Wednesday, Dec 27th

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The time has finally arrived for the vacation we’ve been planning since last summer. We have enjoyed a happy Christmas Season with our friends and especially with our family, but now it’s time to go on a cruise. The St Louis weather turned sharply colder a few days before Christmas and we even had a White Christmas this year. This morning the temperature in St Louis was 4 degrees F – our friends from Minnesota will probably say it was even colder for them. But all this is just going to make the upcoming warm-water cruise even more enjoyable – sorry for everyone who is being left behind! We made all the reservations & bookings well ahead of time, and we submitted the required paperwork & payments a couple of months ago, but to keep the Christmas excitement alive we delayed actually packing until yesterday afternoon. Hopefully we have not forgotten anything essential, but the bags are stuffed so that’s all we could take anyway. We are very appreciative that that our daughter Valerie volunteered to take us to the airport today. She picked us up about 11:00 and we got to the airport in plenty of time for our 2:00 flight. We worked our way through the airport rituals of baggage check-in and TSA inspections (luckily we were both preapproved by the TSA so we kept our shoes on). We still had time to get a pizza to share at the terminal before boarding our Southwest flight. We did not have a direct flight but instead had to make a connection in New Orleans. It was impossible to miss our connection because our out-bound flight was the same plane as we arrived on, but we still had to get off and board again later. Both flights were completely full however we were fortunate that all went as smoothly as we could hope and we landed in Ft Lauderdale Florida about 7:30 local time. Our luggage arrived safe and sound and we arranged for the free shuttle to the hotel. It took a while because the airport was really busy, but we got to the hotel a little before 9:00. We checked in and David went to a nearby store and got us some sandwiches and chips for dinner. Now we are just resting and will hit the bed soon. It is surprising how tiring it can be just sitting on an airplane. But we are all set to really start our adventure tomorrow. By the way, it was 74 degrees when we landed. Good night.
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Comments

[JanelGarvin]

Happy Birthday
Have a wonderful time on your cruise and a very happy birthday!