Christmas All Year: The Cruise: Days 1-2

My goal upon starting this vacation was to update my blog daily. I quickly changed my priorities once we got to sea and I found out that if I wanted internet access I would have to mortgage my house and sell my first born child. I did take notes at the end of each day, however, and I will now attempt to translate them into a coherent record of our adventures at sea. All of the updates in this post are backdated and I'm sure will get gradually shorter and shorter as I try to make up for lost time.

Saturday May, 18

The trip began as all trips do. Stressfully. We left the hotel an hour later than we had planned to get to the dock. We had to make a (not so) quick stop at Walmart to pick up all the “essentials” that we left at home and in John’s car at the hotel in Denver. We split up into teams. After team A (my team) finished picking out some hot pink tennis shoes for Whitney and an unsatisfactory flower for Sydney’s vacation hairdo I taught them a skill that every scout should know. When you are lost, stand in one place and wait to be found. My girls and I withstood the temptation to separate and search and we waited in the center aisle until team B (John and Bryton) showed up. It worked like a charm and I was happy that they had already begun learning life skills this early in our vacation. I’ll bet they wouldn’t have learned that if they’d stayed in school. They might not make it into college but at least they will know what to do when they are lost at Walmart. And that piece of info might just be more useful than a college degree. (Hopefully they won’t read this until they’ve graduated college.) We headed to the cash register and waited in line to be told that our credit card had been declined. Excuse me? Try it again. Still not working? That darn credit card company. We told them we would be traveling. Call the credit card company. No sir it should still be working. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Try it now. STILL not working? Etc., etc., etc.. Not a big deal if you never have anything going on in your life, ever. But I’m betting it can be stressful even then. However if you have a 6 week vacation planned that is completely dependent on you catching a boat by a certain time plus an anxious driver waiting outside it can cause SUCH a tension head ache. We arrived at the dock in plenty of time but I was seriously so proud of how efficient we were being at Walmart that I think, in part, the tension headache came from having my record breaking time go awry. Does everyone play mission impossible games in their heads like this or is it just me? If so, I hope no one takes them as seriously as I. Being stuck at the register was like not saving the people from the exploding building in time. Well, maybe not that bad but you know what I mean. Picture something that would give James Bond a tension headache.

Our arrival at the dock was anticlimactic. Just the boring stuff. Going through security, standing in lines, luggage drop off, etc. in a grey warehouse type building that didn’t seem very magical. Things got better once we boarded the ship. They announced our names like they would at a royal ball and everyone clapped as we entered. I say everyone but really it was only the paid staff that would really like us to tip them. Still, I’ll take applause wherever I can get it. They sent us directly to lunch which took place more or less 5 minutes before dinner and that’s where our discriminatory eating came to an abrupt halt. Here are some pictures of where we have lived the last two weeks.

The kids enjoyed watching dolphins through the porthole before boat launch

Kids Room

Sunday, May 19^th

In a nutshell:

We spent about one minute at ship church.
Talked to a Taiwanese waiter at breakfast who knew all about BYU and their rivalry with the U. When I asked him if he went there he looked at me like I was crazy, pointed to his name tag and said, “No ma’am, I’m from Taiwan.” Didn’t know BYU culture was so well known in Taiwan. ;) This is the same waiter who absolutely would not allow me to order only oatmeal for breakfast. Brought me 2 items I didn't ask for.
Swimming, basketball, flubber making