Prologue - Planning

My sister and wife were both celebrating a certain milestone birthdays in the Fall of this year.   The original goal was to try to use the events as an excuse to get a wider Olen clan gather together. However with 5 siblings across 3 states and a dozen cousins ranging in age from pre-school to late 20's - finding a suitable time and location became a Seven Bridges of Konigsberg logical problem that was unable to be cracked.   Even trying to get two families schedules aligned became too big a hurdle to overcome.  So my sister booked a cruise with her family over Thanksgiving and we decided to do something over New Years.

If you peruse the previous vacations chronicled on this blog - I am often accused of fitting 7lbs of vacation into a 5lb bag.  My wife's request for her vacation was relaxing vacation that did not involve side visit to the Badminton Hall of Fame or Jack Lord's birthplace.  So we settled on a cruise as the best option.  We had done a Disney Cruise in the Eastern Caribbean almost 10 years ago with the kids but thought we would try a Western Caribbean cruise this time around. Of course since a popular cruise port is Galveston Texas - I could not resist convincing my wife to tack on a few days in Austin TX visiting my brother and family prior to the cruise. 

So the plan was set in motion to leave on Christmas night and spend two days in Austin and head out on a 5 day cruise into the Gulf of Mexico.