Hooton's Nest: March 2013

I've always wanted to go on a cruise but I've always had the hardest time leaving my kids for very long. I just stress about them the whole time, so I would just rather take them with me. I've heard that Disney is the only way to go, so it worked out perfect that we could go on a cruise and the kids could come with and have fun too!
Some of the things we did included: eating, family dance party, cooking class, ate some more, met lots of disney characters, watch a couple disney play/productions, watched a magic show, ate good food, rode bikes on Castaway Cay, had my hair pulled out by a big Bahamian woman braiding my hair, a bus tour around the city of Nassau, swimming in the ocean and on the ship, oh and did I mention we ate a whole lot of good good food.

I'm just going to warn my three readers now, there are a lot of pictures. Most of them you could probably care less about. But, since this is like my journal I didn't want to skip out on anything or any picture.... so here we go (big deep breath)...

Going to the airport was an adventure in itself. Wells was such a good helper to carry one of the bags. He felt just like daddy.

While waiting for one of our flights Wells met a couple of friends and as you can tell by this picture he tried to put his arm around one of the girls. I don't know where he learns this stuff from.

Once we landed in Orlando Florida we stayed the night in a hotel and the next morning we hopped on a Disney shuttle that took us to our ship.

Taking a snooze on Grandpa Hooton

Boarding the ship!

The "Aquaduck" waterslide went out OVER the ship. The weather wasn't the most ideal for going swimming. It was so windy and kind of cold. Each day we kept thinking it would get warmer so we could go on the Aquaduck but on the last day I told Wade I was going on it no matter what the weather was like and he was going with me (you can only go two at a time, and Wells was too small to go). So we suited up and waited for 20 minutes in winds up to 40mph. It was cold but oh so worth it! It was so much fun and I'm so glad we did it.

The fist stop was the island (and capital of the Bahamas) Nassau. It was just like any third world country, poor and dirty. I didn't really like taking my kids through town so we just went on our bus tour and then headed back to the ship.

One of the stops was to a very small zoo. It was cute and we had fun, but as you can tell by this picture below Wells was tired and onery.

The pink flamingo is the national bird for the Bahamas and Pink is the national color. A lot of the buildings were painted pink and bright pastel colors. I really liked that part about the city.

Our second stop was to Castaway Cay, Disney's private island. It was beautiful, quite, and clean! I loved it. A little tram took us from our boat to the beach.

I think this next picture is funny because if you look in my sunglasses you can tell who's little hand is in the picture.

One of our favorite parts about the trip was our bike ride on the Castaway Cay island. They had little bike paths that wound through part of the island and it was an such an easy relaxing ride. Wells had his own bike too and he loved it so much. He did such a good job keeping up with us adults.

The third night we had Pirate night. They gave us all these cute bandanas to wear to dinner. Everything from the waiters, the music playing, the food and entertainment was pirate themed. It was pretty cool.

One of the highlights for Wells was meeting the characters. Micky Mouse was by far his favorite. After we took a picture with him and they were inviting the next family up Wells just stood there and stared at him in total awe. He was totally star struck.

This was our cabin and the funny monkey that our room service guy made for us. The port hole in the back is just a screen that's connected to a camera outside, so it looks like we are looking out an actual port hole.