First day grade 1 and 4!

When I was a kid it was freezing on the first day of school.  Here in Ontario it is sometimes still extremely boiling! What a treat to bring the girls to the same school for the first time! Rose was a bit nervous as it was a new school for her, but she did well on the first day.

Last night Disney.

As soon as we set sail away from Castaway Cay (after they played all of the ships horns in a long sequence, and I missed most of them as I was frantically speed walking down the hall from the spa, trying to make it back in time), the ship set sail back to Port Canaveral.  What a sad feeling.  Also what an anxious feeling...the captain made an announcement as we set sail that the hurricanes (not sure where they were as I had no internet), were very far away but we might feel the ship rocking more than usual.  I already felt the ships movements disturbingly rocky at night when I was laying still in bed, so I felt a bit panicky about this.  All staff said they could not feel the ship moving ever, FYI, so I was probably just overly sensitive. And oddly enough I found that night to be the least rocky of the entire cruise.

But anyway, as the ship set sail back to port Canaveral we got ready for our final dinner and tried to pack up the rest of our stuff. (Clearly not everything as we left behind a few special souvenirs...so sad). We had to skip the final stage show in order to make sure we got to bed on time.  Henry didn't nap and we knew we had to be in the restaurant for breakfast around 6:30am.

Leading up to the cruise I was so over the top excited.  We spent months looking at you tube videos and researching what it would be like.  Rose was almost excited as me, and when we were eating our final breakfast in the restaurant she was crying.  She didn't want to leave.  She still watches some of the videos (more than 3 months later), that we used to watch leading up to our trip.  It was truly a really fun time.  Sure there are always things that happen when you have 3 kids (hyper behaviour, craziness, the fact that we had to force them to go to the kids club, henry getting sick), but overall it was so much fun.  I felt like I would be sadder getting off the ship, but I think I really made an effort to appreciate and not take for granted all of the time we spent on the ship.  So it didn't go by too quickly.  And now we just have to wait 393 days from the time of this blog post until the next cruise! Woohoo! I'm really looking forward to trying a cruise in the winter as all 3 of our cruises have been in the summer.  I have to admit it was nice coming back to summer.  But when it's winter it will be fun to see how it goes when we are freezing at home and venture into the warm!

After we got back from the cruise we only had a few days and then school started.  I think for Rose it was the biggest adjustment as we came off a fun family trip and she was switching schools and having to make new friends.  It definitely was a bit of a culture shock.  

The Last day of the Cruise

I'm not sure I had ever looked so boiling hot in my entire life as when I finished the race.  As Mike was not rough like me, I sent him to get the kids from the kids club as it was probably a kilometre away.  It took them quite a while to make it back, so I just rested on a beach chair and people watched. I was also taking in the sights of the extremely choppy waters breaking at the edge of the reef (hurricanes on route but did not interrupt our trip!).  All excursions were cancelled for the day, but luckily we didn't have anything booked.  There is more than enough to do there anyway.  Once the kids got there we went for some swimming and lunch.  They had a huge buffet on the island, including some chewy mouth watering cookies.  Afterwards we put 2 and 2 together--the restaurant was called "Cookies", and further down the island was "Cookies 2".  Now it all makes sense.  We had a great lunch and fun swimming.  Although with the stormy seas the water clarity was really reduced.  The girls and Mike tried to snorkel but couldn't see much.  I'm sure the water is usually crystal clear. I spent a long time hoping that Henry would have a nap on the beach chair, and he did lie there quietly for a long time, but unfortunately didn't sleep! Had it not been so boiling  hot it would have been fun to check out the shops and take the kids to the water slide.  I think we were all happy to just stay in one spot though! 

You can see Henry with his tongue sticking out in the one photo.  All of the kids had their first experience with salt water on this trip.  Having a pool at home means they are in the water constantly, so the salt was a bit of a shock! (One amazing thing though--the salt water completely cured the girls of their green hair problem! Although when we got home and everyone started swimming in the pool again, it was green again.)

Castaway Cay is really great though.  You just walk right off the ship onto the beach, which you can't do anywhere else.  Its a good thing it's the last port though--it was super easy to bring the kids here and probably the best port day for them.   I should also mention that Castaway Cay is a private Disney island that they lease from the Bahamas...so that's the general direction that it's in.