Caribbean Cruise Day 2

We got to spend a week on the cruise!  We had a couple of days were we were on the open seas, and once we got into the Caribbean sea, it was incredibly warmer!

Eating lunch at the buffet- it was all you can eat and had lots of fun things to try!

Here is the promenade, or the "shopping" area.  Apparently people like to shop at stores while they cruise... we didn't except to buy some nail clippers...

There would be bands playing in the promenade and dances and things like that.   At the end of the hallway there was a little shop to get snacks whenever you wanted.

And the whole reason we chose this ship...the Flowrider!

We braved it when it was cold and got to try it out when there weren't many people.  It did get warm and therefore more people in line...  We also discovered that is is alot of work and is really hard (for us anyway) to do the surfing.  Luckily it didn't hurt as bad as it looked when you crashed!  We did do it so much that we were a little sore the next day (you do get a little bit of whiplash if you fall wrong).

this the boogie boarding.  Amanda didn't like it as much because for some reason whenever she crashed, she crashed hard into the back wall!  It was still fun to try to flip yourself around.l

We also discovered that if you want to meet all the Mormons on the boat, you went to the sports deck because that is where they hang out!  That is probably because they aren't drinking in one of the many bars or gambling in the casino.  We met some really fun people, especially on the flowrider. There was a group of Hawaiian guys that were amazing on the flowrider (they had an advantage though...)

There was actually an ice skating rink on the ship!  Crazy, huh?  It wasn't very big but still quite cool.  There was a show that we will show later on... 

Brian the figure skater!

it was fun to get a window seat and just watch the ship in the water.  

Formal Night:

they had a couple of formal nights on the ships where you were supposed to dress all fancy for dinner.  It was fun to get all dressed up (and can we say we are AMAZING packers for packing a suit and a formal dress in a carry-on bag...).  It was such a romantic evening and not something we get to do a lot.  The promenade was lit up all romantic and there were tons of people in their fancy clothes. 

they introduced the cruise ship crew and our captian was from Norway!

a good looking guy eating dinner right there!

for some reason they had this fancy old car in the promenade.  Not sure what the purpose of it was, but everyone took photos by it.

We also went to a Broadway/ballroom dance show in the big theater for the formal night.  They had some sweet dance moves and some awesome singing!   

Our housekeeper, Nilesh always had some fun towel designs for us when we returned to our room for the evening. This one was a swan.

Caribbean Cruise Day 1

Brian and I (Amanda) got to go on a cruise, just the two of us!  We had talked about it and joked about it and then come November, Brian was serious about it.  So we booked one and sent in stuff for our passports hoping they would return in time.  Luckily they did!
We dropped the kids off at Brian's parents house where they got to stay for a couple of days and then Grandma Turpin would bring them back so Avery could go to school later in the week (he had a couple of days off for break and a holiday).
Then we rode the front runner train to the airport (it was so nice and it didn't cost us to park for the week and the train took us right to the terminals at the airport).
Then we flew to Houston, Texas!  Our cruise was the next day and sailed out of Galveston, about 45 minutes to an hour away from Houston.  We had some really good friends that lived in Houston (Caleb and Nicole) that were so willing to let us stay the night and to take us to the airport.
Here we are getting ready to check into the cruise!  It was a pretty big ship, but its hard to believe there are even bigger ships! Our ship was The Navigator of the Seas by Royal Caribbean.

After reporting to our muster stations for a safety drill, weWexplored a little bit on the top deck as we were ready to set sail.   

towards the front of the ship, on the top

looking out behind Amanda is Galveston, Texas.

And we are off!  This was going to be so much fun!

We got a little overwhelmed with all the activities and what there was to do on the ship that we really didn't do much that first day.  We did find the Flowrider, which is a surf simulator.  It was one of the reasons we chose this ship.  They usually don't have it running on the first day, but they did this day, even though it was freezing cold!  We decided that maybe we would try it out, but by the time we got back up there after putting our suits on they had closed it again.

After exploring some more, we went to dinner.  Brian said it was the fanciest place he has ever eaten.  It was really nice!  They had a really pretty chandelier and the waiter brought us to our seats, placed our fabric napkin on our laps and made us feel like royalty!  They served 3 courses every night in the nice dining room.  We decided to try esgargot, or in otherwords, snail!  It was actually pretty good, since it was drenched in butter and garlic.  It tasted alot like mushrooms.  The food was really good too.  

We explored some more around the ship and  went to sit in the hot tub (it was kinda cold while we were in the Gulf of Mexico). Then we headed back to bed!