we have returned!

hello all! have you missed me? we had a great time on our cruise. i would recommend carnival cruise lines to anyone! this is actually the second time we have traveled with them. the staff they have is the nicest and hardest working bunch. we met people from Indonesia, India, Belarus, and many other countries too. it is amazing when out of the 2600 guests on the cruise, they know you by name...and that's half way thru a 5 day cruise! we did get sunburned (some more than others) and we had bryan getting sick 2 separate nights. well, then jeff was sick the whole ride home. yes the entire 10 hour drive home. it was great getting to reconnect with bryan, and getting to know michelle better. bryan actually enjoyed dinner, and had *gasp* compliments for the chef! believe me, he is very picky about his food (being a chef, that's understandable), so the fact he called several dishes "fabulous" was pretty high praise indeed! we had 2 stops, one in progresso island(?) which was ok. there wasn't many shops, and there didn't seem to be a lot to do. granted we just went to a beach party, but we arrived at 9 am and had to be back at the boat by 3. it just wasn't enough time. nathan took a pretty nasty chunk out of his foot trying to climb a telephone pole for a bottle of tequila (contest on the beach). the man who actually won was like 50 years old, drunk as a skunk, and went all the way to the top. of course on his way down, he tore up his foot and his shin. we saw him a couple of nights later, he said he couldn't even sleep because of the pain. anyway, cozumel was really fun. we went on a dune buggy tour of the island. our tour guide was awesome. he was so knowledgeable about the history of the island. we got to see some crocodiles in the wild. they built a walkway and observation tower out over the water. we saw around 5 crocs close up, and they were around 6 to 8 feet long. pretty cool! after the tour, we hit carlos and charlie's and senior frog's. lots of fun there! and we got to do some shopping. it still didn't seem like we had enough time. we left the boat at 9 am and had to be back by 4. the entertainment on the ship was good. the comedians were funny, and the singer they had by the casino bar was amazingly funny, or we were all really drunk...one or the other.
i have a different opinion of new orleans now. the first time we went (last year), it was smelly and you wanted to take a shower after being down there. this time was much more fun. we hung out on bourbon street sunday night ( the same night as the NBA all stars game) and had a great time. when we got off the ship yesterday, we went back down to the french quarter and went thru their market place. it was really fun. we would definitely go back.
now, we came home around 1am, and their is snow and ice everywhere. the kids had 2 snow days while i was gone. ( ha ha) the kids were good, and no one had any major problems...well except for the fact alex and haley argued quite a bit while we were gone. (no surprise there)
i think we are definitely going to do this again. in fact bryan and michelle want us to start planning another one for next year!
ok, this has been long enough...and i don't want to make anyone too jealous!