Cruisemas - Day 1 & 2

It seems that Christmas was forever ago but I thought I would post some pictures from our Christmas cruise. My camera is always a little wonky but I took more pictures than I realized.

We start off on the plane on our way from Salt Lake City to LA on Wednesday, December 22nd.
I have very few pictures of Lucy with Brandon so I am glad I could get a few on this trip.

And Lucy adores her Uncle Damian so we of course, had to get one of them. Ethan was with us as well if you can seen him in the bottom left corner of the above photo. Fortunately, our flight was direct but unfortunately, we had to spend quite a chunk of change to change flights since I had no idea how much time we needed to give ourselves to get to the cruise and we were getting worried that we might be late. As it ended up, we had plenty of time and the cruise left very late so we would have been fine but I guess the peace of mind was worth it. We also got to have a family breakfast at the hotel where the other half of the family stayed the night after coming in from Buffalo.

A cruise is the perfect vacation for our family since we can all go off and do our own thing. So here Brandon, Lucy and I are on Day 2, eating lunch in the fancier restaurant on the ship since we couldn't find anyone. Next cruise, we will remember to take walkie talkies since our cell phones don't work.
Brandon was obviously very excited to eat...

Lucy was loving the bread. She was quite well behaved for the meal and got lots of smiles and "Awws" from other passengers and the crew since the majority of the passengers were older and there weren't many toddlers around (or kids of any age for that matter).

Lucy spent a lot of time with her cousin, Taylor on the trip since they were the only grandkids on the trip and Lucy absolutely adores her cousin. Kid-friendly distractions were scarce on the boat. The weather was too chilly the first couple of days to go swimming and Lucy wasn't old enough to go the daycare (although Taylor was - lucky Adrian & Natalie). They amused themselves a bit with the nativity set:

Then went on to a kids' cooking class...
...which consisted of a lot of waiting in a cold, cold room...

...and finally, a little sugar cookie making (and don't worry, Mom - we all washed our hands before).

I have to admit, I was really disappointed in all the kids activities (or lack of). They were very poorly planned and executed. I guess we should have expected that from Holland America since they cater more to older people. I think out of the 12,000 passengers, only about 20 were children. And we didn't stay on the for the whole cruise so we didn't get to experience all of them. I guess that they assumed that the excursions at port would make up for the boring-ness of the cruise days for a parent with their kid. But since I had never been on a cruise before, I had no idea what to expect.

But you soon get into the swing of cruise life. Here we are, eating fancy dinner sans Brandon's parents who ate in their room since his mom wasn't feeling well:Damian, as always, provided much of the comic relief.

Despite the small size of our rooms, much entertainment was had in there:
Lucy got a kick out of the fake window we had. At the head of the bed, there were curtains all across the wall but if you looked behind them, it was just a wall. They might as well have painted a picture of the sea there.

Lucy loved the phone too since she didn't have our cell phones to play with. Despite the tight sleeping quarters, Lucy slept pretty well. She made it into our bed a couple of nights but it wasn't so bad because the bed was a lot bigger than our bed at home. We were pretty lax with her bedtime and schedule overall, so she was probably exhausted from all the days activities and the excitement of being in a new place. We ended up having a lot of quiet, dark time with her since we couldn't really leave her alone so one of us had to stay with her while she napped or went to bed early (although she did have a couple really late nights - staying up and singing karaoke).

All in all, it was pretty amazing to be on a mini-city floating on the water.