Tuesday, August 11

We woke up in port again, and yet again, I didn’t feel a thing.  We were sleeping like stones at night.  A by product of the busy days at WDW and on the boat itself.  The kids even slept through the night without barely a stir.

The difference this morning is that we were woken up by a phone call.  It was Harry, up in my parent’s stateroom.  My parents were going to breakfast and Harry wanted to go to breakfast with us.  Did he know the way down to our room?  Of course not.  So Kile had to throw on clothes and go get him.

It was earlier than we might have otherwise gotten up, but it wasn’t an entirely bad thing either.  We were hoping to get off the boat and get a good spot set up on the beach under an umbrella.  I had heard that if you don’t get their relatively early, you can miss out.  And if there’s one thing I knew about myself: without shade, I was not worth a whole lot.

On our way to breakfast, I took a quick picture of the hallway outside our room.  It was a very long hall:

That’s looking forward.  It’s a long way forward from our room.  But that was okay, because we grew to have a fond spot for the aft portion of the ship.  Forward was for squares.  Midship was for pansies.  Aft was where it was at.  HAR!

Okay, so we decided to do the Parrot Cay buffet for breakfast.  And it was MUCH better than the Beach Blanket Buffet.  We were rather pleased as we gorged on breakfast goodies.  There’s no end to the food on cruise ships, just in case you were wondering.  It’s EVERYWHERE.

After breakfast, we had to get ready for….

Castaway Cay!  And yes, that IS the Flying Dutchman there on the right.  It may not look like much from here but Castaway Cay is where I want to go to die.  It’s just awesome.  And completely stress-free.  We stuffed ourselves into our swimsuits, sprayed ourselves down with sunblock (I have to give mad props to Banana Boat for Kids/Babies (we had both) tear-free sunblock because NO ONE got burned when we used it.  And we didn’t have to obsessively reapply either.  And in case you weren’t aware, I’m entirely white and prone to burning so that is a BIG DEAL) and were ready to hit the beach.

Again, we could have waited for the tram but we decided to just hoof it.

It was like something out of a Corona commercial.  I kid you not.  We even spotted none other than “Captain Jack Sparrow” on our way to the beach.  This guy did a good Captain Jack, too.  It was uncanny.  He had the voice and the mannerisms DOWN.

See him?  No?

How about now?  He was a crowd favorite that day.

We dropped Harry at “Scuttle’s Cove” which had all sorts of children’s programming on the island.  But I sorta wish we’d kept him with us.  He didn’t get any chance to play in the water with them and I think some of the activities kind of bored him.  Kile had gone to check on him at lunchtime but wasn’t able to ask Harry directly if he wanted to stay.  Oh well!  NEXT TIME!

We were able to quickly find the perfect spot on the beach to set up camp.  It was under not just an umbrella but a palm tree as well.  We gathered a bunch of chairs and loungers around, just in case anyone wanted to join us (and eventually they did).  It was… heaven.

White sand beaches?  Check.  Blue-Green ocean?  Check.  Palm trees?  Check.  Bright umbrellas?  Check.  Just awesome.

We pretty much went in the water right away with the little ones.  And yes, you could just walk right in.  It was like bath-water.  One of the ships photographers came along and took a picture of Evie and I (yes, while in the water!) and Kile bought it on our last moments on the boat.  Beware for my hideous-ness but Evie was sure cute:

Liam loved the ocean too and I think we could have stayed out there all day.  But I didn’t want Evie to get water logged too much at once.  So we eventually returned to our little “nest”.

After the kids played on the sand a bit, we went back for another dip in the water.  It was hard not to!  If we hadn’t had the little ones to chase around, I would have liked to rent an innertube and float around like I saw many other people doing.  That water was intoxicating!

Eventually, we got hungry so we dried off and went in search of food.  The cruise had a BBQ buffet set up just down the path from where we were.  We went and loaded up on bbq ribs and a very tasty mahi-mahi sandwhich along with chips and cous-cous salad and lots of lemonade.  Being out in the sun makes you hungry!  After we ate, we stopped by the souvenir stand to see if we could find anything we loved there.  We knew we wanted some postcards, since we’d heard you pretty much HAVE to send a postcard from Castaway Cay.  And Kile and I still hadn’t found any t-shirts we loved.

As it so happens, Kile found the PERFECT t-shirt and they happened to have ONE more in his size!  It was perfect for him and he was very happy with it.  I got desperate and went with a t-shirt that had a picture of the beach and the boat, said Castaway Cay and 2009 on it.  Pretty good, but it was quite larger than I would normally get.  And it wasn’t the sort of cut I was hoping for.  But every “girly” shirt I saw was outrageously expensive and this one was a very reasonable price.  The cheapskate in me caved and I got it.  We were able to send all our purchases (sans the postcards, of course) back to the boat to pick up later.

We returned to the beach and hung out there with some of my siblings for a while.  Evie was exhausted so she took a nap on one of the lounge chairs.

Too cute.  Kile and Liam went back into the ocean and I found some reputable family members to keep an eye on Evie while I went back into the water myself.  Again, I could have stayed out there forever.  It was just bliss.  And the water was SO salty, that I was able to lay back and float with no trouble at all.  Ahh…

I only returned to shore because I saw Kile holding Evie, who had woken up.  It was getting close to the time we had agreed to head back to the ship.  We wanted to be out of the super heat of the late afternoon and we also wanted to catch a screening of “Up” in the theater on the ship.  We had even arranged to put the wee ones in the nursery while we did it.  So it was time to pack it up and head back to the boat.  Kile went to get Harry from Scuttle’s Cove and we found out he hadn’t been in the ocean at all.  Kile offered to take him down there for a few minutes and I took Evie back to the boat myself, since she was DONE.  I sensed she wanted to nurse, but wouldn’t consider the sippy cup.   I took a few pictures on my way back, mostly of the Flying Dutchman.

Back on the ship, it was time to get clean.  Evie and I both were a little sandy, despite having rinsed off at the beach showers, sticky from the sea water and greasy from the sunblock.  Bleh.  My plan, flawed as it was, was to bring Evie in the shower with me in hopes that she would stand or sit still while I washed my hair, then I would pick her up and wash her down.

It didn’t go quite that smoothly.

She wasn’t terribly interested in staying still.  And as the Disney Cruise doesn’t believe in no-slip bathtubs, she fell down.  A lot.  And cried.  A lot.  But we got it done eventually.  And while we were in there, Kile and the boys came back and I was able to holler at Kile to fetch Evie and dry her off so I could dry off myself.  While I was dressing her and nursing her back to her old self, it was Kile’s turn to take a shower with Liam, though Liam cooperated a lot better than Evie had.

Once we were all dressed and ready, we dropped the little ones off at the nursery, which was conveniently located right next to the theater.  We grabbed our 3-D glasses and headed in.  The theater is truly a full-sized movie theater and I’m a little sad we didn’t try to go see more movies there.  But G-Force and Hannah Montana didn’t appeal to us that much, believe it or not.

The 3-D was AMAZING.  The glasses irritated me a little but it was worth it.  Almost like seeing a different movie!  And it was nice to see “Up” outside of the drive-in and I caught more details this time than I had on the first viewing.  Best of all?  FREE.  Free is good.

After the movie, we killed a little time and then picked up the wee ones.  It was time to head to dinner, so we took a quick picture of everyone out on the deck before heading back to the Animator’s Palette.

They were all a lot happier than this picture lets on, believe me!  And yes, we were back at sea, the boat having left Castaway Cay at 5pm.  And this time?  I didn’t feel it at all.  I was getting VERY used to it.

It was Pirate Night and the Animator’s Palette was the best place to celebrate, I’m sure of it!  All the waitstaff was dressed up like pirates, the table cloths and linens were colorful and we had festive, themed menus.  Let the fun begin!

I had scallops and shrimp and it was fantastic.  I’m not even a big scallops person and they were awesome.  Evie LOVED all the extra excitement of the evening and kept everyone entertained the way she clapped and cheered while the waitstaff paraded around the dining room for us, whooping and hollering.  It was all a big show to her and she ate it all up.  Loved every single minute.  The girl, she knows how to party.

The staff had a cake for us that night, for my parents.  In honor of their fiftieth anniversary this year.  That was pretty cool.

The show that night was “G-Force” in, you guessed it, 3-D.  Kile and I weren’t terribly hot to see it and the little ones were getting rather desperate for sleep.  So my brother’s family offered to take him with them.  Sweet!  We took the little ones down to the room and found our nightly towel animal waiting for us:

I also realized that I had been very remiss in taking pictures of our towel animals to date.  The first night we had a dog, and the second night it was an elephant.  Both were adorable and I’m a fool for not taking pictures.  But at least I got the towel monkey!

The little ones went to sleep VERY easy that night after their big day.  We watched some TV but started to feel bad about missing the big pirate party above-decks.  Around 10pm or so, we came to a decision:  the little ones were well asleep.  We could run up there, watch the fireworks, and then head back down to our room.  No harm, no foul!  Right?

We hoofed up to Deck 10 (no small feat since there were areas closed off and elevators to nowhere and all that fun stuff).  There was the dance party underway which we didn’t really care about, but it was fun to watch anyhow.

We cruised around the deck a little bit, went as far forward as we could.  It was dark out on the ocean.

We returned to the party where things started getting a little more interesting, what with the introduction of pirates and Mickey Mouse himself. And then? The fireworks.

The perfect end to the perfect day. Truly.

Coming up: a day at sea! And our last day on the boat. Aww, nuts.