We usually dread February.  It’s the shortest month, but also usually the dreariest here in DC.  It’s the month that finally feels like winter and spring seems really far away.  So this year we packed our February full of fun things and before we knew it, the month was over!

It all started on Valentine’s Day.  Frank’s sisters, Marie and Denise, came down to DC with their families.  Yep, that’s right — 7 people visiting our tiny little house.  Everyone was worried about there being enough room except for Frank and me.  We know how many people we can pack in to our house.  And there was still room for more, so hopefully next time Tara and Frank A. will join everyone too.    Photos from their visit are here.  We started on Saturday with a BBQ dinner in honor of Robert’s birthday.  It seems we only get to see their friends James and Raylene when Denise and Robert are in town, so we were glad for the excuse to have them over.  On Sunday we all went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.  We had brought Nick there on a previous visit, but he was a good sport about seeing it all again.  And Daniel and James loved the big planes.

After that we headed to Ashburn for a delicious dinner made by cousin Matthew.  As a bonus, his brother Philip was visiting from FL so it was a big cousin reunion.

Monday started off with a game of Trouble and a game of Scrabble and then it was off to a Chinese restaurant for lunch and the American History Museum.  We had fun looking at the newly restored flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner, the Lincoln exhibit (it was President’s Day weekend), the transportation exhibit, and the kids’ hands-on room.  That night we ate dinner at home and played a couple rousing games of Pictionary.  I feel like I should scan in some of the winning (and losing) drawings, but they’d probably lose something in the translation…  I had forgotten how much fun Pictionary is.  On Tuesday Marie and her kids headed back to Long Island and I went to work.  I believe everyone else went to the zoo, but there are no pictures so I’m not sure.    We had a nice dinner at home on Tuesday night and played some Candyland.  On Wednesday Denise and her family left and Frank got us ready for our cruise while I was at work.

Then, on Thursday morning at 6 AM we left the cold, rainy, yucky weather to go on a cruise!  We almost didn’t make it, though.  Our flight was at 8:30, and we got to the airport by 7 AM so we had a nice relaxing wait for our plane.  We boarded the plane on time and the doors were shut by 8:25.  We taxied to the runway and then sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And then the pilot came on to say that the wind had shifted and instead of taking off to the south, we’d be taking off to the north.  But we were too heavy to take off to the north — in DC the flight path rules are very strict and if a plane takes off to the north it has to take off at a steep angle and make an immediate sharp left so it doesn’t go over the White House or the Mall.  So, we were fine for taking off to the south, where it’s a straight shot, but too heavy to go north.  So, it was back to the terminal at around 10:00 AM to offload some weight.  We taxied to the terminal and refueled, but they didn’t unload anything.  And then all of a sudden we were heading back to the runway.  It seems that the wind had shifted again and we could now go south.  But, on our way there, the wind shifted again.  Oh, and it was also raining, so our stopping distance was increased and now we couldn’t take off to the south anymore either.  Agh.  But they “massaged the numbers” (those are the pilot’s words, not mine!) and all of a sudden we were going to be taking off to the north.  Let’s get this straight.  It’s now 11:30 AM.  We’ve been on the plane for 2.5 hours.  No weight has been lost.  We have added fuel.  And we’re taking off to the north, which we weren’t allowed to do 2 hours ago.  Um yeah.  I was not feeling so good about this flight.  But there was nothing I could do but sit and stare at the ceiling and hope we kept going upward.  So that’s what I did, and despite a ton of wind and bumps and lots of sideways motion (which I hate!), we did make it up into the air.  And we landed with plenty of time to get on the ship.

So, after that scary start, we were finally on the cruise ship.  But wait!  More drama!  It seems that in Italy a woman’s official documents all use her maiden name, even if she changed her name when she got married.  So, Frank’s mom’s cousin’s wife has a different official last name than the one we used when we bought her ticket for the cruise.  They weren’t going to let her on the boat!  Frank and I lost track of his family at customs, so we went ahead and boarded assuming all was well.  Then we saw his parents on the boat, but not the cousins!  And the boat was to leave in an hour (at 5 PM).  We did our mandatory lifeboat drill at 4:30 but they still weren’t on the boat.  In fact, Frank and I didn’t know if they had made it at all until we got to dinner at 6 PM.  We were extremely relieved to see them at the dinner table.  It turns out that they were able to call their son in Italy to have him fax over a copy of their marriage license.  Thank goodness he was near their house, had a key, and was able to find it exactly where they told him it would be.  Once the stress had worn off a bit, we were able to laugh at the idea that if our flight had been later and if they hadn’t gotten the marriage certificate, Frank’s parents would have been the only ones on the cruise and we would all have been hanging out in their condo for 4 days without them.

The cruise itself was great (photos are here).  I had never been on a cruise and wasn’t sure if I would love it or hate it.  I think 4 nights is the perfect length of time for a cruise — just enough time to really relax but not so long that you start to go stir crazy.  There were 14 decks on this cruise ship — that’s 14 stories that the passengers use and doesn’t include all of the working levels.  It was enormous!  It had miniature golf, several pools, an ice skating rink, a theatre that was bigger than my high school’s auditorium, a casino, multiple restaurants, and probably lots of things we didn’t ever even see.  The food was delicious (although we ate way too much) and the weather was perfect the whole time.  We had 1 day on land in Cozumel, Mexico.  There we rented jeeps and took a tour of the island.  We saw an old Mayan temple and went snorkeling.  We saw a sea turtle, were close enough to touch a very large barracuda, and saw lots of other fish and some very pretty coral.  All in all, the cruise was a lot of fun and it may become part of our regular mid-winter Florida excursion.

Unfortunately Frank got the flu at some point on the trip, and on Tuesday night he started to get sick.  He spent the remainder of February on the couch under a heap of blankets trying to get rid of his fever.  It finally went away on the first day of March.  But now we know how to spice up February and make it a month we can look forward to rather than a month we dread.  We’ll just make sure Frank loads up on vitamin C.