Disney Dream Vacay Part I

A few years back some of the ladies in the family started toying around with the idea of a family reunion aboard a Disney cruise.  Most of the family loves themselves a cruise, not to mention I'd heard rave reviews about how family friendly the Disney ones were.  And expensive, but that's another story.  So after a lot of hours researching, pricing out (THANK YOU ASHLEY! Girlfriend had one amazing spreadsheet) and working out everyone's schedule we settled on the far away date of May, 2013.  Then finally the day was upon us and we all left our various states and trekked it down to Florida to meet up.  Let the fun begin!

Our first dinner on the cruise.  A cruise/vacation made possible in HUGE part thanks to these folks.  Thanks Mom and Dad!

The kids enjoying their dessert of Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.  The first of many sugar highs to come.

Waiting for the nightly show to begin.  I will say that I loved how family friendly everything was.  So awesome!

Our first port of the Bahamas.  And I hate to say it, but I didn't love the Bahamas.  It just felt like some shops set up all selling the same thing and if you wanted to do something better and/or water related you had to dish out some dough.  Which a few of the group ended up doing, Evan included.  I ended up hanging out on the ship with Delaney, Cade and a couple of ladies from my fam while Evan took a boat out into the middle of the ocean to do some snorkeling.  Not so appealing to me but absolutely right up his alley.  After some hemming and hawing on my part, he ended up taking Colton as well.  Who loved it.  Who's first comment to me when he got back was, "MOM! I saw an EEL!"  Okay there tiger, glad it was you and not me.  Colton also proceeded to ask me if for his birthday, he could go snorkeling.  Well buddy, your birthday is in December and we live in Chicago so I'm going to have to go with no.

My mom soaking up some time on the balcony to their room.  If you look close, you can see little miss Delaney Anne checking out the view with her.

Okay, so I wasn't such a fan of the Bahamas, but hello Castaway Cay, Disney's private island.  I absolutely loved the day spent there.  Only Disney docks there, so you avoid the crowds of other cruise ships and can you say gorgeous?  Makes a person like me almost want to get in the water.

We spent our time playing in the sand, hanging out in the water, snorkeling (I even did it!), biking around the island, going down the water slide, eating the yummy barbecue, and trying not to get burned.  It was the absolute best kind of day.

One of the nights on the ship was pirate night and apparently, my family really digs the whole pirate thing.  Thanks to Nana, the boys were all dressed up and ready to go.

 

And they weren't the only ones.  Remember when I said my fam was into the pirate thing?  Yeah, that would be a parrot on Val's shoulder.  I'm telling y'all, they meant business.

Logan was lucky enough to celebrate his birthday on the ship and what's even better, have his birthday dinner on pirate night.  The best part about this all?  Ashley's face in the pic.  Looks like she's falling in love with her hubby all over again.

Here we are at the last dinner on the ship and the ending to a great four days cruising.  If you're going to be cruising with kiddos, I highly recommend taking the Disney route.  Other fun things not pictured are the kids (and adults) loving the huge see through tube slide around the ship.  There's even a part that takes you over the ship so when you look down, all you see is ocean.  Who wouldn't love that??  We played games, ate enough ice cream cones to last us a lifetime, watched the fireworks out on the top deck, danced ourselves silly with the kids, watched Iron Man 3 sans kids in the theater, and overall made some awesome family memories.