Cruisin' Cannegieters!

This year for our anniversary/birthday celebration, we decided to go on a cruise. This time we took the kids! You should have seen the look on their faces when we showed them Carnival's DVD to tell them that we were going too! It was priceless! I don't think that they slept that night. We picked an itinerary that would take us to St. John in the Virgin Islands. I have heard so many great things about this island and dreamed of visiting the beautiful place someday. We were originally supposed to stop at the islands of Turks and Caicos, but they were badly hit by the hurricanes. So they changed our intinerary and took us to Nassau, Bahamas on Saturday instead. Anyways, we started the adventure stuck in the traffic of Atlanta (we tried to leave earlier, but got stuck at work) we drove to Orlando Friday (Sept. 12) evening. Saturday, we visited Epcot, per Scott's request. We had a great time on our favorite ride, TEST TRACK!!! We stayed at Epcot for the fireworks and then returned to the hotel for the night. Sunday morning we left for the 3 hour journey to Miami. We were all excited when we finally arrived at the Miami Port. Happy day when Scott found his gigantic jawbreaker in the car when we were dropping off our luggage and went inside to finally check in. He luckily had this to help him contain his excitement as we were waiting in line.

Our first day started with lots of food and a family dance party! Our first port of call on Monday was to Carnival's private island in the Bahamas: Half Moon Cay. We were one of the first families off and so we were able to find a nice spot on the beach to spend the day.

The next day we spent a wonderful day at sea eating all the ice cream that we could. They have a waterslide on the boat that was a lot of fun. Kiley and I were very excited when they hosted a Scrapbooking class. They even sold all of the supplies on the boat! That night we all dressed up for a fancy birthday dinner.I think our favorite day was the one we spent at St. John. We had to ride the ferry from St. Thomas (Wednesday's port of call) and rented a car in St. John. We drove to the National Park and spent the day at Cinnamon Bay. It was perfect! There was hardly anybody there! We had a huge stretch of the beach to ourselves. The water was amazing! It was like swimming in a pool.

(I'll speed it up a bit)Thursday we dragged the kids around the hot, humid San Juan, Puerto Rico. It reminded me a lot of Spain. I was glad that we were able to visit El Morro Fortress, a fort built long ago to protect the island. Friday, we attend the ice cream eating contest! Scott was the winner! We were so proud! Saturday we went to Nassau, Bahamas and went to Paradise Island and enjoyed the waves at the beach. That night we all cried because we knew that we had to go home the next day. It was a wonderful family vacation. When the kids had enough of us they asked to go to the children's program (Camp Carnival), but we had the best time spending time together! We're looking forward to going again. Email me if you want to join us :)