Caribbean Cruising!!

My parents have 8 kids.  We hadn't all been in one place at the same time in 8 years!  We all finally made it happen in October. We went on a caribbean cruise and all 8 of us and our families made it.  It was a wonderful reunion.

 All ready to fly :)

 Will pretending to be busy on his phone...an old broken one :)

 Ready for take off!!

 Switching flights.

 Here we go again!

 Finally made it to the port of Miami, very very sleep deprived!

 And we made it on the boat!!!!  Yahoo!

 Cousins reunite!

 Disembarking!!  And we're at sea!

 This kid kept falling asleep at dinner!  It was hilarious, because when we'd wake him, he'd do the funniest grin.

 We don't selfie well!

 The food was all delicious!  Especially dessert!

 Look at those eyes!!

 First stop, Nassau, Bahamas.

 My mom wanted a family photo of everyone, all 32 people!  So as you can imagine we did a whole lot of waiting for everyone to get in the same place at once.  Devin and Joslyn saved the day with these kites for the kids.

 It was hot and windy, perfect for kite flying.

 After that, everyone was hungry, so we jumped aboard the ship for a quick snack before hitting the beach.

 Ava took pictures of all the passing boats as they ate their ice cream.

 Now for the beach!

 Photo bombers!! In the water!

 It was windy, but still fun!

 Just hanging out on a bench in the Bahamas, half of my kids picking their noses for the picture.

 When we got back to the boat, the splash pad was up and running and I figured it was a great way to wash off all the sand from the beach!

 We had a wonderful dinner again and a fun show.

Sadly the next morning, the waters were too choppy to take the little boats to the private island so we were stuck on the boat all day!!  The kids enjoyed the kids club and I sat by the pool for a long time!

 After a long day on the boat, we enjoyed another delicious dinner and a pirate show, put on by our own children.  These two cuties were dancing to the music when they had a name that tune game going on, in which my brother Scott seemed to dominate and could have blown us all away with his best Celine Dion rendition of the Power of Love.  One of the highlights of the cruise for me!  It was great to reconnect with my brother, Scott and his family.

 Here come the entertaining buccaneers.

 It was an entertaining show with songs, poetry and dancing!

Here are my three pirates.

 Here is dapper Cory in his cruise wear.

 The next day we came to Key West.  And sadly, the weather did not look promising.  But, of course, we didn't let that stop us.  We headed off to the beach again.

 Some cool architecture and scenery on the way to the beach.

 We saw this cool crab.

 Beaches are always fun, even if it's a bit cold.

 There was this cool tree.

 More cool buildings.

 Just a random chicken.

 Beaches and babies...these are two of my favorite things!  The beach was great, until, there came a sudden down pour. And I mean, down pour, no where to hide and stay dry kind of down pour! We were drenched all of our things were drenched!  It was an exciting day!  So back to the boat we went and there we stayed.  The kids had more fun in the kids club and we just hung out.

 The last night, we played games and that was a lot of fun!  I wish I could have had more time with all my family all together.  It was hard being on a big boat and lots of kids with different schedules and some bad weather days, but I was still glad for the times we did have and that I could run into my family so often. That couldn't happen anywhere else.  :)

 Before we knew it, it was back home again.  Boy, we were tired and needed another vacation!

 Thank you mom and dad for the great trip and the memories and for all my siblings.  I love you all!