We are in Chicago visiting Jason, Jenny and the Grandgirls. Ava celebrated her second birthday with an Elmo theme. Noelle who is seven months had a great time too. We will be here a week to help with a bathroom renovation and spend more time with Ava and Noelle. Such fun. We head back to NH on the 29th.

March 14

We are in our rental in Fairhope, Alabama. It is a cute little two bedroom house with a big deck and a pier our into Mobile Bay. We are sharing it with our friends from Michigan. We have been having a great time exploring Fairhope, a charming artsy town with great little shops and restaurants. We have been eating some great seafood. Today we visited Mobile where we walked around the historic district and visited Oakleigh, a beautiful southern home that is now a museum. The weather has been warm, 70's, and sunny. Great for lunches outside at little fish restaurants. We will be here until Wednesday when we head to Chicago to see Jason, Jenny and the grandgirls. We will be there for Ava's birthday.

Tuesday, 3/9 We are leaving Sarasota today.

It has been a fun visit. Yesterday we went to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. It was very interesting. There was an exhibit of Rainforest Masks individually carved and painted by the people of Boruca, Costa Rica. There were artist/craftsmen there at the exhibit carving and painting the masks. It was amazing and they were beautiful. We especially enjoyed all the orchids in the large greenhouse. Today we head north, visiting more friends. We check into our rental on Mobile Bay in Fairhope Alabama, on Wednesday, where we will be for a week.

March 5, Sarasota, FL

We are in Sarasota. It is not warm here, in the 50's but sunny. Today we spent five hours at the Ringling Museum. An amazing place. First we toured the 36 room mansion of John and Mable Ringling built like an Italian villa, on the Sarasota Bay. It was finished in 1926 and is very lavish with gold leaf furniture, lots of marble and art work everywhere.

We then toured two circus museums. There was just so much to see including a replica of the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, complete with eight main tents, 152 wagons, 1,300 circus performers and workers, and 800 animals. It is in 3/4 inch to foot scale and occupies 3,800 sq feet. It is the worlds largest miniature circus!

We also spent almost 2 hours in John Ringling's Art Museum with hundreds of paintings and sculptures he collected. What a day!

Sunday, 2/28 Costa Rica

Our ship docked at Puerto Limon and we took an hour bus ride onto the Veragua Rain Forest on a narrow, rutted, muddy road a bus should never have been on; rather harrowing! This area of Costa Rica gets over 200 inches of rain a year with humidity at 94%. It is always wet and it was rainy while we were there. We took a tram through the canopy and down into the rain forest where we walked to a waterfall. In the picture of us we are standing by a huge tree root. In the picture of the ferns, the leaves are each as big as Paige! We also visited a research center where they study frogs, snakes, butterflies and insects. We were able to see exhibits of all of these. We saw many poisonous snakes and frogs in glass enclosures. We walked trough a hummingbird garden with hummingbirds buzzing all around us. Another fun encounter was a three toed sloth high in a tree. It was a great excursion.

Saturday, 2/27 Panama Canal

We were up at 6:00 am on the bow of our ship to watch as we entered the first lock of three that would lift us 85 feet from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake. There was another cruise ship in front of us and a large container ship behind us as we went through. Each lock is only 110 feet wide and 1000 feet long. For us that left very little room on each side. There are two "mules" which are small trains, on each side and two on each side in the back, 8 in all that are attached to the ship by cables to keep the ship centered so that they do not damage the walls. The ships travel through on their own power. It took us about 2 hours to go through the 3 locks. Once in the lake we turned around and came back through the same locks as we were not going through to the Pacific. Ships are charged by size, our ship has to pay $300,000 each time it goes through the locks. The canal has been open for 95 years and runs much the same way as in the beginning. It was run by the USA until 1999 when it was tuned over to Panama. They are building a set of new locks for bigger ships.

Thurs. 2/25 We are in Aruba. Our shore excursion took us first to a natural bridge, some interesting rock formations and a lighthouse in the northern arid part of the Island. Then we took a bus to the touristy section where all the big hotels were. We took a boat out to the Seaworld Explorer, a glass bottom boat. We traveled out to the shipwreck of the Antilla where we saw many interesting fish, and the sunken German ship. It was a fun tour. Tonight's entertainment on the ship was a steel band. Great music. The entertainment on our ship has been excellent.

Wed. 2/24 We are at Willemstad in Curacao. A lovely city with very colorful buildings. Hot and sunny. We took a trolley tour of the town and learned lots of history. It is the Dutch capitol. Did some window shopping and then went back to the ship to cool off in the pool. We are enjoying the many historical and cultural lectures on our ship. The meals are six star and amazing.