Wednesday Night Update!

Internet out at sea always amazes me. I know it’s all about satellites & such, but it never fails to intrigue me that we can be in the middle of the ocean and still be connected to the rest of the world!

I think about what it must have been like for the Pilgrims, or the million others who have traveled across the oceans over time. We have the luxury of cooked food, clean water, showers, bathrooms, and especially ship technology like stabilizers & GPS!

So what have we been up to the past 4 days?

We usually sleep like rocks, all three of us, and I think I have had the deepest sleep I’ve had in ages. Every morning, I wake up so well-rested. I definitely don’t feel like that at home!

In the mornings, we’ll order room service coffee and Reese gets a bagel. We hang out, Jeff has his coffee & Reese his bagel (I manage to swipe a few bites of his bagel) and then we get dressed to head down to breakfast. It’s the typical cruise-buffet-fare for breakfast….pancakes, hashbrowns, sausages, bacon, danishes, cereal. Stuff that gurantees you won’t fit into your clothes after 7 nights! Reese has found the wonder of Lucky Charms cereal, and is convinced that it’s Magic Cereal and makes him run faster J Of course, he only eats the marshmallows…

After breakfast, Reese usually wants to head to Camp Carnival, the children’s program on board. He is VERY independent and insists we leave immediately after checking him into the club! Jeff & I were talking a few nights ago about how neat we think it is that Reese desires to do things apart from us in a comfortable situation. You could stereotype homeschool kids & worry about them ever wanting to do things away from their parents since they spend so much time together. Not the case!

On the first night, we went to Camp Carnival with Reese to check it out & get comfortable with the counselors. After that first night exploring, he wanted us to be gone! They’ve done all sorts of fun things so far this week & I love it that he’s so entertained.

So what do we do while he’s at Camp Carnival in the mornings? We usually take the laptop & sit out by the pool. I’ve read through one book (The Road) and am working on reading Twilight. Jeff keeps up with all his important reading. We download emails & respond if needed. I upload a few vacation pictures to the blog. It’s usually pretty quiet onboard in the mornings on deck, and the weather has been so beautiful.

We pick Reese up at noon, because the Camp Carnival counselors take the kids to lunch, & Reese absolutely does not want to eat with Camp! Which is good, because by noon, Jeff and I are really missing Reese and are ready to spend time with him!! The Grille onboard has burgers, hotdogs, onion rings, fries, salads…more stuff to insure your clothes will be snug when you leave the boat!

After lunch, we usually swim or play in the hot tubs and a few of the days we’ve listened to live music on the deck. Reese has had lots of chances to get his groove on! Carnival even video tapes things throughout each day (with the intention of having you buy the DVD at the end of the cruise!)…and he was taped dancing. They play the video each day on the TV in your cabin, so every time we pass by that channel, if we go too slow & Reese sees the channel, we have to stop and watch the ENTIRE thing while he waits to see a 3 second clip of himself dancing J

Now, along with being a model (“I was on a magazine cover, so I am a maw-DUL”), he’s also naming himself a movie star…

Once we’ve eaten, swam, and danced our hearts out, we head back to the cabin for showers and naps. Let me just say…the three of us are knocking out some awesome naps together! Reese has been napping for about 3 hours a day, and Jeff and I probably average about 1 ½ hours. It feel sooooo good to wake up from a huge nap and not feel like I should have been doing laundry or dishes or anything else!

Afternoons are a mix of stuff…then we go to dinner at 6:00. We’ve skipped the formal dinners. Truth be told, Jeff & I don’t like two hour dinners, and Reese especially does not like two hour dinners! So we’ve either done room service or gone back to the buffet. Two nights ago, I had a New York Strip Loin & Brie Cheese sandwich, and oh my gosh it was yummy!

Once 7:00 comes, Reese wants to go back to Camp Carnival for their evening program which lasts until 10:00. He’s never ready for us to come pick him up, but once we get back to the room he’s pretty much ready to hit the hay. Sometimes we’ll order a late night room service snack, but the last few nights we’ve all been so tired we just head to bed.

So that’s our day in a nutshell. I’m not sure how I’m sleeping so well when all I’m doing is eating, reading, & eating some more! We come home on Saturday, so I can’t wait for our three more days of fun on board!