Yospe Carnival Cruise- Day 1

We went on a CRUISE! Holla! It was an awesome way to kick off 2016. January is such a dull, dreary month if there's nothing to look forward to or celebrate. I love taking a vacation in January. That's why I'm uber grateful for Jake and his ever-planning and dreaming ways. He proposed this idea a year prior, then asked his parents if they'd want to go, which then sparked Ike and Jordan's interest, then Esther's. Pretty soon it became a Yospe family cruise! (Minus Abe and his family, since he had to continue teaching Cami's class. :) She only missed 3 days of school). We looked forward to this trip all year, and Jake had everything planned out and I just went along with the plan. The plan was to DRIVE in our van to Brittney's house in Orange County, stay with them overnight, hop on a cruise ship, take a 4 night cruise to Catalina Island and Ensenada Mexico, then stay 3 more nights at Britt's house and go to Disneyland one of those days. Woo hoo! The girls were of course beYOND excited. The day finally arrived for us to embark on our journey.

Yay for road trips! How I survived as a kid without a comfy minivan and a DVD player, I don't know. We were squished in the back of a brown Oldsmobile station wagon for our trips to and Utah to California. TORTURE. Especially when a certain little brother would always get car sick. And our gummy snacks would melt into one big ball. And we'd kick eachother against the door for being over the seatbelt line. Brutal. But ohh the memories.

Anyhoo, the girls loved watching movie after movie, coloring, snacking, playing road trip Bingo, reading a little, and doing a teeeny bit of looking out the window. :) Oh and bringing lots of toys like those chubby knee'd, cankled Cabbage Patch Kids.

We spent Saturday driving, stopped in St. George at In n' Out and met up with some of the Yospe crew for lunch, then headed back out on the road for the rest of the journey. We arrived in Rancho Santa Margarita that night to a gorgeous Misiego house, and Cami could hardly wait to knock and see Ari and her cousins.

We made it! We hadn't seen them since Christmas! haha. So only a few weeks, but it was still super exciting to be in their home and get the grand tour of everything, including their backyard swimming pool. We got Thai take out for dinner, and got settled in. The girls all jumped into their matching jammies, looked at books with Matt, and had a fun sleepover that first night.

Oh, and we got to meet Luka. :)

Pure white snowball cuteness! The kids paraded around with him and had a joyous time that next morning.

Check out the view from the front yard at Britt's house! Ahhhh heavenly.

CRUISE time! We left Brittney's house with our cruise luggage, drove to the Long Beach port, and met up with the rest of the Yospe's in front of our Carnival Imagination ship. That's a big ol' ship! The girls couldn't believe we'd be living on it for 4 nights. They were pretty stoked.

The least fun part of that day was waiting in a long snaking line at the port, just to check in and board the ship. It was hard to keep the kids entertained!

But after an hour or so, we finally got on, and got to find our first FOOD. I chose an asian stir fry station, where you could add noodles and veggies to a bowl, and hand it to the chef, who would add in your choice of protein and sauce, and stir fry it up. It was tasty and gluten free!

We had a few hours to spend exploring the ship, so the kids found this life sized chess set.

Clark and Emma got right to lounging and reading. :) That's the way to go! P.S. It was pretty cold- like jacket weather cold, which is kind of weird on a ship.

Uhhh these golden statues were LINING the inside deck of the lobby. Avert your eyes, kids!

There was a fun mini golf course on the ship, so we played a round of golf and enjoyed the sunshine. Lexi's so cute when she golfs.

On the OTHER end of the ship, there were water slides! This was the selling point of the ship for the kids. Cam and Lex couldn't wait to get their swimsuits on and go out and slide, even though it was like 55 degrees outside.

Action shot!

It was funny- a lady walked by and said "You guys are from Utah, aren't you." I said why yes, how'd you know? She said "Only people from Utah would think this is warm enough for water slides!" True dat. It was 30 and snowy back home.

There were surprisingly tons of people from Utah on our cruise. Who'da thought. Cam and Lex were the first of the kiddos to enjoy the slides.

Then we walked over and found the rest of the fam in the hot tub! The pool was too deep and NOT heated, so the hot tub got a lot of kid action! We never got in.

 Ohhh Luke and his Daddy Ike. Cute cheesey picture.

 The nice thing about the ship was that they also had a kids camp, called Camp Ocean. We signed the kids up, and then could drop them off anytime they wanted to go to an activity (or we wanted adult time) and they'd play games, do crafts, and have fun. We also had cell phones so that the camp people could call us if they needed to, but we could also call each other around the ship. Score! Lexi didn't love it. She was in the younger camp, and tended to cry every time we dropped her off like 5 minutes after we left. :) So she didn't go much. Cami enjoyed being in the older camp with Mae, Max and Luke. They got these fun crab hats that Jake is modelling.

 Esther and Walter, ready to sail away from Long Beach.

The sunset was gorgeous! Photo cred: Jordan. Nice panorama!

Soooo as soon as we embarked and started sailing out into the wide open ocean, the rocking began. Pretty noticeably. I had put my patch on the night before, and was using patches I had had for a year from our last cruise, but they hadn't expired yet. So I thought they would do the job.

THEY DID NOT.

I felt every rock and every sway, and my body did not like it. I felt nauseous and unhappy. I tried to be normal like everyone else who didn't seem to notice at all, but I couldn't. I went to dinner that night in the tight clausterphobic dining room, and ate a little bit of dinner and then called it quits. I can't even remember what I had for one dinner on the ship. Isn't that sad? It was not my favorite time.

I went back to the room and just crashed. Jake and the girls went to the opening welcome show, and came back late and had to fold the bunkbeds out of the wall, get dressed in jammies, brush teeth, etc. I was not in a good mood at that point. I swear- the Pacific Ocean is rockier than the Atlantic. But the good news was- the next morning when we woke up, we were anchored! Wahoo! Cami had fun sleeping in the wall. :)

And Lexi slept in the bunk above our heads, which was a little weird, but hey it worked. They thought it was so cool. We're actually on a cruise! And a whole fun day at Catalina Island is ahead of us.