Well the vacation actually kind of started on the Sunday the 28th for us but I will only count the days starting Monday when we started cruisin to keep it simple!
On Sunday afternoon we left in the afternoon for our park, stay and fly (is that the right order?). Before we got to our awesome hotel, La Quinta, we made a necessary stop at Meijer to get some drinks for the night, a couple bottles of wine for the cruise and a bottle of gin that we were going to try to get on the boat too to save some money on drinks (it worked!).
These were our hotel drinks... Logan was an active participant. Don't worry we don't give him the hard stuff. Excited for our cruise the next day and dreading waking up at 3:15am.
Just a little meijer hotel floor supper... we got one of those precooked whole chickens (Logan loves his chicken and its always our #1 meat) so Logan had chicken with some random fruit that we bought.. melon and berries. Make shift supper!
We were bound and determined to get goober to bed early sicne we had to get up so early, but he was actually down at 8pm.. normal time! It was an early night for everyone after a couple beers/wine and snacks (found my new favourite only available in the States... apple cinnamon rice cakes!)
When Logan heard us getting up at 3:15am, it was no big deal. He just got up like it was 6:30. We packed up all our things and caught the 4am shuttle to the airport. Having a baby at the airport is so easy through security... they even let you bring water for the baby and his bottles!
Logan slept in his stroller until we were able to board then when we boarded there was a 45 minute delay and we sat there while they had to restart the airplane. Then he slept in my arms starting right from the take off and woke up as we were descending. It was a pretty easy first flight for him minus the numbness of my arms.
It was a 6:30am flight so we got to Fort Lauderdale super early despite our delay. We were at the cruise port by 11:30am. We asked to board early but they wouldn't let us board any earlier than our pre-set time of 2pm. They suggested we go to a restaurant nearby that was air conditioned since we were worried about Logan getting overheated. It wasn't the fanciest of establishments but we were able to have a couple beers each and Logan napped in his stroller and we got on the boat finally (or started the process anyway) by 2pm.
Just waiting for boarding... no special treatment from Carnival for the baby!
Then we got on the boat! Yay! We found our room and checked out the balcony first. We had lots of time before the ship was departing from Port. We wanted to eat but the dining room was crazy busy and when we tried to eat, they said it was closed because of the safety demonstration. A 45 min thing we had no idea about. And Logan was not having it... such a long day and then trying to confine him to listen to this was so so hard! Cranky pants.
So after the safety demonstration, we decided to grab some drinks before going back to the room and just calling room service for dinner because someone needed to go to bed! These are our first drinks on the boat... and Logans night-time pablum... nudey oats if you will (they precede bathtime so he has them in the nudey!)
It was nice that they had 24 hour room service on the boat, but the menu was a bit limited... sandwiches and salads and dessert and any warm food was an additional charge for the room service. But sandwiches and salads is exactly what we wanted on the first night anyway! After the first night the only other time we used the room service was for (very) early morning coffee!
Mr. Goober was down by 7pm the first night and we didn't fall that far behind after eating our food and having our beers!
Day 2: Fun Day at Sea!
As you can see by the empty buffet, we were up nice and early on the second day. Logan was very excited about the variety of food on the boat... pancakes, eggs, sausage, meat and cheese... all the good stuff.
This guy packed on some vacation weight.
After breakfast, we went for a walk around the boat to explore! We found the pool and splash pad which you can see in this picture and we also randomly came across the kids daycare there too. It was open for the kids to play and parents stay (we wouldn't be comfortable leaving Logan there... especially on vacation!). We met some of the other babies on the boat there! The camp counsellor said there were 25 babies under 2 on the boat!
Pretty sweet (and windy) views from the cruise ship.
The pool area that we spent a total of 0 minutes at... with the exception of walking through to get to the food! Logan's not much of a lounger by the pool...
Im so glad I told Carnival that it was our anniversary because the free perks were awesome! We got a free bottle of champagne (well it was $2 with the difference), and a free picture (they take a million pictures through the cruise and try to sell them to you for a min of $14 a pop!).
After breakfast and touring the boat, Logan was ready for his morning nap. So while he napped, Aleksy and I took turns having a quick 30-45 min workout. This is the awesome outdoor track I ran on. We also hit the boats gym. It was a little humid when running outside but the view was pretty sweet. Weirdest thing ever is working out on a moving boat. So much balance is needed for exercise that I dont even notice!
Once the goober woke from his nap and we had some lunch, then we hit up the splash pad. This quickly became our go-to spot. Logan was the happiest littlest person when at at the Splash pad He never got cranky there no matter how little sleep he was on. It was a great soft floor that he could crawl around on comfortably. We went every day after this too!
On the cruise ship, they give us an itinerary every day of all the events going on and we saw that there was a Dr. Seuss activity going on in the later afternoon so we planned to take Logan since he likes his Cat in the Hat book and the show on tv! It ended up being a parade... that we were in. So Logan gladly shook his tambourines and paraded around the cruise ship!
And we made the fun day at sea our fancy dinner day. We were able to go to the served, fancier restaurant any day, but with Mr. goober it was easier to go to buffet and control the time of our food! So we went just this once. We got the picture they took of us at dinner free too thanks to our anniversary perks!
After supper, heading back to our room for the night... but first... we had to hit the bar and get our free bottle of champagne!
We brought an inflatable pool so Logan could have ''baths'' when we were on the cruise but he hated it! So Logan had showers instead after this day and once he was in bed, we just hung out on the balcony having drinks and usually 2nd supper and dessert. This night was no different... champagne and pizza! (the pizza place was 24 hours so this was usually our go-to)
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