Puerto Rico - Land of Enchantment!

After way too many years, I finally went back to my roots - Puerto Rico!

I'd brought up the idea last year about doing a trip there to visit family and it be three generations of us girls. (My Mom, my daughter, and me!) Since we're all getting older, I figured this might be the last chance for something like this. And I wanted my daughter to learn more about where we all came from.

Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean. It's small, only 100 X 50 miles, but chock full of culture and exotic foods and more! Better yet, you don't need a passport to go there. Puerto Rico (meaning Rich Port) is a property of the US - so while it might seem foreign, it's still part of the old US of A!

We spent a little over a week there, staying with my uncle. We drove all over the place. And like usual, I took a ton of pictures! heh heh. I'll share a few with you and also links to the albums in case you want to see more. (Albums have a slideshow feature!)

View from my uncle's porch. So awesome! He lives outside the city of Caguas. 

This is the beach at Luquillo. The colors of the water are gorgeous!

El Morro is an old Spanish fort in San Juan. A huge fort! Lots of history here.

San Juan has a section where all the roads are as they were in the past. Built from the weights carried in the ships as ballast once they came to port to fill up with goods from the island.

El Yunque (The Forest) is a protected rain forest. You will have never seen so much GREEN! :)

Have several more albums - Caguana Indian Ceremonial Park, Camuy Caves, Guajataca, Ponce, and Other.

Hope you get a chance to visit the island someday!

Disney Cruises are the BOMB!

I missed making my monthly post in April - apologies!

Never saw the reminders between working a ton of hours at the day job and then going on...VACATION. Woot!

Hubby and I took a Disney Cruise about 8 years ago and had been dying to go back ever since. This year, we got to go again. Awesome!

One the things that make Disney Cruises so awesome. Every night, when you return to your room, you find some sort of towel origami. They are so cute!!!!

The ship itself is all kinds of awesome. Here's a pic of the ceiling in the main theater. They did live shows almost every night here. We even got to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 3D on opening weekend here! (Sweet!)

You never doubt where you are on this boat. But it is also incredibly fancy. And they go out of their way to have programming everyday for the kids, the teenagers, and the adults. 

Got to see all sorts of things at the ports of call. This big guy was at the archaeological dig site for X'Tel's temple on Cozumel.

We even went to HELL! Lots of great t-shirts and postcards loving the joke. lol.

Grand Cayman also had a tortoise sanctuary. They were so cute!

As you guys probably know by now, I took a whole bunch more pictures than these randomly chosen ones. Heh heh.  If you'd like to see them, Google + has them in a collage you can drill down on for my *ahem* awesome commentary. As if! :)

I grouped them into four albums: Miami, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, and Food/Ship. 

Hubby and I are ready to go again! How about you?

Your Hub

From 2007 to 2009 our local newspaper hosted a site called Your Hub. Perhaps you’ve heard of it or even participated. It was a community board where anyone who registered could post stories, photos, events, and just about anything that was happening locally. And the neat thing about it, at least to me, was the fact that once a week the Wichita Falls Times Record News printed some of the stories and photographs in the newspaper on a page titled “What’s Happening in Your Neighborhood.” Now there’s something about seeing your article and pictures in the newspaper that’s pretty cool. So I was a major contributor.

And, to my good fortune, the editor in charge of Your Hub called me one evening and asked for an interview. I, of course, posted about my books a lot, mentioned signings and showed the book covers. He wrote a very nice article about me: “Former teacher finds success writing.” Some nice publicity for an unknown author.

Over the short time Your Hub was available in our town, many of my articles were published in the newspaper. Sometimes, nice replies were posted on the site. Othertimes, I received personal email. Once I posted a picture of my aunt standing in front of the Pavillion that was at the lake many years ago. There also was an old-timey motorcycle that I asked if anyone knew what kind it was. A few days later a reply was in the newspaper. A man recognized it as a 1920 j-model Harley.

I talked about my cats and birds and asked how to keep ants off the hummingbird feeders. Several people replied with their solutions. I tried to find the owner of a stray dog that kept hanging around our house by putting his picture on the site. It appeared in the newspaper too.

Unfortunately, other people weren’t as excited about Your Hub as I was. A handful of contributors were faithful and posted regularly. I read some funny stories, some serious stories, and posts that told beautiful stories. But without enough participation, the paper finally closed the site. Other towns still have Your Hub. I know because I receive regular emails from Denver. If you’re interested in whether your local newspaper sponsors Your Hub, try http://yourhub.com. I can’t guarantee where it will take you. Mine goes to Denver. But it is cool getting your name in the newspaper.

Happy writing.

###