…Or Part deux, as they might say in our first port of call, Sint Martin/St. Maarten, the half-French, half-Dutch island.

Daddy actually took the girls out bright and early on St. Maarten, in search of french crepes. Mommy, well…Mommy it seems had a little too much to drink at the amazing French restaurant, Remy, the evening before. So she was, ahem…getting her head back on straight before joining the party on Orient Beach.

J. and I visited the island 12 years ago, way before we had kids, and way before the island was ravaged by tourists. So while the beach, ocean, and sea air were all beautiful and a great way to spend an afternoon, the rest of the island seemed…a little run-down. It is an exercise in eye-opening guilt when you travel to some of these poorer islands – and while I’d love to buy goods to help support the people living there, most of the stuff they have for sale is just the same ‘ol crap they hawk to the tourists. Stuff I don’t need or want. So the beach trip was really the only highlight of St. Maarten.

Then we sailed on to St. Thomas. J. and I got in two fantastic dives (we saw a shark and a pretty cool wreck!) the morning we landed in St. Thomas. It started to rain as we were coming back in on the dive boat.

Thankfully rain in the islands is warm and relatively sporadic – it stops as quickly as it starts. So we rounded up the girls and attempted to go out and explore the island. St. Thomas is kinda expensive. And is filled with a lot of the same tourist junk, too. Although we did find, and buy, what are being sold as “the softest sheets in the world.” I was so excited to find sheets made from bamboo for our new bed! And then I discovered that the company who makes them is in Utah, so it wasn’t even an exotic St. Thomas brand. I bought some anyhow, and after having them on our bed for a few nights, I must say – I think that they did not oversell them…they are some soft sheets!

All in all, St. Thomas made the list as a possible destination we can revisit someday, but we were happy to get back on the ship, our home-away-from-home. After all we had Pirate parties to attend:

And character breakfasts to wake up to:

Princesses to meet:

(Addie spotted Ariel – her fave princess – while we were down in the atrium. Ariel was a few floors up and Addie just screeched “Ariel!” and took off to chase her down. It was definitely a highlight hanging with Ariel for a few minutes with noone else around!)

Animations to create:

And seeing our animations come to life:

We celebrated an early birthday:

And finally, it was time for our last stop – Castaway Cay.

I would just like to go on the record as saying, “I want to live on Castaway Cay.”

Seriously. The day on the island was spectacular. We fed and swam with stingrays:

Er…some of us did:

Some decided that they just wanted to snorkel in the part where “there are none of those stingrays!”:

We played in the water and sand all day long:

We did more waterslides:

And when we got tired of playing in the water, we just rested. In the water:

It was the perfect end to the perfect vacation. I just put one thing in the suggestion box…”Maybe you could just do a cruise that stays the entire week at Castaway Cay?”

Like promised, I’m back with our vacation highlights. It has taken me all-the-live-long-week to even get to the point that I can deal with the to-do lists and backlog of email that I left behind when we shoved off two weeks ago. Wow, it really was 2 weeks ago tonight that we left! I guess being on “island time” for the past two weeks has made the time cruise on (oh you know that pun was intended…as lame as it is!) by pretty quickly.

So, we left on the red-eye to Orlando and I was quickly reminded of the last time we took that flight and I vowed to “never take the red-eye AGAIN.”  J. usually sleeps fairly well, the girls sleep pretty well, and Mommy rarely sleeps at all. But the flight leaves at 10:30pm, and it is essentially a 5-hour flight, so even if the girls sleep from wheels up to the minute we touchdown – 5 hours of sleep a night is not good for my normal 12-hour sleepers.

So they either become uncontrollably giddy:

Or they crash:

Sometimes they do both. But we made it to the port and met Mickey – in our traveling clothes and glassy-eyed from no sleep:

And then we saw the ship:

We realized nothing really mattered, we were on vacation. It is a magnificent ship. I think it was by far the most relaxing vacation J. and I have ever taken. No email, no texts, no work, no worries. And we did everything and nothing all at once.

Thankfully I remembered to grab our swimsuits and throw them in the carry-on while we waited for our stateroom to be ready and luggage to be delivered. We tried out the pools:

And the Aquaduck:

Yes, it is a waterslide that goes all the way around the top of the ship’s deck. And yes, it is clear and at one point goes off the ship out over the sea:

It is, as Emma would say, Awwwwesome!

We found our staterooms pretty awesome, too. I am certain I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms than our cabin:

And our own little balcony got a lot of use. Most mornings you could find me, a Cove latte, and my kindle out there while the rest of the stateroom slept off their kids’ club hangovers:

I did get a glimpse into what it might be like with two teenagers in the house, every morning we didn’t have an early excursion I had to drag the girls out of bed at 10am, which around our house is LATE! But they also were going to bed extremely LATE every night as well. And the second night I was treated to this:

Addie read (and finished) an entire big, chapter book – all by herself. This is a very big deal, believe me. Oh, she CAN read, she just usually wants “you to read to me,” – thank you very much. So to see the two of them snuggled all up reading real books, well, it did this Mama’s heart proud.

The days at sea were full, but very relaxing:

Between the reading, swimming, and eating (free ice cream – all the time!), there are 10 things to choose from at any given time.

We Bippity Boppity Boutiqued:

We saw stage shows; there are first-run movies in the movie theater; Addie and I took a cooking class and learned to make apple strudel; and Daddy and Em took a towel origami class and learned to make cool towel creatures like this:

(Bear and Cat in the Hat didn’t mind being left in the cabin – they found their own fun, I think!)

The girls spent a lot of time in the Oceaneer’s Club & Lab – thousands of square feet of “kids only” fun. And while they were away, Mommy and Daddy got to play on the “adults only” side of the ship.

Spa? Yes.
Adult Pool? Yes.
Peace and quiet? Yes and Yes!

And with that, I think I’ll have to take a pause. I’ll be back tomorrow, or maybe the next day, with the Ports of Call round-up. I think I need to milk the vacation mode just a smidge longer.