Good morning everyone!
Kathy (Gma X4), sounds like your weather is just like ours!! We're back to cold now.
And, we had 4 weeks of GREAT weather.... really nice and warm. It's supposed to be cold this whole week (I'm wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt now.
). But, they say it might warm up for Labor Day weekend, so I'm hoping so. And, I agree with you... I hope we have a warm fall. We'll see.
Wow, I can't believe your hair was down to your waist! That is amazing. And, your hair must grow really fast if it was just at your shoulders 4 months ago!!! My hair does not grow that fast. That must be a sign of good health.
Everone has great methods to using credit card rewards. I knew I would learn something from posting that! See, I'm not one to charge everything, just yet, even though I pay it off fully when the bill comes. After reading all the ideas, I may just have to start using them more.
LovestoRun: I found the pictures of the Dooney & Bourke line by googling it. They even made one for just the Dream.
NC2WDW: We actually charge everything on our credit card (gas, groceries, cable bill, etc... even a $2.00 cup of coffee....), but we pay it off to zero each month. We do that because we view every dollar charged as 1 point closer to a free airline ticket, which basically means just charging our cost of living on our credit card is giving us free airfare, which is one reason we can afford to travel as much as we do. We do definitely have to buy plane tickets full price, but our strategy is to save the miles for the expensive flights (like Seattle to Florida, or Seattle to Hawaii, etc), and then pay full price for the cheaper flights (like Seattle to Los Angeles, which if we get a goo deal, we can get that for around $180 per person round trip).. And, when you pay full price for an airline ticket, then you get miles for that trip, which is more miles to go into the pot for a free ticket.
Also, a lot of miles credit cards have deals where if you eat at certain restaurants, you get miles just for eating there, or you get miles for staying at hotels (for example, we are staying at the Hyatt MCO, and we will get 500 miles just for staying at the Hyatt MCO by using our Alaska Airlines credit card to pay for it, and then we'll also get 1 mile for every dollar we spend on our room at the Hyatt MCO), so that is more miles.
And, when we do buy an airline ticket on Alaska (and I'm sure other airlines do this, too), we buy it through their website and not a travel site, like Expedia, because if you buy it through their website, you get a 2,000 miles bonus just for buying a ticket on their website, and then if we use our Alaska Airlines credit card, we also get a 1,000 miles bonus just for purchasing the ticket on our credit card, so basically for every plane ticket we buy on Alaska Airlines website with our AK Air credit card, we get an automatic 3,000 miles bonus on top of the miles we fly for that trip, and on top of the 1 mile for each dollar we just spent on the plane ticket.
i could go on and on.... but basically, if you use a credit card where you get airline miles, or points to go toward something you spend money on frequently (like the Disney Visa, or a hotel credit card where you get points for hotel stays to go toward free hotel stays, etc. etc. etc.), it SURE makes traveling more affordable!
The big key, though, is to be responsible with the credit card and pay it off to zero each month, which it sounds like you do. Because if you don't, then you have to pay interest, and late fees, and then you are not saving money, and defeating the purpose. So, we treat our credit card almost like a check or cash.... we figure as soon as we charge something, we've just spent that money, and we make sure that money we just spent is in our bank account so when our credit card bill comes, we can write one check to pay it all off to zero.
Anyway, this is one thing I LOVE to do!! Also, if you keep your eye out for credit card deals that you get sent in the mail, etc, sometimes you will find a credit card where they say if you sign up for their card, you will get tons of miles or two free airline tickets, after you spend $500.00 on their credit card. We do this, too, but ONLY if it's a really really good perk/deal. We just did this with a Chase credit card. The deal was if you sign up for the card, and spend $500.00 on their card, they will give you 100,000 miles to transfer to any airline miles account you want!!! Wow!!! That is 4 free round trip tickets for our family for the continental united states! So, we signed up for that card, and just put our groceries on the card until we reached $500.00, then got the 100,000 miles, transferred them to our Alaska Airlines account, and now we have more free tickets sitting in our account for our next trip.
And, we no longer use that credit card now... no reason to. We went back to using our Alaska Airlines card.
Since we love to travel sooooo much, doing stuff like this is what helps us afford to travel as much as we do. Friendsd and family always ask how we can travel so much, and I just tell them that our basic cost of living helps gets us free airfare! And, for a family of 4, not having to pay for airfare is a HUGE savings for travel, especially now adays with airline travel so expensive. It also helps that my DH travels a lot for work, so that is how we rack up miles faster than the average person... If we only put just our monthly cost of living on our credit card, we definitely would not rack up miles as fast, so this is why when we travel, I always pick hotels that give us bonus miles for Alaska, and if we eat out, I generally try to pick a restaurant that gives us bonus miles for eating there, etc. And, every miles helps get a free ticket.
Oh for the alcohol policy guess you can't bring on board the harder alcohol like a bottle of rye instead??? Also when you get off the boat at the ports can you bring more on like another bottle of wine or the six beer?
Tanya
Thanks, Kathy, for posting the new Alcohol policy. We have brought wine on board before, but just like one really nice bottle of wine we'll keep in our stateroom and we ask our stateroom attendant for a cork screw, and two wine glasses... we don't bring our own wine into the restaurants because to us, the $20 cork fee is not worth it, so we just buy wine in the restaurant, but we will use our own wine at times we are not in the restaurants.
That is a good question if you can bring wine (or beer, liquor, etc) on board from the ports you stop at!! I can't see why not... how would they know how much wine (or beer, or other alcohol) you brought on when you first got on the ship?? Hmmm....
Also, not sure about the hard alcohol... this new policy does not mention that either. If you normally bring hard alcohol on, maybe call you TA and ask (if you have a TA), or just call Disney directly and ask. You'd hate to bring a nice bottle of hard alcohol, and then have it confiscated at port.
Well, for us, this new policy won't affect us because we don't bring enough of our own alcohol on board to make this policy affect us, but I know it'll affect a LOT of people.... I know there are lots of people who bring tons of beer, wine, etc, on board to keep their on board account low.
Kathy
Cute pic!!
...can we say a vacation is in order soon 
and my husband's 30th birthday was in June.
That is a GREAT shot! It made me laugh out loud! 
