Dear Family,
Crystal and I have now been on a cruise. We enjoyed it.
Whatever complaints I may register in the forthcoming paragraphs about this month’s cruise, cruises in general, or the kinds of people who gravitate toward cruises, please keep this much in mind: we had a very nice time, and I’m glad we went.
Cruising is neither something I’d always wanted to do nor something I’d long dreaded one day being compelled to endure. Somewhere between those two extremes, it’s one of those experiences I figured we might get around to at some point — if for no other reason than to satisfy my (mild) curiosity of what all the fuss was about. But the prospect of going to my grave without ever having set foot on a cruise ship is not something that caused me a great deal of angst.
And so it should not be surprising that our first cruise was someone else’s idea. Crystal’s mom, Carolyn, was turning 80, and Crystal’s sister, Liz, thought a cruise would be the best way for Carolyn to mark the occasion with her husband, Pat, her five children and their spouses.
Everyone agreed. And so, at a little after noon on December 19th, pursuant to a great deal of coordination and planning among people other than me, the 12 of us found ourselves standing together at the Port of Los Angeles preparing to board Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas for a five-night voyage to Mexico (and back, hopefully).
The L.A. departure made as much sense as anywhere given our geographic dispersion. Crystal and I are the only East Coasters. Crystal’s oldest brother (Rick, and wife Mimi) lives in L.A. Carolyn lives in Washington (state), while the other three siblings live in Idaho (Roland and wife Marci), Oregon (Carrie and husband Joe) and Nicaragua (Liz and husband Joe — not the same Joe as Carrie’s Joe, different Joe). I’m the only Kent son-in-law not named Joe.
Everyone except us flew into L.A. on the 18th — the day before departure. The 18th was not an option for us. And so, we flew in from Maryland on the morning of the 19th.
Pro tip: If you’re scheduled to board a cruise ship at 1:30 in the afternoon and you’re at all prone to anxiety, try to avoid scheduling a flight that arrives at 10:10 that morning. I mean, you’ll probably make it, but…
Our flight was scheduled to depart BWI at 7:15 (ET). By the time we got to the airport, that had been pushed back to 7:30, but you could already sense that 7:30 wasn’t gonna happen, either. I attempted to calm my nerves while we waited to drop our bags at check-in by pulling out my phone and starting my daily routine of working through the day’s NY Times games. I typically knock out the Wordle first, then make my way through Connections and Strands. The crossword is my favorite and I usually save it for last. (Then, if I still have time and nothing better to do, I’ll start working through Spelling Bee, but it’s not part of my regular routine. As my statistics below indicate, I’m not a big Spelling Bee guy. I do the crossword 10 times more often that I do Spelling Bee.)
Anyway, the 19th was not a good day to turn to the Wordle as a nerve-calming tactic. As you may recall, the Wordle that day was myrrh. Seriously, myrrh! I guess myrrh is technically a real word, but it’s a stupid, pointless, annoying word with no real vowels and no modern, practical usage. No one knows (or cares) what myrrh is — I mean, I know how it’s defined in the dictionary and that it was one of the gifts of the magi (everyone knows this tidbit of Bible trivia, though I’ve yet to meet a person who can explain to me why this fact is in any way relevant to Christianity or anything else). If I were to open a big box of myrrh on Christmas morning, I would have no idea what it was or what I was supposed to do with it. I’d probably also be annoyed, but not nearly as annoyed as I was gradually becoming on December 19th while waiting to check luggage into my delayed flight and trying to solve the stupid myrrh Wordle .
Sometimes (not usually, but sometimes) the Wordle has the effect of agitating, rather than calming me. This was one of those times.
(Crystal got it fairly quickly — I ultimately gave up and looked at her screen for the answer.)
Myrrh. So, so stupid. It’s been nearly two weeks and I’m still upset about it.
We eventually got to the gate and of course the plane wasn’t there yet. They pushed the departure time back a few more times, and we ultimately got out of there a little more than an hour late. Plenty of time to make the cruise in hindsight, but not without creating a lot of unnecessary anxiety for me. (Crystal glided through the entire experience, seemingly without a care in the world. I have no idea how.)
Rick picked us up at the airport and drove us to his house in L.A.‘s Westchester neighborhood (anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes from LAX, depending on traffic — it was closer to 10 minutes on the morning of the 19th) where we met up with the rest of Crystal’s family. Assisted by Rick and Mimi’s minivan and an Uber XXL, the 12 of us (plus our luggage and Pat’s wheelchair) made our way to San Pedro (call it 40 minutes away) to board the ship.
As we approached the port and the Quantum of the Seas came into view, I initially mistook it for a hotel. Unfamiliar with gigantic cruise ships, I struggled to get my head around something so enormous — let alone how something like that could float.
We boarded, found our staterooms (Crystal and I were on deck 11 — we had a nice little balcony exactly large enough for two lounge chairs — though not large enough for them to lay completely flat), and reconvened at the Windjammer buffet on Deck 14. The eating commenced at around 2:00 p.m. and continued with only brief interruptions for the next 114 hours.
The food was abundant and fine, but not great. I think it was Mimi who described it as “wedding reception quality.” That’s apt. It was not bad at all and really quite good in my estimation, considering it was being prepared for like 5,000 people all at once.
Ultimately, it was the cumulative effect of sharing a confined (albeit very large) space with more than 5,000 other humans that I found most trying. It felt a little like being perpetually trapped on the Ocean City boardwalk, vying for space with a mass of humanity drifting slowing and aimlessly in no particular direction (often diagonally for reasons passing understanding). And then stopping right in front of me (or in a doorway, or on the hot tub stairs) for no apparent reason. I find this behavior excruciating when I’m actually trying to get somewhere. By the end I was ready to just start bowling people over.
I found a modicum of solace each morning on the track that circled deck 15 (while most of the annoying, slow-moving dawdlers slept). The track, which ran virtually the entire length and breadth of the ship, was 2.91 laps per mile (nearly 40% longer than a standard 400-meter outdoor track — for another sense of how colossal the ship was) and was reasonably fun to run on — but even that got repetitive after a while. The views from a cruise ship are generally nice but don’t change much…except when the sun rises and sets.
The entertainment was, for the most part, entertaining. I eventually came around to mostly admire the “cruise director” despite his annoying penchant for coming on stage before every show and demanding to know “Who’s having a great time?!” (or equivalent banality designed solely to artificially produce a roar from the audience). Regardless of how loudly the audience responded to the initial query, he would predictably follow up with some version of “Is that the best you can do?” and the roomful of dullards, like so many trained seals, would respond even more obnoxiously. He would then repeat the exercise with various subgroups: “Who ordered the drinks package?!” “Who’s enjoying the hot tub?!” In all, the call-and-response nonsense could easily carry on for several minutes, and by the end I wasn’t sure who I loathed more: the cruise director or the idiots in the audience giving in to his goading.
This curious phenomenon is not unique to cruise ships, of course, and words cannot describe how much I hate it.
Most of what I enjoyed about the ship was enjoyable because of our traveling companions. The 12 of us ate together at least once per day (ashore, on board, or, some days, both). Many hours were spent in the adults-only solarium on the top deck near the bow. This provided a haven from a good bit of the ship’s chaos (though not by any means from all of it — the most annoying “kids” on any cruise ship are in their 20s — and unfortunately are permitted in adults-only spaces).
Following team Kent into whatever entertainment options the group selected generally proved to be a prudent strategy. The only exceptions were the two adult karaoke sessions.
I had no idea, but it turns out the Kents really love them some karaoke.
I don’t get karaoke. Like any number of other things, I suspect I might appreciate it more if I were a drinker. (It can’t be a coincidence that the words karaoke and bar so often appear in close proximity.) Why would I want to listen to strangers sing poorly? Not everyone is bad, but few are truly good, and many are genuinely painful to listen to. The phenomenon I understand the least is that the worst singing seems to garner the most riotous cheering. I can get behind unmerited adulation (to a degree) when the performers are children. But these were adults (impaired to one degree or another, but adults). It is neither kind nor helpful to encourage adults who suck at things to publicly perform those things. Instead, they should be encouraged to practice (and, in some cases, seek professional help). Singing well requires discipline, grit and hard work. (A little talent and a good teacher help, too.) Hooting appreciatively at people when they clumsily reach for high notes and land nowhere near them makes a mockery of this.
But I am making too much of the worst two hours out of 114. Most of the other 112 were really quite enjoyable.
In the end, the five-day cruise was just the right length for me. I had fun, but I would not have wanted it to last another day.
Would I do it again? With this same group of people, absolutely. With a different group of people I like, absolutely. With just Crystal and me, probably not. I think we agreed we might’ve have gotten bored if it had just been the two of us. Plus, there are just too many other places we’d like to visit — most are not easily accessed via cruise ship.
Christmas
We docked back in L.A. on Christmas Eve morning and took three Ubers back to Rick and Mimi’s house. We arrived amid a Southern California “atmospheric river” that was dumping enough rain to flood many of the streets.
We dragged our soaking wet luggage, clothes, and selves into Rick and Mimi’s living room and mostly relaxed (some spirited Rook competitions broke out) while Mimi, despite having been away on a cruise for the past week, somehow managed to pull together a Christmas Eve feast for the 12 of us consisting of bacon-wrapped pork, latkes, potatoes, salad, charcuterie and I forget what else.
Rick and Mimi drove us to LAX later that evening, where we caught our 10:00 p.m. flight home. The pilot claimed to be able see Santa’s sleigh out the cockpit window. Most of us were too tired to care. My friend Richard Krikava picked us up at BWI at a little past 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning. By 7:00 we were home and crawled into bed.
Our fatigue did not detract from the excitement of being with all of our children (and their two spouses) on Christmas. We had dinner with Luke’s family in Gaithersburg, which was great — especially for us, as we were too tired to do anything.
It turned into a nice long weekend with all 8 of us here.
On Saturday we went to the National Aquarium (in Baltimore). We were members of the aquarium for many years back when the kids were little, and we used to go all the time. But I hadn’t been in forever and it made me happy when everyone asked if we could go back.
On Monday, some of us went down to the National Museum of American History (where I also hadn’t been in years and most of the exhibits were new to me — they do a good job keeping things interesting and fresh). But it’s hard to imagine them ever moving Dorothy’s ruby slippers into storage…
Sophie, who just graduated from BYU, has spent the past two weeks juggling multiple job interviews and offers. I’ll let her tell you about it, but it looks like she’ll be starting in January as a co-teacher at a public charter school in Draper.
Grace, about to enter the second half of her third year as a music education major at Southern Virginia University will be supplementing her work at the writing center with a job as the music director for a local youth production of School of Rock Jr. this spring.
Pre-Christmas
If you’re made it this far, you may be interested to learn that the nine performances I was involved with between the Saturday after Thanksgiving and 14th of December all went reasonably well. (Well, eight of the nine did. One was just kind of annoying.) Here are the highlights:
I got to play in the band at the barn dance our friend Allison hosted in the church cultural hall. This was undoubtedly the most fun of all the performances.
My brother Grant was the bassist. (It was all he could do to get the other band members not to call him “President Willis”)
The next day, I was part of a quartet that sang “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” at the annual temple workers Christmas devotional in the big room on the 7th floor of the temple. No recording exists and we sang unaccompanied, but it felt like we did well and it sounded good from where I was standing. (I attribute our success to the fact that we put some work into learning the piece and didn’t just arrogantly walk up to a microphone in a bar thinking we could knock it out without any prep and knowing that people would cheer wildly for us no matter how poorly we performed.)
On the following Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the Washington D.C. Temple choir performed at the lighting ceremonies for the annual Festival of Lights at the Washington D.C. Temple. The event was headlined by Elder Gérald Caussé of the Twelve and Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, Mexican ambassador to the U.S. (After much speaking and fanfare — and suffering the indignity of having to listen to countless people mispronounce both of their names — the two of them together pushed the button that turned the lights on.)
My perch in the choir seats put me closer to Elder Caussé than almost anyone. I would have enjoyed meeting the French apostle (he previously served as the president of the Paris stake, but that was after my time there) but the choir was asked to keep its distance so he could interact with the ambassadors and other visiting dignitaries. I get that. It was still fun playing a small part in it.
The following Saturday, members of our ward choir (plus my brother Andrew and nice Afton) sang in an interfaith concert with the choir of the Colesville United Methodist Church, which meets down the street from us. The concert went reasonably well — at least until the pastor of the other church began his remarks by saying “Good evening, everyone.” When only a smattering of people replied “Good evening,” he said something like, “Well that wasn’t very good” and then repeated more forcefully, “Good evening, everyone!”
It was all I could do not to throw my music binder at him. But they’re a nice church and it’s fun doing things with them.
The next night we had a concert in Arlington that I’d prefer not to talk about. (It was a train wreck.) And so I won’t.
On Saturday the 13th and Sunday the 14th, the Washington D.C. Temple choir closed out our holiday schedule with three performances: two at the Visitors’ Center and one in Oakton, Virginia. Those both went great and made me happy.
It was an exhausting couple of weeks to start off what turned out to be an exhausting but really quite satisfying month. I both thoroughly enjoyed it and am kind of glad it’s over.
Happy 2026!
Love,
Tim et al
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly
Happy new year to your beautiful family. I wish you good health, Joy, togetherness, safe bike riding and more news. I love hearing what annoys you and completely agree.
We are leaving for the Galapagos and the Amazon river in Ecuador in early February. We will return just in time to greet our first grandson due February 15. We’re so excited and hope you meet him this summer in Idaho where rumor has it we may all be gathering.
Please give my love to everyone, Cara