Losing weight on a cruise ship is no fun...

...especially when you're just 1 year old - or 3 - or 31.

Especially if it is caused by five days of vomiting and diarrhea (for the Banana; the Papaya had only 2 days; Husband and I had mild illness).

The first 2 days of our cruise were a lot of fun.

The last 5 nights and days could have been better.

Sometimes the things you dread really do happen.

We spent $25 on self-service laundry on the cruise ship.

At least somebody else was washing our linens every day, and cleaning our room for us.

We gave our cabin stewards generous tips. They deserved them.

We are glad to be home again, even if it is cold and the wind is gusting up to 50 MPH, and you get sand and dust-blasted every time you step outside. The children are even happier to be home.

It will be a while before we cruise again.

It wasn’t all bad. It was beautifully warm and humid in the Mexican ports of call, and we even dragged the sick kids off the ship for the last two stops (Mazatlan & Cabo san Lucas) and managed to have a good time on the beach. We saw a humpback and a few gray whales from a distance, along with several blowspouts (although my hoped-for zodiac trip with Husband was nixed). Our obstructed balcony cabins were wonderful, especially since we were stuck in them quite a bit. Just watching the water of the Pacific was lovely.

The formal night in the Goodwill dress happened before the sickness, and was a lot of fun. Husband and I had portraits taken for fun, which turned out so well that my mother-in-law plunked down $20 for one of them. And despite a clingy Banana, an open-backed stretchy dress, and no bra, I managed to avoid entertaining the entire dining room with another wardrobe malfunction*.

I’m hoping we’ve gotten all the sickness out of our systems, so that the upcoming visit of my sister and her family (from Wazoo Farm in Pennsylvania) won’t be a repeat of either our ill-fated cruise or their visit from last year.

*On our last cruise (two years ago, courtesy of my brother-in-law’s great airline benefits), I wore a silk wrap-around skirt that my mother-in-law brought me from Thailand, with a blouse that just came down to my waist. For the last 20 minutes or so of the formal dinner in the dining room, a tired and bored Papaya (less than 2 years old at the time) snuggled and went to sleep on my lap, kneading his feet into my belly. When we finally got up to leave, I took a few steps away from the table and realized, to my intense embarrassment, that the Papaya’s feet had completely undone the tie of my skirt. The entire skirt fluttered to my feet, creating quite a show for the scores of diners behind me. Since I was holding a sleeping Papaya, I couldn’t grab it, and was reduced to communicating my distress with hysterical laughter. My mother-in-law and husband grabbed the skirt and wrapped it around me as quickly as they could, then ushered me out of the dining room to the sounds of great hilarity from my fellow diners. I was comforted by the fact that at least my underpants were not old, and matched the color of the skirt I had been wearing. My brother-in-law definitely saw a lot more than he probably wished to, but at least my father-in-law missed the show. Happily, there was no repeat offense this year.