A few months ago, my friend, Lana, came up with the idea for a huge ladies trip as part of her fortieth birthday celebration – a three day, four night cruise to Mexico. So, I have truthfully never wanted to go on a cruise.  The thought of one both repulsed me and terrified me, and so I had never even contemplated it.  But a very short cruise with a bunch of my new friends, and to a country I had never been to, intrigued me.  I decided to go, especially because it was only $179 per person. And then Kevin gave me the idea of taking Lily with me, and so I gave it to her as one of her Christmas gifts.

Well, last weekend, it was finally the time for our adventure.  A group of eight of us carpooled to Galveston, with me as the driver. We had so much fun on the drive, especially as we bonded over me having to off-road for a bit to avoid a huge traffic jam, and two different defensive driving maneuvers I had to complete on the freeway when random things were in my lane (sometimes blown into the lane at the last second). Luckily, the Lord was watching out for us, and we made it safely. And then there was the crazy hour long line and boarding process.  Wow.

We eventually made it onto the ship, met at our muster station to learn about evacuation procedures, and got to unload our things at our little state room. It was a cute little room on the first floor and the lowest floor you could go on the ship. We dropped off our things and headed upstairs to get some food, as we were starving.

When we made it back upstairs, we managed to find most of the forty ladies in our group, all with matching cruise shirts. Most of them I didn’t know, but luckily there were about ten of us from our ward, and so I met new people, it was an awesome chance to get to know these new friends of mine even better.

When we got back up to the main deck, it was just in time for us to depart, and it started a party with dancing and fun. Lily loves to dance, and so she left us behind to find herself a place where she could spread out and do her thing.  She has no fear or inhibitions, and danced her socks off – and got quite the workout – ha ha!

We were on a Carnival Cruise and were on the Carnival Breeze ship. It was a fun ship, and I guess it was on the smaller side as cruise ships go.  I guess that Carnival is known for being more of a party ship, and although it was fun and had some cool things, it wasn’t the best. But hey, that was part of the reason it was so cheap ;).

One of my favorite things about being on the ship, was watching the sun set and looking out at the ocean.

Every evening, we had dinner and since our whole group was connected, even though we had seating assignments at dinner, after the first night, we were able to move around to different places in our group. I did love spending time with my core group of ladies though.  Dinners were a bit of an adventure, as that tended to be when the rocking of the ship was worse, or maybe we just noticed it more.  And because it was a Carnival cruise, the food was hit or miss, and so I followed my sister’s advice and ordered multiples of different things, like two appetizers, multiple desserts, and even more than one main dish.  Ha ha!

It was a fun first day and a great start to off our Mexico cruise adventure!