At the bottom of each was an envelope that had a piece of paper with a picture of a boat on one side, and a clue on the other. "Have you ever had room service at midnight?", "Do you know where your swimsuit is?", "How's your Spanish?", really, really clever things like that. The last clue, in Hartman's stocking, said, "Clear your schedule January 21-25!" When the kids guessed we were going on a cruise, it was a scream/bawlfest around the table. We've never done anything like this! And only 3 1/2 weeks after Christmas, we were off for our adventure.
We left Saturday morning, January 19th and drove down our dim, ice cold street. We had subs for Romney and Raegan's paper routes, and were not sad at all to give up those early mornings for 8 days. The temperature showed negative 13 degrees as we made our way to Wells, and then turned South. It was fun watching the temperature steadily rise as we drove, and by the next evening in Long Beach we saw an 86 on the thermostat! A difference of 99 degrees in two days. It was so great to get out of the freezing cold and into some warmth!
We stayed at the LVH in Vegas right off the strip the first night. Luckily I scored some great deals on the rooms, and got 2 for less than the price of one. The only damper on the trip was that Raegan and Scarlett were sick. In fact, Scarlett threw up for two whole days until she finally recovered. She has been so excited for this trip, it made me teary-eyed looking at her at Cafe Rio Saturday night with her head in her hands looking so sad and forlorn because she felt so crummy.
We can't get enough of those fountains at Bellagio! We even heard my favorite, "Time to Say Goodbye".
Vegas, Baby!
Sunday morning we decided that since we had some sickies we would just have a little spiritual meeting in our hotel room. We tried our best to make it feel like the Sabbath and had a good discussion on agency and choices/consequences. We decided there are a lot of peeps in Vegas who are really taking advantage of that agency! Then we were off to Long Beach. Raegan has her learners permit, and was actually the driver who got us there. I'm sure that very few of her Elko friends have driven the California freeways...and she did great!
We checked into the Best Western but only had one room for this one night. It meant that FIVE of us were on the floor. We swam a little, sat in the hot tub, and got as comfortable as we could for the night, and then went with achy backs to breakfast the next morning. We were too early, but couldn't stand waiting around the hotel when we had a ship to explore, so we headed to the pier. We thought we'd be waaaay too early for check in from the time we were given online, but showed up to long lines of people, as antsy as we were to get on that boat!
We took one picture before being severly scolded (top secret building, ya know) and then were given our room keys and told "Welcome Aboard!" We were SO EXCITED. My favorite moment of the whole trip was walking out of the building onto the bridge and seeing the SHIP right THERE! So big and just waiting to entertain us. We walked onboard, and heard, "Lunch on the Lido deck." I'll always love those words.
The food on the ship! My goodness, it's TOO MUCH. It was so fun to walk into the dining area past the pool and waterslides and miniature golf, and see food food food everywhere you looked. Salad bars, grills, themed food, 24 hour pizza and ice cream and hot chocolate (we joked later that we never saw Sophie without either an ice cream cone or a mug of hot cocoa in her hands), dessert bars...you name it. I tried to keep myself from thinking too much of the wasted food that comes out of a ship like that, and wished more than once that we could magically zap all our leftovers to M. Ray Taylor.
That night we walked into the dining room for the first time and were oohing and aahing at the fancy tables and linens and gaudy decor. So fabulous! It was fun to get all dressed up each night at dinnertime and head to the dining room. Our waiters Putra and Serafin were the nicest guys--they had our names down immediately and learned by the second night to leave the wine glasses off the table, and to bring trays of fries and ketchup while we ordered to keep the babes happy.
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| There was a section on the menu titled, "Didja ever?" where we had to try something new every night--just because when are you ever going to eat escargo, duck breast, and alligator again? We loved all of it (except for maybe the alligator). Delicious, fancy food. And the dessert menu! Our fave was the chocolate lava melting cake with ice cream. Mmmmmmmm. |
Our cabins were right next door, U200 and U204. Romney, Raegan, Sophie, Alivia, and Landrie in one room, and Brent, me, and the babes in the other. Our rooms were tidied up each morning, and then the turn down service at night brought all the beds down and ladders up and the towel animal and chocolates waiting for us on the bed. Hartman and Scarlett couldn't get enough of jumping off their beds onto ours, and they each had little lights they could turn on and off. I don't think we've ever been on a vacation before where even little Hartman has his own bed! He was livin' the life.
Romney and Raegan were only in their cabin this one time, so we had to document it. Carnival has clubs for different age groups for kids, and the first night we told the girls they should check out Club O-2, for 15-17 year olds. Well, it turns out that our particular cruise happened to be half LDS, and several of these LDS families had cute sons in that age range, who also decided to try out 0-2. You can guess what happened. We never saw the girls in the evenings again! Dance parties, games, t-shirt making, eating, party, party, party. That's what they did. They met some really nice boys who now text constantly. One even texted after the cruise that some of the boys had been texting eachother saying that R and R are like 2 in 10 million. Funny, happy, beautiful, strong in the church, smart, witty...the list went on and on. That kid is on Team Goulding for sure.
Sophie decided to try out Circle C after her sister's success, and though she didn't enjoy it quite as much, she still had fun and was still able to manage a constant ice cream cone or mug o' cocoa jojo. We somehow kept saying the name with a lisp for some reason, so it was, "Hey Sophie--are you going to Thircle Thee tonight?"
The first day we docked at Avalon, Catalina Island. It was a beautiful, sunny morning. We boarded a little boat to get us to the dock, and saw several sea lions frolicking about right next to the boat, and even saw one catch and eat a fish. That's about how we like to experience nature in this family, from a cruise ship. It was delightful.
We loved this day sightseeing! We saw cruise people driving golf carts around, and decided to fork over the dough to do the same. We had to get two carts, and followed the map that took us way up the mountainside and around the city. We loved it!
We shopped, had to find a bathroom a couple of times, found some little souvenirs, walked around a bit, and the second someone said they were hungry, we said, "BACK TO THE BOAT!" Who wants to buy a burger when you've got a whole burger grill at your disposal???
We loved Santa Catalina.
The second day was in Ensenada, Mexico.
The only picture we have of that day is the one we bought from the cruise photographers. Ensenada was overcast but warm. The kids were a little disturbed by the little Mexican ladies with babies strapped to their backs who followed us for blocks begging us to buy their bracelets and bobbing-headed turtles. It was a little heartbreaking to see! But I felt for a while that day that I was back on my mission in Brazil. The colors, the not-so-clean streets and buildings, the restrooms with broken plumbing and no toilet paper...all very familiar. We loved shopping and buying inexpensive jewelry. Raegan ended up with a poncho that she has since worn to school, Romney got a backpack, Sophie found a darling scarf, and Alivia and Landrie got the bracelets and turtles. Scarlett and Hartman were happy with the marachas, and the little lady selling them was thrilled. We considered taking a tour to the blow hole, La Buffadora, but the before-mentioned lack of toilet paper caused some of us to want to get back on the boat asap. And when Scarlett said, "I'm hungry." Back to the boat it was!
There was miniature golf. There were night shows with some pretty good singing and dancing. There were some pretty funny family comedians. There were afternoon movies in the Candlelight lounge. There were deck parties. There were waterslides and hot tubs. There were the Club O-2 and Thircle Thee peeps. There was an ice sculpture carving on the pool deck. There was a class on how to fold your towels into animals at home. There was a break dancing demo in the atrium. There was the constant, round-the-clock playing of "The Avengers" on channel 17. And FOOD. It never stopped. We partied like it was Car-ni-val!
One evening we noticed what looked like fish jumping out of the water right along side the boat. Soon everyone on deck was staring overboard as we saw hundreds of little dolphins jumping in and out of the water, and playing in the ship's wake. We watched for a long time, it was so neat to see so close up. One afternoon that the kids were all piled on the main deck in the hot tub (including all the new "boyfriends"), Brent and I snuck away to the Serenity Lounge, for adults only. We sat in the hot tub for awhile with some other couples. The view from the back deck was so beautiful overlooking the vast ocean. One couple was complaining about the boat not moving very fast that day. Brent said, "And then you realize you're still on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean with this view and it's all okay!" The guy was like, "Yeah, you're right."
The weather the entire last day (our day at sea) was overcast which made it feel a little cooler, but that didn't keep us from any of the fun. Hartman wanted to go "get the pushers" over and over again. He loved the mini golf. Scarlett kept saying, "I don't want to get off the boat! I don't want to go back to Elko!" Unlimited chicken nuggets and fries and ice cream? She was sold.
We received a bonus of 200 Carnival bucks at the time of booking that could be used on the boat. Since we don't drink or gamble, that left a good amount of money for us to spend at the gift shops. We all found little things to take home: more jewelry, stuffed animals, t-shirts, photos, a tie for Brent, even swedish fish. We had to spend till our last penny was gone! The girls had parties at their "clubs" until the wee hours of the morning on the last night, and then we were up early to get ready, grab our things, and head to where else, the LIDO DECK for more food until they called our number to debark. We stood in line in the 7-story atrium looking around one last time at our boat. We were so sad to leave! The Carnival Inspiration was good to us. We took one last look from the bridge as we left the boat...Goodbye cruise!
We found our filthy, dirty car (the Elko winter has been hard on us so far!) amongst all the shiny California cars and made our way back to Las Vegas, back to the LVH. I just couldn't pass up the $36 rooms! This time we were on the 27th floor and had a good view of the rides on top of the Stratosphere. Since Raeg and Scarly Boo had missed the fountains on the way down, we did them AGAIN. Plus the Atlantis statue show in Caesar's Palace, where we watched every fish inside that giant tank for 40 minutes, totally fascinated. We had to stop by a tropical smoothie place that Brent and I found when were were there this past summer and got a few smoothies to share. They hit the spot, even on a rainy night in Las Vegas.
I just have to post one more picture of one of my favorite scenes from this trip. I often walked behind everyone as we followed eachother in and out of ships, parking lots, and hotels. I loved seeing my whole entire group like this:
