Family Vacation-Day 1

Join us on our Dalton Family vacation from Vancouver, Canada to Valparaiso, Chile via the Holland America ship ms. Zaandam. We start with a beautiful scenic train ride from Seattle to Vancouver. 

Happenings so far--in more or less chronolgical order.

Mark threw his glasses away at Walmart, prompting him to have to dig through the trash to find them. (So sorry, no photo). 

Roger left the taxi on the driveway, meter running, for 5 minutes to go back in the house to find his baseball hat--which no one had remembered for him. Causing the Ethiopian driver to remark "that's one expensive baseball hat"!

Andrew (AKA-The Game Nazi--for his strict adherence to "the rules") implemented a 1beer penalty for calling someone by your child's name.

Mark was taken into the back room at Immigration for "additional questioning" 5 minutes after saying "I'm never hassled, it's always Robin"!

Roger is showing his support for the Huskies by wheeling two flashy purple suitcases and a lavender tote bag. He just forgot to get his gold baseball hat while he was back in the house. 

Karen enacted cruise rules #1 & #2--"No Elevators" and "No Bread & Butter". Then completely defeated the effort by having both Bread Pudding and Crumble--for lunch!

Fritz is trying to beat the world-wide chocolate shortage by having a chocolate frosted chocolate cupcake and chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, with a side of meringue--for lunch.

Barbara has threatened to throw at least 3 members of the party overboard.  Some more than once! (We don't leave the dock for another 8 hours yet).

Andrew tried to change the ship-touring rule to a willy-nilly go where you want in a zig-zag pattern one. Karen restored order by insisting on the traditional start at the top and go counter-clockwise in circles downward. Fine, until you end up below the water line in an emergency escape stairwell!

Karen lost her voice--Completely! Leading to lots of hand waving (and smirking by Fritz).

Barbara deemed the Life Boat Drills, the French Onion Soup and the Bathroom Decor worthy of negative ratings. Roger added the Beer Selection to that list (but still found something that could be forced down).

Andrew tried to change the rule on calling by a child's name to "not counting if you didn't get out the whole name". Rule change vetoed by Karen & Mark. Current score--Mark--1 Isaac, Karen--1Tristan, Andrew--2 Myles and 1 Alizee.

Barbara had to abandon her criticism of Roger's dessert eating when Mark had three!

Mark missed his 6am date with Fritz at the gym, after insisting he had an infallible internal clock causing him to rise at 5am (must not work in Canada). The story is the guys walked the Promenade instead--sure!

The in room safe requires a mag stripe card to lock and unlock. Karen used her room card and promptly de-magnetized it with a purse clasp--causing the purser's office to have to unlock the safe (even with a new card). Mark used his Safeway card, also apparently not up to snuff and also had to have an in-person visit from the purser's desk.  Suggestion to the powers that be---most people can remember a 4-digit code!

Aye Carrumba!

P.S. Without an Internet connection certain members of the party are going mad trying to figure out which island Ernest Shakelton was rescued from. We have had to resort to big paper Atlases--to no avail! Please help!