In early November...

we went on a much needed vacation.

Two years ago a friend invited us to go on a seven day cruise (she wasn't paying, just inviting us to join their family). While we wanted to go we'd taken a bit of a hit from Chuck's job. The industry he was working in was declining. Althought he knew that, it was tough, really tough for him to walk away. Not so much the job, but he believed he was walking away from his family. It meant going back to working on a tugboat, which meant living aboard a boat three weeks out of a month. While I didn't relish the idea of him going back to tugging (as we call it), I knew it was our life preserver, financially.


Fast forward a year and a few months the friend who'd asked us to go said "I keep hoping you'll be able to go on vacation with us." Chuck had changed jobs, and it looked like we might be able to join them. The trip changed from a seven day cruise to four days on land and four days on sea. We didn't much care about the details, we just knew it was a VACATION. For all we knew she said "we have ocean front property in Arizona. Wanna joing us?"

A little over a year ago we commited to going. The anticipation of the trip was as much fun as the trip its self. First we had to tell the kids. The other families going hadn't told their kids yet, so we waited months and prepared an elaborate game. We divided them into three teams to search for clues. Once they obtained all the clues they had to finish a word/phrase scramble together that read- "Disney Land and Sea". You should have seen their faces. Priceless! It was Superbowl Sunday and we were together under the pretense of watching the game. All the boys (there was only one girl) wanted to do was eat and watch football. When they saw the phrase they didn't put together that it meant GO on a Disney Land and Sea vacation with all these people standing here. Once one of the moms broke that news. There was some cheering. Four boys stood smiling, excited for the others. One brave soul of the four said "Does that mean us too?" You could tell he was half scared that he'd be disappointed by the answer, but he was also willing to risk knowing the truth so he could celebrate with his friends, either for their excitement, or for theirs AND his. He was delighted he took the risk and asked.

The trip ended up being four families in all. There were 21 in our group, 13 children and 8 adults. We spent four days at Dinsey World and four days on a Disney cruise. The mix of kids was great. On the ship we had a room of 7th graders, four of them to be exact (God bless their housekeepers soul), a room of 8th graders, three of them, and then our four seperate family cabins. We only had three girls, but they hung tough and had a great time together.


Here are a few pictures from the trip. All the kids, on the last day of the cruise, holding our local news paper in hopes that they'll put the picture in their feature section "traveling with the Current."
The kids, minus Lil' Luke who'd been quarentined by the ships docter. He had a stomach virus.
The ship at dock on Disney's private island, Castaway Cay. Beautiful and many fun things to do!
The ships best servers.
My very sweet and handsome men. I am one blessed woman.
Our hotel, "The Boardwalk". We loved it. I highly recommend the Concierge's level at any of the Disney hotels.
On our way to the cruise ship, Disney Wonder via a private bus we chartered.
Atlantic City Airport waiting to board the plane headed to Florida. Three of the four families flew down together. What a hoot! We laughed all the way down.
Epcot- Germany dinner at OctoberFest. Yum...sort of...By the time the meal was over I wasn't feeling well. Turned out I had a stomach bug. The bratwurst only made it just outside the gates of Epcot. It wasn't pretty, I'll spare you the gory details, and spare me the embarrassment of re-living the moment...too late.
The sweet girls.
It's a Bugs Life, Animal Kingdom.
It's A Nap Time. Oh, I mean it's nap time for a man who spent much of the night up tending to me because of the stomach bug.
My boys, being themselves. Should have been my Christmas picture.
The three above photos were taken while on a jungle walk in Animal Kingdom.
The 7th graders the first day of the cruise, exploring the ship.
Clay and his friend playing ping pong aboard the ship.
The 8th graders the first day of the cruise, exloring also.
Clay and to the left is Luke swimming in the MICKEY pool. Too bad, so sad for Zack, he was too BIG to swim in the Mickey pool and slide on the Goofy slide. It may have been the size 14 shoes gave him away...any maybe the 5 ft. 11 in. of him.
Dinner at Artist Palate aboard the Wonder. Our servers did a fabulous job of entertaining our kids, as well as serving our every whim. The head server is doing magic tricks to keep them occupied.
The Bahamas BABY!
Luke taking it all in, he does this a lot.
Our 7th graders are so Jersey. Just LOVE 'em!