The Beginning of Our Cruise to the Caribbean

Well I guess it is time to blog again since we just got back from another trip. There is going to be lots of writing for my purpose of remembering it when I finally get around to scrapbooking it. My grandpa once again took my family on a cruise. This time the kids were invited and essentially there was no leaving them home. They couldn't be more excited and kept asking when we were going on the big boat. Our cruise was to the Eastern Caribbean out of Ft. Lauderdale. We went on Holland America and here is the good part--we went the week BEFORE Lexie's spring break and so we got that week of vacation and then a week to recuperate. It was great. One of the reasons we would need to recuperate is because our flight to Florida was a red-eye. We left at 9pm California time and arrived there at 5am Florida time. We weren't even allowed to get on the boat for another 6 hours. Originally we were going to hang out in the airport but my grandpa decided at the last minute to get a hotel and so we got to crash for about 4 hours. I don't know if we would have survived the cruise without those four hours of sleep. Our flight over was awesome as we were on JetBlue. So the airline to fly. All the snacks and drinks you want and they are the good snacks and we had the seats with the extra leg-room. The kids loved having tv. but since it was late at night all the shows were grown-up and not cartoons. At one point Lexie said to me, "Hey mom I finally found a good cartoon." and pointed to her screen which had South Park on. Fortunately she went to sleep pretty fast after that.
We got a late check-out and some hotel shuttles took us to the dock. Here Lexie is in the shuttle extremely excited to go. They kept looking out the window for our boat and were so loud and enthusiastic. I was really proud of them because we hadn't actually eaten a meal since 6pm California time because there were no places to eat. So other than snacks we were close to starvation and they were being happy. Not a common occurrence in our family. We stood in lines to board the boat and then it was time for us to get on. Man were we excited. Mainly to get to the Lido (where the buffet is) and eat.

Of course I was camera happy and was snapping pictures all the time. Here we are right after we have stepped on the boat taking a pic of the kids on the stairs. Just a little sidenote--those stairs became my best friend as I only took the elevator a handful of times. That may not seem like much but our rooms were on the 1st floor and the kids club, lido, and lounge area were all on the 9th floor and up. So I generally walked up about 140 steps everytime I went somewhere (and yes I did count the steps), and many times I carried Ryan up with me. I know, I know I am superwoman. Actually it was because then I felt free to eat whatever I wanted.

After dropping our carry ons in our rooms we pretty much ran to the Lido where we ate a delicious lunch. There food was great and there was such a big selection. They had ice cream pretty much all the time and thus I was thankful for all the stairs I walked up. Ryan enjoying my ice cream the little turd.

After eating we decided to explore the ship. Lexie was most excited to go swimming but I had told her that the pool was closed the first day. As you can see from the above picture that that was a lie and she soon found out and was not happy with me. That's Ethan my nephew. His parents had 7 month old twins with them so he was in our family pics a lot hanging out with us. After exploring we went back to our rooms and unpacked and then took the kids (minus Ryan) up to kids club where they stayed for 3 hours and then we went to the Dining room for dinner. I love eating there because it is literally a five course meal and you can ask for as many appetizers, main courses, salads, desserts as you want. And we asked. Generally a meal would last 2 hours since our party was so big. We picked the kids up at 10 and I made them go straight back to the room because I was so tired and wanted to go to sleep and I was ready for them to go to sleep. Of course they were to hyper and wouldn't go and there was a lot of me threatening and getting mad. Finally, Lex and Josh were out but Ryan would not go down. Finally he cried and was silent for like 10 minutes when are phone rang. Man I was going to kill who was on the other line because it woke up Ryan. So now he was back to crying. I took the phone off the hook but that doesn't keep it from ringing 10 min. later. I was ready to scream I was so tired. I was done with Ryan and so Eric takes him out of our room. I felt bad and so then waited up for him to come back with him. He was gone almost an hour and I felt really guilty. When he came back I asked where he had gone and he said no where and Ryan went to sleep and we all crashed. Now here is the funny part. The next morning my sister Rose, my dad and my brother Andy all told me that it was so funny last night because Eric brought Ryan up to the Lido and one of the workers took him and held him for 45 min. and showed him off to the other workers all while Eric shoved his mouth with food. He forgot to mention that little tidbit when he came back the night before. I so should not have felt guilty.

The next morning Eric took the two older kids to breakfast while I stayed Ryan since he was still asleep. When they came back we finally told Lexie she could go swimming. It was our day at sea and so we didn't have to be anywhere. The kids were so excited and so off to the pool they went. I brought Ryan down a little later when he woke up. I must add here that I was very proud of myself because we were so diligent with sunscreen. Not the most fun thing to do with three kids but I didn't want any sunburns.

After swimming we ate at the Lido. The kids always wanted to sit by the window and can you tell why it was gorgeous outside. Ryan is looking out above and Lexie is below.

After breakfast most of us headed to the Crow's Nest (the very top floor) to compete in the Trivia Game. We lost big time but we had a fun time. So that is what matters right. Our trivia team above, my sisters, my brother, parents and brother in law. The older kids were at kids club. A great thing in my book since when we had the kids they were grumpy and complaining.

Our first full day was also formal night on the cruise. Formal night is where everyone dresses up and we act all fancy. It can be fun but Eric gets so tired of all the pics I want to take. So this is the only one I got. This is also the last picture I got of Eric before the fun began for us. Here is my last long story of this post.

To preface 3 years ago Eric got a piece of steak stuck in his throat that he couldn't get out. He could breathe just not swallow. So after about 6 hours of trying we went to the ER where they used a scope to dislodge it. But in the process of doing that Eric's throat tore (he has a very small throat and so the scope was very hard for it) He was then admitted to the hospital for 4 days and put on an IV diet because they were worried about the cut not healing (it was an internal cut so you couldn't see it) and that gases would leak into his chest cavity at which point they would have to cut his chest open to repair all the damage. Eric had had this problem for years but had always managed to get the meat out before. But I kept telling him to have it checked out but he wouldn't so now it had become a huge crisis. I was dealing with a four month old baby that wasn't sleeping and my husband was in the hospital in absolutely no pain getting a break. Yeah my sympathy isn't that great. Anyways the hole healed and he didn't have any other problems with it. So we are eating our dinner and Eric orders pasta. But we all order different things and give different bites to one another. My mom gives Eric a bite of her Filet Mignon. And what happens it gets stuck. He leaves to try to get it unstuck but has no luck. He is very upset and frustrated that this had to happen. You can imagine our fear because we are on a boat in the middle of nowhere when this thing happened again. We were worried he would have to be helicoptered off, or that he would have to be admitted to the hospital again. It was scary. My brother and dad gave him a blessing and then him and I headed down to the ship dr. to see what our choices were. It was 10:30 at night. The ship medical center is actually quite well supplied but the one thing they didn't have was a scope. The dr. tried to see if he could see the piece of meat but he couldn't and Eric kept gagging. So the dr. put this stuff in his mouth to numb his gagging reflex. It didn't really work. The dr. was getting kind of short on ideas and told us he would try to stick a breathing tube down his mouth and see if he could dislodge the meat but if that didn't work then he would have to go to the hospital when we got to port the next day. So they stick the breathing tube down Eric gags really really hard and throws up the piece of meat. Oh how we were relieved. He was struggling catching his breath and his throat hurt and he swallowed some of the numbing stuff and it numbed his vocal chords. So my usually talkative husband was silent (insert sarcasm), but everything was fine. The breathing tube is so soft that it did no damage to his throat. We knew Heavenly Father had answered our prayers and kept him safe and it was probably a really good thing they had no scope because his throat would have torn again. Needless to say Eric didn't eat anymore steak or chicken this trip. He stuck to fish and pasta and desserts.