Cursed!

I tell you, my poor mom's trip to Sea Socks '07 was cursed. On Monday night, I got a call that she'd gotten in a car accident on her way home from the airport in Minneapolis and totaled her car. Fortunately she was okay, but it remains to be seen what kind of financial damage the whole affair will do to her. She's not sure what happened, but the other driver accused her of running a red light (which she didn't see), so it's hard to say what will happen there. Luckily, she's married to an attorney!

I finally managed to get my camera hooked up to the computer, so I've got a ton of pictures for you. Starting out on the first night of the cruise, here is my darling daughter who is drawn to music like a moth to flame.



They were having some sort of line-dancing lesson out on the deck by the pool, and when Sydney saw them, she ran right up and joined them. Owen, on the other hand, was more interested in trying to get himself in the pool, despite my mom's best efforts...



Here's my first class - Color Theory with Mama-E herself (with Phil, who came along to supervise):



That afternoon, we got instruction on sock design and making the most of handpainted yarns from Queen Eunny herself.

Here is my poor mom, hanging out on our balcony in freezing cold the morning of our arrival in San Francisco (that's the Golden Gate bridge behind her):



She looks pretty good for someone who spent the previous few hours throwing up, doesn't she?

Going under the GG bridge was one of the highlights of the trip for me. How often do you get to see it from this vantage?



To make it even cooler, the captain blew the ship's horn three times as we passed underneath. Quite an impressive sound when you're outside and in the front of the ship!

We also got a great sunrise view of Alcatraz (that's one of our tugboats out front).



I already talked about our day of captivity in San Francisco, but here's what we did get to see from our little balcony (the balcony cabin was quite a bit more expensive, but on this trip it was worth every single penny!):



Owen joined us for the docking and had a great time watching the tugboats push us up to the pier.



Speaking of my darling boy, this is what he spent most of the cruise doing - running away. Here he is in the Centrum (the big central atrium that was open up to the top of the ship):



And out by the pool:



And on the running/walking track on the upper deck:



He did slow down long enough to charm the pants off several of the Sea Sockers (or maybe I should say "charm the socks off").



Really, he did, even though the picture I tried to get of it makes it look like they aren't the least bit interested in him! Here he is, entertaining Michelle...



Sydney managed to grab everyone's attention with her "cruise shoes" (the silver-with-lavender-feathered-toe contraptions she's struggling to keep her feet in here):



They were extremely difficult for her to walk in and keep her feet in, and yet she insisted on wearing them every time we left the cabin (and had wild raging scream-fests if we tried to talk her into wearing her more practical albeit less fabulous blue-denim tennies). I tried hard not to curse my mother-in-law for giving them to her right before we left and telling her they were to be worn on our cruise...

And now I fear I've gone way overboard with the pictures, so I'll leave you with one final photo of my darling, adorable son. This is one of the few times I actually snapped something other than his back, so I was quite delighted with it!



This face was the only thing that kept him from being thrown overboard several times throughout the trip. It was so nice of the kids to decide they needed to bring out the sibling rivalry full-force on the boat. They're lucky they're cute, or they might still be in Victoria!

Speaking of Victoria, my next post will cover the Canadian portion of our travels, eh? Victoria and Vancouver were both awesome, with many, many pretty pictures to be shared. I will try to get to it before next week!