SB - Day 3

The day started with me getting up before everyone else and enjoying the sunrise out on our balcony. It was gorgeous!

 We docked in Nassau, but our excursion wasn't for a couple of hours, so we played some games...

and did a little detective game they had on he ship.  I only have a video of it and I can't get it to load, but it was pretty cool. 

We got off the ship to go to our excursion at the Atlantis Resort.  

For the ride there, they PACKED the buses full.  There was only 1 little fold down seat left in the middle of the aisle, so my poor husband had to cram himself in it.  I will say, it looked pretty funny!

The grounds of the hotel are beautiful.  They have a ton of places to see stingrays, sharks, etc.  The aquarium was awesome.  There were all kinds of fish and the boys really seemed to enjoy it.

Here they are in front of an "Atlantis" scuba diver. (Notice Hudson's Vanna White hands... I have several pictures of him doing this.)

We ate lunch and started back towards the ship.  This is us trying to get a picture... Hudson cracks me up.  This kid has personality (well, that's what I choose to call it.)

That's better. :)

As I was uploading pics, I realized that I don't even have ONE picture of the four of us from this trip. Boo.

Anyway, Monday night was Pirate Night.  We got cleaned up for dinner and put on our bandanas they left in our room.

Yep...personality.

Tonights ketchup was a skull and crossbones Mickey.  

After dinner, we went up on deck for the Pirate Party.  They had a skit with Captain Jack Sparrow - very cute and the boys were enamored.

Then came the fireworks... it was really cool to watch fireworks on a cruise ship.

We had to walk back through Cabanas (the buffet restaurant to get back to the elevators that went to our room, and they had these carved watermelons places around the tables.  

They also had a crepe bar (crepes, strawberries, bananas, chocolate sauce, caramel, whipped cream, etc.) so yeah, we had some of those. :)  When we got back to our room, our towel monkey was waiting for us. :)

Spring Break - Day 2

We woke up and the boys and I headed down to breakfast at the hotel.  This hotel is where a LOT of people stay the night before cruising, so breakfast was packed. We grabbed a few things and went back to the room to finish eating.  After doing research on the internet, we decided to wear swimsuits for boarding so that we could go straight to the pool (our luggage wouldn't be available in our staterooms until later that afternoon anyway).

 After a short shuttle trip to the terminal, we had to wait outside before check in. This is them waiting in line... no idea what they are looking at.

After security, the check-in process and getting the boys signed up for the kids club, Hudson wanted to take a picture with Olaf.

We waited about 30 minutes and our boarding number was called.  This ship is HUGE!  this is only half of it - I couldn't fit the whole thing in my frame.

We ate lunch at the buffet and then straight to the pool.  They had a large screen over the pool where they played movies, trivia, etc. 

My little dudes in the pool.

We took our first spin on the Aqua Duck.  Reed wanted to ride by himself, so I went with Hudson.  Brian took a picture from the deck below - you can barely see Hudson's head in front. :)

After swimming for a bit, our stateroom was ready so we went to go check it out.  As soon as the boys felt the ship move, they had to run out to the balcony and see what it looked like.

We got settled in our room and before we knew it it was time for dinner.  They have everyone on a dining oration through the three restaurants, and our first one was The Royal Palace.  It had a princess/prince charming type theme.  

Hudson wanted ketchup with his french fries and of course our waiter made a Mickey Mouse head.  It was too cute. :)

We ended up not doing much Sunday night - we had an excursion on Nassau the next day, so we rested in our room and watched one of the many Disney movies you have access to.  When we came back to our cabin after dinner, they had done the turn down service and Hudson's bed had a little surprise on it... wearing my sunglasses. :)

Spring Break- Day 1

A little over a year ago, before he was in Kinder, Hudson and I were watching TV one morning and Cake Boss happened to be on.  It was an episode where the entire family had gone on a Disney Cruise.  It showed them on various parts of the ship and Hidson was enamored.  The part that really got him was when they went on the "Aqua Duck" - a clear tube water coaster/slide that goes around the top of the ship.  He kept saying "Mom, do you see that? Do you see that slide?  Mom, look at that slide!" Brian and I talked about it and decided it would be fun to take them on a Disney Cruise for Spring Break.  Since we were only a couple of weeks out from Spring Break, we decided to go ahead and book a little over a year in advance. AND I KEPT IT A SECRET FOR A YEAR.  Gold star for Mom!!! 😊.  I didn't want to tell them that early, because it would be a constant "When are we leaving? When is the cruise? Is it time yet?"

Uh, no thank you.

We chose Disney because of a few reasons-

1. We have been to DisneyWorld and Disneyland and have loved it.  The people that work for Disney are awesome.  They want to make your vacation an experience.  The parks are always so clean and we have always had the best time.

2. Reed is greeting older and we are on the tail end of Disney still being fun.  It'll be nice too because they aren't interested in any of the characters, autographs, etc. so we won't have to wait in line for that! 

3. Castaway Cay.  I purposefully chose a cruise that went to the Bahamas so that we could go to Castaway Cay which is Disney's private island that the ships stop at for a day.  

4. Lastly, we chose Disney for the slide on cake Boss that started it all. 😊 DCL has 4 ships and the Aqua Duck slide is on 2 of them.  We chose the Dream because it has the Aqua Duck and stops at Castaway Cay. 

So, after Brian and I got back from Mexico, I decided that it was close enough to tell the boys.  I made up a mini scavenger hunt and they went though the house getting clues.  At the end, I had made a "Countdown to Disney Cruise" sign I had made.  They were excited, but not as excited as I would've thought.  Once we sat down, looked at the ship online, watched videos of the waterslide, etc.,  they have gotten more excited. As they were getting ready for school last week, Hudson looked up at the countdown and said "It's only 9 days until we get on the cruise ship?  I'm so excited! Reed, are you excited?"  It was pretty cute.  Here they are with the sign this morning... 

Today we got up and headed out to get donuts for breakfast... It's the best way to start vacation, right? 

We went home, finished packing and then headed to the airport. (By the way, NEVER fly Spirit Airlines.  They hit you with so many hidden fees that IT. IS. REDICULOUS.  Lesson learned - never again. Ever. Very bitter over here.) After check-in and security, we went to get some lunch... Pizza. We're off to a super healthy start. 

At the gate, I did this - 

Polka Dot "Minnie Mouse" Jamberry nails, Starbucks and my essential oil handbook.  Not to shabby.  We let the boys break out the games.  This is a very accurate picture of my family in any situation where we have to wait. 😊

 We boarded and had to take the token selfie... 

Brian was on the row behind us, so he didn't make the cut. 😊 

An uneventful flight and quick drive to the hotel... Well, long enough for Hudson to bite the dust... 

...and we are checked in and ready for bed. I think we're all going to sleep well tonight! 

Reed's Music Program

Tonight we went to Reed's music program at school.  The theme was science camp.  Mrs. Duty always does such a great job with the programs and this was one of my favorites.  Reed came out in his lab coat- here is my little cutie with his fake smile plastered on.  He is so much like his daddy in this respect- not much of a singer/performer- he'd just rather do something else. :)

His big part was in the first song- he was one of the dry ice guys.  ( When the curtain opened, Hudson saw him and said in a rather non-quiet voice "There's Reed... Doin' some science."  Oh good grief.) Janna knew Reed would like this part in the program- and he did. The dry ice was pretty cool. 

The rest of the program was also very cute (with an almost constant commentary from Hudson.  The whole school had seen the program earlier in the day, so we heard how he had already seen this part, yadda, yadda. I shushed him approximately every 2 minutes for the rest of the show.)

We had a fun night- so proud of my boy!  

Mexico

Brian and I got back last night from a great vacation in Mexico.  We had 5 wonderful days of relaxing on the beach, hanging out by the pool, visiting Mayan ruins, deep sea fishing (Brian, not me) and just general relaxation.  I loved it that our biggest decisions usually involved which restaurant to eat at. :). We had such a great time reconnecting - lots of laughing and enjoying each other.  I am so thankful that after 11 years of marriage and 17 years together we still enjoy each other's company and are truly still in love.  Brian works very hard and has to handle a lot on a day to day basis.  I don't think he realizes how much of the stress gets to him.  On a normal day, he makes me laugh, but when I can get him away from work and relaxed, he quickly reverts to a silly/super funny guy and I love it. It was such a great getaway and makes me look forward to the next one. 

However, I did not look forward to coming back to 30 degree weather and snow.  I miss my flip flops already. 😊

Okay, so we got a little behind...

This is when it starts to get crazy.  We had our first Christmas get together on Saturday and in getting ready for that, my daily blogging has ceased. Since then, our activities have consisted of more random acts of kindness, seeing Frozen at the movie theater, 

new pajamas...

and driving around looking at Christmas lights with hot chocolate...

 

Today's activity was to make a Christmas snack mix (popcorn, pretzels, M&M's and white chocolate drizzled on top). 

Yum. :)

Joy has been keeping up the shenanigans- here is our last week in review.  

Playing angry birds...

Getting in her morning workout...

Putting together a Christmas puzzle...

Writing a note to Santa...

 

Playing Peek-a-boo in a t.p snowman...

 

Playing with the copier...

And this morning we found her in front of a cup pyramid.

It's one week until Christmas!!! I can't believe it. This month has flown by.  I've been pretty productive - I'm almost finished shopping and I spent all day Sunday making the 32 "Thank you/Merry Christmas" treat bags for the kids school personnel and Brian's subs.  Orange cranberry bread, Oreo bark and the popcorn snack mix mentioned above in today's activity.

I'm glad I set aside the time on Sunday because there is literally no time left until Christmas- everything is scheduled! Hope you all are ahead of schedule too!

12/11

School was delayed 2 hours today, so we were able to sleep a little late. I got up when I heard the boys and when they saw me Hudson said "Where is Joy? I've looked everywhere!"  I told them we didn't have a whole lot of time to look because they needed to eat breakfast and start to get ready for school. Reed wanted waffles (which is exactly what I wanted to happen) and went to the freezer and found this...

She brought us frozen treats!  Hudson smiled and said "Well that was nice!" :)

Our activity today was to do a random act of kindness. I'll leave it at that -  I think it's weird to do a RAK and then go tell people about it, but at the same time I know I have people who read this who want to know what our activity was for the day. 

On another note, I realized that Christmas is TWO WEEKS from today.  Um.... Yikes. :)

12/10

We awoke to quite the sight... Joy had tied up the Grinch!  Guess she didn't want to hear anymore "Scroog-y" stuff outta him!

The activity for today was to watch Despicable Me 2. It came out on DVD today so I knew it would be the perfect activity. I had a ladies Christmas party to go to so the boys got to spend some good quality time with Dad. :)