I'm going to have to do this in parts. Mostly so I don't overwhelm you but also because I have to get the photos ready and I just got my pc back this afternoon. I had to download all 500 photos. I had curves tonight and had to go grocery shopping. Joey has been pretty needy lately so I've not had much time to do this.

Oh and it's been very cool with Joey lately. He loves attention. He loves when I read him books. He says a TON of words now which is so cool - I love seeing his personality. He's very good natured. Tonight he brushed his teeth and walked to bed. We put him down, then he started to cry. So I took him into the office, rocking him for about 5 minutes, then asked if he was ready for bed, he got down, walked to his bed and went to sleep. He's such a good boy!! He is very good at saying please and thank you. I'm trying to change his food habits too - introducing rice cakes, fruits and veggies - which he is already very good about eating. I'm trying to get rid of the cakes and chips. He doesn't need that crap and either do I!

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Cruise Day 1 - Saturday

Well to start the trip off, we had a plane trip to Chicago and then another to LA. It was a LONG trip. We got up at 3am. My mom had us to the airport at 4:30 to get ready for our 6am flight. We then flew to Chicago and then to LA. We got to LA about 11am Pacific. The trip between Chicago was 3 ½ hours.


We had a long walk to baggage return. The LA airport is all under construction and very weird. They had hand drawn signs telling us to walk outside the airport to get to baggage. When we finally got there I nearly threw myself on Caroline! I was so happy to see her!!

We took a cab to the port. They allowed us to get on the ship early so we got on about 1pm, instead of 5 like it originally said. We went to eat lunch right away. YUM!


The first day we had to go to a mandatory safety training in case something happened to the ship. Of course Jason was acting his normal self (goofy) and sat there putting his tongue on the light to make it glow.

For lunch when we got on the ship we did the buffet. It was excellent. I had a ton of veggies and they were awesome. We mostly searched the ship to see what was there.

Caroline and I worked out that evening. I ran a little over a mile with her.

For dinner I had Pasta with Chicken, Mushroom soup, a fruit platter and a georgian peach cobbler.

Joe had 2 shimp cocktail, Prime Rib, Belgian Chocolate Torte and expresso.

Joe happened to look under the bed to see why it was so darn hard and found a bottle of wine. We ran over to Jason and Caroline's room next door and asked if they had wine under their bed. They didn't. Someone must have left their wine. This was like a double bottle of wine and it was from Washington State (where they live). That was awesome!!

We played a tennis like game for awhile up on deck. I had fun trying to hit the ball!

We went to bed about 8 pacific. That's like 11 our time!

Melissa posted a few of her new scrapbook pages...so that reminded me, I have a few new ones I wanted to share too.

Here is one I did of Joey called Athlete in training.

Journaling: I love these photos of you because it shows your interest in a baseball, something so simple to you but baseball means so much to your father. From 7 months of age you were able to hold a baseball in one hand. We were so amazed. Early on you were able to chuck a ball across the room. This day you took the ball and you would pick it up, toss it and then follow it across the room. Here’s a little about your development at the time these pictures were taken on 10/28/2004. Joey will be 10 mos old on November the 8th. He is now 21.2 lbs, 31-32 inches tall (very very tall), in 18 mos clothing, almost walking - he pushes the walker and walks behind it. Stands up by everything and lets go so he's free-standing. He crawls super fast. He can climb up both flights of our stairs in less than a minute. He's growing wayyyyyy too fast. Today he started to say momma (11/1/04). I think his first word was cat - whenever he sees a cat he says kttt, and he says dada but I don't think he knows what dada and mama mean yet!

Journaling: Journaling
This in your face pose is a common pose for our king of the house, Alex. He’s the oldest of our four cats and thinks and really believes he is king. He often fights the other cats to prove he is still king. His favorite things are sleeping on the cat tree, eating canned cat food (YUM), fighting with the other cats (see, I’m still king games), sleeping ON Briana (it’s the most comfortable way to sleep), and snuggling with Joe (can’t sleep on him though, he doesn’t like it!). Things he hates are hairballs (ew), Kali and TyTy (our youngest cats), us leaving for the weekend (where are the owners? I miss them!) and not being able to sleep with Briana (her darn allergies doesn’t allow it anymore). He is the only cat that tolerates Joey quite well (the other cats hide) and Alex will allow Joey to pet him and gives Joey wet nose kisses. He’s very affectionate and loves people. He will be the only cat that is still around if a stranger comes inside the house. Alex always has to check the new person out. Even though Alex is the oldest, he’s really still our baby cat. He was our first, and he has the most personality. We sure do love him!


I love this one of Joey. The journaling is large. Click on the scrapbook page to read it.


Journaling
Anyone who served in the war has a very very emotional time trying to recall the events of what happened. I asked Chester Kapa in September of 2005 what he wanted to say about this photo of him and he kindly recalled some of the events of the war.

This is Chester Kapa in the spring of 1944. He served in the 82nd Air Borne. He took parachute training Fort Bening, Georgia. Chester graduated parachute school with a PFC. They made one parachute jump, but because Japanese warplanes were coming, they were sent overseas right away. There was a Japanese spotter on both sides of the air field with a red flag, and the spotted waved it, people would jump out off the heavy equipment while the Japanese flew over and bombed and strafed the air filed. Then of course, when they were done, they would start all over again. Then they went into Manilla when the war ended and went house to house and shack to shack to see if there were any Japanese left. At the end of the war, when it was time to go home, they went by points. They sent you home based by how many points you had. They would have to sit in these little camps and wait your turn to go home because they could only take so many home at a time.The war ended in 1945.

In 1947 Chester met Norma in 1947 and were married in May 1948. Grandpa said she ‘salted and peppered his eggs just right’ and that’s why they have been married all these years. They had Fred Kapa in October 5, 1950. Then in 1953 Charlotte was born. They had to work split shift so they didn’t have to hire a babysitter. Chester would do clothes washing and farming (raising beef cattle) and would go to work in the afternoon. They worked split shift for 6 years and then moved in with Auntie. When they moved to Texas they sold their brick home, but hated the hot summers and came back in 1971 and built the house they are in currently in 1972. Chester retired in 1982 when they gave him a buyout deal and took care of Joe Fisher Sr. (Joey). Chester would always lay in bed with Joe and Chester remembers one night they had a slight earthquake and the pictures moved on the wall. Joey was always hard to get to sleep, so he would drive him in the 1976 van to try to get him to sleep.

Yep, I'm finally home.

I don't have photos yet because our pc is at the computer doctor. It kept shutting itself off because it was so hot. It just had a ton of dust in the fans over the cpu. The weird part about it is it's only 4 months old!! So I'll get my pc on Tuesday and then talk a bit more about our trip and show photos. Be prepared. I took a TON of photos!!!!! I think I took about 500?

A little about our trip though. We were extremely happy to see Caroline and Jason. We realized that 3 years apart is just too much. Before we left we were already trying to crunch numbers to see if we could make this a yearly thing, even if it means just doing something smaller in scale. We just get along soooo well with them. Caroline and I are like the best buds and Joe and Jason get along perfectly. This is very good because Joe is kinda shy when he doesn't know someone, and he doesn't really hang out with his friends like he used to, so the fact that him and Jason get along so well is awesome. It makes for some good times when we all hang out.

We met some really great people on our cruise. I'm going to adopt one of the ladies I met - Clara. She and her husband Joe sat with us during our dinners each night and I was ready to adopt her! She's so kind and interesting to talk to. She has a total of 12 children - 6 are hers and 6 are Joe's. You can only imagine what an interesting family life she has! Of course they are all grown now but still, holiday's must be fun!!

Our excursions were fun. We did two city tours in Puerto Vallerta and Mazitlan. In Cabo we did sportfishing - and caught NADA. Very sad!!

We couldn't wait to come home yesterday. We traveled ALL day. We got off the boat at 8:30. Our flight was out of LA at 11am Pacific. We arrived in Chicago at 7 eastern, and then into Detroit at 8pm. We got home about 9:30 and took off to up north. We were sooo happy to see Joey I swore we kissed him a billion times. He woke up of course and played with us for a few hours - well until 1am. Gosh did we miss him. We agreed - 7 days is the absolute longest we could go on vacation. Any longer and it's too much.

Today we just hung out. I slept a bit. Joey was full of piss and vingar today. Not sure why. I think it could be because he was up a bit last night or he was so excited to see us today. We had a few meltdowns today too. I think he's just getting to that age. It's 21 months now!

He now says Helecopter, say cow instead of mooo...We will say, wow, what is that and he used to say mooo instead of cow. Now he says cow. He knows how to say no for sure. We still have our pillow fights, he enjoys those. We started to pull out all the cold weather clothes from the basement. It's just so cold anymore. It was 90 degrees in Mexico, but here it's in the 50's! YUCK!!!

Oh and we avoided Otis the hurricane. We took a long route around it. We hit it one night about 4am. I woke at 2am with some rocking of the boat but not at 4am. Anyhow, we had no rain our entire trip and it was in the 90s. It was so beautiful. We had a great time.

I will write more later. I'm most excited to get the photos off my camera and share a few with you. I weighed myself when we got back and my scale says I only gained 2 lbs. That's pretty good, considering the average person gains 6-10!!