Family Cruise Party 2012

Well, we just got back from an amazing vacation. My grandpa treated the entire family, 37 of us, to a seven day cruise in the Caribbean! It was dope. We had so much fun hanging out with the family and enjoying the cruise ship and the islands in all their delicious, warm, humid glory. I never wanted it to end. I definitely want to do it again sometime!

 Jacob met the man who created Yoda! He has a little Star Wars Memorabilia museum in St. Maarten. Freaking awesome right?

The beach at St. Maarten was absolutely phenomenal. I literally never wanted to leave. I want to live under that beach. Under an umbrella. For the rest of my life!

We had fun playing dress up for the formal nights. I got to wear my favorite dress, the one I got for Senior Dinner Dance and am still in love with to this day. The dinners we had in the dining room at night were INCREDIBLE. I have never had such good food, for so many consecutive days in my life. Yum!

And for one of the nights the Cam, Kumi, Jacob and I decided to go retro. We thought 80's formal seemed appropriate and I finally had somewhere to wear my mom's sweet party dress to. Kumi's grandma apparently has a whole collection of "cruise dresses." Hers is rad, don't you think?

The ship had so many fun things for us to do, we couldn't even do all of it in a week! Okay, we could have, but we like naps. Jacob did spend a good amount of time on the Flowrider though and he climbed the rock wall they had.

We also did some ice skating and mini golf! We got to see Madagascar 3D in the big theater on the ship (so funny.) And of course there were many swimming pools and unlimited soft serve ice cream machines.

The day we left, we had like eight hours to kill in between getting off the ship and flying home so we went on an airboat tour in the swamps of Christmas, Florida. It was SO cool! We saw some huge gators and other fun swampy wildlife, and then after they gave us the option of holding a baby one. I was like... I'll just hold this soft cuddly one. 

 

Last but not least, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter! We did this first, the day before we got on the ship. I don't have a ton of good pictures because there were so many people in them that I just felt like they didn't capture the essence of the place but let me tell you. It. Was. Amazing!!!! Hogwart's especially. That castle, and the ride at the end, was unreal. I seriously was dying at how cool it was. Everything was just like the movies! Then we ate at the Three Broomsticks and got Butterbeer and geez. The food was so good. We all loved it. Then just wandering around Hogsmeade was awesome too they had all the little shops like Ollivanders, Honeydukes and Zonko's. I highly recommend going!