Bing Bong!

Before anyone gets too excited out there I just want to warn you that my picture taking skills, when compared to cruises past, are now horrible.  Call it trying to "live in the moment" and not live through a camera lens or call it just plain laziness- in the end, these are the best I could do. I am ashamed. And with that stellar introduction that just makes you tingle with excitement about how you have chosen to spend the next five minutes, you can scan the few pics I managed to snap.

It was raining when we left Port Canaveral, but finally at about 6:30pm I sorta found the first break in the clouds. 

Shortly after that picture a man who was feeling pretty loose by virtue of the libations onboard really wanted to take our picture for us.  He even made us take it twice.  Turned out to be one of the only pictures we took of both of us!

Friday night was my birthday, but since I did not have my camera with me to take a picture or video of the 5 Indian waiters singing Happy Birthday to me (which I will never stop regretting- I mean, the one little Indian guy even did the cha-cha-cha in between verses and clinged two little metal butter dish tops as cymbals!!! Why am I so lame??!), I recreated this picture on Sunday. Just so you can kinda pretend you were there.

As more proof of my questionable decision making skills, while I did not take a picture of my birthday night dinner or cake, I did remember to take this picture then next morning of the giant chunk of pineapple I launched off my plate and under the table next to me because I tried to cut it with the side of my fork and not a knife.  Yep, this is what my life has become.

Since we had already been to Nassau, we only spent about 2 hours on the island this time.  Last time we hit the Zoo, this time we hit a slave-carved staircase and a tiny little fort you had to pay one dollar to get into.  

Queen's Staircase and Fort Fincastle, respectively.  

Apparently the fort was never actually used for any defensive reason.  Those canons were never even fired.  Personally, canons are overrated anyways. I think the coconut bombs and pirate alarms from Swiss Family Robinson would have worked right well.

Me and my friend, Marcelo Felix.

Here is one of the weirdest trees in the whole world.

I think this is the crazy uncle of the womping willow.

Two years ago on this cruise we missed going to the Royal Caribbean's private island because of high winds. We never even saw it. This time we finally made it! And after having been there I am even more angry we missed it the first time.  It was absolute heaven.

And while I was chilling on the beach I noticed that my camera has a setting called "Vivid Color", which basically just jacks up the saturation level about 50%.  I normally don't like too much over the top correcting of photos, but I switched it to that setting while we were on the island and I don't feel bad about it one bit because the water and sky really were that blue and my regular camera settings were just not cutting it.  

And would you believe that Jacob pretty much refused to take any epic pictures of me seagull punching???  I got around that hurdle and took one from the comfort of my beach chair!

Heck, I even did a seagull KICK!

And I may have even done a rooster punch.  I think I have a problem. 

And here is the proof that if there is a cat within a 50 foot radius, I will find it.

Jacob kept the hardware streak alive by winning a gold and silver medal on the cruise.  

Gold for sand volleyball and silver for tolerance of the lack sand soccer skills by his spouse.  

I tried, I TRIED! That other team was full of ringers and secret soccer pros from Lithuania!

I also learned during this cruise that Jacob's ideal vacation is "sports camp" for adults. 

No, seriously.

And major brownie points go to Jacob for walking to the front of the tender boat for me to take this picture of our cruise ship just chilling out in the water.

Ever been on a cruise for the Super Bowl?  Well, you get three giant screens, theater seating, all the nachos and hot dogs you can eat and NO commercials.  Seriously, licensing agreements prevented us from seeing any of them.  And as it turned out that was pretty much the ONLY thing worth watching this time around.

It only took us THREE years, but we finally played ping pong on the cruise!  Here is a picture of my paddle opening a can of kick-bootie on Jacob.  The Dramamine was working hard at that moment, as I had to watch the ball go back and forth at the same time as the passing foaming waves out of the corner of my eye.

Another first we experienced was using the safe!  Why I brought $500,000 worth of diamonds with me this time around I still don't know, but it worked great.

I could stands what I could stand and I could stand it no more! This time around during the Super Bowl I buckled and ordered my first ever paid drink on a cruise. Virgin pina colada. Worth the $4? Actually, yes :)

Vivid color mode was still on.  But I think I looked that red in real life.

And what cruise would be complete without some towel animals?

Here we have the elephant dog who loves to watch TV...

                                                                           
                                          And here we have the librarian sloth.





I spent some time enjoying the parlor in our cabin...

Did I mention there was a TON of soccer on TV during this cruise?

Yep, I went to the top of the rock wall again.  Yep, I was scared out of my mind again.

And finally, once again, we ended up in the negative for how much we spent outside of tickets and tips.  If I had known we had a credit coming, I would have had TWO pina coladas! Dangit!

I do want to mention here, mostly as a reminder to myself, a few other moments that happened on this cruise that I found amusing.  The first being that the check-in agent referred to me as Jacob's "Sugar Momma" because the credit card was in my name. You know it! The second thing being that we saw one of the funniest editions of the Newlywed Game on board the ship. They do this on every cruise and this was the third one we have been to, but two of the couples- one being a very modest Indian couple and another being a very elderly couple that had been married over 60 years- kept misunderstanding the questions.  It created some very strange and wonderful moments.  Plus the Indian man's name was Aloysius.  Pronounced Al-oh-wish-iss.  Which is a name my brother Chris has been using as his default ridiculous name for 20 years! I have never heard it real life. Ever! Until that moment. I was kind of freaking out. And finally, the cruise director on this ship was the best one we've had so far.  I knew this the first day when we were doing our muster station safety drill and he was reviewing everything that would get you kicked off the boat- things like "lewd and offensive behavior, drunken insubordination, throwing things overboard, or being a fan of Justin Bieber."  He was really harsh on JB the whole time.  It was glorious. And he ended every single ship announcement with a high- pitched and happy "Bing Bong!"  Which I will now start doing in Primary, just make things exciting :)