Cruise Day 7

Day 7

 

This was a fun day at sea, so we didn't take too many pictures, but here are some fun ones.

 Madison and Marah at dinner.

 So I didn't realize he was pulling this face and when I saw it I...

 was mad!

 Jason at dinner, yes we are always eating on the cruise ship.

 We went to karaoke a couple of times and we even went up to sing as a group.  We got the place hopping!  Well, one time it was more of an adult karaoke night, but the kids were in there a short time too.  The worker that was over the singing did 2 songs that were AmAzInG!  He had a great voice, but the kids probably shouldn't have been in there watching it.  This guy was super flaming and sang, "Don't cha" and another one I don't remember what it was called though.  Anyways, the little girls say this and thought it was super funny and here they are posing like him.

Marah

 Madison

 Kurt and Shaileen out on the deck on a dress up night.

 Jason and me on a dress up night.

 Here we all are on one of the stairways.  We asked a worker to take our picture and I don't think that he had every used that type of camera before because it took forever and is totally crooked.  Aren't we a good looking bunch?

 This is our fantastic waiter, Arnie.  That is not his real name, but he introduces himself like that because people can't pronounce his name. When we asked him where he was from he replied, "My mom."  He was the best waiter.  Every night at dinner all of the waiters would preform a song or a dance.  Well, whenever it was a dance Arnie would stand up on his serving table and get down!  We did find out that he was employee of the month, which he totally deserved!

 We enjoyed the piano bar so much that we went back, but this time with all of the family besides the little kids.  We showed up super early to get seats up at the bar.  It was super fun!

 Our towel creation.

Cruise Day 6

 Day 6

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta!  As we were disembarking , like every port, they had people dressed up to take pictures with.  Here they also had a parrot to sit on people's shoulders for pictures.  Janica's family was the last off the boat so I was able to take pictures of her kids with the bird.

Kailee

 

 Brayden

 Marah

  Our family contacted a company in Puerto Vallarta to rent a catamaran for 6 hours.  It was a little interesting finding the place we needed to be.  We walked past the local Home Depot and Walmart and down the main street for a way. Jason decided to ask someone if we were getting close and we had just pasted the street we needed to turn on, so we were pretty lucky we hadn't gone any further.  We waited around for a couple of minutes and this man, Charlie, showed up.  Him and his son, Charlie, (yes both of their names are Charlie) took us out on an amazingly relaxing day. They were amazing!  When we boarded the boat we knew that drink and lunch were provided, but someone mentioned that we don't drink and they were surprised.  They had loaded up 2 cases of Corona, we saved them a lot of money! 

Charlie and Charlie 

 Jason and me on the catamaran.

 While we were waiting for the Charlies there were many iguanas just walking around.  We were told that they are like stray cats there.  It was fun for the kids to see these huge ancient lizards walking around.

 Kurt and Shaileen

 Jason and I had to get our pose in!

 Jason with in island people snorkel around in the background.

 Enjoying the fresh air on the boat.

 Bret and Madison

 Kailee as we first started out.

 Mom watching the coast

 The Charlies took us to a pretty secluded beach to snorkel and play at.  It was very pretty, but very cold water.  Jason, Bret, Brad, Janica, and I snorkeled and saw some fish, but the water was really murky so we didn't see a lot.

 My mom and I

 My dad and Carson

 This is how most of the kids rode the entire way.  They sat on the edge with their feet dangling off.  There was a net so we didn't have to worry about them falling off.  The kids had a blast because the water would splash up onto them and into the boat.

 Rocks in the ocean that have weathered and eroded away so they have tunnels right through them.  What amazing surroundings!

 Enjoying the sun and relaxation!

 We went back to the ship and took showers and then decided to go to check out the stores.  We took a taxi to the main shopping area.  It was Passover so there were a ton of people on the streets partying. We found a hat for me, some maracas, a tambourine, and a hat for Dawson.  

This is the amazing sunset we were able to catch on our way to the shopping area.

 And of course, our towel animal.

Cruise Day 5

Day 5

 After eating a bit of breakfast, but before taking a tender off the ship Jason and I made our way to one of the upper decks to look out at Cabo.  Here I am with the amazing rocks and some beaches of Cabo in the background.

 Jason and I on the deck of Carnival Splendor in Cabo San Lucas.

 Jason and I got scuba certified over the summer and were excited to actually go diving out in open water with living things!  When we certified it was in the crater in Midway, which was really neat, but nothing lives in there, so nothing fun to really look at.  This day Jason and I went off on our own because no one else in my family is scuba certified.  This was our favorite excursion hands down.  We went out with a great company and had an amazing dive leader!  This guy showed us a bunch of sea life. We actually went on a two tank dive, which was really neat to be able to go to two different spots and dive! 

Here is Jason before our first dive. We saw an octopus, tons of star fish, and a lot of really pretty fish!

Our second dive was even more amazing to me.  I think because on the first one I was super excited, but concentrating a lot on just doing everything right and didn't focus on my surroundings.  So I was so happy we were able to go down again!  On this dive we saw an eel, some type of little shark, a totally camoflauge fish (the leader pointed it out to everyone), a huge school of fish, and again amazingly beautiful fish!  I am excited to go diving again.  The sad thing is, our underwater camera only was waterproof up to 25 meters but we were diving 60 to 70 feet, so we weren't able to get any pictures.

Here I am after both dives are finished.

 Jason after scuba diving.

 After we went diving Jason and I walked around town a little.  We have one of our timeshares in Cabo and wanted to go check it out.  We found the place, but after finding someone to ask about it we didn't feel like checking the place out.  But just by the looks of the lobby it was really nice.

 Jason and I back on the ship after getting cleaned up from the dives.

 There are many activities on board the cruise ship.  This night we found the most amazing things on the ship.  The Piano Bar!!!  This is where you basically sit around a guy playing the piano and singing, while you sing with him.  It was super fun!  Even better is that most of the people there were crazy drunk which added to the fun.  We were probably the only people who remembered that night. 

 Jason and the Piano bar.  We had to arrive pretty early to get seats at the bar which deffinately added to the experience because we were right up by the guy performing.

 Kurt, Dad, and Me at the piano bar.

 Kurt, Mom, and Me at the piano bar.

 Here is our view.  That is Chris the piano man in the background.  The piano was slowly spinning around so everyone was right up close!

 And, here is our towel animal for night 5



Cruise Day 4

Day 4

We arrived in Cabo San Lucas!  It was super exciting to be able to get into Mexico and go on an excursions.  Cabo doesn't have a place big enough to dock a cruise ship so it anchors in the bay and we have to take little boats they call tenders to land. 

This is us on the tender into Cabo.

Jason and Me on the tender.

When we got to the shore we didn't have any concrete plans so we walked a little way down the street where many vendors are lined up trying to get you to choose them.  We got to the end of the "road" and Brad, my brother in law, went up to the last guy, Hector, and got a pretty good deal on our events for the day.  We set up a boat tour up the shore, snorkeling on Pelican Beach, and jet skiing.  We were super excited  to start our day!  Lucas was our boat driver, he took us to this huge rock that had a ton of sea lions.  It was so fun to see the sea lions laying out in their natural environment.  While we were in the boat looking at the sea lions Lucas almost got us in a boat crash.  We were seriously inches away from hitting another boat, ahhh! 

Here we are on our boat tour, with Lucas in the background.

Lucas dropped us off with snorkle gear on Pelican beach for 2 hours.  The water was super crowded with boats, but very clear water.  We swam out to some coral and were able to see some pretty fish.  I spotted a star fish, a trumpet fish, and some other pretty fish I don't know the names of. 

Here I am in front of the family in the water.

Jason at Pelican beach, what a stud.

Here we are again, but this time together.  Jason couldn't get enough snorkling.

Hilarie, Bret, Dad, Brad, and Jason playing in the water.  Hilarie was scared to snorkle but dad took her out to teach her, and she ended up loving it!

Snorkling in action

A glimpse of Pedro, one of the sea lions.  There were two of these guys that hung around the docks.  These guys would swim around in the marina and follow the fishing boats begging for fish. In Cabo they call these guys stray dogs.  They are such beautiful creatures!

Here is what the tenders look like.

All of the girls bought dresses on shore.  There was a lady selling them on the beach and the one I bought was on top and I instantly loved it and had to have it.  After I went over to inquire about the dress all of the other girls came over to look at them too.  We all got the same type of dress, but they are all different colors.  So we decided to wear them to dinner that night.  Here I am in my dress.

Here is our cute towel animal for night 4.