Fisher Caribbean Cruise - Day 7 (St. Croix)

We docked at our final port on Saturday: St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. The whole family stayed together for the 'Hotel on the Cay' beach excursion that day. We simply spent the day on a private beach, playing in the sand and water. We had a wonderful time, but the "excursion" was absolutely not worth the $79 per person it cost! The beach was pretty small (and we were only allowed to put our chairs on a specific half of the beach - we were asked to move - because the other half was reserved for hotel and restaurant patrons), the sand was kind of dirty in some parts, the food they gave us for lunch was sub-par, there is no windsurfing on cruise ship days, and all of the rentals that were available were way too expensive. But like I said, despite the fact that the money could have been better spent, we had a beautiful, fun day on the beach. And I took lots of great pictures. Enjoy!

Jeff with his hands full on the bus ride to the ferry.

Bethany and Luke having a conversation

Cousin Love

Luke was fascinated by everything that came out of Bethany's mouth.

Our little family on the beautiful beach

Hermit crab

As soon as we got down to the water, Bethany sat down and started to bury her legs in wet sand.

Bethany talked about building a sand castle on the beach all week long and at our last port, she finally got to do it! Steven helped.

Luke loves shoveling sand at the beach.

Steven and Kyle relaxing in the crystal clear water.

Cut little Becca and her mommy

Luke and Grandma

We spent almost all of our time in the water playing with kids and blow-up beach balls.

Kyle, Steven, and Jeff planning a stunt for the camera.

A tower of brothers!

It was a long fall from the top for Kyle.

Caitlin and Becca

Greg preferred just to observe from the comfort of his cabana. In the afternoon, Luke joined him for a while and was entertained for a shockingly long period of time by the game 'Pile Sand onto Grandpa's Chair.'

Bethany was so fun to play with in the water. I pretended to fall asleep shallow water so that she would have to "rescue me" and from that point on, she repeatedly said, "Oh no! You're gonna fall asleep!" about a zillion times. We swam back and forth from the beach to a few feet of water for a long long time, me falling asleep and being rescued again and again as we went. When I had a sufficiently salty taste in my mouth due to all of my underwater snoozes, I told Bethany I was going to go and play with Jeff and Luke in the shallow water for a while. But Bethany wouldn't be cast aside that easily. She pushed Jeff away and said, "No, you can't have him anymore." And when I picked Luke up, she tried to lift him out of my arms and hand him to Kyle saying, "You can't have him anymore either." This one little girl who will fight hard to get her way.

Later on, Bethany and I had a fabulous time pretending to walk to the donut shop (in the water) and buy some donuts using shells as money.

My wonderful husband who makes everything more fun.

Luke spent a lot of time playing with Grandma. She is so fun!

Luke and Mommy. The only way we could Luke to cooperate and smile for this picture was to have Jeff standing behind the camera. Luke was such a Daddy's boy on this trip (and a little bit anti-mommy at times)! Jeff and I have never understood the random phases Luke has gone through where he prefers one of us over the other. And we can't predict when it will happen or which one of us it will be.

See? "Daddy save me!"

Luke and Becca were so cute together on this trip. They were always following each other around and giving each other hugs and kisses.

Adorable little beach babe

Becca already knows how to flirt.

Becca gives the cutest kisses, complete with the little kissy sound!

Apparently Luke was going for a big slobbery one!

Luke smiles so big whenever Becca gave him a hug or a kiss.

So sweet!

Luke is such a nuzzler!

You can really tell they're cousins here.

The excitement was too much for Becca. She conked out right on the beach.

I love to see these two together. They have so much fun!

Head dip.

Sweet hair-do courtesy of the head dip.

Cowrie shells like these ones were all over the beach so I collected a few before we left. I'm going to make a bracelet out of them and it will be a great reminder of this fun vacation since Jeff and I didn't buy any other souvenirs.

It was a long day on the beach and everyone was so exhausted from playing so hard. Some of us didn't even make it back to the ship before deciding it was nap time ...

That night we got ready to say good-bye to our beautiful ship the following morning. We packed our bags, filled out the comment cards for our awesome staff (like Ronnie, our stateroom attendant from the Philippines, who was so sweet to us and loved Luke. He was even there when Luke learned to walk.), had our last delicious dinner, and Jeff and I played our last round of cards with Steven and Kyle before bed (Jeff forcefully woke Steven up and made him play with us because it was our last night so he had to play).