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.

I didn’t have a chance to do a post yesterday, sadly.  We had to drive to Winnemucca to meet my in-laws and pick up our dogs from them.  It has been so weird to be without the dogs for two whole weeks!  They’re happy to be home and the drive wasn’t even that bad.  Helped me to get some knitting done at least!  But not so good for the posting.  So I’ll be getting to that now…

Friday, August 7

We were determined to get out of our room and to the parks at a reasonable hour this morning.   I didn’t take a shower, knowing that I would much rather have it mid-day when we came back to the room to recharge.  We loaded up the kids, grabbed some granola bars to munch on and got down to the bus station to catch the bus to Epcot.

We saw my brother and his family on the bus, which was nice.  They were headed for FastPasses at the Test Track and I thought maybe Harry and I would enjoy that too.  So we tagged along with them as we went through the bag check and admission gates and found our way to the Test Track ride.  Our fast passes weren’t for a couple hours yet so we had plenty of time to kill.  My brother’s family was headed to breakfast but we had decided we would rather do lunch in the park instead so we amused ourselves elsewhere.

We went to the World of Energy, or whatever it is called.  It was a ride/show with Ellen DeGeneres that was actually pretty funny and interesting.  I remembered it from my trip there all those many years ago.  Of course, Ellen wasn’t in it back then, but you get the idea.

It was already starting to get majorly hot and we needed to find a bathroom.  It took some wandering around but eventually we found it near a gift shop.  Then we headed over to the Living Seas and did the whole Nemo ride and checked out the aquariums and did Turtle Talk with Crush too, which was fun.  I thought it was cool how they had all the Nemo fish in the aquariums so the little ones were able to identify and get excited easily.  There were also dolphins and manatees and other cool stuff.  Plus, you know, air conditioned.  But, like most things at Disney, strollers weren’t allowed.  And while Liam could walk around on his own, Evie could not and I got tired of holding her.

We were all pretty hungry at this point, so we went next door to the Earth building (the name escapes me, I apologize) and found a big food court there.  We didn’t stay to look at anything or go on any rides.  We were kind of tired and thought maybe we should head back to the room at that point.  Harry and I had missed our FastPass time while having lunch and it was after 1pm.  On our way out, we stopped in a gift shop to browse around (and take some super cute pics of the kids wearing mouse ears).

We also took some pictures of the most recognizable monument at Epcot: Spaceship Earth.  It was starting to cloud up, thank goodness.  I was beat and so were the kids.

We caught the bus back to POFQ.  Harry was desperate to go in the pool so while the boys all went down there to have at it, Evie took her nap and I took a shower.  I also tried to get some knitting done but wasn’t able to get much accomplished.  Evie woke up before too long and I let her wander around the room.  It wasn’t long after that the boys returned.  We all got cleaned up and headed down to the boat dock to take the boat to the Port Orleans: Riverside resort up the river.   We were having dinner there that night to celebrate my parents’ 50th anniversary that is happening later this year.

We had to split into two tables because there were 19 of us and there just isn’t a table alive that could fit that many people (at least not in a restaurant this size).  Dinner was alright.  The food wasn’t that great, sadly.  And Evie had some serious ants in her pants.  She normally doesn’t act up at all in restaurants but she would not settle down that night.  Kile and I took a couple turns getting up with her so we could each eat.  But eventually I had to just leave.  I let her walk to her hearts content through the lobby of the resort and then strapped her in her stroller and went outside on the docks to look at the river, feel the sprinkles from the sky and people-watch.  Eventually, the boys met us outside and we decided to head back over to Epcot for the evening.  I really wanted to get to the World Showcase.

My wrist was starting to hurt very badly.  I wondered if maybe it wasn’t because of the knitting I had done earlier, but I think it was from NOT knitting so much.  It hurt SO badly that we stopped by the aid station on our way to the World Showcase to get some ibuprofen.  Then… Mexico!

Liam had fallen asleep in his stroller (I think it was Liam… Evie?  One of them!) (or maybe both…) so I sat outside the pyramid on a bench and watched the world walk by while Kile and Harry went on the boat ride.  After that, we walked around the Showcase, and I took pictures of the different “countries” until I ran out of light.

We stopped briefly in “Germany” because Harry needed to use the restroom.  The boys also checked out the Christmas shop there and Kile brought me back a glass of the most awesome wine.  Maybe it was awesome just because I NEEDED IT SO BAD.  But whatever.  I took it.   Then… more walking.  We had no time to actually DO anything, which I’m still sad about.  But at least we saw it.  Let me say it here first, folks:  Epcot takes TIME.  Days worth, even.

Aaaaannnnd… then it got too dark to take pictures.  I was using my iPhone too, so there wasn’t much to do about picture quality.  But with my wrist hurting, it was the best picture taking solution for the moment.

We continued on, past Great Britain and  ended up at Canada when we ran into other members of my family who were there for the fireworks show.  We planted ourselves on some benches and settled in to watch the show.

I didn’t have the best view, but best I could tell, they were trying to blow the whole place UP.  It was amazing to see.  I tried to get a picture but pictures just couldn’t do it justice…

It was all done over the lagoon and was loud and simply breathtaking.  Evie got a little freaked out, even, when the night before she hadn’t been upset at the Magic Kingdom fireworks at all.

Epcot closed down after that, which was a little surprising for a Friday night.  It was all good, we were planning to leave anyhow.  Kile and Harry were going to the Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom that night, from 11 to 2am!   Originally, I was going to go, but my wrist was still hurting so bad and I was just exhausted.  We took the crowded bus back to the POFQ.

We got the little ones settled down and the boys left again.  I couldn’t have imagined it… I was rather happy to read some of my book and then go to sleep.  It would have been nice, but I was just plain tapped out at the moment.

The boys stayed the whole time, it sounds like.  Kile didn’t get many pictures, but he got a couple:

Yep, they did the Tiki Room!  They did a bunch of other rides too, though nothing too thrilling because Kile isn’t a roller coaster kind of guy.  Apparently, there were a LOT of people there.  Of course there were, it was a Friday night!  But it was cooler and the lines were shorter than during the day and the boys had a blast.  Kile even had a Dole Whip, damn him.    Mostly I’m just glad that they had fun.  The late night would take it’s toll though, especially on Harry.  The next day was our last day in the parks and there was a LOT to do!

Coming up: we finally get it right!

I love a good, long weekend. And this weekend was good. And long. Productive, yet enjoyable. Yes, we had a great time despite NOT seeing fireworks yesterday. Can you believe it?? Turns out you can celebrate our nation’s independence WITHOUT fireworks. I know, I was shocked too.

See, I love fireworks just as much as the next fella. What I DON’T love are insane crowds of people. I don’t love these crowds even more when I’ve got two small children in tow who are generally zombies after 9pm. Rancho San Rafael generally puts on an awesome show. It’s a bit closer to home and we have ways of enjoying the show without having to get hip deep in people. And then we can make a quick escape and get home without having to fight traffic. But, thanks to the shit economy (which I blame BUSH for cuz it’s so much fun), there was no Rancho fireworks this year.

We’ve tried the fireworks show over in Sparks in the past. And while we had a good time, the mere NOTION of trying to duplicate that event makes my blood run cold. And not just the mad throng of people watching the show… But the fighting traffic to get home. It was a nightmare. So if that’s what it takes to see fireworks in this town? Sorry, but I’ll pass.

I must be getting old. Once upon a time, mad throngs of people and horrendous traffic were part of the fun! It was exciting to be a part of the crowd! To be where the action was at! I remember, years and years and YEARS ago going to downtown San Jose to watch fireworks and afterward, driving over to Ls Gatos where the Brazillian socvor teams was ripping it up every nughr. That was the summer the World Cup was in the Bay Area and Brazil’s parties night after night had become the stuff of legend and news stories.

It was great.

I remember the streets being PACKED, shoulder to shoulder wth people laughing, drinkng, singing and having a great time. It was a lot of fun.

But the thought of doing that now? Sorta makes me want to scream. I like spending time with family and friends, barbecuing, telling stories, laughing and setting off little fireworks in the backyard. That sure beats having to fight traffic, if you ask me.

And it’s not like we won’t be seeing any fireworks this year. It’s officially one month until our big Disney Extravaganza and I have it on good authority that there will be fireworks every night. Yes, even on the cruise. So it’s not like us (or the kids) will be deprived or anything.

Cough. Where was I?

Oh yeah! The weekend. I had fun. It was long. Now it’s over. That makes me sad.

Next up: Liam turns 3. GAH.