Sunday, February 13. 2011
While Tulsa was experiencing Snowpocalypse of 2011, we traveled down to Texas to embark on our first ever cruise. We were in Oklahoma for the first 14 inches, which made our exit from the state challenging, but it also allowed an early departure since work was closed. Of course, Texas had some severe weather, including 7-8 more inches the morning we left the grandparents' to head to Galveston. We managed to make a 6-hour trip in 9 hours! With 3 active kids in the car! After spending the night in a hotel, we got ready for boarding, which was also interesting with 3 active, young children and all the requisite luggage in tow. We finally made it onto the "big boat" and started exploring. I commented quite a few times on the trip that we were either brave or foolish depending on the perspective.
Seth and Ruth both attended childcare at Camp Carnival at intervals during the day, but there was very little official childcare for Zeke. Thanks to Tim's brilliance, we invited an old friend and a new friend to come with us to help. It was wonderful to have a few kid-free hours each day to actually relax. Thanks, Krista and Becky! But it was great to have the kids with us and see them experience all the new things.
One port day was in Progreso, Mexico. We put all 3 kids in childcare and headed into town by ourselves. We did our own thing, shopping and hanging out on the public beach. I even got to impress Tim by bartering in my (very rudimentary) Spanish. The childcare was only available for a short time, so we couldn't do any of the cool things like Chichen Itza, but it was nice to just have some time for the two of us.
The other port day was in Cozumel. We took the whole family this time and did an official cruise excursion. The kids had fun playing in the sand and the pool. It was too cold for ocean swimming. (For us, anyway. I think we saw some yanks out there.) On the way back we enjoyed some Mariachi music.
The boat was lots of fun, too. Seth had an introduction to miniature golf, which he now loves. He played about 5 rounds a day and invented a move called the "longee zoggee". I think it's sort of like an expanded Mulligan and involves picking up the ball, bouncing it on some rocks, logs, etc., and then dropping it into the cup. It can be used anytime your ball bounces off of something when you hit it, at least according to Seth. There were also water slides that our kids loved. Rumor has it that the Ecstasy (our boat) will be replaced in September with the Magic, which has even more amazing things on it and is even bigger.
One of Tim and my favorite times were the dinners. Our friends watched Zeke and sometimes Ruth so that we could enjoy it alone. We had wonderful servers from the Philippines who took great care of us. At a couple of the dinners, all the servers entertained us with song and dance. Otherwise for breakfast and lunch, we mostly ate at the family-style buffet with our very loud and boisterous children. The food was plentiful and pretty good for the most part. The kids absolutely loved finding towel animals created by our room steward each evening with our turn-down service.
I think that debarking was worse than boarding, just because we were already tired and we had to wait a LONG time in a dark lounge with nothing for kids to do, but Seth made new friends on the shuttle bus back to our car. We survived and headed back to the grandparents' to stay another night before heading home. It was nice to see the Livingston cousins the next morning before we took off.
There are pics and video on FB, so check it out!
-Laurel
