Disembarking

The final stretch the ship had to travel back to port was a little rocky. Bianca got a little seasick, but slept it off with an afternoon nap. On the first night, they had family karaoke. Bianca sang 3 songs (one with her dad) and Eric sang some '80's metal song with the real band. Susannah and I even sang an '80's Madonna song, Crazy for You. Because we have a very similar voice, it made me feel that it wasn't really me singing.

 We had sea days on the Friday and Saturday so there were a lot of fun activities for the kids and us too. We discovered tea time at three, where the servers dressed in tuxedos and they served little tea cakes and treats. Mom and I did tea both days. Eric and Bianca joined us on Friday.

Eric played trivia a couple of times. I mostly read out on the deck.  Portia's age group had a pirate day one time. More face paint. She loves this.

Bianca's age group did scavenger hunts around the ship and they made t-shirts. In fact, Bianca made a really good friend her age, named Jocelyn, from right here in Utah. They ran around the boat together the entire last day.

We had the last elegant night, so we all dressed up one last time.

We were surprised to find our towel creation that night. Here's Portia after we found the monkey hanging from our ceiling:

With all the excitement of being out to sea and the warm weather, it was difficult to remember that it was December and as such, Christmas season. Every once in a while, we'd run into a Christmas tree on the ship but not often.

On Friday, they actually had a Christmas show with the kids from Camp Carnival doing a couple of things. Bianca's age had prepared a dance routine. Bianca did it, even though she's not so fond of dancing. Portia's age group wore reindeer antlers and sat on the stage while the narrator told a Christmas story. One of the ship's dancers took a liking to Portia and had Portia sit in her lap the entire time. After the show, they even created snow on the ship using bubbles that fell from the very top all the way down all the ten levels of the ship. Now we have snow in Utah. A lot. But it's amazing how extremely excited Portia was to see it snowing on the ship. I don't think she caught a snowflake in her mouth, thankfully, although she'd given it her best shot.



All good things must come to an end. I was actually done by the seventh and final day. Portia said she thought we should live on the boat forever, but I was  ready to head home. We disembarked in the morning on Sunday and began our 10-hour-drive home. Fortunately, we didn't run into any real snow so the drive was wonderfully uneventful.