11/14/25-11/24/25 ABC Cruise from Ft Lauderdale

Shelly retired 10/31 (Andy was supposed to but ended up not retiring until December 5). -- So we planned a retirement cruise. Cathy and Roger Hill joined us at the cruise.

We flew to Ft Lauderdale. We rented a car for one day and drove all over Ft. Lauderdale. We really enjoyed the Jungle Queen boat -- it was before the cruise. We took a boat out to a little island. The ride to the island was about 1 hour through the port where all the super yachts are along with all the fancy houses. They told us all kinds of interesting information about the houses and the yachts. They served all you can eat BBQ and had a luau afterward. It was super fun and cool.

(One story I remember from the tour -- one of the couples had been married a really long time. They asked the wife the secret to a long marriage. Her answer, lots of space. They had a 36,000 sq ft home.)

We went to Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao -- the ABC islands. On each island we enjoyed an excursion. One took us to a glass bottom boat, another was a tour around the island seeing ancient ruins and the third toured the island seeing flamingos and ending at a private beach.

We enjoyed delicious meals in the fancy dining room most nights.

We were on Celebrity Cruise line - they have an agreement to carry sports. We were able to get pizza and ice cream and watch the BYU game in our room one night.

We had a balcony room that was very nice and comfortable. They did turn down service twice daily.

At the conclusion of the cruise we stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn in Ft Lauderdale. It had a water taxi stop right outside the hotel. We were able to catch the water taxi and spent a day traveling up and down the coast. We were able to stop and get off and visit several places. It was so fun and cool.

The weather was perfect the whole trip. There was one day that rained just a little - so little that we were told about it and didn't actually experience it!

Comments

01/12/26 Just a couple of things going on

Every Monday night we do family night pizza. This has included Eldon and Diane for quite awhile now. They left on a round the world cruise and will be gone from January - May. So we sent them a pic of these two cuties and told them we missed them. Found this fun scratch off -- you can mark everywhere you've been. We want to travel in our retirement and thought this would be a fun way to keep track of it. (We also have a world map but I think 1 on the wall is enough). SO this is our little inspiration wall to remind us to get out and see the world! Holly painted this picture on her wall a couple of years ago. I added some words and music notes in vinyl to it. I'm working on turning her bedroom into my music sanctuary. The WELCOME pineapple sign was starting to peel off. I took off all the vinyl and painted the words instead. Gave it a nice refresh! We signed up for classes at the college too -- currently we are taking World travel, AI (artificial intelligence), Aging an...

03/28/26 Trip to Italy, Day 5, Saturday, Florence

We stopped at a local restaurant and got some breakfast tarts and then went to the Academia and saw the statue of David and had a tour. We returned to the same Restaurant and had panini sandwiches for lunch. Then we went to the Uffizi Museum for another tour. We had yummy gelato and took a rest for a while. We walked through the leather market and to a cool bridge. We walked around the city awhile into we came to a restaurant that was super cute and we ate outside. We had ravioli and pizza. We walked a bit more after dinner and then came back and played games. Academia Statue of David A bum shot Kevin and a cello One of the first pianos ever Early pianos Art in the Uffuzi The ceilings! Art in the Uffuzi Art in the Uffuzi Bridge of Sighs, Florence Shelly in the Bridge Florence Florence Andy and Shelly in the Uffuzi Art in the Uffuzi Florence Florence Trash bins in Florence Restaurant in Florence Outside in the street...so quaint! Restaurant in Florence Restaurant ...

08/23/25 Organ

The Washington First Ward Building was sold to the City of Washington. Part of my responsibilities included dispensing of the organ and pianos in the building (along with other things). It is an Allen, approximately 1970s. I put the organ up on the auction. There were a couple of other people that were bidding on it, but I ultimately won the bid (for under $100). On the day I won the bid I was able to arrange a mover!!! I paid $250 to have someone from the piano store move it to our house (I have no idea how he managed to get that into the back bedroom....but he did it!!!) Then, it wouldn't work. 😭 I waited for approximately 6 weeks before a guy (who had to be 80 years old) came down from SLC and repaired the organ. (So the organ wasn't actually broken, it had to do with the electricity and the house talking nicely to one another.) It took him a couple of hours to figure it out. He charged about $200 and voila! I have a working church organ. Cool, eh? Now, I got...

Griffin Family

Search This Blog