My mom went to Tortola and all I got was this lousy t-shirt...

Seriously.  All I got was a lousy t-shirt.  I fought with my brothers over their shirts instead.

My aunt called my mom a couple of months ago asking if she wanted to go on a cruise.  They were taking a group and needed one more person to go, so they took my mom and left me all alone to deal with my father and my brother.  It was an eight day cruise and my mother seemed to have the time of her life.  They went to Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Antigua, and Tortola.  Tortola is where mom decided to buy everyone a cheap t-shirt.  Yes, she did tell us they were cheap.  Apparently jewelry is also cheap on cruises and in the islands.  Mom said she went snorkeling and it was absolutely awesome.  You could swim through schools of little fish (she was afraid she'd end up with one in her hair) and everything.  They had high tea the last couple of days on the ship, and there were live shows that they later played on the tv's in the rooms.  My mother is still laughing over one of them.  Mom and my aunt and uncle got their picture taken, and mom got one with a pirate too.  They even put those towel animals on the beds like they show in the Carnival commercials.  Mom bought me a book on how to make them to go along with my cheap t-shirt.  Her mistake, all the towels in the house are going to turn into little animals now :D.  And she did bring me a little mint from her pillow.  And someone apparently asked the cruise director why they were putting little pats of butter on the pillows every night.  It really does kind of look like a pat of butter, but that comment really makes you wonder about a person.  Although I suppose it would have been funnier if they had opened the package and tried to use it on their toast.

One of the neat things about it though, is that you can do your own laundry.  I never really thought about being able to do laundry on a boat, but mom said she did her laundry on one of their days on the open sea, so she wouldn't have to do it when she got home.

They didn't make it in time for Easter dinner but we saved them some and even my mom couldn't say something bad about the country ham (take that mom!).  We had many arguments over it before, but I made everything and nothing was a complete disaster.  And I did save some dishes for mom to wash ;).  Had to welcome her back properly.  I'm sure more stories of the trip will come out over the next week or so, especially as she finishes unpacking.