"Why Did They Have To Play The Goodbye Song?"

Saturday Ben beat me to the run and I enjoyed a bit of a lie in with the kids. 

Always our favorite deck!

We're kind of in love with Deck 4

I’m guessing Ben had to hold the iPhone over his head to capture this angle from his deck four run as we were pulling between Galveston and the mainland of Texas at dark o’clock thirty.  He’s tall, but the angle on this makes it look like he’s at least seven feet tall.  He isn’t.

While on his run, Ben dropped off our feedback forms, making especially certain to mention how helpful Luis had been with Kylee’s special meals getting sent to the club as well as Beth, a counselor who Kylee adored throughout our cruise. As we stuffed PJs into our backpack for the day, Ben made passing remarks as to it being cold on deck during his run.  I didn’t have any warm coats for the kids and Kylee’s jacket disappeared into the club the day before, so it became time for me to have a massive case of mommy guilt. I figured it couldn’t be that bad.  We said goodbye to 5020 and (in what has since become a tradition) visited the door of our new room for the next cruise.

Now we’re probably the only people who think eating breakfast at 7:30 qualifies as a lie in, but if you’ve made it this far into the trip report you aren’t surprised. Since Kylee was stuck on her peanut butter tubs kick, we opted out of our rotational dining assignment and headed to Topsiders for a bit of breakfast.

We made a point of tipping our servers Thanksgiving evening so they wouldn’t suspect we were stiffing them between Palo the last night and buffet breakfast the final morning. I realize that they still get tipped regardless of if they get the slips, but it just doesn’t seem like a proper thank you unless it’s done in person.

We climbed the stairs to deck nine, while feeling a bit like a pack mule schlepping a laundry filled backpack.  All indignity disappeared to shock on exiting the stairs onto the open deck.  It wasn’t cold.

It was frigid, freezing, or very close to it.  Tauntauns wandering by wouldn’t have been surprising. Winter arrived. I’m a deep southerner (having moved here in middle school and never left) and frost on the lawn is enough to scare me into hibernation. It does seem quite extreme when only a day or two ago we’d been frolicking with sea life in the Caribbean and retreating to the a/c on the ship and now the double insult of debarking day and cold weather. At least it wasn’t raining!  So that’s something.

Now we’re probably the only people who think eating breakfast at 7:30 qualifies as a lie in, but if you’ve made it this far into the trip report you aren’t exactly surprised by this fact. Since Kylee was stuck on her peanut butter tubs kick, we opted out of our rotational dining assignment and headed to Topsiders for a bit of breakfast.

Ben and I both still felt heavy from Palo the evening before and just had a light breakfast, but Chris stocked up at the buffet like it was his last meal. Ben and I got to bid Sylvester a final farewell as he was manning the juice station. Kylee nibbled at the corners of a hash brown while patiently awaiting the kind CM who went and found her four tubs of creamy peanut butter. Ben and I started rehashing our favorite bits of the cruise with the kids while clicking back through the photos on each other’s phones (always fun to see what someone else found interesting enough to photograph.)

As we were comparing the kids started discussing which of them would have a faster baby when they grew up.  Yes, back to the Diaper Dash trash talk. "I'm going to bring my kids and my baby on the cruise when I grow up. I'm going to race my baby.  She will be fast." Said my 6 year old.  Not to be out done, my darling Kylee, three at the time piped in with "Mom, I'm going to train my baby on a treadmill.  Can I?"  I’m so glad I wasn’t drinking anything, because it would been a choke worthy moment. We meandered back and forth on five a bit then a bit on four.  When it appeared that the line started to move out on three we headed down only to stand in the longest line ever.  We were in pretty good spirits, what with getting to come back and all, but as we inched toward the lobby the Mickey Mouse Club theme song came on the speakers.  As it got to the “M I C, See Ya Real Soon!” Chris looked at me, suddenly realizing we were leaving and asked “Why did they have to play the goodbye song?”

I told him there was only so much room on the ship and everyone takes turns.  This explanation made sense to him as a number of the kids from his class had been recently or had upcoming trips. Once we reached baggage claim, everything flowed pretty smoothly through bag pick up, although our kids are quite a bit older now than they were nearly eight months ago when they took their passport photos.  As such, the customs agent asked Kylee who her mom and dad were (to verify she was ours) and she pulled a fit of shyness out of thin air and buried her head in my neck.  He took this as Kylee was in fact mine (thankfully) or he would’ve probably gotten treated to a photo montage over the last year of my Facebook photos on my phone. We headed straight out with our porter managing the luggage to a waiting heated van.  I gave Kylee my sweatshirt, because she wasn’t dressed for the cold. The EZ Cruise parking attendants couldn’t have been nicer and dropped us right by our car.

The kids were exhausted.

Tinker Baby

After pulling on my years of Tetris experience, we managed to wedge our collection of luggage back into my Honda Fit. Loaded the tired kids into the car and drove north to our little corner of Texas. Chris and Kylee fell asleep almost before we reached the mainland (and the Port of Galveston is by no stretch of the imagination a distant drive from the bridge.) Thankfully, Ben and I found that returning from this vacation we had tons of energy from all the relaxing we did on deck. Unloading and unpacking commenced and I got out the calendar to see how long our next paper chain should be…

The joy of unpacking

It was a short 73 days until the Surprise Couples Cruise I had booked for Ben and me with our friends in February.  But I wasn’t waiting to surprise him still as the world’s best Christmas/birthday/anniversary surprise, so I couldn’t exactly tell Ben about that countdown.

Kylee running amok in my shoes while I unpacked

Meanwhile, Ben and I eagerly anticipated introducing our kids to the World through our Cruise to the Kingdom which was coming up in April 2013.  153 days away makes for a loooooooong paper chain.

Today we’re still looking forward to our “R is for Ridiculous 10^th Anniversary Cruise” coming up in January 2014!

This post is Part 19 and the last of an Ongoing Trip Report Covering Our Thanksgiving Cruise 2012.
I completed it under a year from the cruise! Self Five!