2012 Vacation: Last Day

We woke up the next morning to see this: Port Canaveral. We were back and our magical and happy vacation was coming to a close. That morning was spent busily packing all our luggage and getting ready to leave. I took some pictures of our staterooms before we left. We had two staterooms for our family that were connected, complete with a balcony outside, which was so nice.

We had breakfast at the Royal Palace and since there were such long lines to leave, we took that chance to walk around the ship a little more to see everything one last time and take a few last pictures.

And then, we left..... :( I sure hope to see you real soon, Mickey!! We had so much fun!

After we got off the cruise we could finally turn our phones on again (they don't work out at sea or you'd get charged if you did use it when not in the US) and received a text from our uncle Jefre, who lives in Miami along with his wife and some of our cousins, letting us know they weren't going to be able to visit us as planned. They were going to come meet up with us and spend the day with us but they had too much homework. So we got off the ship, kind of depressed, because there isn't much that beats a Disney cruise. We tried going to the NASA visitors center because we thought it was free but turns out it's pretty expensive so that didn't last long.

We ended up going to Cocoa beach but before went to the grocery store and took forever getting food (Carina wanted something to eat because she hadn't eaten on the ship as she was still feeling seasick) to eat. Finally we got to the beach and mostly just laid there and tanned (something we actually hadn't done much of on the ship surprisingly) while Gracie played in the water a little and found so many shells--she was in heaven I tell you.

After the beach we went to the Orlando temple and just walked around. It was peaceful, which felt good and made up for a little of our sadness of leaving the cruise and not being able to see our cousins.

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called "Steak and Shake" which was so delicious! Maybe we were just craving some burgers after all the fancy food we'd eaten on the cruise, but man was it good. We all got yummy shakes too so that filled us up and made us pretty happy.

Then we went back to our hotel to watch Once Upon a Time (its a tv show and we love it!) and then go to bed. Our flight the next morning left at 7 am, which was 5 am our time! And since it left at that time, we had to get up earlier than that to drop off our car and get to the airport.

When we got to the SLC airport, we were a tired but happy to be home bunch!

I just have to say that I love my family so much, and I'm so grateful that we got to go on this amazing vacation together. I love my parents for taking us and trying so hard to plan fun things for the whole family. I'm so happy to have been place with the family that I did, because they are the best and I really do love them. And boy am I lucky, because we get to spend all eternity together! :)

2012 Vacation: Day 2 of Disney Cruise and the Bahamas

On our second day of the cruise ship, I woke up in the morning to this :) The Bahamas!!

When we got off the boat and at the edge of the city (we were in Nassau) there were Bahamians (is that what they're called?) all over trying to get us to get in their vans and cabs so they could show us around the city. We wanted to see most of the city, so we went with a really nice man who was actually a preacher. He had a cool accent and he took us around the city, telling us about stuff and Nassau's history as we drove by.

We got out at a little marketplace where people were selling stuff that you could barter for so that was pretty fun and cute.

Next stop was Atlantis, a city with a super fancy hotel (like the kind of hotels you see in cool spy movies like James Bond). Apparently the top suite costs $15,000 a night and you have to rent it for at least 4 nights. Um, yes...crazy. We walked around the hotel and basked in it's richness and then got lost trying to get back to our cab driver..oops. The hotel was just huge! Atlantis definitely is a whole separate part of the island. Nassau is much poorer, I mean, the people seem to do fine, but Atlantis has the richest of the rich. Crazy.

Cool pavilion :)

After we were done with the tour, we walked around the city and went to some of the shops to get souveneirs. My dad, Cee Ryle, and Gracie all got tired so they went back to the boat while my mom and my other sisters and I continued to shop for a little while longer.

When we got back to the boat, Gracie went to wait in line for Tinkerbell, her all-time favorite Disney character. She was SO excited. The adorable thing about Gracie on the boat was that any time she met a Disney character, she'd give them a huge squeezy hug for a looong time until someone would finally be like, "Okay...time to let go.." So now when she hugs me I tell her to give me a "Disney character hug" and then she squeezes me. So cute :)

We had dinner in the enchanted garden and all of us were dressed in pirate gear for the ship's pirate night. They gave us all bandanas and we tried to dress as pirate-y as possible. It was really fun!

I was trying to do a pirate hook haha

28 was our table number each night

All the food was incredibly fancy. Often, I'd read the menu and have no idea what certain things were because the words were so foreign to me. Luckily they'd mark which thing was the favorite and if I didn't know what to get, I'd get that. We had like four courses--appetizer, soup or salad, main course, and dessert, so we were always so full by the end of dinner. And sometimes we'd get more than one appetizer or more dessert, because it was all paid for already with all the cruise fees, so we were always stuffed. It was all so good!

When we got to our stateroom after dinner, a monkey was waiting for us!

They had a small pirate night celebration in between dinner and the show that we went to which was pretty fun. That one was more aimed at the little kids, because later they were having a bigger celebration with fireworks and stuff. Somewhere there we lost Cee Ryle for the rest of the night, and when he came back after midnight we found out he'd been at the Edge, a place for kids 11-14. After the pirate show we went to see the show, "Villains Tonight!" which was really funny. Here's a preview of the show. Then we dropped off Gracie and went to go see the fireworks. Fun fact about Disney cruise line: they are the only cruise line allowed to do fireworks on water, cool huh?

After that was done, they had the funnest dance party I've ever been to in my life! It was just so fun and surreal to be having a dance party on a Disney cruise out in the middle of the ocean. When that was over, they played Pirates of the Carribbean so I watched a little bit of that and then went back to the room because I was tired. Fun day!!

2012 Vacation: Day 1 of Disney Cruise

Thursday morning of our vacation, we were SO excited to get up and get going to be on the cruise!

First view of the cruise ship...it was so big!!

This picture pretty much sums up how Gracie was feeling. We took a few pictures in the little boarding place while waiting. They were playing Dumbo on some tvs that we kind of watched but were really too excited to pay attention.

All ready to board! Yay!

This was our first view of coming on the ship. It was beautiful! As we walked in, there were cruise line employees in button-up shirts and slacks on either side of and as each family walked up, they'd announce our names to the whole cruise ship, so it was pretty fun.

For lunch, our first meal on the ship, we went to the Cabanas, which was a huge buffet filled with every food you can possibly imagine. Sooo delish!

After lunch we explored the cruise ship a little bit..

They had a little departing party on the ship with fun and dancing, and a countdown for the ship to leave.

Each night for dinner we went to a different place, and this night we went to Animator's Palate, which was kind of art-themed. They had sketches of Disney characters all over and they also had tvs all over with Finding Nemo characters that would randomly float onto the screen and talk and respond with the people in the restaurant.

I had the salmon, which was delicious!!

When we got back to our stateroom, an elephant was waiting for us with chocolates :)

Each night they also had a great show that was Disney based and almost as good as any Broadway show. This night it was The Golden Mickeys.

That night after the show we explored some more and just had fun on the ship. We went and did this little family game show called "Mirror Mirror," which was pretty fun. We were teamed up with this cute Asian family of six. I think they were probably Mormons too, because of the large amount of children and also because every time we saw them (we ran into them so much all over the ship) they were dressed modestly. haha ;) Being on the Disney cruise was way nice because every night we were able to just go drop Gracie off in the Oceaneers Club (which she called Pixie Hollow because there was a Tinkerbell section in it). It was this huge place for kids to go play with other kids, meet characters, and be watched over by counselors. She loved it and so did we, because it meant we could go do other stuff she wouldn't have wanted to do.

And that's the end of the first day on the Disney Cruise! Man, it makes me sentimental writing this, because we seriously had such a good time. It was so fun! More fun reading to come!