OurBigAdventure

Chris: Sandra posted: Nordstrom Rack Orlando... http://bit.ly/9Hco8o

Sandra: Have you ever slept on a hotel bed and said "I HAVE to buy this mattress!"?? We just bought one. I can't wait to go to bed on Feb 11th!

I first visited a Nordstrom Rack (the outlet store for Nordstrom) in Los Angeles in 2006. I was told it would be heaven for a shoe lover like me. I wasn't exactly impressed - the store was a mess and the shoes were strewn all over the ground - sometimes missing one of the pair. I was probably there for 10 minutes and I realized I hated the store. I just don't like digging for shoes!

When I heard Orlando was getting a Nordstrom Rack by the Millenia Mall I started to have those same awful visions. But last night I decided to stop by and see my friend MJ while she was shopping over there. I was quite surprised! The store was very clean, very bright, very ORGANIZED. Not a shoe on the ground! They were all in the correct size area and they had a huge selection. I must have hit the one bad Nordstrom Rack on the wrong side of LA so many years ago.

If you like Paul Mitchell products they had a ton of stuff including the Tea Tree shampoo that my mother in law Patty got for me for Christmas. They also had a lot of Smashbox makeup and some great makeup brushes for great prices. They also had a huge selection of designer jeans, sunglasses and jewelry! I really wasn't in a shopping mood and there wasn't anything I needed at the moment or I would have bought a handful of things.

But my find of the evening was a pair of black heels - perfect for our upcoming Joshua Bell concert in Ft. Lauderdale. They are Me Too shoes - originally $88. Marked down to $39 with an extra 35 percent off and I paid just over $25! I wasn't shopping for black heels but these just happened to catch my eye. They were too cute to let go!





What do you think?

Almost a year ago we booked a cruise on the Jewel of the Seas. Teresa, our cruise agent, sent us a list of cruises and deals she had found and out of the few that she told us about we chose this one because of the list of ports that it was going to visit. We told her that if we could book an aft room with a balcony to reserve our spot. As it turned out there was a room available and our trip was planned.

The cruise was leaving out of the port of Miami which is only a four hour drive for us and it would then head to Aruba, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Grand Cayman. It was a 11 day cruise and we had only been to Grand Cayman in the past so this would be a great way to hit some new ports without changing hotel rooms.

Not to mention that we had never been to South America or Central America so we were looking forward to the experience and all of the great new ports as well. So after eleven months of waiting we were excited to finally head out for our cruise and after just loosing Duke we needed a little time away from the house to recover.

Goblin was going to stay with our neighbors who's Ridgeback Foxy was in LOVE with him. He would get some extra attention and plenty of walks and would be in his own neighborhood which should make it easy on him while we were gone.

We will be posting our trip over the next few weeks and it will be full of great photos and stories. Hopefully you will have as much fun reading about our trip as we had experiencing it.

I hope you enjoyed reading about our summer road trip. We had a great time on the trip as well as putting together all of the posts for the blog. I am currently working on posts from our recent South America/Caribbean cruise so if there was anything you liked about the Road Trip posts such as "I want more video" or "Too many photos" or whatever I would love to hear your feedback. (although it's probably too late to get you extra photos or video from this trip, it would help for future trips)

Also, if you think you missed anything about the road trip you can read the entire thing from the beginning here. The cool thing about reading it this way is that the posts are in order from top to bottom of your page so you can read it like a real story.

And finally, if you want to keep up with our blog but you don't want to try to remember to visit the site every day you can always sign up for our email list by following the link at the top of the page. The only time you will get an email is when there is a new post and you will get the new post in your email box so you won't have to guess when we might have a new post for you to read.

Don't forget, let me know what you liked and didn't like so I can add your suggestions to this next trip's posts!

On our way out of Jacksonville we stopped at a yogurt shop and Duke and Goblin got their own plain yogurt.



They dug in and would only stop when the brain freeze set in. You could see the pain in their eyes until their brains warmed up again and they dove in for more frozen goodness. Then they passed out for the rest of the ride home. We cruised through the last 3 hours of our trip fairly quickly, talking about the different places we had seen and trying to decide which ones to return to. It was such a nice relaxing end to the trip that I didn't notice the gas warning light come on, but luckily I did see it before we ran out of gas. (About 1/2 gallon before to be exact!) We pulled over with about 30 minutes to go, filled up and made the rest of the trip with no more surprises. We had traveled nearly 7,000 miles over the last 28 days and after unpacking the car and ordering a pizza we went to bed with no plans of setting an alarm clock. Tomorrow begins our recovery and slow transition back to our normal routines. We won't be back on the road again for 5 more days, then it's off to Georgia for the next two weekends this time for work, it's wedding season after all...

We caught I-75 in Albany and headed South, in all of the years I can remember driving this stretch of highway I can't remember a single time that it wasn't under construction. Either the State of Georgia can't complete the job or they are making too much money with the doubled speeding fines. Eventually we made it out of the construction and into the State of Florida where we got on I-10 to Jacksonville to drop Warren off. Duke and Goblin were soon going to have their entire seat back.

We pulled into Jacksonville and dropped Warren off, somehow the car seemed much lighter, even though he didn't really have that much stuff. We stayed long enough to have a ham and cheese sandwich and the pups got to see the cats. If it hadn't been for the glass door the introduction of Duke and Bones would have been more excitement than we were all ready to handle. Bones had his share of excitement though and wouldn't go near the door again, that's for sure!