Spring Break Part 3

Saturday, March 30 was a "day at sea". We woke up and ate breakfast and tried to get going for the day. Lexi was an absolute mess (what can I say, 3 very full, busy days, and 3 nights of staying up past 10:30 when she usually goes to bed around 7:30, I'd call that a recipe for disaster). I took her back down to the stateroom, and we took a two hour nap. We would have kept sleeping, but Marc came and got us because it was nearly lunch time.

After lunch, we took the kids up to the water park at the top of the ship. There were a few slides, some splash zones, and a nice deck to lay out on. Lexi was less than a quarter inch too small to ride the slides.   We even tried several attempts when the guards rotated, but they were pretty strict about it. At least she had a cousin and grandparents there to play with and they had a good time in the splash areas.

My dad gave the kids strict instructions that they needed to order a pina colada while they were on the cruise. Every day they reminded me, so while we were out on deck, they got to order a pina colada and strawberry daiquiri that we all shared. Lexi and I preferred the daiquiri, the boys liked the colada better. They swam for a bit in the "main" pool (it was FREEZING!)

After swimming, I ran the kids up real quick to Camp Carnival because they were doing "build a bear" there (you had to pay for it, but it was less than what you pay at the store and we thought it would be a fun souvenir). Each picked out a different animal (Tyler picked a dog, Bryce a Lion and Lexi a Lamb). They got to stuff them, close them up, fill out a birth certificate, dress them in a Carnival t-shirt and put them in a special box that even had a porthole window. I didn't have a camera with me, but we took some down in our room. The kids love their animals! Tyler named his dog "Paws", Bryce named his lion "Roberto", and Lexi named her lamb "Lucy".

After showering and getting cleaned up, our room kind of became the hangout and play on the ipad area with all the cousins and some of the uncles. It was pretty funny to watch. It was some needed downtime and they had a good time hanging out together.

Before we knew it, it was dinner time. If we hadn't been requested to eat dinner together as a group, we would have sent our kids to the Camp Carnival Kids Only meal that they offered every night. They were sick of sitting politely in the formal dining room and waiting for all the adults to finish their meals before they could play. I can't say as though I blame them, but I definitely realized that I wouldn't want to cruise for longer than 3 days with kids. That night we ordered tomatoes & mozzarella cheese, alligator and sushi as our appetizers, I had some type of pasta with seafood in it, and chocolate cake for dessert. We made a point of trying things we wouldn't normally get an opportunity to eat. I did not care for the sushi. Not quite sure what the appeal is for it, but I won't be spending a ton of money to eat it in the future!

After dinner, we walked around the boat for a bit, looked at all the pictures they'd taken of us throughout the trip and all of us went to the "main" show. It was a singing/dance performance with songs from the 80's. It kept our attention, I enjoyed the songs, but it was really loud! After the show, we went down to get all packed up. You have to have all your stuff ready to get off the boat by breakfast time.

Sunday, March 31 was Easter Sunday. It felt weird to not celebrate it in the traditional sense. We ate breakfast, waited for our turn to get off the boat, find our luggage and got through "customs" without too many headaches. After the fiasco of getting to the ship when we first arrived, we decided to get our own car and have some freedom to do what we wanted, when we wanted to. We ended up going to a mini golf place that had an alligator to touch and hold.

After that, we caravanned with Bob and Deb, and Chris and his boys to Orlando and ate lunch and found a park to play at for awhile. We ended up at an Elementary School and it just so happened to have a kick ball and some cones laying around. Everyone enjoyed an intense game of kickball until Marc started getting a little too competitive and kicking the ball into tim-buck-too. We were melting in the sun anyway, so it was a good time to wrap things up.

 We hung out at the airport for awhile together until the others left for their flight to Cincinnati and we had a couple more hours to kill.

. We did not leave Orlando until 7:00 at night. We got into Boise at midnight (2:00 Florida time which we were all adjusted to) and drug ourselves back to Caldwell. The kids had to go back to school Monday morning and Marc had to be back at work. We decided it was best to let the boys get a little extra sleep and I would drive them to school when I went into volunteer. All in all, it was a quick getaway! Wish we could have had some extra time, but we sure crammed a lot of fun into a few short days.