Cruise day 7 - at sea

The last day of our cruise was jam packed with things like flow-rider, a movie, 2 shows, pool and hot-tub and of course lots of great food!
See my sister's blogpost here: http://www.sydkad.com/blog/last-day-at-sea-and-home-day78

Breakfast at our favorite again - Park Cafe!

Jamie takes on the flowrider several times - even gets up on his knees!

notice his "thinking" tongue in this picture and the next?

Carrie and I did the flowrider too but the camera ran out of batteries!

Day 6 - at sea

Priceless!

Day 6 was a great day at sea, a chance to do some things that we hadn't yet had time for. Most of our family slept in but Abby wanted to go to the character breakfast with everyone else so I dropped her off and went for a run on the outdoor track. 12 laps = 5 miles, that's how big the boat was! After that we had a hard time finding everyone again. Eventually a lot of us did the zipline that day and we all met up at the kid pool for the afternoon. Tonight was also the last formal night so once again we all got dressed up. Tristan didn't scream as much this time but it must've been exhausting for him because the next thing we knew he was asleep on the couch while we were all getting ready. After dinner we got some professional pictures taken. That night we dropped the kids off at kids club and then went to the comedy club and to the dance club - Chad even danced with me! It was a late night - most of the kids were asleep when we went to pick them up, but we all had fun. See my sister's blogpost here:
http://www.sydkad.com/blog/finally-a-sea-day-day

Jame rocked the zipline!

Father and son :)

We could not get the 3 youngest to smile!

Day 5 - St. Maarten

Ziplining

I started out day 5 bright and early with an Extreme Ziplining tour that I took with my sister, dad, Jon and Crystal.  Above is our picture as we disembarked the boat.  My sister is the only one that brought a camera, so you can see her post here and read about how much of a scaredy-cat I was. (What she doesn't mention is that our tour guide admitted to purposely trying to scare us on the way there so that we wouldn't think it was so bad once we on the course.  And it wasn't - well, except for those blasted rope-bridges!!)
http://www.sydkad.com/blog/extreme-ziplining

St. Maarten

When we returned that afternoon, we still had plenty of time to explore St. Maarten so Chad and I decided to head on into the town and check it out.  My mom had just returned from shopping so I slipped on her water taxi bracelet and she took my kids (win-win for me).  Once we got over to the town we saw how beautiful the beach was (should we go there again we will just spend the entire day on the beach).  We walked around the town a bit - the streets were very narrow and the shops small and squished together, it reminded me of Papeette, Tahiti.  Chad found a restaurant and had himself a feast - including an entire fish.  He said it was the best food of the trip (it was really good - I tasted it), I had already ate lunch so I didn't get anything.   Then we headed back towards the beach, and wishing that I had brought a swimsuit, I headed into a touristy shop and bought the cheapest bikini I could find, paid a lady $.50 to use a restroom and then headed to the water.  Chad swam in the shorts that he was wearing and we had a fun swim.  It was getting close to needing to go back to the ship but since we were right next to the water taxi dock, we just

waited until the line receded and then headed back.

Onboard

Back onboard we had some time to burn since we weren't eating in the dining room that night but instead at Rita's Cantina. Chad wanted to get pictures of a sunset but the clouds ended up getting in the way. It was still really pretty out though.

Tristan ate dinner at the Park Cafe.

View looking up from the cafe.

It was fun to look at the art around the boat especially when you found a place you've been! (this is Tokyo I believe)

Fiesta time at Rita's - see more picture from previous post (Cruise tidbits)

See my sister's post about day 5 here:
http://www.sydkad.com/blog/st-maarten-day

Day 4 - St. Thomas

See my sister's post about day 4 here:
http://www.sydkad.com/blog/st-thomas-the-boat-day

We didn't have any excursions planned for St. Thomas so we got off the boat at our leisure.  There was a "mock" town set up at the cruise ship terminal which was pretty lame.

on the cruise dock

After looking a bit thru the shops (and finding nothing but bandaids and snacks), we decided to see where we could get if we just walked out of this makeshift "town".  Well, let me tell me you, they do not make it easy, we had to walk past a long line of taxis and out into the road (because the sidewalk ends) and thru the gate. Surrounding the terminal was a tall fence with barbed wire on top!  Sheesh - you'd think we were in prison or something!!  Well, anyways we walked past a small marina and past a few more shops but then there was pretty much nothing unless you wanted to walk the remaining 2 or so miles into town.  At this point Chad says that this is what he wants to do so I volunteer to take the kids onto the boat and just hang out at the pool.  But first I make him walk us back to the terminal to ensure we didn't have any problems getting back "in".

Chad took this picture on his walk.

He found Charlie and they explored and found some hole-in-wall bar that they thought was cool.

Meanwhile we try going to "beach" pool (it has a tapered entry and is salt water).

After ice-cream and me reading for about 1.5 seconds, the kids wanted to go to the kid's pool, so that's where we went and eventually met up with my sister and her family and my parents.

Abby takes a turn with the camera (see her video of Sydney below).

All wrapped after swimming for hours!

Pool Videos:






That night we did karaoke.  It was family karaoke and I knew Jamie wanted to try it so I offered to do it with him.  Jamie has a cd of old disco songs so we picked Safety Dance because I knew he had heard it several times.  What I did not realize was that the lyrics to Safety Dance are actually sung really fast!!  Combine that with no musical talent of my own and you get one train wreck of a karaoke song. Owell, Jamie was still proud that he had done it and that was my goal to begin with!  Uncle Charlie actually did a really good job on his song! (see videos below)

Karaoke videos:

Cruise night 2 and day 3 - fancy night and at sea

So after getting back on the ship from our excursion, we hung out at the pool for a few hours. The kids loved getting their own ice-cream cones from the self-serve machine (in fact, that may have been their favorite part of the cruise). Then it was time to head to our rooms and get ready for formal night. Tristan threw such a huge fit over having to put on a suit and nice shoes that I had to carry him and his blankie all the way to the dining room (in my formal wear).  The best of dinner was that the kids club staff came to pickup kids 45 minutes into dinner (they always brought the kids' food out right away).  That way all the adults could stay and enjoy dinner and dessert at a more relaxed pace.  For more formal night pictures, see my sister's blog here:
http://www.sydkad.com/blog/fancy-night-day-2-continued

So sad (and stubborn!)

still not that happy...

finally better after kids club!!

 Day 3

On day 3 we spent some time exploring the ship and the kids got to ride the carousel, get face paintings and balloon animals (or helicopter, in Tristan's case) We also got to see the Dreamworks parade in the Promenade:

Jason, Carrie and I head out to the Solarium deck and pool for a break.

Chad takes a nap with Tristan and then they do some exploring.

For lots more pictures of day 3 and some great storytelling of our girls' night at the dance club, go to my sister's post here:
www.sydkad.com/blog/first-day-at-sea-day