Big Summer Vacation, Part 2

On Sunday morning, we all woke up excited and ready to get to the port.  However, Royal Caribbean had another plan.  They stagger the boarding times by boat deck, so we were assigned a 2:00 entry.  It did make check-in go a lot more smoothly, but it gave us a long morning of anxiously awaiting getting on board!  We enjoyed a buffet breakfast at the hotel and then returned to our room to pack and watch some Wimbledon.  The girls watched a movie on our iPads.  After awhile we headed out for a delicious lunch at Bubba Gumps.  It's one of my favorite places to eat so this was a great way to pass the time! 

 After lunch, we did a little more waiting, but finally it was time to board!  Once we checked in we headed to our room.  As Lily looked around, she asked "Mommy, did you mean to order such a small bathroom?"  Ryan and I cracked up and explained that most cruise ships have pretty small bathrooms even though she was remembering our Disney cruise a couple of years ago that actually had two bathrooms in it.  From there we explored the boat, did the muster drill and then started the cruise for 7 nights.  It was wonderful!

I have a ton of pictures to share.  Because they were coming from three cameras (mine, Ryan's and our water camera), there's really not an order here.  These are just things we did on the boat.  We didn't even take pictures of everything!  The pictures from our excursions will be in another post.  Also, I'm not really putting many pictures of the boat on here.  Allure of the Seas has plenty of photos they are happy to share on their website.  So, off we go...

We stopped by to register the girls for the Adventure Ocean kids clubs.  Mia was in the Aquanots group while Lily was in Ocean Adventurers group.  Each of the days we were at sea all day and a couple of the evenings when they had fun themes going, the girls went to their camps.  They absolutely loved it!  Lily has said multiple times that her favorite part of the cruise was making new friends here.  Some of their themes included pirate night, superhero night, circus fun, ocean exploration and color explosion.  This was so much fun for them!

 Cut outs by the Mexican restaurant at a little playground.  We never ate at this restaurant but the girls always love these face cut outs.

 On our balcony (on the left) and on the back of the boat (on the right) ready to sail away!  I bought these "Bon Voyage" shirts from Crazy 8 months ago.  Couldn't get any more perfect.

 Mini golf has now become a new fun family activity.

Posing at one of the holes.

 They liked these little creatures.

 They were so excited to have a bunk bed in our room.  They alternated who slept on which bed each night.  The picture on the right shows what we saw each evening.  They had a blast every day but they were worn out by the time they got to bed!

 So we quickly found our way to the cupcake bakery.  Yum!

 Allure has an ice skating rink on it where we enjoyed a couple of shows.  The first one had sort of a Monopoly concept to it.  It was neat to watch.

 The girls chose to spend the money they had been saving on these stuffed animals.  It was like a build a bear shop where they picked the animal, stuffed it, put a little token inside and then picked a shirt for it.  Lily picked a dolphin and named her Royal.  Mia picked a whale and named her Splash.  While I wasn't thrilled they picked another stuffed animal, it fit their budget so we let them get them; they have actually really loved on them since buying them so I'll say it turned out to be a good choice.

 Royal Caribbean partners with DreamWorks which made for some fun character appearances, movies and parades.  Here we were at a parade which featured characters from How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and Madagascar.

 We also went to the How To Train Your Dragon ice skating show which was actually really neat.  We all enjoyed it!  Since How To Train Your Dragon 2 recently came out, there was a lot for this particular movie which was fine with our kids; they both love it!  They played it in the big movie theatre on board one day so we went to see it which was fun; we also saw The Lego Movie and Epic while we were on board.

 There is a Boardwalk area on board, so the girls had a lot of face painting this week.

 More face painting...

 And more face painting...they couldn't get enough!

 I took the girls to a kids cupcake decorating class which they both really enjoyed.

 Showing off their finished products (fish swimming in the ocean!) before the best part - eating it!

 Both girls had a lot of fun at Pirate Night with their camps (I'm sure more face painting had nothing to do with it).  Mia's group performed on a stage up in the kids' area which was really cute.  The leader would ask a question such as "What's a pirate's favorite letter?" and the group would respond "Rrrrr!"  Our little pirate had a pretty good time. At one point though, the kids turned around to shake their "booty" at the audience but Mia wouldn't do it and she looked a little upset.  She told us later she didn't think that was nice so she didn't want to do it.  Love this sweetheart!

 Lily's group also performed but they first paraded through the Promenade on the main deck.  She had a blast!

 Ready to have fun a the pool!  We got to the pool each morning right about as it was opening at 8 (my kids are incapable of sleeping in even when they are up late the night before), and we would stay for a few hours.  We practically had the place to ourselves which was really nice.  Around 11:30 we would head over to lunch and then find other things to do on board (there was no shortage of activities) as the pool was more crowded.

Mia loved the water canons!

 Lots of pool fun pictures coming up.  While here, Mia learned to snorkel and fell in love with it.  Now, she doesn't want to be in a pool unless she can snorkel.  Lily also learned to snorkel but more so, learned to hold her breath long enough to dive down for things.  I tell you, this is major improvement for both of them since even the beginning of summer.  Finally, we are a pool ready family!

 Ping pong was a fun thing to try.  We were never really able to get a rally going, but it was fun to try!

 Oh you better believe we had room service a couple of times!  We had no interest (or clothing) for a formal and semi-formal night at the regular restaurant, and you know how much we love room service so this made sense.  Ryan and I would sit on our balcony to enjoy the sunset view while the girls had fun sitting inside talking.

 We did go to Johnny Rockets for lunch one day.  The milkshakes, hot dogs, fries and onion rings were all enjoyed; top it off with watching the waiters dance and we had a great time!

 The ship has an "aqua theater" at the back of the boat.  They had a show called Oceanaria that they performed a few times throughout the week.  It was spectacular!  It was a diving show that was truly amazing.  It was choreographed to music, there was some comic relief and it was simply awesome to watch.

 I put this picture in to show that one of the boards (it's lit up) was 90 feet above the pool.  A guy dove from it twice!!!  He has to be crazy.  Most of the diving was from one of the two platforms closer to the pool, but that was breathtaking to watch.

 Allure has a levitating bar in the middle of it so we had to ride it.  Of course, we went during the day when they weren't very busy.  It was a neat experience.

 The girls were thrilled to get balloon creations on the boardwalk one day.  Mia got a monkey hat to wear and Lily got a mermaid hat that happens to look just like Ariel but since the cruise line doesn't partner with Disney, well, it's just a mermaid.

 On our last evening, we went to a performance called Blue Planet that was similar to a Cirque du Soleil production.  There was beautiful singing and lot of acrobatics.  Pretty neat looking tree in this picture, right?  It's almost all made up of actors who come apart to perform.

 This was the first of many, many carousel rides on the boardwalk.

 While the girls were at camp one evening, Ryan and I went to a fountain show at the aqua theater.  It was really neat to watch.  It was only about 15 minutes long, but it was very similar to the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas.  They had them all choreographed to beautiful music.  It was very relaxing to watch, and we both really enjoyed this.

 Mia with her superhero cape from camp one evening.  This was probably her favorite night.

 My favorite picture from our time on the boat.  This was taken on our balcony one day, and I just love it.  Not only are the girls adorable, but look at that water behind them.  Amazing!

I didn't put any pictures in of our dinners at the regular restaurant which were all pretty tasty.  Our waiters, Bien and Geraldo, were very kind and great with the girls.  We met a lovely family from South Carolina at the table next to us which was nice.  We stopped by the library which unfortunately didn't have a kids' section; Lily was a little disappointed by that one.  They have a donut shop on the boardwalk in the mornings, so we enjoyed that a couple of times or we would head to the Windjammer Café for more options.  Overall, the food worked well for us.  One evening Lily did get sick in the middle of the night.  I think it was a combination of exhaustion and not eating great but she recovered quickly.  Ryan enjoyed watching the Germany versus Brazil World Cup game on the big screens at the aqua theater.  We did glow sticks in our room before bedtime one night which the girls loved!  We watched people try the Flow Rider waves but we weren't brave enough to try it ourselves (or the zip line nearby).  We had fun watching a belly flop contest and the girls can now tell you that judging for this is based on pain.  We did a family art camp for a couple of hours where we attempted to build a catapult and a tail for Toothless.  The girls and I went to a Barbie fashion show one day and also went to a face painting and balloon animal making class.  So that is pretty much how we spent our time on the boat.  It was truly a wonderful time away.  I'll put pictures from our excursions up in the next post because that was pretty great too!

Big Summer Vacation, Part 1

Our family was so excited about out family's summer vacation this year.  This was the first time in 5 years that Ryan hasn't been in Alaska at the beginning of July, so we decided to add some family time to our annual New Smyrna Beach vacation.  Looking through all the options, we decided on a cruise out of Fort Lauderdale.  We knew we would drive, but man, that was going to be a long trip, so we started thinking of ways to break up the trip.  As luck would have it, in one of Lily's Lego sets there was a reference to LEGOLAND in Winter Haven, Florida.  That was more than halfway there, and we were certain the girls would love it.  They both have a great time with Legos these days, so we thought we would give it a try.  We didn't tell the girls about our idea though.  Central Florida in early July is known for its rain (and blazing heat if it's not raining).  So, we decided we would head on down, not buy our tickets in advance and make a day-of decision on if it made sense to go.  Well, we got up that morning, and even though we knew it would be hot, it looked like it would be a nice day so off we went.  The girls didn't have a clue until we pulled in and they saw the big welcome sign.  I love surprising them like this! 

 First up on our agenda was the double decker carousel.  Of course, we had to sit on top.

 Next up was the kid's animal safari ride.  I gave Lily my phone to take pictures while Mia "drove" the car.  Really, it was pretty impressive to see all the cool animals made out of Legos.  Not quite the same as the Animal Kingdom safari, but still neat.

 They enjoyed it.

 After that was boating school.  The girls actually drove us around; it wasn't on a track.  That was interesting.  Thankfully (and kind of miraculously) no one got sea sick even though those boats were rocking and bumping!  The girls were quite proud of themselves for their captain skills.

 Right next to the boating school is the driving school.  They have one for kids 6 to 12 but Lily became really nervous and refused to give it a try.  Mia however was super excited to try out the small track for kids 3-5.  I have to be honest, she showed some pretty nice driving skills here.  She started in the back of the pack since she was the last one in, but ended up driving around others in tight spaces to come out in first place.  She was thrilled to be given her "driver's license" when it was over.

 Some of the neatest things to see were all the Lego structures they had created.  Some were really impressive!  Here's Cape Canaveral and San Francisco.

 Mia and I also rode a neat little ride where we pulled ourselves up pretty high then released the ropes to drift back down.

 One of the day's highlights was meeting Emmett and Wildstyle from The Lego Movie.  Lily currently says this is her favorite movie while Mia says it is in her top 5.

 The girls were excited to ride this medieval looking ride.  They rode something similar at Hershey last year and loved it.  They thoroughly enjoyed this one which spins them around pretty quickly.  I was able to snap one not-too-blurry picture as they sped by.

 Here are they are looking upset to be in the stockade.  They were mad that we had said it was time to go.  It was mid-afternoon so we had been there for quite awhile, and we were all burning up.  We could see rain clouds moving in, and we knew we had another 3-4 hour ride ahead of us to Fort Lauderdale.  We had seen and done just about everything we were interested in (they didn't want to do any roller coasters and we weren't going to the water park because we didn't want to be soaked in the car), so it just made sense to go on and head out.  Regardless, this was their reaction, but to me, what better faces to have in the stockade!

 Of course, they cheered up pretty quickly when they remembered we told them at the beginning of the day that we would go to the gift shop on our way out.  They both picked out their souvenir (Cinderella's castle set for Lily, a sword and shield for Mia), and we picked up a couple of little surprises for them and our Christmas tree ornament.  It was a very fun day, and I'm so glad we added this to the front of our vacation.

We made it to Fort Lauderdale a few hours later.  We were all taking showers and relaxing and decided going out to dinner just didn't sound right, so we ended the day with room service, our favorite!

What a great way to start our vacation!

Awesome Family Vacation

We were so fortunate to have a two week summer vacation this year. It was great!  I hope to post lots of details and pictures soon, but I'm having problems getting pictures from my phone to computer. Here's the summary:

We left on July 4 (unfortunately missing the Marietta parade which ACCA participated in) and drove to Lakeland. We spent the night and spent about half of Saturday at Legoland. It was so fun!  It was also ridiculously hot but hey, it was central Florida in July. What do you expect?  

When we had our Lego fill, we headed south to Ft Lauderdale. We took it easy and had room service for dinner. On Sunday morning, we enjoyed breakfast and Wimbledon before heading to one of my favorite lunches:

Bubba Gumps!  Love it!  From there it was time to head to the port. We were so excited for a week's cruise on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas. It was pretty spectacular. We cruised to Nassau, St Thomas/St John and St Maarten. These places were so beautiful! We went snorkeling, on a semi-sub, shopping and touring there. On our days at sea we enjoyed a carousel, shows (broadway style, ice skating and water theatre ones), mini golf, ping pong, movies, fun food treats, parades and face painting. The kids loved going to kids camp too. Lily even said her favorite part of the cruise was making new friends. We all had a blast!  It is impossible to show the whole trip here, but here's a few pictures. 

It was fantastic!  When we docked back in Florida, we drove a few hours up to New Smyrna Beach for my family's annual vacation. My parents, Liz and my cousins were already there enjoying the sun. We joined right in and had a great week with family. On Wednesday, our cousins Emily and Kate drove over from Lakeland to spend the day with us too which was great. We don't get to spend nearly enough time with them since we live so far apart. Here's a fun picture from that relaxing week. 

We had looked forward to these two weeks for awhile. I'll fill in more details later, but until then, know it was lots of fun!

Mia's Ailments

So two funny side stories on Mia not feeling great recently:

She started having some fluid in her ears last week that smelled horrible. She wasn't complaining, but I assumed it was infected so we went to the doctor. Turns out it is swimmer's ear from our recent trip. As Mia explained it to Ryan and Liz when we got home "I still have beach stuff in me."  That's one explanation!

About a week ago, Mia woke me up about 2:30 in the morning. She stood right next to my face and said "I think I'm gonna throw up" to which I promptly replied "Get in the bathroom!"  She calmly walked in and leaned over the toilet. I held her hair back. She forced herself to cough a couple of times, spit once and then said "Oh, I think I just had a piece of corn stuck in my throat. I'm fine now."  She then went back to bed and fell fast asleep. If this kid wasn't so stinkin' cute, I would have been upset!

Recent Life

Our summer is off to a great start!  I love this laid back time of year.  We decided to kick off summer with a backyard cookout.  We started by roasting hot dogs which turned out delicious.

 Of course, you can't have a summer fire and not make s'mores!

 At Mia's request, we decided to have a water balloon fight afterwards.  Lily and I were on team Balloon Busters while Ryan and Mia were on another team.  We spread these balloons all over our deck and had a blast getting soaked!  Hopefully we'll do this again soon.

 Afterwards and we were drenched.

 I put this picture in purely for Mia.  Love her enthusiasm!

 Liz took the girls to Shades' VBS for a week, and they had a superhero theme which went over well with our girls.  Here's Lily modeling her superhero outfit for me.

 One of Lily's recent drawings.  Love her creativity!

 Meme turned 93 last week.  I adore this lady.  I went to visit with her the Friday before her birthday.  When I walked in, she was sitting in her wheelchair with her Bible open on her lap.  When I asked what passage she was reading, she said she was studying the different names of God; she said that never gets old.  I wish I could have snapped a picture just before she looked up; it's a sight I will never forget.  I am so thankful for this wonderful woman and the influence she has had on my life.

 I wasn't able to join Meme on her actual birthday because Ryan and I were in Florida.  His grandfather passed away, so we went down for the funeral.  Ryan was able to give a tribute to Grandpa Hooks at the funeral, and he did an outstanding job memorializing this incredible man.  He certainly led an exciting, interesting and full life.  There are many that are going to miss his zest for life, generosity and wisdom.

 

Back at home, the girls built this fort and we kept it up for several days.  They had a great time crawling inside to read books or play on our iPads.

 Last week the girls went to tennis camp.  They had never picked up a racket before, but they both did great!  They loved it, so we're looking into finding a coach to continue these lessons.  I was 6 when I started, so I think they are at the perfect ages to start.  I love that they are loving this!

I don't have a picture of this, but I took the girls to Barnes and Noble last week.  They have a summer reading program that Lily participated in, so we went to pick up her free book.  On the way, Mia asked if I would get her a toy there.  I said no but I would get her a book.  When she responded she didn't like books, I suggested that maybe we find one on a subject she really likes, like superheroes.  She lowered her voice to a whisper and said "Mommy, just so you know, I'm just pretending to be a superhero right now but when I get older, I'm going to be a real one."  Somehow I don't doubt her!

 

We also have enjoyed a Braves game with our good friends, the Gary family (happy father's day present to Ryan).  It was a blazing hot afternoon game and the Braves lost, but we had a lot of fun with our friends.  We also went that evening to a surprise party for Shane as he recently received his college degree.  We are so super proud of him (he did a 4 year program in 9 months, yes, 9 months!) and look forward to seeing where this takes his family in the future.  It was so incredibly hard not to say anything to him at the game though!  Thankfully I hadn't told the girls so the secret was safe.

 

Let the summer fun continue!