It has been a while since I've posted The Friday 15. It's hard to downsize when you aren't home! But now I'm back and today is a wrap up of the year. Here is everything I discarded or donated or sold off in 2018. Yay for downsizing!
January
eBay sales
emptied my computer trash
February
March
April
May
June
July
0
August
September
October
November
No photos, but to my daughter went two pair of pants, one sweatshirt, two Christmas ornaments from upcoming tutorials, four stuffed fabric pumpkins and one candy corn trick or treat bag from the tutorials earlier in October, and one rope toy for her dog. And a fidget quilt went to our neighbor.
December
Just this wrap up.
Between the things I have photos of and the things I wrote down but didn't take pictures of, over 400 things left my home this year.
While we’re not quite done with our last cruise of the year, we have our last port today (Cabo San Lucas) so I’m calling it close enough to do a wrap-up of our travel year. It was a biggie and boy, it was a whirlwind! We spent close to 120 nights away from home. We traveled during the months of February, May, June, August, September, October, November, and December.
Here are the numbers:
11 cruises
7 different ships
90 nights at sea
12 flights
19 hotels
7 National Parks
2 NASCAR races
2 Major League Baseball games
3 road trips
This year, just by cruise ship, we visited:
Amber Cove, Dominican Republic
Barcelona, Spain
Belize twice
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico twice
Costa Maya, Mexico
Cozumel twice
Fort Lauderdale, Florida seven times
Grand Cayman three times
Grand Turk
Icy Strait Point, Alaska
Juneau, Alaska twice
Ketchikan, Alaska
Livorno/Pisa, Italy
Los Angeles twice
Manzanillo, Mexico twice
Mazatlán, Mexico twice
Nassau, Bahamas
Ponta Delgada, Portugal in the Azores
Princess Cays in the Bahamas twice
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico twice
Roatan, Honduras
Rome/Civitavecchia, Italy
San Francisco three times
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Seattle, Washington twice
Skagway, Alaska twice
St. Maarten twice
St. Thomas three times
Vancouver, Canada three times
Victoria, Canada,
Whittier, Alaska
I can’t believe I’m typing these words, but it was too much travel too spread out. 120 days over eight months again? No thank you. Squeeze those 120 days into four solid months of travel? Heck, yeah!
I have a few things worth mentioning about the year. Let’s call this list the best of the best:
*Most heartwarming feeling: Learning what happened after I posted a video to YouTube of our cabin steward on the Caribbean Princess making towel animals. His family back home was so excited to see him making towel animals on the internet. His six year old son couldn't believe his dad knew how to do it and his wife shared it with family and friends and posted it to Facebook. I am happy I was able to be part of him feeling like a movie star.
*Friendliest taxi drivers: Key West, Florida. Hands down. Nowhere else even came close.
*Best itinerary change due to a hurricane: When Hurricane Isaac caused our ship to be rerouted to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
*Best last-minute change of plans: Instead of grabbing breakfast at Subway we decided to head into Talkeetna, Alaska for breakfast instead. And ran across this beauty called Denali.
*Best back-of-the-car picnic: In a snowy but sunny parking lot in Olympic National Park.
*Most interesting barber shop for two middle-aged white people: The barber shop/salon in Grand Cayman where hubby got a shave.
*Longest lasting sunset: In the Caribbean, of course. Here are just a few minutes of it, but it went on and on and on.
So what’s next? Well, we need to get hubby into physical therapy to gain some strength and mobility. As for me, wrestling with the bathroom door on the transatlantic voyage may be requiring a visit to my orthopedic surgeon. He’s already done seven surgeries on me so might as well make it an even number and go for eight, right? I will also have some exciting news to share about the encouraging words project and a major woman’s magazine. I’ll announce the details soon. Otherwise we'll be back to our regular life. I'll keep making crafting videos, keep writing about cruising and travel, and keep downsizing our life.
Speaking of cruising…we currently have no other cruises booked. Like 0. For the first time ever we will be leaving a ship without any future plans to be on another ship. While I could certainly jump on a ship next week and stay for the next few months, hubby’s ready for the comfort of his rocking chair and TV for an extended period of time. If you have a disability, or care for someone with a disability, you know how tough travel can be on both parties. It can be frustrating, challenging, and downright exhausting. After spending this year getting him out into the world again, I suspect the coming year will be instead be spent at home where he feels most comfortable.
Thanks for following along, and hope to see you from a cruise ship sometime in the future. Hopefully sooner than later.
Disclosure: Deb's Days is a participant in affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to affiliated sites. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you new sewing and crafting content.
Looking for more Christmas ideas? Check out these other projects!
Looking for other Christmas projects? Check out these ideas!
You can find the step-by-step how to tutorial for the fabric snowman Christmas tree ornament sewing project right here:
Well, the encouraging word money pockets made it to the Wake Show today. All seven of them were read aloud, and I found out that the dollars will be going to charity. Double score! I’m going to continue adding one each day to their comment box for this upcoming cruise as well.
Tomorrow we’ll be back in San Francisco and we will find a new bunch of cruisers showing up. There are only 20 of us in transit passengers staying on for the next voyage. I do believe that’s one of the smallest numbers we’ve seen. We originally were planning on heading home tomorrow, too. But when we realized that once we got home we’d have to shovel snow and get groceries and Christmas shop and wrap presents and put up our tree and then take it down two weeks later it all just didn’t seem worth the effort. We’re basically skipping the pre-Christmas junk this year. As long as we’re home for Christmas day (per our daughter’s orders) that’s all that matters.
As for blogging during this last cruise of the year, I think I’ll be skipping it. I’m calling it a Christmas present to myself. I spent way too much time this past year blogging live from the ships. It takes more time than you could imagine making sure I had experiences to share, searching out answers to readers’ questions, writing informative posts, and taking photos other cruisers would find of interest. While I loved every minute of it (well, most every minute of it) I’m desperately in need of a cruise where I can relax and enjoy it as a cruiser and not as a writer, reporter, blogger, or photographer. (Thanks, slow Grand Princess internet, for making that decision an easier one.)
However, if anything new or exciting comes up I’ll come back here and write about it. I will also do an end of the year wrap up sometime next week. I’ve already started on that post and let me just say this: Oh. My. Goodness. What a year of travel it was.
Just to give you an idea, here are the numbers I’ve figured so far:
11 cruises
7 different ships
90 nights at sea
12 flights
19 hotels
7 National Parks
2 NASCAR races
2 Major League Baseball games
3 road trips
Whew. Like I said, more to come on that in the next week.
Tomorrow we have San Francisco, then three sea days on our way back to Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlán, and Cabo San Lucas. Then two sea days, a day in San Francisco, then home to cold and snowy Boise, Idaho. As said in Frosty the Snowman...busy, busy, busy.
For me that’ll mean busy being a cruiser, not busy being a blogger. At least for 10 days. See you soon.
