Cruise

I am so glad that the Johnson crew got to go on a cruise together. There had been a fair amount of stress with the wedding, Christmas, and Papa's health. It was nice to disconnect from the world and have some awesome family fun time. We sailed on the Carnival Pride with stops at Princess Cays, Nassau, and Freeport. Since we were leaving out of Baltimore in December, the ship goes super fast on the first and last days so that they can spend more time in the warmer, gentler seas. Breezy and Morgan got super seasick. 

It is nice having artistically minded siblings who take cool pictures of your kids

I have to talk about the food first because really this is the main point of going on a cruise. I LOVE cruise food. The highlight this time around was a desert called chocolate panna cotta that permeated every part of my mouth with the best taste I have ever experienced. I was the only one who had a transcendental experience at dinner- I think being pregnancy gives me super tasting power.

Annie loved the towel animals! One morning they had a display of towel animals by the pool deck. Her loving Grumpa spent a LOT of time looking at them with her. 

Aaron rigged up this sheet around Annie's pack and play so that she wouldn't see us and want to stay up all night. It worked pretty well! We had a video baby monitor that worked short range so that we could spy on them and make sure they were sleeping.

Elliot wanted to spend lots of time drawing with his Christmas art supply loot. We used some of his sweet fish pics to mark which door was ours in the looong hallway of identical doors. A nice couple left a note on our door saying that they loved his art and put a couple of new yearsy necklaces on our door handle. So nice! I had Elliot draw some more fish to tape to their door as a thank you. 

Elliot did not cooperate with the documentation of the cute note incident

This was the first cruise where we took advantage of the kid activities. We dropped Elliot and Annie off at the kids club a couple of time when they were supposed to be having craft time or fun sounding games, but Elliot wasn't super impressed. After much whining he agreed to go to the Dr Seuss parade and show and ended up loving it. They had a dramatic reading of Horton Hears a Who with lots of kid participation. Elliot got to be part of the clover field, which meant he got to sit on the stage with a clover and wave it over his head.  

Max and Morgan were participants in a Newlyweds Game one night. They were the most recently wedded couple. They competed against the longest married and a couple from somewhere in the middle. It was hilarious even if some of the questions were definitely outside of their comfort zone. They won a bottle of wine that they gave to another recently married couple who didn't get to participate in the game. After their big win they became low key celebrities on the ship with people saying hi to them all the time. 

One day I noticed some water dripping through the ceiling in our hallway, so I called to report it. It took a few minutes for someone to show up and by that time it had grown from a drip to more of a gush. Water was starting to pool in the hallway. The maintenance person  that eventually showed up took one look at the situation and then ran back the way she came talking furiously into her walkie talkie. Soon there was a whole group of workers there. Breezy and I had a great time watching the debacle unfold. The best part was seeing other people open their doors and getting to see their reaction to the mini flood that was the hallway. They fixed the leak and had an impressive array of fans to dry the carpet up in no time. 

Annie loves herself some Max and Morgan

Our first port of call was Princess Cays, which is owned by the cruise line. I think there might be a handful of people that actually live there, but most all of the staff there is from the ship. They set up a buffet lunch on the island. The highlight of this stop was that we found some volleyball courts to play on. I learned that my dad is the worst scorekeeper ever because he never wants the game to end. We realized that half the time we asked him what the score was, he would say a number that was lower than the last time we asked. 

I packed my beloved snorkel set all the way from Arizona and used it at every stop. Princess Cays was neat because we were able to see some giant brain coral! The biggest one must have been 4 feet wide. But my true snorkeling triumph happened at the beach on Nassau. I dove down and found a live conch shell! It was the highlight of my ocean exploration career to date. 

I put it back after the photo shoot because it was still alive

Breezy and Blake gave me some loving coaching on how to take instagram worthy pictures of my prize

My siblings always bring out my most mature side

Behold, the sand goblin!

Our last stop was Fortune Beach on Freeport. It was colder and windy that day which was OK because we didn't have a ton of time. The beach had super soft sand and some eroding cliffs for geologist dad to teach us about. There was a mysterious dark area in the ocean that looked like a scary drop off, but when we waded out to it we discovered that it was a sea grass mini forest. 

Clint was convinced that this was some sort of egg and insisted that I trek way back out to return it to where I found it. We later decided that it was almost definitely a plant part. 

Another sand goblin

Another fun part of the cruise was the water slides! There were two- a yellow one that Elliot was big enough to go on, and the GREEN THUNDER. The Green Thunder was INSANE. You stand on a trap door and lean back as this capsule door closes around you. A automated voice counts down from 3 and then the door opens and you fall into this super fast slide that actually goes over the side of the ship before splashing you into water. I was completely unable to breathe while I was on it and went in and out of it screaming, much to Elliot's delight. He liked going to the top of the tower with me to watch people go down the trap door because he thought the screams of terror were funny.

Now enjoy the video that Breezy made of the cruise! The music is a song called Blossom that Blake's band, the Dead Sons, wrote. He is the lead singer.