Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Jackson's 5th Birthday
It is hard to believe that our little Jackon Case who made me a mother 5 years ago today for the first time is FIVE years old today! He had a great birthday today. We decorated outside his room last night with balloons, streamers, and made a "birthday tunnel" for him to come out of! He loved it. Then he got to go to special breakfast with mommy at Panera and after breakfast, we went to Publix to get our cupcakes for his class. When we got to school he was greeted with bear hugs from nearly his entire class wishing him a happy birthday...I can honestly say it was the cutest thing I have ever seen and Jack was so happy. This was after he grinned from ear to ear at breakfast from a birthday video from cousins Ellie and Anneliese singing him a Happy Birthday "cha cha cha" song. He was beaming!!! The power of the I-phone and he also had face-timed with Mimi before we left the house and she sang him happy birthday...lucky boy!!! We capped off the day with a play at Jack's classroom and dinner at Chili's (his choice) "because you can get 1 for 2" (he was trying to tell me 2 for 1) but got it tangled up!! The staff at Chilis sang to him and brought out dessert and he loved it. We did presents this weekend on Sunday and a little family party then so he could enjoy his toys over th extended holiday weekend and he has his friends birthday party this coming Saturday so it is a week of celebration around here!!!
Monday, May 27, 2013
Saturday, May 25, 2013
birthday bonanza
We are on the verge of Birthday bonanza in our house!!! We finished a very very busy week back to work after a week of vacation and now we are preparing for the arrival of Aunt Megan next week Thursday and the kid's double birthday party next week Saturday. We are also preparing for Jackson's real birthday which is this coming Tuesday. We're having a celebratory weekend all weekend long starting with baking his cake for our little family party for him today. We are going to let him open his present from us on Monday and do long distance family member presents on his real birthday to spread it out a bit. SB will probably get some things early too because she really does not understand. Then of course they get another haul of things the really do not need at their party Saturday and her real birthday (along with Mimi's birthday) is next weekend Sunday! So we are embarking on a full week long of birthday fun. I ordered the food for the party and the cakes and cupcakes this week for pick up next weekend and we have a bounce house coming next week Saturday for the yard and a tent and tables and chairs for some shade and we are expecting many familie and friends and about 60 people in all so it should be a fun time. I'm kind of glad with all of the commotion and planning and expense that goes into this that their birthdays are together!!! We can do one big blow out and there you have it, at least at this age. All of the people we would invite are the same so it really would be nuts to split it up.
Besides party planning this weekend and a big trip to Sam's planned, we are just hanging aroudn this weekend. We have great weather weekend and we plan to spend a lot of time at the beach, in our pool and at the Moorings. We may go out with friends in the boats tomorrow so we wil see! Happy Memorial day everyone!!! Happy Anniversary too to Aunt Julia and Uncle Craig, Mimi and Papa and to Grandma and Grandpa who I believe all have anniversaries coming up!!!
Besides party planning this weekend and a big trip to Sam's planned, we are just hanging aroudn this weekend. We have great weather weekend and we plan to spend a lot of time at the beach, in our pool and at the Moorings. We may go out with friends in the boats tomorrow so we wil see! Happy Memorial day everyone!!! Happy Anniversary too to Aunt Julia and Uncle Craig, Mimi and Papa and to Grandma and Grandpa who I believe all have anniversaries coming up!!!
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Disney Dream Bahama Cruise breakdown
Jon posted a ton of photos from our cruise, including the professional ones we bought from Disney from around the ship, now I will give you all the play by play on this amazing vacation that I hope every family with small children will take the time to do at least once!! We had a great time, we booked the 5 day Bahamas Cruise on Disney's Dream out of Port Canaveral, very easy, about an hour from WDW and about an hour and change from our house. The cruise left on Sunday May 12th, Mother's day, so we opted to go to Magic Kingdom the Saturday before and stay overnight at a Disney hotel to get the full experience. We enjoyed this although I do not know that I would do the park this time of year again the day before the cruise. The park was super crowded and it was hot and we were tired. We would have been better off just enjoying the pools and the hotel and relaxing. We boarded the ship mid morning on Sunday and it was a bit stessful getting on board but Disney made it very easy, much easier than any other cruise embarkation that I can remember and this was our first cruise with kids and all in all, besides them being starving and having eaten every last snack I had packed by the time we got on board at 11:30 that morning, it was smooth sailing and once we got on board, we had two hours to grab lunch, and explore the ship before the rooms were all ready at 1:30. The boat docks and goes out the very same day so they need that half day to turn the rooms around for another cruise! It never sits in port over night, again, the magic and business of Disney!!!
We enjoyed lunch at the Enchanted Garden which had been recommended to us, there was table service there and a full fancy buffet lunch. It was a pretty restaurant but with patience running thin and bellies hungry, truthfully until we all had some food in our bellies at that meal, I did not get to notice how nice the restaurant really was. Embarkation day was hard but once we got into our room and unpacked, the kids perked up, loved our large balcony on the aft (back of the boat) section (we would definitely recommend families to try to get one of these rooms, the rooms are the same size as the rest of the boat but the balconies are three times the size, nearly half the size of our room because they are deep, and not narrow like the ones on the side of the ship. We also learned a trick for future trips, try to get a corner room as you get more space, and a double balcony.
Once we were checked into the room we headed up to register Jackon for the Oceaneer's Club and Sarabeth for the nursery and confirm her reservation times. This is important to do or you won't get a spot! She napped in the nursery each day and also ate and played in there for dinner time. We all ate together the first night and after that, the kids wanted nothing to do with eating and sitting through a long dinner, even at a disney themed place so we learned another trick, next time around we would book the later dinner seating and would just take the kids to eat quick service somwhere on the ship and get them fed and drop them in the kids club and nursery for play time while we had our dinner so we could enjoy it and they could play. Jackson played in the club each evening for a few hours while SB was in the nursery and this gave us a bit of a break and also one afternoon while SB was napping Jon and I got a massage at the spa and Jack went to the kids club. They really make kids a priority on these trips and it is really really nice and safe and clean!!
After getting everyone squared away for child care we headed up to the pool deck to check out Nemo's reef which was a splash pad area completely shaded, perfect for toddlers and even kids jackson's age. There are also two large slides and two larger pools on deck. I'm not a fan of cruise ship pools so we steered clear of those but Jack did the two water slides, one of which is Mickey's slide and the other is the Aqua Duck water coaster. Jon and I both rode it with him, this is the water slide tube that hangs off the boat over the ocean and goes all around the top deck of the boat, very cool! He loved it!! Lines could be long though, sometimes as long a 20 minutes so we had to watch that and get in line at the right times!!
That night we had dinner at Animator's Palate, this was the only night all 4 of us ate together as after this, Jack preferred to go to the kids club for his dinners and SB went to "play babies" as she would say to us when she wanted to go play with the toys in the baby room. We were all pretty tired that night so went to bed fairly early to get a good start on the next day. We pulled into port the next morning at Nassau and just briefly got off the ship and walked around. Each day one of the most exciting thing was pulling into port and waking up to see where we were. Jack had an over head bunk that he insisted in sleeping on (even though he ahd a full pull out bed) and he would pull the curtain open and look out to see where he wa each morning and then they would enjoying watching from the balcony as we pulled into port. Other than the Atlantis resort and beaches, there is not much for kids in Nassau and since we live in Florida we did not need an extra beach day. We took advantage of this day to enjoy the ship and the amenities and the slides with half the people off the ship! We also saw some characters around the ship on this day and the princesses. The character experiences and sightings on the cruise were the best we've ever had on any Disney experience.
The second day was by far the BEST DAY. This was the Castaway Cay (pronounced Key) day at Disney's private Bahamas Island. Honestly I wish we could have stayed docked there for two days!! It was beautiful, clean, nice beaches, nice swimming, guarded, they served us a full lunch on the island, perfection!! We had beautiful weather each day too and an unseasonably cooler day with temps in the low 80's and a breeze and low humidity, it was wonderful and the water in the bahamas is so pretty. We will definitly go back there again!!
The third day was a sea day which was also great weather and a fun day to explore the ship. We swam that morning, enjoyed lunch as a family and then had our couples massage that afternoon and about 30 minutes before the massages at the adult quiet pool area. We also saw the princesses that morning (long wait for this despite all efforts but it was worth it). The spa was nice but expensive. Somehow our bill ended up being like twice what they quoted us so I don't know that I would do that again!! The other scam to look out for is the Disney photos they take of you around the ship. There is no way to avoid this, but just don't go look at them if you don't plan to drop several hundred dollars on the prints!!! They will make them look so nice you won't want to resist them plus they kind of rush you and create this frenzied environment so next thing you know you feel like you MUST have these photo and two hundred dollars later, you have them!!! They are good at marketing on the ship as there are no price tags on anything it seemed in the shops or anywhere, and there are NO clocks anywhere! Kind of like Alice in Wonderland or something. This is a great vacation, but BRING YOUR WALLET, It is not for the cheap or budget concsious is all I can say. They do things right though, with the child care, pack and play in the room, even a diaper genie was in our room which was emptied each day for us! They have a neat bathroom set up with dual bathrooms, one with a tub and shower and sink and a separate bath with a second sink and mirror and toilet and there is a curtain that pulls between the queen sized bed and the kids area with the bunk and pack and play or bunk and pull out sofa and balcony.
I would never do this trip without:
balcony stateroom (the rooms are not huge, (even a "deluxe" family stateroom was small in my opinion and tight and narrow)with kids you need that balcony space plus you just do not get the experience without the balcony)
my video camera, we took hours of video, periodically and have enjoyed watching it again all weekend with the kids
using the childcare they provide, I was not sure about this but it was really nice and I would recommend it highly, this is an exhausting trip and parents need a break too even for just a bit
i would not go with a child less than 18-24 months old. SB did fine but really I think one more year and she will be a lot easier and the perfect age is 3 and up.
I would not go with a stroller any larger than a macllaren umbrella stroller, ours barely fit through the entry way of our room, there is no way a larger infant stroller would have fit
I would probably do the 7 day rather than the 5 day, the 5 day i really more like 3.5 days as the last day you have to be off the ship by 8:30 am!! So, the 5 day trip goes very fast. It was not a big deal for us as this is close to home for us but if I was hauling my entire family and all the gear across teh country, go for the 7 days, it i worth the effort and time.
I would do the later dinner and feed the kids on my own in advance, don't try to make the kid sit through dinner with you and your spouse
I would do room service each morning for breakfast, we did that, we filled out a card each night beore and left it on our stateroom door and at the time we designated each day a tray was brought to our room with juices, milk, cereal and fruits and bagels, etc. and then Jon just went up and got the kids some eggs and such. So much easier to let them eat in their jammies on the balcony and roam around and watch a show than to try to get up and dresed and up to a dining room to eat, ugh!!!
All in all a great family vacation...so great that we took advantage of an onboard special and by booking on board for next May, we saved 10% off our total next cruise price, hand picked our room and are all set to cruise on Disney' Fantasy which is their newest ship out of our same port next May to the Western Caribbean for a 7 day to Cozumel, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and then back to Disney's Castaway Cay and two sea days this time! We will be sailing next year the week of Memorial day and Jackson's 6th birthday, exciting to look forward to!!!
We enjoyed lunch at the Enchanted Garden which had been recommended to us, there was table service there and a full fancy buffet lunch. It was a pretty restaurant but with patience running thin and bellies hungry, truthfully until we all had some food in our bellies at that meal, I did not get to notice how nice the restaurant really was. Embarkation day was hard but once we got into our room and unpacked, the kids perked up, loved our large balcony on the aft (back of the boat) section (we would definitely recommend families to try to get one of these rooms, the rooms are the same size as the rest of the boat but the balconies are three times the size, nearly half the size of our room because they are deep, and not narrow like the ones on the side of the ship. We also learned a trick for future trips, try to get a corner room as you get more space, and a double balcony.
Once we were checked into the room we headed up to register Jackon for the Oceaneer's Club and Sarabeth for the nursery and confirm her reservation times. This is important to do or you won't get a spot! She napped in the nursery each day and also ate and played in there for dinner time. We all ate together the first night and after that, the kids wanted nothing to do with eating and sitting through a long dinner, even at a disney themed place so we learned another trick, next time around we would book the later dinner seating and would just take the kids to eat quick service somwhere on the ship and get them fed and drop them in the kids club and nursery for play time while we had our dinner so we could enjoy it and they could play. Jackson played in the club each evening for a few hours while SB was in the nursery and this gave us a bit of a break and also one afternoon while SB was napping Jon and I got a massage at the spa and Jack went to the kids club. They really make kids a priority on these trips and it is really really nice and safe and clean!!
After getting everyone squared away for child care we headed up to the pool deck to check out Nemo's reef which was a splash pad area completely shaded, perfect for toddlers and even kids jackson's age. There are also two large slides and two larger pools on deck. I'm not a fan of cruise ship pools so we steered clear of those but Jack did the two water slides, one of which is Mickey's slide and the other is the Aqua Duck water coaster. Jon and I both rode it with him, this is the water slide tube that hangs off the boat over the ocean and goes all around the top deck of the boat, very cool! He loved it!! Lines could be long though, sometimes as long a 20 minutes so we had to watch that and get in line at the right times!!
That night we had dinner at Animator's Palate, this was the only night all 4 of us ate together as after this, Jack preferred to go to the kids club for his dinners and SB went to "play babies" as she would say to us when she wanted to go play with the toys in the baby room. We were all pretty tired that night so went to bed fairly early to get a good start on the next day. We pulled into port the next morning at Nassau and just briefly got off the ship and walked around. Each day one of the most exciting thing was pulling into port and waking up to see where we were. Jack had an over head bunk that he insisted in sleeping on (even though he ahd a full pull out bed) and he would pull the curtain open and look out to see where he wa each morning and then they would enjoying watching from the balcony as we pulled into port. Other than the Atlantis resort and beaches, there is not much for kids in Nassau and since we live in Florida we did not need an extra beach day. We took advantage of this day to enjoy the ship and the amenities and the slides with half the people off the ship! We also saw some characters around the ship on this day and the princesses. The character experiences and sightings on the cruise were the best we've ever had on any Disney experience.
The second day was by far the BEST DAY. This was the Castaway Cay (pronounced Key) day at Disney's private Bahamas Island. Honestly I wish we could have stayed docked there for two days!! It was beautiful, clean, nice beaches, nice swimming, guarded, they served us a full lunch on the island, perfection!! We had beautiful weather each day too and an unseasonably cooler day with temps in the low 80's and a breeze and low humidity, it was wonderful and the water in the bahamas is so pretty. We will definitly go back there again!!
The third day was a sea day which was also great weather and a fun day to explore the ship. We swam that morning, enjoyed lunch as a family and then had our couples massage that afternoon and about 30 minutes before the massages at the adult quiet pool area. We also saw the princesses that morning (long wait for this despite all efforts but it was worth it). The spa was nice but expensive. Somehow our bill ended up being like twice what they quoted us so I don't know that I would do that again!! The other scam to look out for is the Disney photos they take of you around the ship. There is no way to avoid this, but just don't go look at them if you don't plan to drop several hundred dollars on the prints!!! They will make them look so nice you won't want to resist them plus they kind of rush you and create this frenzied environment so next thing you know you feel like you MUST have these photo and two hundred dollars later, you have them!!! They are good at marketing on the ship as there are no price tags on anything it seemed in the shops or anywhere, and there are NO clocks anywhere! Kind of like Alice in Wonderland or something. This is a great vacation, but BRING YOUR WALLET, It is not for the cheap or budget concsious is all I can say. They do things right though, with the child care, pack and play in the room, even a diaper genie was in our room which was emptied each day for us! They have a neat bathroom set up with dual bathrooms, one with a tub and shower and sink and a separate bath with a second sink and mirror and toilet and there is a curtain that pulls between the queen sized bed and the kids area with the bunk and pack and play or bunk and pull out sofa and balcony.
I would never do this trip without:
balcony stateroom (the rooms are not huge, (even a "deluxe" family stateroom was small in my opinion and tight and narrow)with kids you need that balcony space plus you just do not get the experience without the balcony)
my video camera, we took hours of video, periodically and have enjoyed watching it again all weekend with the kids
using the childcare they provide, I was not sure about this but it was really nice and I would recommend it highly, this is an exhausting trip and parents need a break too even for just a bit
i would not go with a child less than 18-24 months old. SB did fine but really I think one more year and she will be a lot easier and the perfect age is 3 and up.
I would not go with a stroller any larger than a macllaren umbrella stroller, ours barely fit through the entry way of our room, there is no way a larger infant stroller would have fit
I would probably do the 7 day rather than the 5 day, the 5 day i really more like 3.5 days as the last day you have to be off the ship by 8:30 am!! So, the 5 day trip goes very fast. It was not a big deal for us as this is close to home for us but if I was hauling my entire family and all the gear across teh country, go for the 7 days, it i worth the effort and time.
I would do the later dinner and feed the kids on my own in advance, don't try to make the kid sit through dinner with you and your spouse
I would do room service each morning for breakfast, we did that, we filled out a card each night beore and left it on our stateroom door and at the time we designated each day a tray was brought to our room with juices, milk, cereal and fruits and bagels, etc. and then Jon just went up and got the kids some eggs and such. So much easier to let them eat in their jammies on the balcony and roam around and watch a show than to try to get up and dresed and up to a dining room to eat, ugh!!!
All in all a great family vacation...so great that we took advantage of an onboard special and by booking on board for next May, we saved 10% off our total next cruise price, hand picked our room and are all set to cruise on Disney' Fantasy which is their newest ship out of our same port next May to the Western Caribbean for a 7 day to Cozumel, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and then back to Disney's Castaway Cay and two sea days this time! We will be sailing next year the week of Memorial day and Jackson's 6th birthday, exciting to look forward to!!!
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