Fisher Caribbean Cruise - Day 1 (Travel Day)

At the end of August, Jeff's parents gave us a really, really, really, really nice gift: a 7-day Caribbean cruise! The whole cruise was all expenses paid for Jeff (and me and Luke) and his three brothers (and Ben's family). We all even got a substantial daily allowance for excursions at the ports! THANK YOU Greg and Renita!

It was a very eventful week, so I am going to do a separate post for each day...

Sunday was a travel day. We all piled into the car with our mountain of luggage and drove to the Houston airport. After lugging our many heavy bags and children through the airport we took off on a 4.5 hour flight to Puerto Rico. Fortunately, we occupied 3 rows on the same side of the plane and there were family members sitting in front of all of our seat-kicking, hair pulling, climbing children. The kids actually did really well on the flight. It was a virtually painless experience and the time went fast.

Jeff, Luke, Me, Kyle, and Steven waiting to board our plane at the Houston airport. I know this is a very attractive picture of me. You don't have to tell me.

Becca didn't sleep a wink on the plane ride, but she fell asleep in Grandma's arms as soon as we got to the Puerto Rico airport.

Just collecting our luggage.

Our men were pack mules. Especially Jeff! He is carrying two huge duffel bags that weigh a TON and a smaller duffel bag and just before I took this picture, he was also carrying the two suitcases that our driver is picking up.

At the port, we all checked in and boarded our ship for our first view of the gorgeous lobby at the center of the ship. We were all starving and our formal dinner didn't start until 6pm (an hour away) and Jeff and I knew from experience that we would be nibbling on bread for a while before our entrees were served, so we decided to go check out the buffet with Steven and Kyle for an appetizer. Jeff and I are definitely no fuss, efficient, buffet dinner eaters when it comes to cruises, but Greg loves the formal dinners and he insisted we all join him for them. He was paying, so of course, we couldn't argue, and they ended up being great family time at the end of each day.

I was sure to locate the frozen yogurt machine (one of my favorite parts of the cruise ship) immediately. And I may have had that as my "appetizer" instead of real food.

Dinner was delicious and we had great waiters who were very efficient and so sweet to the kids. Luke ate really well all week. He is a seriously picky eater, but the food was pretty great. Of course, I have very simple taste so most of the dishes on the adult menu each night were too fancy for me. I stuck to the grilled chicken breast with mashed potatoes and vegetables every night but one (that night the chicken was replaced by turkey) and I was perfectly happy. It was the best chicken I've ever tasted. And the desserts were divine! My personal favorite was the brownie with ice cream off of the kids menu.

After dinner, we got everything unpacked in our room and set up the pack n play for Luke at the foot of the bed in our tiny room. We figured Luke would take some time to get to sleep in a new place and bed, but to our delight, he went right to sleep. Jeff and I happily went next door to play cards with Steven and Kyle before bed. But just a half an hour later, we heard Luke's cries coming through the monitor. And as soon as we got back into the room, Luke threw up everywhere. Apparently, Luke enjoyed the food at dinner a little too much. It took him a while to fall back to sleep after that so after we cleaned everything up, Jeff stayed in the room with Luke and let me go back and enjoy some more cards with my awesome brothers-in-law. We didn't get as much sleep as we would have liked that night with noisy, groan-in-his-sleep Luke snoozing right by our feet, but we had so much fun playing and exploring all over the ship the next day that we forgot how tired we were.