Vacation Time

WEEK 1

Saturday, January 9
Yes, week one. This is the first year that we are able to take 2 weeks of vacation at 1 time. And in the middle of winter! Tom and I have such a hectic schedule in the late fall and early winter that when New Years is over, we need time to regroup. Then the craziness starts again for him until Easter is over, but not nearly as bad as the Christmas Season. For those of you who don’t know, Tom works for a ham processing plant, and 2-3 months before Christmas is constant work!

Vacation preparations were being finalized during our last snow storm, and 2 days of being drifted in, which just happened to be the 2 days before we were going to leave. I was chomping at the bit! I wanted to get out of there. But how, if we couldn’t drive out the roads? Luckily, the grader went, we went to town, we came home and packed, we parked out back, and we left early, early the next morning, without sleep, and got out the country roads. Then I needed sleep!

Saturday, Jan 9, 4 am arrived at Omaha airport. Tom dropped me off in front, helped me carry in luggage, and went to park. Luggage consisted of 2 luggage bags, one for each of us which wasn’t bad considering we are going to be away for 2 weeks. Some people say to pack less and do wash. WRONG! I’m on vacation and I’m not doing wash! We had 1 bag filled with food, and another bag ½ filled with food and with other odds and ends - extra shoes, light jackets, books to read. We never take the chance of all of our luggage arriving at the same time, so we split our clothes up into the 3 clothes bags. We bring breakfast and lunch food for almost every day as it is cheaper to pay the rate for an extra bag ($30 x 2 bags) then to buy all our food in Aruba. Food is about 1 1/2 -2 times more expensive here! We went to a grocery store the other day to compare, as we thought if we can buy our food for the extra $60, we wouldn’t bring food next year. A can of soup that costs $1 in the US, costs $3 here. We bought hamburger to make chili, 1# was $6.50 Florin (Aruba currency), which is about $3.67 US. Chocolate chip cookies were almost $9 Fl, which is almost $5 US. I guess we will bring food and only buy essentials. I don’t know how the Arubians manage, as they don’t make a high income.

A shuttle brought him back in about 15 minutes, and we waited in line for about another 15 minutes until the ticket windows opened at 4:30. I thought that was cutting it close for a 6 am flight, but we were to our gate within the hour, after going through security. We left Omaha on time, then had a delay in Chicago. We weren’t worried about the delay, as we had a direct flight to Aruba. The only problem was that it put us into Aruba 1 ½ hours late, and cutting into our vacation time!

We checked in, unpacked, ate a light supper at the resort hotel, and enjoyed a cup of coffee in the early evening at the pool side. We crashed at about 9 pm that first night, sleeping until about 7!

Sunday, January 10
Breakfast orientation at our resort. Last year, breakfast was a free buffet, but this year we had to pay. Bummer!

We went to the outside flea market, which is some of the same vendors that are set up permanently down town at the pier. We bought outfits for Makenzie and Caden that matches Grandma and Pop’s! Cute!
We walked the beach from 2-4. Went back to the outdoor flea market and bought bar-b-que ribs! We made a side dish of flavored rice. The ribs were delicious!
We relaxed with our first Aruba Ariba rum drink at the pool side! Nice!

Monday, January 11
Relaxed in the morning. I caught up with my blogging.

After lunch, we went to the beach to lay out on a lounge chair. The sun went behind clouds that afternoon. A resort consultant came by and asked if we wanted to tour the Divi Resort. Even though it would take an 1 ½ hour out of our afternoon, the day was overcast and we wouldn’t see any more sun. We also would earn 2 dinner passes, one for $100, and one for $50. We thought that was a good deal. We listened to the talk, said no thank you, thanks for sharing the info, and that’s the info we need. The resort actually left us go without hassling us, except the rep didn’t walk us to the door! That was rude of him! lol

We walked the beach after the tour. After supper, we enjoyed a cup of, sitting at the pool.

Tuesday, January 12

We woke up at 6:30 and went to see the sunrise at the lighthouse.

Beautiful.

We came back to visit with the resort rep here at this facility, to hear what was new. We laid out at the pool until 2, then went to walk at the beach for an hour.

We came back to the resort’s welcome time with free snacks and rum drinks.

Fruit punch and rum drinks! Delicious!

Wednesday, January 13
Did a little bit of computer work. Pool time from 10-noon.

We went out at 2 but the clouds were out again. We decided to go downtown to the port and window shop. We went through the jewelry shops. That is always fun to do!


Thursday, January 14
We did a little bit of computer work. We knew we weren’t going to the beach today, so we went in the morning for a walk. We walked almost 2 miles. Tom has a pedometer and we are checking how far we walk each day. I feel that we walk a whole lot further than the gauge tells us that we walk!

We enjoyed the pool from 10-noon and 2-4.
We had a dinner cruise schedule for tonight and left about 5:30 for a 6-10 cruise.

We enjoyed the sunset at 6:15-6:30, then a dinner of barb-q-que steak kabobs and chicken. There was a dance while we cruised.

Tom and I enjoyed the top deck for awhile, watching the lights of the resorts. We were about 1/8 mile out from the coast, but far enough out to see some fish jumping.


Friday, January 15
Today, once again, I did some catching up with reading some blogs. My daughter, Sara has a blog and wrote about her animals! She had me laughing with their antics! My DIL, Amber, has a blog and wrote about Caden’s last Dr appt and how he does not want to sleep through the night. Oh, motherhood is bliss!
We enjoyed laying around the pool from 11-1,



had lunch, and then pool time from 3-5.
After a quick snack, we walked the beach and enjoyed the sunset!

What beautiful colors!


Tomorrow, we change rooms for our 2nd week here. This week has gone by so extremely fast that if we were leaving in the morning, which we have always done, it would seem like we just got here. I’m looking forward to our 2nd week. We have to redeem those 2 dinner meals!

The end of the first week! More to come soon!