The cruise that may not be

Well, Stephen and I have had a cruise planned all summer that leaves Monday, Sept 1st and returns Sat Sept 6th. We fly out of Pensacola early early Monday morning, and arrive in Fort Lauderdale, where the cruise is departing. The *tentative* schedule is:

Monday: 5pm leave port
Tuesday: Key West (I went on a cruise for my last spring break in college with friends, right after I got engaged, and we stopped in Key West. I have been to Key West like 4 times, and love it down there. My favorite trip though was when our cruise stopped there and we rented scooters and rode all around the island. It was indescribably fun and a wonderful way to see the entire island, and I think it was only $40 at the time! Anyway, I HAD to find a cruise that stopped there, again, so that Stephen could experience this!)
Wednesday: Cozumel - never been
Thursday: Belize - heard some good things about Belize, and, besides, it just sounds exotic and fun
Friday: Day at Sea
Saturday: 6am boat docks back at Fort Lauderdale and we catch a mid-day flight back to P'cola

*WARNING*SELFISH PRAYER REQUEST*
*WARNING*SELFISH PRAYER REQUEST*

ummmm that BOTH Gustov and Hanna just disappear??? One seems to affect our flying out of Pensacola, and the other affects us getting back to Fort Lauderdale next weekend. If we dont make the flight, we get our money back from our cruise, thanks to a $58 insurance package, that I am so very glad I last minute decided to purchase last month, and we should get credit for flights. The cruise appears that it will embark no matter what the weather, just possibly adjusting the ports it visits. In the meantime, I guess our little ship will just bob its way around the roughed up waters of the Caribbean until weather passes. Our fault for booking a cruise during hurricane season, huh? Stephen and I both thought it would be interesting if the ship has to make an emergency dock in Mobile's cruise terminal since Hanna will most likely be plaguing the eastern shores of Florida at the time our cruise should be ending. Then, we could just hop off and forget the flight! Sounds OK to me, but I doubt it will turn out that way.

This time, I do plan on packing a couple changes of outfits in our carry on, since our last trip went as follows:

Flight out of Mobile at 12 noon with a connecting flight in Atlanta and then to Venice, Italy. Well, this one day in March 2007 just happened to be the one day in Mobile history that tornadoes plagued the city (at least to my memory). Our flight was delayed by about 6 hours or so, I was a wreck, we missed our connecting flight in Atlanta by a looooong shot, had around 15 minutes to catch a flight in Atlanta to Paris, then once in Paris they gave us about another 20 minutes to make it all the way across every check point in the Paris airport (um not gonna happen) so we missed THAT flight to Venice. So we sat around in the hot airport for a few hours, to then catch another flight to Venice, arriving around 9pm that night, instead of the originally planned 7:30am. And to top it off, they lost our luggage. Upon arriving at the hotel, the man I had talked to the night before obviously didnt understand English and thought I said we were canceling our reservation, when in fact I was just informing him we would be late that night. That worked out ok, we got their only available room: their "penthouse" (which is more like a nice HoJo in the states). But a bed is a bed and we were pooped! We washed our clothes in the bathtub/sink and slept in AirFrance-issued Tshirts. The next day, still no signs or word of our luggage, so we spent our now only full day in Venice shopping on AirFrance's dime to find clothes that would last us the rest of our 10 day stay in Italy. We had 100Euro a piece to spend, and that only bought a coat and a shirt for Stephen, and some pants and two shirts for me. When we arrived back at our hotel that night, our bags were in our room and you would have thought someone said we won the lottery.

Needless to say, I will NOT EVER EVER travel somewhere without packing a change of clothes in my carry on!!!!

On to B:
Bennett will be completely taken care of next week, I know, splitting up his time between two loving, generator-manned houses of his grandparents. I am going to stock up on formula and babyfood today, not just for when we are gone but also for reserves in case we get hit by another hurricane!! I don't know what I will do without seeing B for that many days, and I plan on making some phone calls when we stop in Key West, but I have a feeling Stephen and I are going to be having so much fun: just us, relaxing and taking a much needed break (on his part at least!) that we will be "OK" with the whole not-seeing-Bennett for a couple days. I use the term "OK" loosly. You can tell I am trying to talk myself into believing this :)

I am also praying that Stephen's and my sinus infections are gone by then too! We both have had two shots of steriods in our rumps, 5 days worth of antibiotics, and who knows what else the doctor pumped in us. Thankfully, B shows no signs so we hope this time away from him will also give his little immune system a chance to pump itself up so he doesn't get sick!

Bon Voyage! (I hope!)

(Edited to add: Erin and Momma, you would be so proud. I actually did something I haven't done since I was living under the Setzler roof (and living under my mom's normalcy): I made a list of what I was packing, detailing what I planned to wear each day and night. I even packed some things (bathing suits, etc) in ziploc bags in order to save space. I know. Get me a cookie)