spend most of the weekend at children's hospital with the poplion family.

a little sweet 8 year old girl named amber poplion got very sick on vacation in hot springs, arkansas and had to be flown quickly to the hospital in dallas saturday morning. five days later she is still very sick and the cause is unknown.

the poplion's are a very warm family and we recently have become close friends with them.

please say a special prayer for amber's recovery.

we just got back on saturday from our 5 night cruise out of galveston, texas on the carnival ecstasy.

wow. we all (the whole family of five) had a super time on the cruise. it really was a very relaxing and fun trip.

the food was endless and luckily i only gained back 1.5 pounds! i mean really endless.

the buffet food was pretty good, but nothing to get excited about. where the cruise line really shined was in the main dining room. the food was fabulous. the service was even better. we had a waiter from peru named martin (see photo of martin with the boys) who was really spectacular.

keep in mind that the boys (i have been told that i am not exactly the best here) are usually a bit to handle all together and they can pack away a lot of food (hmmm, i thought you were supposed to get fat when you ate that much) when given the chance.

well, the cruise was the ultimate test of that.

see, in the dining room, you can order as much as you want. you want two entrees, no problem. you want five appetizers, whatever. i think many people have no clue about this when they are new to cruising.

so ruthie and i had been before and we told the boys they could order as much as they wanted.

well, i think our average (in fairness, ruthie pretty much stuck to a few appetizers and one entree) was seven appetizers and 2.5 entrees per person over the entire cruise for dinners. plus there was one night when jon, ruthie and i went to the midnight extravaganza (with the ice sculptures and food carvings) so that day the three of us had 4 meals!

we asked martin who had ordered the most food in the dining room and he said "your table". then we asked him who ordered the most food on the whole cruise and he said "your table". well, i guess we got our money's worth out of this cruise. martin, you were great. he told us which food was the best and never flinched when we ordered 11-12 items overall each.

so besides the food, we woke up for early morning sunsets, told long walks on the decks, used the steam rooms and saunas, went to shows, karaoke, comedy shows and had a great time.

the ship stopped in mexico in the yucatan at a port called progresso and at cozumel.

in progresso we took a local bus to the capital merida (21 miles) and walked around among the true locals far away from all the tourists. had real mexican tacos in a market and did a bit of shopping.

in cozumel (which ruthie and i had been to the day after we got engaged) we got a cab to the mr. sancho beach and swam in the gulf, played ping pong, buried jon in the sand, had a few beers and ate a bit. it was very relaxing and calming.

on the way back from galveston, we dropped david off at a&m, visited with amy for 5 minutes and came home.

now they all want to go on another cruise.

we just got back from milwaukee, wisconsin (see really good family vacation to milwaukee) and i had promised my lovely wife ruthie that i would post a picture of our friend bart koenig as "soon as we got back".

yup, this is a honey do.

Click image for larger view

we met bart years ago because his company, velocitie integration, inc. was doing business with ruthie's city of cedar hill, texas. we went to dinner then and then again when he was in town the next time a year or so later.

so, when we went to milwaukee, ruthie called bart and he happened to be coming from green bay down near milwaukee for business when we would be there. so we met for breakfast and took this photo.

good seeing you again bart. maybe one day we will get to meet your family too.

Click image for larger view

it's just 74-1/2 hours until we board the carnival ecstasy in galveston, texas for a 5 night cruise with our entire family of 5!

we have been looking so forward to this cruise for a long time and now it's almost time to actually start packing and making final plans for the voyage.

it will be my 3rd cruise, the second one for ruthie and the first cruise ever for josh, david and jon.

note: for sanity reasons, we opted for our own cabin and the boys will be sharing a cabin. it's a big ship and we can get lost (see large image) if the noise level gets too high.

ruthie and i plan to just relax, read and explore the ship, plus take many cool shipboard photos. i'm bringing my small sony portable and my Canon DSLR camera, so i should be able to get lots of great shots.

josh, david and jon have vowed to gobble down a huge share of the vast amounts of food on the ship. there is a 24 hour pizza joint, a (read a review) very good hamburger stand, buffets and formal dining available for all to enjoy. they also plan to spend many hours in the workout room to balance this out.

more on the cruise after we get back on august 23rd.

sixflags48 is the user name of my nephew dillon moskowitz. it turns out he is quite a youTube video contributor with 84 videos currently hosted on the site.

this is his video he created in tribute for nascar driver dale earnhardt sr. after he died in a crash in a race.

i would have embedded the video, but dillon has embedding turned off, so here is the video at youTube.

way to go dillon.