BOMs Away - Hello! (Home from the cruise)

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM-type project 

so they don't stall out in UFO-land!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Boy, I'll tell you what - traveling really does a number on those of us with immune syndromes! Sorry to be late with this week's link up. It took me a full week to get myself back together after having an absolute blast on our 2-family cruise. I've only done tiny smidges of hand stitching BOM work in the past two weeks. I was having so much fun with family on our sea days, that I only accomplished this much work on my Octopuses Garden blocks:

This is as it should be.  :)

and after a week of being home, I only have this small set of pieces for Devon's Dahlias finished up for something to share:

But let me tell you - Caribbean cruises have the absolute BEST excursions you can go on.

We interacted with sea turtles and swam with and fed sting rays at Grand Cayman,

Super fun snorkeling in this lagoon habitat at Cayman Turtle Center -
I had one turtle swinging alongside me for several minutes, just hanging together. *love*

This is Stingray City, a sandbar offshore where dozens and dozens of stingrays come see the people
Photo actually taken four years ago, but we went back to this excursion
because it was so great and we wanted to see Pat and his sister experience this.

We toured Roatan Island off of Honduras and snorkeled its coral reef (some of us scuba'd)

Note to self: 

I'd love to spend a week at the currently-inexpensive resort and dive center at Anthony's Key off of Roatan, right next to the ****coolest**** dolphin research center/habitat that I've ever seen. 

The dolphins could clearly leave the enclosure any time they wanted to jump out, and they open all the gates every two days, anyway (it's not walled from the ocean in the first place, simply large-bore rope-netted), so the only dolphins in the enclosure doing tricks for people and giving encounter rides are those that WANT to do it. That is why, even though the shows are not as fancy and choreographed as you'll find at Sea World, etc., this is the absolute coolest dolphin place I've ever seen.

Pretty amazing. We watched workers entertaining the newer volunteer dolphins that were still untrained with hula hoops, balls, and trick lessons if they wanted to do that, so that the dolphins who'd come often enough to have the training to interact with people could do their thing unimpeded. 

We climbed on ancient Mayan pyramids in Belize,

sitting on the side of The High Temple at Lamanai, Belize

The Mask Temple at Lamanai, Belize

On top of the world at Lamanai, Belize

. . .and we went spelunking along an underground river at the Riviera Maya on the Mexicn mainland from Cozumel - 

Rio Secreto is AMAZING

The astonishing thing is that eating like PIGGGGS the entire week long, I only gained 6 pounds once the travel edema worked its way out after being home two days. Which is good, since I've been extremely foolish with mopey eating the last 6 months and had 20 pounds I already wanted to start taking off.  So, why is it so very hard to take weight off while eating properly and exercising??!!  ha! 

~*~*~*~

How did you do with your BOMs while I was away?

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, 

and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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