Dinner, Night 1

Tonight was our first dinner on the cruise. We were sat at our private table for 12 which was all the way in the back of the dining room, up on a raised area. It is the coolest table in the dining room. We also met our waiter and assistant waiter who will take care of us for dinner every night. His name is Devon and he is from Jamaica.

There were SO many choices on the menu!

Dinner was amazing. I had two different appetizers, soup, salad, main course, and dessert, and all of it was super good.

Zinadine and the boys liked the ice cream at the end the best.

We dress up every night for dinner and tonight we wore gold and blue. Lots of people stopped us when we walked through the dining room to tell us how nice it was to see a big family like ours. We got a whole bunch of compliments.

After dinner we all went dancing in the Safari Lounge to music played by the house band. I got to dance with all three of my favorite ladies... Mom, Nana, and Baby Z.

The Boat...

We boarded the boat this morning. 


We call it a "boat" even though it's a cruise ship, because "ship" is a dangerous word to teach Baby Z. It's better for her to say boat. I'll let you figure out why. 


We set sail at 5pm tonight and will cruise on the sea until the 16th, when we will arrive in Haiti. 


The boat is amazing. It's way bigger than I thought it would be and the inside is a lot cooler too. 


Here are some photos of the inside of the ship:


This is the center lobby in the middle of the ship. My parents are making us take the stairs everywhere we go, so we won't get to use this elevator too much, but it is super pretty with an awesome view. 

This is the main dining room where we will eat dinner every night. It's two stories. We can also have other meals here if we want, but with so much else to choose from we'll see how much we eat here. 

This is another restaruant on board called the Seaview Cafe. This one is up top right next to the kids pool and they serve a bunch of food that I love, so I hope we eat there as much as possible. 

This is the FUEL club, which is the teen hangout. They have a whole bunch of activities planned that will be here in FUEL, should be fun! It has a dance floor, couches, computers, a DJ booth, a kitchen, a foosball table, and a bunch of other cool stuff. 

This is the Vortex dance club. At home we have dance parties all the time in our living room. This is way cooler...

This is the library... We already checked it out and I borrowed a book that looked cool called "What would MacGyver Do" about survival. Zinadine borrowed a girly kids book too. 

This is just one of the 3 pools on the boat.  The main pool is open with no ceiling, but this one has a glass ceiling so you can still see the sky. The kids pool has two water slides, so I plan to spend a lot of time there. 

This is the sports court on the boat. You can't see it in this photo but there are soccer goals on each end. You know where you can find me... 

This is the Rock Climbing Wall. Sign me up! 

This is the arcade that is attached to the kid's area. They have Guitar Hero and Air-hockey!  

This is part of the 9-hole mini golf course.

This is the kids pool slide. Looks SO fun! 

And this is the main pool. There are a bunch of games planned for the main pool including a belly flop contest. Ryder is the best belly flopper I know. I bet he wins.  

This is the theater on board for the shows. There is another cinema for watching movies. There is a big show planned for every night including a magic show. 

There is more to see of course, but for now, this will have to do!


On to Haiti!!! 

Loading the ship...

We got to the cruise terminal, filled out some paperwork, and then got to board the ship.

They gave each of us a "Sea Pass" that is a little credit card with our name on it that will be our identification, our room key and how we pay for anything we want to buy on the cruise.

Here we are walking on to the ship.

After we got on board we went straight to check out our room. We have a family suite with bunk beds!

Then we went to get some food at the buffet. I tried a little bit of everything!

The buffet had this cool Welcome sign and a bunch of animals made out of fruit and vegetables.

Later the boat pushed off and we waved goodbye to Florida. From the boat the coast of Florida looked just like it did in the powerpoint presentation I did for school.

Leaving for the cruise...

We are all packed up, checked out of the hotel, and heading off to our cruise this morning.

Here are all the grandkids waiting for the shuttle to pick us up and take us to the cruise.

My crazy Nana jumped in this one!

Florida...

Finally done with the airplane part of our trip. There were some amazing views from the airplane as we flew into Florida. I saw the coastline and some really nice beaches. 

Soccer stadiums look like patches of very green grass from way up in the plane.

The weather here in Florida is not as warm as I thought it would be, but still WAY warmer than Sandpoint. I mean WWAAAAYYYYY warmer. I heard it's 16 degrees back home today. It's 70 here with a light breeze. I'm rockin' flip flops.

We board the cruise ship tomorrow morning. I have photos on my phone of the views from the plane in Denver and Florida that I will post soon.

Cruising...

Tonight our family heads out on an adventure. We are flying to Denver, then on to Florida. But as cool as Florida is, that isn't our final destination. Not by a long shot.

In Florida we are boarding a cruise ship called The Jewel of the Sea, and we will cruise for nearly 2-weeks, stopping in Haiti, Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Grand Cayman.

We're leaving behind the frozen world of Sandpoint for the warm beaches far away. I'll write about our trip here, and will post photos too. Bon Voyage! (That's French for "good journey")