Saturday - Heading home ... or are we?

 Saturday is always a sad day aboard the ship ... since we have to get off!  We had breakfast at 8:00 am and then headed off the ship.  Hope to see you real soon!

 We took the shuttle back to the airport hotel and everyone (except us) tried to check into their rooms but it was still too early.  We were flying out at 5:30 that night so we were just going to hang out with my parents and relax until our flight.  We hung out in the lobby for about 30 minutes and them their room was ready.  We relaxed for a while and then headed down to do some window shopping (in the mall at the airport) and then met my parents for lunch.  While we were eating we got a text that said our flight was delayed 2 hours.  That was OK until we realized that we had a connection in Denver that we were going to miss with that later flight. So, Trav and Conner got in the Southwest line to try and figure out what we could do.  Flights were filling up fast and we had two options.  One, fly to Denver and spend the night there and take a noon flight to SFO the next day.  Or, two, fly to SFO the next day at 6:00 pm!  There were only 4 more seats left on that flight, so we decided to take it, wondering what we'd do all day on Sunday waiting for our flight.  We headed back to the hotel to get a room for the night since we had to stay.  Then, we started thinking about flying into Oakland.  There weren't any flights on Saturday, but there were a couple on Sunday morning.  So, Trav went back to stand in line to change our flight to Oakland.  

 That night we went to dinner, got some ice cream, watched "Inside Out" and watched them build this Christmas tree in the lobby.  

 We got to bed early, and then got up the next morning, had breakfast, and then headed home! 

We had a great, memorable trip!  It was strange not having Parker there and was a little crazy with 17 people, but we'd do it again in a heartbeat!

We sure love Disney!

Disney Cruise - Friday - Castaway Cay!

Friday, we arrived at Castaway Cay.  It's usually our favorite day of the cruise.  However, this year we had a bit of rain.

I was up early so I got to watch as the captain backed our ship into the dock.  It was pretty cool! 

 Castaway Cay on a warm and overcast day.

We had breakfast that morning at the buffet. Conner and Calissa were getting along soooo well!

Smile for the camera!

 We got off the ship pretty early to get a good spot on the beach.  Of course, we had to stop for a picture in front of the huge Christmas tree on the island!

 There were Christmas decorations wherever we went.

Dumbo taking care of some painting on the ship while we were docked.

 We found some beach chairs and staked our claim!

Conner looks happy, right?

 Dad and Calissa about to get into the water.

 Calissa and I

 The ship from the beach.

 The not crowded beach. 

Calissa happy to be in the water! 

 Sisters-in-law!

 Calissa and Grandma swimming in the ocean.

 The boys playing football.

(Love the dark clouds in the distance?)

Then it started to sprinkle ... then it started to rain.

 Drew's family! 

 Who cares about the rain?  It was warm and we were in the water anyway.

Then, we decided to head over to the water slide.  Here we are getting ready to climb onto the platform. 

 Then, climbing down the platform.  We got up to the top of the slide and the lifeguards saw lightning ... so we all had to evacuate the water!  (We thought it would  have been faster to go down the slide, instead of the stairs, but they said no.

So, we hiked back (in the pouring rain) to our beach chairs to get our stuff out of the rain.

 Then we took shelter at the eating pavilion while it POURED!!

 Drew's family walking back to the ship (about a mile) in the pouring rain! 

 We decided while we were waiting to see if the storm would blow over, we might as well eat. 

 It was crazy since everything was soaking wet.  Once we were done and looked at the sky it didn't seem like it would let up anytime soon, so we decided to hike back to the ship.  We used out towels to protect our bags, but they still got pretty wet.  My flip flops are memory foam and foamed between my toes every step I took.  Finally, I just took them off and walked back bare foot.

 One we got back to the ship we had to stand in a huge line to get back on the ship.  Everything was dripping! Our bags and hats took 2 days to dry!  However, we dumped our towels as we got on the ship and the greeted us with warm, dry towels ... it was heaven!   We climbed back up to the 8th floor laughing all the way about our adventure and then took a "selfie" on the balcony. Fun memories for the day!

 After showers, we headed to the deck to relax on a recliner and read.  The skies cleared up, but by that time most everyone was back on the ship out of the rain. 

 It was another beautiful sunset! 

 Gorgeous! 

That night we had the good-bye show ... "See Ya' Real Soon!" Charlie and Sam made it into the show with one of their pictures from the trip. We had dinner tonight in the Royal Court and packed up our bags to put them outside our door ... sad that our vacation was drawing to an end!

 Calissa with our final towel art for the trip.

Disney Cruise - Thursday

Thursday was out final day at sea.  We enjoyed another relaxing day! We went and saw "Ant Man" in 3D.  That was a great movie!  We read and relaxed and went to the hypnotist show in the afternoon.

That evening was the semi-formal night.  We got dressed up and headed to the Disney's Believe show before dinner. That evening that ship was bouncing around pretty good and the kids started to not feel so well.  

We had dinner that night in Animator's Palate.  

Tonight was the night that we got to be animators.  Fortunately, we all got to draw our people, unfortunately, quite a few of the kids' stomachs were bothering them and were a little sea sick.  Charlie was the only one who threw-up, but Sam, Charlie, Conner and Calissa all didn't eat that night and ended up in bed early. 

Uncle Kevin and Grandpa

Aunt Tina, Uncle Drew, Max, Aunt Kellie

Sam

Charlie and Christopher

Abby, Calissa and Lindsay

Aunt Tina and Uncle Drew

Conner and Trav

Me and my mom

Aunt Tina and Grandpa starting off the show with Mickey!

Calissa's dancing person!

Mine on the left and Trav on the right.

Conner (in the middle) ice skating!

Our names in the credits.

Our cool towel art for the night with my shades!