The highly anticipated day had arrived at last!!
Glen, Nani, Kathy and I were on our way to Las Vegas! It was the first stop on our BYU Cruisin' With the Cougs vacation.
We invited everyone we knew to go on this cruise with us, but Nani was the only taker. She then invited our sister-in-law Kathy to be her roommate.
We learned there was a water line break, and we hoped it would be fixed soon...
In the meantime, we parked the car at MGM Casino and were walking around to find somewhere to eat dinner. We weren't that hungry, so we ate hot dogs at a food court. Glen was in hot dog heaven.
We had to show Kathy some of the Las Vegas sites on the Strip.
Our show that evening was in the MGM Casino. Glen apparently wanted the MGM lion to be smack dab in the middle of the line-up of us girls.
After the session, we stopped at Yogurtland for our lunch. Glen was doing his best to get the camera ready for our selfie and this happened:
Okay, now here we go with our group selfie. We all look anxious about whether Glen can figure out how to get all of us AND our yogurt cups in the photo.
They all gave it a thumbs up.
I think Abe was a little sad he didn't have tickets to go with us to Donny Osmond's show that evening. Donny puts on a fabulous show and the four of us had a great time watching him performing.
The next morning was the day we were getting on the ship.
It was fun to see the big blue BYU banner hanging on the side of the ship when we stopped at every port on our cruise.
Cruisin' With the Cougs had officially begun!! Bon voyage!
We found our side-by-side cabins and got settled in.
We wandered around the ship.
Glen and I spotted Cosmo on our exploration.
As on other cruises, I really enjoyed looking at the artwork all throughout the ship.
These cows were in the hallway where our cabins were located.
There was blue BYU Cougar stuff decorating the whole ship.
Some of the athletic legends who were onboard were announced--including Cosmo.
After the show we went to our late dinner in the dining room. There were no assigned tables. We were paired up with a couple we didn't know.
Nani really got a kick out of the steward using her glasses as a prop for their towel animal.
I know it's not right to covet what others have, but when I looked at the open walkway between Kathy and Nani's beds, I was more than a bit jealous!!! No hurdling for them to get in and out of their beds!
The show we saw that evening was Cirque du Soleil's KA. Lots of fun stunts and skilled movements throughout the show. It was very enjoyable.
We were hoping beyond hope that when we got back to the hotel for the night that the water would be working. When we opened the door to our room, it felt like a hot, wet, sauna.
I had turned on the water in the shower before we left and was messing with the knob and managed to not turn the faucet off before leaving the room.
The good news was we had evidence the hot water was working as we heard the hot water running when we opened the door to our room, felt the muggy air, and saw all the steam on the bathroom mirror.
We ate breakfast the next morning at a restaurant in our casino hotel.
Nani had gone walking around the whole casino that morning for some exercise and was anxious for Kathy to see the musical alligators at the front of the casino.
We were all dressed up to go to an endowment session at the Las Vegas Temple.
Had to get a good photo of Glen and his ginormous ham steak he ordered.
Kathy was so proud of herself for being the only one who chose a smaller cup so she wouldn't eat very much, and I wanted to document that in a photo.
OOPS!! This photo captured our spoons.
Kathy noticed that in every picture we took, her cup looks like a huge popcorn bucket rather than the smallest cup of the four of us.
OOPS!! This photo captured our spoons.
So funny!!! We crack up every time we look at these photos and remember her remark.
Nani suggested we walk around Caesar's Palace.
While there, we got a phone call from this fellow telling us he was on a work trip in Vegas, was at a casino right up the road from us, and wanted to know where he could hook up with us for dinner.
Knowing our Abe like we know our Abe, Glen was sure he would enjoy spending an hour playing before dinner. Abe was all in on that idea.
He met us in front of Electric Playhouse. According to Google: it is "the premiere indoor entertainment venue featuring interactive motion-based games, activities, and events."
I gave our meal at Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux a thumbs up!
It was fun to share a meal with Abe and to know he made time and effort to spend time with us. He is a fun guy to have around.
But first, we had to drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. We stopped in Primm, Nevada to eat breakfast to break up the drive a little bit.
Breakfast took a while and by the time we were on the road again, we were anxious about making it to the ship on time.
It was a relief when we got to the port and saw people still casually making their way onboard the ship. We were so happy we made it before the gangway was raised and they set sail.
We were feeling a bit out of it when we saw other cabin doors all decorated with BYU paraphernalia... UNTIL...we saw a packet sitting on our bed with BYU magnets in it. Glen wasted no time in decorating our door.
Kathy and Glen were happy when we found the ice cream cone station.
We knew we were on the right floor of our cabin when we saw the orange helmet heads, and they helped us know which side of the ship we were on.
Half the passengers were given a white BYU wristband, and the other half were given a blue one. That designated whether you were going to the early or the late evening entertainment.
We got a blue one, so we had the early showtime. We thought that meant we had to go to dinner at the late dining time and we were bummed out about that.
We enjoyed the Cougar Kickoff! The entertainment that evening was getting us all pumped up about the fun BYU-themed week on the ship.
By that time, Nani had thrown up and wasn't feeling like eating dinner. I think she left to go to the bathroom during the meal.
Kathy left the table a couple of times thinking she was going to throw up.
Glen's stomach was not feeling great, and he chose to join Nani in not eating any dinner. He left the table early saying he was going back to the cabin because he wasn't feeling well.
My stomach was bothering me a bit--like it feels like when I eat too much red sauce kinds of foods. I figured since it was already feeling like that, I would go ahead and order spaghetti Bolognese because I loved that so much on past cruises.
I also know dairy bothers my tummy, but decided to go for the gusto and order cheesecake to top off my meal since I figured it would not be offered any other time--which it wasn't.
Let's just say that by morning all of us had been sick as could be throwing up and having diarrhea all night long--including Glen who has only thrown up two other times in our whole 47 years of married life.
It was violent sickness for all of us. We figured it had to have been the ham omelet breakfast we had eaten for breakfast for us all to be sick at the same time. We had not eaten anything the same the night before at the restaurant with Abe, nor had we all eaten anything the same since getting on the ship.
What a YUCKY way to spend Day 1 on the cruise!!!
Day 2 we were in Ensenada, Mexico. Nani, Glen, and I were feeling like we could not get too far away from a bathroom that morning, so we opted out of our city tour we had scheduled.
Kathy felt good enough that she wanted to go and ventured out to the open-top bus to take the tour by herself. We thought she was very brave.
We spent the morning in the cabin hoping we would be feeling a lot better by the afternoon because we really wanted to go on the tour we had signed up for later in the day.
This photo (featuring us two sickos) is good to show the bed situation we had to deal with all week long. Notice the very comfortable couch that we really enjoyed having in our room. It was right up against the foot of the bed on my side of the bed.
Glen had a similar hurdle on his side of the bed as the cabinet and TV were butted up right next to the end of his side of the bed.
It was very awkward and hard to try to step over the barriers, so we both ended up lying down on our respective sides of the bed, pulling our legs up, rolling over on the bed, and then righting ourselves on the other side of the bed.
This maneuver we both had to make EVERY SINGLE TIME we got IN OR OUT of the bed.
Now imagine both of us up the majority of the night "running" or in our case "rolling over the hurdle" trying to quickly get to the bathroom...over and over and over again. SHEESH!!!! It was ridiculous!!
Hurrah for all of us feeling better by the time the afternoon tour time came around.
We got on a bus that took us to the Holdman Studios. This was the one tour during the whole cruise that we really cared about.
Holdman Studios is located in Lehi, Utah and also in Ensenada, Mexico. They have been making individualized stained glass windows for temples and are in the process of making some for several temples in the construction process.
We were unable to take photos of the windows they were working on because they have not yet been publicly shown.
It was a very interesting process and it was overwhelming how many different small colored pieces of glass go into making one window. The metal strips that hold the glass in place makes up a lot of the finished product.
Hearing what goes on in the mind of the glass window artist as he thinks about the significance of everything he puts into one window was a bit mind-blowing. So much artistry and symbolism that most who look at the window will never know.
Once back on the ship, we found a taco station and were able to get some bland food to get our tummies going once again on consuming food. Loved Kathy's choice.
That day we learned that all the passengers had open seating dining. That meant we did not have to go to the late dining if we were assigned the early show. That news was worth celebrating!!!!
We joined Glen's friend Randy Bambrough and his wife Susan for an early dinner. Then enjoyed immensely the evening show featuring David Osmond and Savannah Stevenson.
Savannah is the actress portraying Mary in the Church's Bible videos.
David is Donny's nephew. At one point he explained how he and Donny had both been in the performance of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
After explaining that, David invited Donny on stage with him--via video. Together they sang a song from the play. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the song, Donny stopped the song and said there was one thing he wanted to say...
Then he shouted out, "GO COUGARS!!!!!!!" Then they picked up singing right where they left off. This was the kind of Cougar Nation fun we were having all week long. Loved it!!!
This was our towel animal we found on our bed that evening.
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