The boys started noticing commercials for cruises and saying they wished they could go on one. Tim and I don't have to have our arm twisted to go cruising, so we were happy we were able to make it happen last year. Baba had been in town visiting us on her way home from Ohio, so she actually took Timmy down early and he had a few extra days in Florida before the rest of us flew down. The trip down was both boys' first flights! Baba said that Timmy didn't show any nervousness. Tyler didn't either, as long as he was buckled! Once we realized this we tortured him a little bit, you can see his hilarious reaction in the video below!
We had two days at Baba and Grandpa's before the cruise. Unfortunately Tim started experiencing severe neck and shoulder pain and he was in an extreme amount of pain for the majority of our vacation. When we got home he found out he had herniated and ruptured discs and spent months rehab-ing his injuries. It was horrible timing and limited what he could enjoy with us on the trip. He was a trooper whenever possible though and we still made fantastic memories. Our first day in Florida we mostly relaxed, we did go to the Disney Employee's only store and dinner at Port Orleans.
On Friday we went to the Magic Kingdom. We all got to ride the 7D Mine Train, the first time for the four of us! Tyler was also finally tall enough for Splash Mountain. Another first was meeting Tinker Bell, Tyler just loves her. He told her all about how he sees her at our house sometimes (any time light is reflecting off the walls or ceilings, to this day, he yells out "Tinkerbell's here!" She nodded and told him that she comes to check on him quite often.
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| Tyler would lift his hat and say "I'm Tyler" to anyone who called him Goofy, I guess he wanted to make sure Goofy knew too! |
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| Meanwhile we were keeping Donald waiting, who had hands on hips and foot tapping, Tyler was thrown off by this and a little nervous to pose with him for pictures! |
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| Top left is pretty typical of how they approach rides, Timmy's hoping we won't make him ride, for no good reason, Tyler can't wait to get on! |
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| (It just happened to be our 18th dating anniversary too!) |
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| We had reservations at the Polynesian Hotel and had amazing sushi, it poured the whole time we were eating, and stopped for us to head back to the Magic Kingdom! |
The next day Baba dropped us off at Port Canaveral and we boarded the Carnival Sunshine. We went to St Marteen, St Kitts, San Juan, and Grand Turks, with three days at sea as well. Tim and I had sailed on the Sunshine before, but it had been completely renovated since then, with updated dining areas, theaters, and a whole new aerial obstacle course, and water slides and a kids splash pad that the boys and I got a lot of use out of. The boys thought the ship was just so cool. They never showed any sign of nervousness or sea sickness at all. We got some lunch and then the boys and I headed to the splash pad and little playground to let Tim rest.
Our first two days were days at sea. The boys and I spent a lot of time at the splash pad and in the pool! The ship had a bunch of Dr Seuss characters and activities. One afternoon at sea we were in a Seussville parade and listened to story time with the Cat in the Hat.
Another afternoon at sea the boys and I competed in a Scavenger Hunt through the Camp Carnival play area. We had to have photographic evidence of each item, like take pictures with all of the crew members we could find, visit every floor of the ship without using the elevator, chicken dance in the lobby, put a smiley face on one person's forehead, and make a funny face in front of the "whale tail". We had a lot of fun doing it, and we got first place which earned us camp carnival medals and a ship-on-a-stick trophy!
Our fist stop was St Marteen, and Tyler was ready for it. When Ty woke up that morning he asked, "We get off the boat today?" Tim and I had been to St Marteen before and it is a beautiful island. We took a taxi to a beach right next to the airport, where you can watch airplanes take off and land directly over your head. It turns out that it was a pretty touristy spot with very little beach, more rocks, and our taxi driver saw our doubts about getting in the ocean with the kids there. He suggested another spot nearby and it was an amazing beach with free public access, there were chairs with straw umbrellas and a little hut of a restaurant so we were all set. (We did get to see a plane land while we were turning around too!) We all floated around the clear water and Timmy did his first snorkeling with me. I couldn't believe how quickly he took to it!
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| Tyler did not like us snorkeling without him, but he managed to find some kind of fish of his own when he picked up this rock! |
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| We wore Tyler out, he was asleep before dinner arrived; Timmy entertained himself by playing photographer |
The fourth day was at St Kitts. This island we took a longer taxi ride to get to the beach we wanted, and the driver stopped on the way at an overlook and offered to take pictures for us because you can see two Oceans from this point, on either side of a mountain, the Caribbean and the Atlantic! It was so beautiful! We got to the beach and there was a gorgeous restaurant there but it was still free public beach access and they had a masseuse. Tim had his first ever massage to try to get some relief from his pain and he liked it so much he set one up for me as well. Timmy and I snorkeled again, right at the beach, but then we also walked across a rocky area to an inlet we heard others talking about and snorkeled there too. Timmy watched a teenager dive underwater in his snorkel gear to get an up close picture of a fish, the next thing I knew, Timmy was on his way to dive down too! I put a stop to that right away and told him he had to stay on the surface, there was plenty to see!
The next day was San Juan, which Tim and I have been to before and were underwhelmed by, we didn't really have anything planned for the day and Tim was in a lot of pain, so we decided not to even get off the ship. Timmy gave the aerial obstacle course a try and the boys and I went put put golfing on the top deck, enjoying the fairly empty boat. Timmy's eyes did get wide when we pulled out of the port and he saw the fort though, I'm sure he'll get to check it out during another trip!
The last stop was Grand Turk and it is a new favorite island. All we had to do was walk to the end of the pier and we were in a great tourist shopping area with a pristine beach and a giant Margaritaville with a huge public pool! In the area of one block we had everything we could have asked for! We played in the ocean and Timmy and I snorkeled again. We went back on board for a free lunch, and then checked out Margaritaville. Timmy did boogey boarding and surfing in a wave machine while the rest of us floated in the pool and watched him. It looked like so much fun but was clearly pretty hard work, Timmy kept thinking his turn was over and trying to leave!
The boys and I enjoyed several of the shows during the trip, the juggler was especially good and did a funny bit where he had an audience member lay down on the stage, blindfolded, for the juggler to juggle axes over his body, once blindfolded he switched out the real axes for something much safer, and "dropped" one on the poor guy who leapt from the floor to about ten feet in the air instantly. The boys still talk about this! Timmy got to participate in another evenings entertainment, game show night. He got called on stage to play Guestures and got to do a team bowling/yahtzee game. (Poor Tyler was sobbing in the audience, he wanted to be picked to go up so badly too!) The other team went first and ended up with a decent roll, but Timmy was the first to go on his team and bowled a large straight, so his team won instantly!
<3 p="">Our dinner and room crew took great care of us. They knew Tim was hurting, and our wait staff would rush to get us all of the courses, though Tim frequently left before dessert anyways. At the same time, our housekeeping crew would rush to clean our room while we were at dinner, because some days that was the only time that Tim left the room! Every time Tim did leave the room, he returned to bags of ice waiting for him and his neck. Our waiter loved the boys, he told us he had nephews the same ages at home. There were lots of silly games played at dinner. Tyler loved the butter dish cover, and would "pass the butter" to Tim which would just be the cover, without the butter dish underneath, and Tim would act surprised and Tyler would crack up. Tyler really bonded with the pretty dining room hostess, he would run ahead of us each night to say hi and hug her on the way in, and she would stop by our table to talk to him too. They were so sad to say goodbye to each other the last day, she asked if she could take their picture on her phone too!
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| It took me 3 dinners to teach Timmy how to do that finger trick! |
Tim was never up for family photos, but I did make the boys dress up for one of the dressy dinners and take pictures with me after. The last night at dinner, I finished off all the wine and then went to the photo gallery and snuck taking pictures of a bunch of our pictures (way to pricey to buy them all!). Timmy was particularly a good sport for the photographers!
The big piece of news from the ship was Timmy finally losing his first tooth!!! Tim pulled it out at breakfast on the 2nd to last day! (His 2nd loose tooth came out one week later, here we are 11 months later, and he hasn't lost any more yet!)
Baba picked us up from the port and we spent one more night at their house before flying home!
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