cruise, part 1

Several months ago Spencer and I were talking about going on a vacation. A real vacation (NOT a trip). We figured now was probably a good time because it's just getting harder and harder to leave, and more busy with callings and the kids, etc. I looked into going to Mexico or Puerto Rico but Spencer reminded me that his idea of a vacation is definitely not sitting on a beach or by a pool for a week. Oh yeah. Of course! So I started looking into cruises. And I'm glad I did. You stay in the same place every night, food is taken care of for you, with your only decision being what to eat, and you see lots of destinations. With our only problems being slight seasickness, missing the kids so bad, and Spencer almost getting into a fight with a Ute...it went off without a hitch!

We convinced our really good friends to come with us and that perhaps was the best part of the whole trip. Having a group of 4 was perfect for shows, dinner, as well as the excursions. Brian and Camille had to cancel their trip to Cancun in January at the last minute, so this was their replacement trip. And they were the perfect travel buddies. If Camille didn't have Brian and 4 boys at home, she would make the perfect cruise director!

We flew my sister and her baby out for 6 days to watch the kids, and flew her husband out for the weekend with the hopes that it would be more of a fun vacation instead of a working trip. (I reminded her a few times that kids come one at a time for a reason, and going from 1 to 4 wouldn't be that easy.) We were off early in the morning for a full day of flying to Miami.

We got in that night and went to our hotel, which had pretty good ratings online. It was almost midnight when we pulled up, and the place was such a dive. But it was too late to do anything, and we weren't subjecting our kids to the nastiness, so we endured. The next morning we went down for breakfast, which was in the adjoining night club. We got the giggles a few times as we enjoyed looking at the velvet staircases, the dancing poles, and everything else that made it out of our comfort zone.  Fun times in Miami. Spencer wanted to get up and dance but I made him hold back. (I took a picture but it was too dark and didn't turn out. Use your imagination.)

We met up with our friends at the port and hung out, waiting for embarkation. Getting on the ship was quite an ordeal, but we were lucky and were on the Panorama Deck - deck 10. We had a balcony, which turned out to be totally worth the extra $200. We webcammed with the kids one last time for a week, and as we pulled out of Miami we explored "Serenity" - a child-free zone at the front of the boat. We just relaxed on the huge hammock. It was nice at first to go be in a quiet place, but by the end of the trip all I wanted was to be around kids.

Do you like my toes? I got so many compliments on them! Someone even told me she recognized me by my toes. :) My friend sells these (tons of different styles) and they are awesome.

Our first stop was Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. It's an island owned by Carnival, and I imagine it is just gorgeous. At least it seemed that way from all the postcards we saw. To us, it was a rainy and stormy mess! We had to be tendered from the ship to the small port, and got off because we had planned a snorkeling excursion. Luckily we went in the water briefly when we got there because the rain just got harder and harder and we finally dragged our soaked bodies back to the tender boat. That was pretty depressing, and Camille and I worried so much that the rest of our trip would be equally as disappointing. Oh, and the excursions were all cancelled.

Oh the irony of this picture...because we couldn't wait to leave.

Monday was our first of two days at sea. I was so nervous when I woke up (at 6:30, every single day) and nervously peeked outside. I was so thrilled to see sunlight! I ran out to reserve deck chairs (which turned out to be a smart move) and we spent almost the whole day outside. There was a big screen, and music playing all day. Camille and I even went down the waterslide. The boys just watched us - can you believe that? I read almost the entire book of The Hunger Games while I soaked up the sun and occasionally hopped in the pool. We also played mini golf and the boys played dodge ball and knock out. Spencer won two medals and I gave him the task of getting one more before the cruise was over...since we have 3 kids and 2 medals just wouldn't cut it.

(the waterslide was salt water so i really wanted to avoid my hair getting wet and sticky)

Tuesday was our 2nd port day, but really our first since the Bahamas was such a disaster. Again I woke up to sunshine (hooray). We had a great plan to catch the ferry from St. Thomas to St. John and spend the day there.

On the ferry we ran into some ladies who gave us the name of a bay on St. John I had never heard of, but they swore it had the best snorkeling in the world. Leinster Bay. First we headed to Trunk Bay, and snorkeled there.

The beach was gorgeous and the water was beautiful but the snorkeling was just ok. We grabbed lunch, convinced a taxi driver to take us to Leinster Bay (hard to get to) and worked it out with him that he would wait for us exactly 1 hour so he could get us back to the ferry to St. Thomas in time.

We had to walk a mile in to where we could get in the water. In fact, my shins hurt the next day from speed-walking in flip flops. We saw deer and goats. We got as close as we could to the little island (Watermelon Cay), dropped our stuff, and took off for the snorkeling. It was gorgeous. We saw way more fish than we had in Trunk Bay, but we had no fins and we were tired from all the swimming, especially in the strong current. Camille ran into another snorkeler who told us the time and we had to book it back to shore and get back to the taxi in about 10 minutes. It was crazy, but oh so worth it. I even got to (had to?) see a jellyfish. When I was in St. John 16 years ago I saw lots and lots of jellyfish so that will always be what I remember about that island...

Our taxi driver was there when we needed him to be, and didn't charge us extra for waiting. He got a nice tip.

We hopped on to the ferry to St. Thomas, did a little shopping there, and ran back onto the ship. I remember being exhausted that night, and that's about it...

One thing about our ship was that the entertainment was phenomenal. Not only was our 26 year old cruise director so much fun, and so great at her job, but the singers and dancers were really great. We loved the shows almost every single night. The comedians weren't as good but that wasn't a huge deal as we didn't feel comfortable going to most of their shows anyway. Camille brought some card games so we would do that at night when the entertainment wasn't ideal (rare; only 2 of the 7 nights).