Rain Day

Today we stopped at Great Stirrup Cay, that is Norwegians private island.  I had only been to Disney’s private island before and loved it, so I was looking forward to this one.  The only problem was it rained a lot today.  My plan was to get up early and exercise, but when six o’clock rolled around I was feeling pretty crummy.  Plus I could see the rain coming down so I knew the chances of us leaving as early as planned were not good.  When we finally did make it down to breakfast it was so crowded!  We couldn’t find anywhere to sit.  Serves us right for going so late.  That doesn’t happen often.

Once we got to the island the weather wasn’t so bad.  We were able to have fun anyway.  We snorkeled.  The girls loved it.  The boys tolerated it.  It wasn’t as pretty as when we snorkeled on our last cruise.  I don’t know if it was the location or that the sky was super cloudy.  This island wasn’t ideal, but we had fun despite the weather.  Stockton got buried in the sand.  I collected the sand in Jorja’s sock.  I had forgotten to bring something to collect it in, but her sock worked just fine . . . until we left it on the beach.  We didn’t realize that until we were on the tender back to the boat.  Oops.

I am just going to throw up a ton of pictures.  If I try to figure out which are my favorite, I will never get this done!  I picked as fast as I could, so no promises that they are all good.  Hopefully I'll be happy with this post years later. :)

Preston

 Stockton, Jorja, Mike

 Preston and Jorja

 Mike and Stockton

 Mike and Preston (with Stockton in the background)

 Maysen

 Stephanie

 Jorja

 Maysen

 Preston and Mike

 Maysen

 Maysen and Jorja

 Mike

 Maysen

 Maysen and Mike

 Maysen and Stephanie

 Stephanie and the Pearl

 Jorja, Stockton, Preston

 Stockton sand monster!

 Yep . . . these pictures got out of order.  Sorry about that.

 Jorja, Stockton, Stephanie acting like she helped, Preston's head

 Stockton and the Pearl

 Snorkeling

 The Porge

I have learned with ‘freestyle’ cruising that you tend to eat a lot more.  Tonight Mike and I went to a fancy restaurant while the kids stayed in the cabin.  (They did go up to the Kids Café and had ice cream.)  When I got back and realized they only chose to eat ice cream we decided to take them to the buffet.  They had one halfway healthy thing before they had more ice cream.  I think Stockton had five ice cream cones today.  Yikes.

Mike and I went to the show tonight, but didn’t bring the kids.  They wouldn’t have liked it.  I was miserable.  My throat hurt so bad.  I could barely swallow.  I tried so hard not to swallow, when I absolutely had to it took all my concentration to do it.  Mike took a picture of my throat, but we didn’t see any white spots, so hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning.

Stockton and Maysen went to play dodgeball with the teenagers about 10:30 tonight.  Maysen decided not to play when she got there.  Stockton played and seemed to have a lot of fun.  We left him there and I was glad when I heard him come in.  I like experiencing my children as they grow older, but giving them freedom is quite scary!

Preston and Jorja with their new friend

 Who lived approximately thirty seconds