We took our first big family vacation for spring break this year. It coincided with our 10 year wedding anniversary, which was a great excuse to celebrate. I've wanted to take a cruise for a while and invited my parent to tag along. It turned in to a whole family trip when my nephew, brother, his girlfriend, and oldest daughter joined in. We had an afternoon flight, so Jimmy's dad drove us to the airport. I don't think either kid knew what was in store.
My parents took our big bag, so we just had a backpack each and checked the carseats. We hit up the MSP play area for about 30 minutes before heading to our gate. Esme hadn't napped and started to doze as we were waiting to board. I will post a video with clips from our whole trip on the final post.
We were well prepared with iPads, snacks, toys, and candy.
Parker enjoyed looking out the window when we were closer to the ground. Esme didn't nod off until we were back on the ground in Houston, headed to the gate.
We had a quick dinner before our final 2 hour flight to Orlando. We arrived about 11pm local time and got to our hotel closer to the port at 12:30 am.
We grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel before heading towards our shuttle parking.
 |
| Lesa, Parker, Nana (Janet), Grandpa (Sid), Jayden, Jimmy, Esme, Tegan, Ashley, Sean |
We stopped for a quick view of the ocean. Parker kept trying to take off his clothes to go swimming.
Our shuttle ride was very smooth and we were able to get a special escort through security for Parker's sake. The wait still wasn't bad and we were on the boat (Carnival Liberty) by 12:30 and grabbed some lunch before we could access our room at 2:00. Pizza was available 24 hours and Parker loved it! Food was one of my biggest fears, but both kids stayed well fed. Naps were short and sporadic for Esme the whole week with the exception of one day. She fell asleep during our mandatory safety briefing. We have a lot of pictures like this.
On our way out of Port Canaveral we caught a glimpse of some dolphins from our balcony.
We took a quick first swim before dinner at 6.
I was totally confused about how to navigate the boat at first, so we took a long journey to our dining room. They have 7 story glass elevators that overlooked the main lobby. This was one of Parker's favorite areas.
Most of you know how I am with food pictures, so here is a collage of all the food only pictures from the boat. Most are from our seated dinners, but a few are from the lido deck dining areas.
The kids had chicken nuggets every night for dinner. Esme loved dunking in ketchup and ate broccoli most nights too
All 10 our us were seated together with a view out the back of the boat (you'll see a picture os that later.)
We were able to watch the sunrise from our balcony almost every morning. My parent's had a cabin next door, so we opened the balcony divider. It was really fun (and convenient( to have them so close.
Morning family snuggle.
Monday was our day at sea, and that was all we saw.
The kids checked out "Club Ocean" for a few hours in the morning. Jimmy and I went swimming the in the adults only pool and ate lunch from Guy's Burger Joint. Esme had so much fun, she even fell asleep!
Up next: Evening shows and port day in Nassau.
No comments:
Post a Comment