Day Four of the Cruise

Day Four was our first day off the ship. Our first port of call was Grand Turk in Turks and Caicos. The beach was very odd. Under the water was essentially moon rocks. That's exactly what it looked and felt like (I imagine at least, since I haven't actually been to the moon). It was cratered and weird, but still cool. The sand was beautiful and the water was crystal clear.

Doesn't that look like a post card?

Addie and Ben were quite content to play in the sand. They enjoyed the ocean too though.

Even Amy came out for the trip! And then it started to rain. At first we were like "ok, no biggie." Then it started to pour and the locals were like "it'll be over in 5 minutes." An hour later, still huddled under a beach umbrella the rain finally stopped and we were able to enjoy the island more. They have a huge Margaritaville in the middle with a huge pool that was fun too. Then we headed back to the ship in time for lunch.

The view from the ship.

After lunch and while we were sailing to our next port, we participated in the Camp Carnival Family Digital Scavenger Hunt. The teams were the four of and PopPop versus Scott, Keri, Graham and MomMom. We met at Camp Carnival, were given the list of things we need to photograph and were told to be back within the hour, first team back wins.

The first thing was to go to the Lido Deck and have your parents do a "hang ten."

Then you had to get 10 people not in your party together to do a conga line, which actually was ridiculously difficult to get people to stand together for a picture! People were so resistant.

Then we had to have a picture of one of us with ice cream smashed on our face.

BUT you know us, we needed two pictures of that fun!

Then we had to pick one Carnival employee and have them be our "Employee of the Day" and pose with them.

Then we had to go to the Atrium on the bottom level and have two team members do the chicken dance. We had to video and photograph it.

We needed a picture of the whole team with a "We love Camp Carnival" sign.

We needed to start at level one and using only the stairs take a picture of the landing at each level all the way up to 11!

And we had to have a picture of each team member with a smiley face on our foreheads. We used lipstick and this poor lady in the hall had no idea why I asked her to take our picture or why we had lipstick on our foreheads!

There were some bonus things we needed to collect along the way: an umbrella, something with the Carnival logo on it, the Carnival Times of the day, an entertainment staff person's signature and two different types of coffee stirrers. We grabbed all those things along the way and rushed back to Camp Carnival....

AND WE WON! Addie and Ben each got a trophy and we got a certificate. Another family team came in second. Graham's team came in third. They all still got trophies too.

Enjoying the beautiful water on one of the decks.

At dinner that night, Susilo made Ben a hat.

The kids went to Camp Carnival's pirate night while we went to the adult comedy show.

Then we all went up to the Lido deck at 11pm for a deck dance party.

Addie and Ben danced the whole hour, collecting beads along the way (the safe way, I promise!). By the end of the night, we were sweaty messes and their pirate make-up looked more like black eyes!

That night we had to go to bed to get energy for our next day at port!

This is video of what went down during the rain delay...

Day Three of Cruise video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ryXidlitg

Finally!! So this is how it started.... I have the beginning part of the song too, but I accidentally hit the stop button half-way through! Doh! I have to say I was a little unhappy with the physical set up for the karaoke, since the poor kid couldn't even see the screen. She was constantly up on her toes trying to see the lyrics. It was fun to watch as people walked through the lounge and then stopped to listen to her finish her songs. She actually sang four that day! She started with Tomorrow, followed by We are the Champions, followed by the video that I will load below (a soon as Youtube is done uploading it), and she closed it out with Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZJBchrKxNc

I LOVE how Addie's got her hand on his back the whole time, patting him, etc. So sweet.

little hiatus

Oh modern technology! I'm writing from my black berry on a train to a weekend mini-vacation. You know, because we needed a vacation after being back in reality for 4 days!
I will continue with the cruise posts early next week if not sooner, it just depends on internet access.
Hi to Uncle Teb who is chilling with Oliver at our house! Poor cat is probably so confused between Richard and Aunt Wendy there along with Muddy last week and now Uncle Teb!

Day Three on the cruise

This was our second full day at sea. By this time the ice cream machine had been broken for over 24 hours...

Addie and I woke up and spent some quality time on our balcony, as the sun was making its way up into the sky. Really pretty. Then we had breakfast and the kids went to Camp Carnival for some playtime.

Brian picked them up and was given Ben's hat.

Meanwhile Addie and Graham were quite content to wear their creations and were proud to show their facepaint. They had lunch and then we all went to take naps, because we had something very important to do that afternoon...see video link (will be here in a few minutes)

Once all of that excitement wore off, we found this elephant fella on our bed. (And I even took the class to learn how to make towel folded characters now!)

Watch this video after reading Day Two updates

http://youtu.be/SqhEKOnvsZM

It wouldn't upload on here, so here it is on Youtube.

The best part is that Benjamin knew exactly what he was going to do as soon as he saw Addie and Susilo start! Keep in mind that this was our cruise-mates' introduction to Addie and Benjamin since we ate in the steak house the first night.

Day Two on the cruise

Monday was our first full day at sea. We woke up and went to have breakfast.

This is inside the elevator which had decorative "finials" framing the artwork. Well the kids insisted from the moment we got on that they were little seats for kids and each time the elevator doors opened, they were like white on rice to those things. Weird.

After breakfast we went to the pool. It was nice because the pool itself wasn't that huge, but it had this huge area around it that was only 4 inches or so deep, so you could sit on the tiled wall and have your feet in the water. Or you could jump around in the shallow area too. So with this being the first morning at sea, you have to realize that we were booking it down the Atlantic coast. The boat was a rocking majorly. You will have to watch the video below that documents the pool water amidst the rocking boat. Keep in mind we're on deck 9 of 11 in the pool, so we're pretty darn high up off the ocean.

After swimming the kids went to Camp Carnival, while Brian and I took pictures on the deck. This cute outfit is from Muddy and Guppy. I actually had a woman stop me and say, "I have to tell you how great you look."

When we picked the kids up, we were happy to find that Addie had won the "Decorate your wizard hat" competition. And therefore her prize was the Camp Carnival medal. Addie said she's pretty sure that the thing the set her hat apart from all of the rest is the little rainbow on the bottom corner of it. Ben is holding the ship on a stick trophy that Brian won at sports trivia during the day too. Addie is holding the trophy I won for the twist.

Then we had to get cleaned up and dressed for the Elegant Night.

Sorry these two are sideways, but I scanned them that way and don't know how to rotate in Blogger! Ben is thrilled to wear his "Little Brian" outfit. And of course Addie was dazzling in a Muddy creation.

Remember I mentioned dancing? Well this is our Assistant Waiter, Susilo, cutting a rug with Addie during the end of dinner serenade. There's a video of that you must watch below too! (It's not loading below, so I'm going to try to load it separately).

Susilo has the talent to be able to fold napkins into creatures. Here's a bird he made for Addie.

And the bird he made for Ben.

Walking back from dinner we happened to walk through one of the lounges where the Carnival Pride band was performing and couples were dancing. You know they couldn't resist, so Addie and Ben had to take a few moments to shake what their mama gave them. The couple to the right came to know Addie and Ben well through the dance outlets.

We arrived back in our room to find out what our towel animal of the night would be. Those would be my sunglasses on the little fella.

And without a peep, they were in bed and sound asleep after a full day of cruising. We had no idea that our room had bunk beds. The top bunk folds out of the ceiling, which was pretty cool!

At the most extreme times, the water was emptying out three tiles deep!!! Luckily the kids didn't have any motion sickness issues. There were vomit bags in all the hallways and bathrooms for people. Brian's mom and Scott's girlfriend had a really hard time with the rockiness.

We've been everywhere....man

We have just returned from a 7 day cruise from Baltimore to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay Bahamas and Freeport Bahamas!! I'll do a post from each day of our cruise...

DAY ONE

It was in conjunction with Brian's parents' 40th anniversary, so I made these shirts as a surprise for everyone who went. This is us at the hotel the morning that we left.

One of the first stops was to the soft serve ice cream machines--we've been talking about them for months!!

On the staircase to the steakhouse we ate at the first night.

Just Benjamin (I told him this will be a background on a few computers!)

All 9 of us- that's Brian's parents, us four, Scott, Graham and Scott's girlfriend Keri, in our shirts.

The sons and parents. The t-shirts went exactly as I had hoped- people were stopping them everywhere to say "Happy Anniversary."

At the sail away dance party. The partying started with Addie and didn't slow down the whole time (MUCH more on that later!)

The bitty cheeseburger that the chef sent as a precursor to the appetizer at the steakhouse.

Everything at the steakhouse was ENORMOUS. That is Keri in awe of the size of her cheesecake slice!

This is me and Addie in the dance club, where the welcome family celebration for Camp Carnival was held. There was a dance contest and I won the trophy for best Mom who could do the twist.

They went to sleep that night as soon as their heads hit the pillows.