dave.  I had the healthy option and a salad.

 Cannot really see us well,, but here were are!  Look at the view!

 Ran into King someone or other and got a quick picture. *edit Josie tells me it is King Julienne from Penguins of Madagascar!

 We started the alternate blocks! Bonnie's are in red, and mine are in a medium green.

 Here is the nice Janome Scott provided each of us with.  He was our bobbin boy!  He did a great job.  Sometimes I would come back from lunch or a break and discover my bobbin was full again!  I worked all spread out too.  Becky was to the left of me (but there was a huge pole between us) with  Patricia and Janet at the end of the table, and Irene (fellow quiltville open studio monitor) Michelle and Tammy were on my right.  I had Alice directly across from me with Pat and Jeanette on one side and Gail, Denise and Cathy on the other.  I got to know most of the gals at the table though a few were quiet or too far away for me to hear!  Really some sweet gals on this trip!

  Cocktail party in the Olive or Twist Lounge.  Had to get a picture of Alice because she looks dynamite in turquoise!  She bought the most beautiful earrings which were hand crafted in the islands and had them on too!  I wish I had been with her and found some but something to look forward to next time!

 Dinner at Johnny Rockets with Bonnie, Dave, Irene and Becky, Tammy and Michelle.

 Shh, yes I ate this.  It was delicious.  Good thing I was walking the stairs!

 Bonnie had one (or part of one) too!

 Went for a short walk after dinner and found a movie playing.  Already forgot the name of it, was a kids cartoon as was cute.

   Hit the show with Alice!  This one was a musical too thinking it was the fairy tale one with the fun music and the other one I saw was actually not the fairy tale one...so quickly I forget!

 It was packed, but we got great seats!

 Back at the room I had a turtle on my bed!  Did some reading (read several books each night since my roomie wanted to go to bed so early--time change was three hours later and I could not go to bed at 6 PM AZ time.  I just am not a sleeper...too much to do, too much to see!

I plan to put each hexie on a little square of this fabric.  Here are the finished hexies so far!

Cruise Day Thursday--St. Maarten!

 We woke up in St. Maarten!  We wandered down to watch the boat dock and ran into Xenia who was doing the same thing!  It was fun to see the golf cart keep parallel with the boat and the huge ropes they were tying us up with.  We had originally planned the mountain downhill trek for our excursion, but it was cancelled so at the last minute before yesterday's excursion we had to choose another one.  Becky asked me if I wanted to hike a mountain and zipline down.  I decided to go for it!  I have never wanted to do anything like that ever but thought why not.  So the day arrives and we head out early to meet our group.

Here is what the town looks like s we came in.

Here is my ticket which I did not even have time to look at before seeing the sign the gal was holding which said EXTREME ziplining.  HUH?  Becky then told me that it was a ropes course and had ladders and pegs to climb and it wasn't so much a hike. WHAT!  I have never so much as climbed a rock wall (or wanted to) and now the entire thing was out of my comfort zone.  Lucky for me it was raining....so I didn't cancel but decided to let the big guy decide.  Whew, cancelled!  I am really glad too because this isn't something I want to do--at least not the first time.  I was the biggest person in the group (even down 100 pounds and I barely made the weight limit) pretty sure I was the third oldest person too.  Not cool.  So no ziplining for me!  We then signed up for riding horses on the island later that day and went shopping.

I bought Kathy one of these cool windchime things.  She got the peacock feather/teardrop one (far right below) and Becky bough the flower/snowflake looking on in blue above.

Found some stuff for the kids too.  Sniffed around in the chocolate shop but did not buy anything!  I am keeping up with my hexies too, see?

Here we are all ready to ride horses!  Our horses had a bonding moment.  Mine was Magic and hers was a Spanish name that started with F I think.

The best part of the whole ride was going in the ocean.  We were not expecting that and were not dressed right (since it was a last, last minute sign up) but we rolled with it and it was fun!

 My horse went pretty deep!

 After a shower and change of clothes we went up to 14 to the Olive or Twist lounge.  Really great views up there!  Seems not too many folks hang there either!

 I ran into Alice along the way and she showed me her new room (her old on had mechanical issues so she was upgraded to one with a balcony!) so it was cool to experience this and take some pictures!

 Later on I listened to "Carribean" by James Mischner--still have a long way to go on it and worked on my hexies.

Mary Ellen from Sew Many Places led us on a trivia game--we won!

 We hit the machines for a bit. Here is my table working hard!

 We decided to surprise Mary Ellen with a quilt block or two from each of us.  I decided to make her and I a matching block so this is what they look like!

 We went to the ice skating show with Alice, Xenia and Maureen.  It was great...such a tiny rink and they can jump in it and do all kinds of creative things!

 After that everyone wandered off to Bed. I ran into Gail and we gabbed a bit while she drank her bedtime wine and then I went to the dance party on the Promenade.  They did the YMCA and all kinds of fun stuff!

 I also managed to get in some more hexie sewing!  It had been a rainy kind of day so I did the grey hexie, figured I would always remember the day!

Cruise Day Wednesday--St. Thomas!

 After an early breakfast in the Windajammer with an amazing view of St. Thomas we met up with huge group of people to catch huge trolleysinto downtown St. Thomas.

 Here is the view of our ship from the trolley.

 We bought postcards and mailed them off from the island to the kids.

 Becky tried on cool earrings.

Since I was in my Packer clothes this guy had to show me he had a Packer football signed by all the Packers!  Packer fans are everywhere!

 I bought fabric--we found one of the three fabric stores on the island.

 We randomly ran into a few of the gals and they let us join them for lunch!

 We caught an empty trolley on the way back so we could get to our excursion.

 

  Here is our trusty vessel.

 We all crowded on in the hot sun.  It is very humid there and I could not wait to get in the water!

 We passed right by our boat and I had to take a picture of the hot tub...you can see it sticking out up top there under the giant golf ball.

 We had to change on the boat which was not something I would recommend.  It was hot and tiny and humid and sticky and oy getting a swimsuit on in there was something fit for a comedy show.  I jumped off the ship in all my gear (instead of taking the ladder) and started looking for fish and turtles. We had seen a turtle surface to breathe but they are so fast you cannot even grab a picture before they are gone.

 I felt really confined in all that gear.  I did see turtles from afar though!

 It was crazy fun though not my thing!

I had a migraine by the time I got out of the water and did not drink the rum punch!  It was hot, did I mention it was hot? I am not complaining, it was gorgeous and quite an experience. After that back to the ship.  

 This was the view at dinner (everynight we had reservations at 5:30 PM in the dining room) and this is our table.  We were with several couples. You can see Gwen and hubby and Colleen and hubby here.

 This was my delicious three course dinner.

Another great day in the Caribbean!