Do you know how hard it is to sort through 900 pictures from a cruise, decide which ones to keep? I managed to scale down the 900 to 500. Afterall, you don't need 150 pictures of sunrises and sunsets.
It's hard to decide which ones to share on the blog and even how to share them. So I'm going in order of the pictures, which will mean it is by days. So this shows our first day and a half. The half of a day was leaving port, and the first full day was Monday.
I think it took us most of the night to get down the Mississippi River to the Gulf. The New Orleans skyline as we drifted away was pretty!
The first day on the boat was crazy. This was our friends 4th cruise. The first cruise they went on, they didn't take their kids. Looking back, I think if the kids were not with us, the first day would have been much less stressful. It's not that the kids were doing anything wrong, but we didn't know what we were doing, so trying to let three kids know what was going on was a little hectic. Everyone gets on the boat and wants to do 2 things...get in their rooms and eat. So everyone was trying to get food in the same general area on that first afternoon after we boarded. I'll have to admit that Matt and I looked at each other and wondered, "Why did we do this again??"
And then came the room. The teeny tiny room. When we first saw the room, there was a king size bed and a twin bunk. We needed two more beds, and I had no idea how they were going to fit the beds in. It was just one more thing that added to our overwhelmed, "What were we thinking?" feeling. I will say that as soon as we got unpacked and got the extra beds, the room was just fine. Yes, it was small, but everyone had their space and I really didn't feel cramped at all. It was quite surprising that we could all live in a tiny one-room apartment and still like each other by the end of the week! Braden was almost in tears at the end of the week because he didn't want to leave the "one-room" house. He really does not like having his own bedroom, so having all 5 of us sleeping in the same room made his week. And Matt and I had a king-size bed which was very comfortable, so we all slept good!
They had an adult-only "Serenity Deck" which at times was really nice, and at times was not all that "serenity-full". There were a few times we went to sit on the deck and there was not one chair empty. Another time the only chairs that were open was by someone who was smoking, so we had smoke blowing in our face. Evenings and mornings were great, though. Matt and I put the kids to bed at night several times and went up to the Serenity deck and laid on the hammock looking at the starts. Pretty peaceful!
The boat had 3 huge water slides. The kids LOVED this! It was nice that they had a place to play in the water besides the pool. It was cool the first day, but the all enjoyed the slides anyway. We're used to swimming in Michigan in June, so 70 degrees and cloudy was fairly normal for us!
One of our favorite parts of the cruise was the dinners. It was so much fun to get cleaned up after a fun day of play and sit down and be served a delicious dinner. You got to know your servers well by the end of the week. (They are super hard workers...many of them working two jobs, at least 14 hour days and are gone from their families for up to 9 months at a time. All of our servers had spouses and children back in their home countries. So sad that they had to be away from their families, but that is the best way they have to provide for them. Several times we heard, "We do what we have to do!") Anyway...we loved the dining room and the food was amazing! I wasn't sure what to expect of the food. I really didn't eat anything bad at all on the ship. High quality food, and cheesecake after just about every meal! What's better than that??
This the captain. Nothing like meeting the captain of a cruise ship in a casino!
We loved the ship at nighttime. Most of the people were off in the restaurants, shows, casinos, etc, which left the ship empty.
Maddie in her dress that mom made her! She looked so grown up! Unfortunately, I didn't get any better pictures that night. We had all 6 kids since our friends had a date night, and stopping to get special pictures wasn't on the agenda!
This is the theater that is on the boat. Quite amazing how big it is! After dinner we'd go see a comedian or a show. We had to walk out of one "Latin Nights" show that got way to risky for kids eyes (and our eyes, too!) as the show went on. We saw an 60's and 70's show that was good. The dancers/singers/actors were quite talented. And the comedians were funny, too!
They were always showing movies on the deck, so on nights that the movies were kid-appropriate, we got a lounge chair and sat in the open air watching a movie and eating freshly popped popcorn. So fun!
By the time Monday night came, we could tell the air was getting warmer. It was so exciting knowing we were heading south to warmer weather!
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