Our Cruise!

Our family, along with Katie's family, recently went on a cruise together to the Bahamas. This was our first major family vacation with Chase, so needless to say we were a little nervous about how he would deal with the flights, sleeping in foreign cribs and so on. Fortunately lil' Mr. Chase was an angel as always, and aside from our final flight, was great! He even got a cold right as we got there and still did great. I don't know why people have reservations about traveling with their children. It's a blast! I think it was actually much harder for Katie when we got home and his nap and sleep schedule was messed up and off by a few hours.

Along with riding around on a big ship, and eating all we could eat (although I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who truly took advantage of that) we also made some fun stops in a few different places I'd like to highlight.

We stayed in Florida for a few days before getting on the ship, and our hotel was on the water. We went out back and threw some bread in the water and some huge carp came swimming up along with some turtles. It was one of the craziest things we saw. The carp were probably 3 feet long. These were BIG guys. They could have eaten Chase!

Nassau was our first port, and for those of you have never been there, it's about as close to paradise as anywhere I've ever been. Maybe that's why celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Tiger Woods, and Oprah all own houses on Fantasy Island, just off the coast of Nassau. While there we went to the coolest museum ever, "Pirates of Nassau," below are a few pictures of the museum highlights. We also walked through some of the straw markets and Katie delined having her hair braided about 500 times.

Our favorite stop was Key West. We started the day with a piece of frozen pie on a stick from the Key Lime Pie factory. We then made our way to Uncle Ernie's for a family picture. This is kind of becoming a family tradition every time we make it to Key West. We stopped here on our honeymoon cruise to Mexico and I wish I could find the picture we took at the Hemingway house so you could see them side by side, but this time, with another addition to the family :)

In the early afternoon, Katie and I went on a little adventure, we went parasailing, which was awesome! The views of the island and the Atlantic Ocean were amazing, we loved it! Katie was nervous as first but said it was much less scary than she expected. (Although she promises me she will never jump out of a plane with me.)

After parasailing, Katie and I, along with Lynn and Dan, made our way to a private beach in Key West that was beautiful, white sand, palm trees, and super warm water! We did some snorkeling, I found a live conch(too bad I didn't have the camera)and lots of fish.

Unfortunately they canceled our stop at Royal Caribbean's private island even though the weather was beautiful. We were really sad not to go hang out on hammocks and laze on the beach, and Lauren and I were sad to miss our scuba trip. But we had fun at the pool on board, ordering some pina coladas, and having lunch at Johnny Rockets. And Chase had a blast in his own little kiddie pool, since babies are not allowed in cruiseline pools.

We went to a comedian magician show that was really good, some of us went to an ice carving demonstration, went to the spa, ate a lot of soft serve ice cream, watched a lot of Arrested Development with Dan, and ordered free room service at midnight.

As for Chase, I think his favorite part was all the attention he got from his Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Lauren, and even his Uncle Dan.

It was a great time, and we are looking forward to many more family vacations! Although after trying out a few different lines we have decided that the best cruiseline is officially Disney. We're excited to take another family cruise in a few years when Chase is old enough to be excited about breakfast with Mickey :)

-Tim