Cruise, day 4. HAITI!

To say I was excited for our first port day was an understatement.

 This would be my FIRST time ever to step foot onto a different country!

Yep, not even Mexico.

I know, 36 years it took.

 Haiti of all places would be it... who would of thunk!

We could disembark pretty early.

8am, I think.

Watching Haiti's shore line coming closer.

What would it be like in person?

To be honest, I was nervous to go there.

3rd world country known for its poverty and crime.

The hot, humid air hit us right in the face.

Holy cow, I've never experienced anything like it.

Our first excitement after docking.

A ghetto row boat with Haitian men rowing along the cruise ship.
Huh. Not going to lie, I was thinking HIDE YO KIDS! 

We tried talking to them, but pretty sure they didn't know a lick of English.

Then I turned around and said, LET'S GO!

We will only go to Haiti once, lets go enjoy it instead of watching the creepy row boat men.

 On the dock with Haiti in the background.

 Royal Caribbean bought this portion of the island, so it is WELL protected.

You can only enter if you are an employee, or a passenger.
It is much like Castaway Cay in the Bahamas that Disney owns.

So pretty much it is fake Haiti, which was jusssst fine with me!

Real Haiti was yards away.

An electric fence was the only thing between us.

You could see real Haitian people in real Haiti, and it did NOT look pleasant.

Talk about feeling like entitled "rich" Americans.

Yikes.

All the music and dancing hoopla as you walk of the dock

Labadee is a long strip with different beaches all over.

We were told of the beach best suited for families, so off we went.

To get to the beach it was lined with vendors that Royal Caribbean lets in.

Much like Mexico.

Cheap souvenir type stuff.

 Jake getting heckled.

We enjoyed swimming and lounging!

The water was sooo nice and warm.

I was surprised by how salty the water was.

So nice, bringing me some island punch.

Virgin, of course:)

They provided a buffet lunch.

I was thinking burgers and hot dogs.

Well they had that.

PLUS a bazillion other choices.

I could get used to this.

Early retirement, Casey?:)

In the afternoon we had our big excursion!

Labadee has the longest head first zip line over the water in the world.

Couldn't pass that up!

We were nervous because you needed to be at least 80 pounds.

No exception.

Rusty weighed 77.

We tried to fatten him up before the trip, but it wasn't working.

Luckily the scale was behind the desk on the floor where they couldn't see it.

He stepped on and Stephen put his foot on the scale while I

 tried distracting the worker with questions.

I could see the numbers fluctuating pretty quickly.

Stephen was trying his best at keeping it steady.

Finally the worker said he was good to go!

Stephen saved the day!!

We loaded into the 4 wheel jeep thing and off they took us up the mountain!

Should I be nervous about this tongue pierced, crazy man driving us?!

Rusty was the first victim.

He was demonstrating what the bullet position looked like.

 Dallin and Rusty.
Screaming, I WANT MY MOMMY,  lol!

And is that view not amazing?

Lane and Randon

While I was waiting for my turn I was busy asking the workers all about Haiti.

He said he lived in the village right next to Labadee. 

He pointed his finger to the mountain, and there it was.

I'm sure I sounded nosey, but I wanted to know what it was like living in Haiti.

Terrible, it seemed.

Those fisherman we saw go twice a week to fish for food.

You could see others fishing as well.

They were grateful that Royal Caribbean bought that land because it gave them more working opportunities.

Such a poor, poor country.

I was grateful my kids could see some of it so they can see how lucky they are.

Casey's sweat soaked shirt.
Woof, it was so hot.

The end of the zip line looking up to the start.

We stayed over at that beach.

I love this picture of the palm tree shadow.

No swimming at this beach.

Too much coral.

And unfortunately we learned the hard way, lots of sea urchins!

Dallin picked one up and got stung.

His hand turned purple.

They took him to a life guard who hopped out of her seat, grabbed Dallin and starting running!

I guess they take those stings seriously. Something about you could die.

Stephanie started panicking, I don't blame her!

He was fine and came back a few minutes later.

 I was thinking we could stay here forever!

Back on the boat you could see better that village the worker lived in.

We got cleaned up for dinner.

And had time on the boardwalk before the water show started.

It was on the very back of the boat, in a big outdoor amphitheater.

I thought it would be a cheesy performance.

NOPE!

These pictures are terrible, but it was amazing!

Lot's of dancing, swinging, and diving on a water stage.

Cruise day 3

It was a full day at sea!

Luckily after morning, the weather cleared up the rest of the trip

and it was smooth sailing!

You could still feel the movement, but it wasn't a rockin' like before!

You would think you would have all the time in the world when stuck on a boat.

The time sure whizzed by fast!

It had ENDLESS activities to do.

Casey took the kids to breakfast while I went to the gym.

My view from the treadmill.

Talk about needing major balance!
It was like running on a surf board... in the ocean.

The Promenade was like the main strip in Vegas.

It has all the shops, pizza buffet, our hot chocolate spot, nightly dance parties...

They did a mid morning parade.

It was kind of out there.

Something revolved around each monthly holiday and then a wedding at the end.
The kids thought it was great!
Plus, we sat right in front of the pizza shop.
I don't want to know how much pizza we ate.

Fun aunt Val trying to get the kids to dance with her.

Lots of swimming and sliding.

I think Lindi perched herself in the hot tubs for a good half of the day.

She didn't seem to mind that she was the only kid in there at some points.

I can't blame her. Hot tubs are high on my list, too.

LOTS and LOTS of ice cream cones!

In fact, you wont see many pictures with kids empty handed.

 My favorite little touch was the room key.
They look like watches (you can see Lanes yellow one).
It was SO handy because the kids didn't have to run around looking for me
  to take them to the room.
 If they wanted to change clothes to swim suits,
or whatever, they could do it on their own!
 I also loved it because I could use it to charge things
 to the room and it was nice not having to deal with a card.
It's the simple things... so smart!!

Lindi also loved spending time on the Boardwalk.

Formal night sans kids sounded lovely.

The 10 and under got sent to the kids club where they ate their own dinner.

The cool kids table all gussied up in their fancy clothes.

Aunt LaDawn and her sister Trecia took Grammy and Papas spot.

It was too late to get a refund, so instead of wasting the money they offered it to them.

They were our next door neighbors even!

We love LaDawn so it was fun getting to spend time with her.

And Justin's parents took Travis and Sunni's spot since they didn't end up coming either.

Pam and Dan are a hoot in a half!

Seriously, it was such a blast with this cruising group of ours.

I was so torn on what to order.
It all looked good!

Pam said to get it all.

I can?!

That's when my life changed and I got 3 appetizers,
 4 entrees and 6 desserts every night, lol!

Jake showing off his dancing lobster.

We collected the youngsters from the kids club and went to the ice show!

Our hot chocolate night cap.

There was a teen club called the Living Room that Lane
was old enough to hang out at with cousins at night.
  Most nights we would bring Rusty and Lindi back to the room and get them ready for bed.

Find or buy a movie for them to watch while we went back out with the grownups.
They didn't seem to care and most nights we would come back to them sound asleep.

A couple of times other cousins their age would come watch the movie with them.

It seemed to make everyone happy!

This night the adults met at the comedy club.

Night life on cruises is a real thing!

Cruise day 2

We didn't have to rush too early in the morning.

Check in was 1:30.

We were about 30 minutes away from Port Canaveral.

But somehow between eating breakfast, getting ready and packing up,

it was quickly time to get back in the van and head towards the ship!

Last minute we got these shirts made for us to wear on the first day.

We wanted Papa and Grammy with us somehow.

This picture was from their recent cruise.

They didn't know we had these made!

We put this in their cruise box to open.

They were so surprised!

Our first glimpse of Harmony Of The Seas!

It was starting to feel so real by now.

Months we dreamed of the day we could get on.

We had to pass it to turn in our rental car.

Here is the rest of the crew!

They all went a few days earlier to go to Disney World.

Nah, I don't think any of us were excited.

The first thing we did was go to our room and open the sliding glass doors!

We could see the Holmes/Piatchitelli's above us.

A little tour.

the view when you walk in.

To the left was the bathroom

  

To the right was a huge closet!
I was surprised, the room was so spacious.

Our dining time was 5pm.

It sounds early, but we ended up loving it because
we would eat then go straight to the shows afterwards.
If you chose the later dinner time, you would be really rushed.

We were the first to show up.

Our whole group was assigned that corner of tables.

Each night we would mix up the seating arrangements.

And this was the first night our eyes got big as saucers as we were

introduced to what all you can eat fine dining is like.

Even the kids menu was unreal.

She ordered a cookie.
ONE cookie,lol!

 The weather was starting to get not so good.

Super windy, not chilly, just felt like a storm was brewing and the lots of rocky waves.

Which meant they had to cancel our show for the safety of the performers.

Not a problem, the kids took to the pools!

To end the night we discovered hot chocolate and desserts at Café Promanade. 

This free food thing is so amazing.

Pretty sure this is how Lindi and I ended our night the whole week.

The boys learned to be free roamers with cousins and we hardly saw them. Ever.

Over and over again I was told that you would not feel the rocking of the ship.

Hmm, they LIE!!

I was up ALL NIGHT.

Not because I was sea sick.

Thank the heavens I don't get motion sick.

I was in fear that we would be the next Poseidon victim

and capsize out in the middle of the ocean!

I kid you not, it felt like we were doing somersaults out there.

Stephanie noticed I was up from the texting app Royal Caribbean has

for communication. So we text until 3am. Ha.

But I got woken up to Lane barfing left over hot chocolate all over Lindi 

in the morning. It was comical.