Simple Hobby Homesteading

The foreboding dark cloud was inching closer and closer to us and our precious new friend… the Enchantment of the Seas. As we waited we checked out the indoor ship activities in our “Cruise Compass”. Ooh art scavenger hunt, yes please. The boys and I headed one deck up and got our sheet for the scavenger hunt. We had to look at different clues and find the painting/artist they were talking about. It was quite fun and we even won a prize…  a copy of David Najar’s “Fence Line.” A lovely seriolithograph in color on archival paper from 2013. Lo and behold it was 1:30pm, time to head down and check out our room!

One of our duffle bags was waiting for us outside room 3616 (third deck) and luckily it was the one with the gift boxes in it. We had a meet and greet with our fellow homeschool families in 30 minutes! I can’t remember who, but one of us slid our sea pass card (room key, charge card, proof that you were legit to be on the ship, etc.)  and voila the door opened into a larger than expected room with a loveseat, desk, tons of storage, private bathroom, huge window, and two twin beds. We plopped our backpacks down and heard a thud outside our door. Duffel bag #2 had arrived.

We all started looking around, pulling out this drawer and that. I looked in my backpack for my trusty can of Lysol only to realize I had forgotten it in the Mazda. Oh well, this room looked plenty clean. I gave the boys the “wash your hands often and utilize hand sanitizer” speech. Mother’s love their speeches. We saw that there were two more twin beds stowed into the ceiling and knew somehow they must come out/down if our boys were to avoid having to share the loveseat for the night. There seemed to be a square hole for a likewise square tool to fit into that would surely lower the magical beds. Where was the tool? We looked everywhere! Our tool was missing! I was about to call up to guest services when Kevin reminded me that it was almost 2pm… meet and greet.

We resolved to get down to the mystery of the beds upon our return and figured we could push the bottom two twins together to make one big bed for Kevin and I later (not our idea, Mazie had told me many moons ago this was what was done for couples). We went to the meet and greet a few decks up in a lovely huge conference room at the front of the ship… or back… I couldn’t really tell. Oh and front is the bow and the back is the stern… when you are talking about the rear you refer to “aft” but it’s not called “the aft” it just is aft. “Forward” is to the front but it is not called “the forward.”  Confusing? Yes, it is to me and I refused to use the correct terms even though my husband and both boys were correcting me earnestly every time I used the words “front” and “back.”

I’m not even kidding when I say I had to ask my husband and kids for a refresher course just now while writing that. I simply asked “Where was the conference room, the front or the back?” That’s when the lesson began and I typed as they talked. Then Kevin asked a trick question… “What side was our cabin on?” I smartly replied, “The outer side… we had a window!” He replied, “There were windows on the other side too.” Grrrrr he was right. I tried again, “The exterior side.” I quickly realized it was virtually the same answer I had just given. He lovingly corrected me with “Starboard side honey, we were on the starboard side” (am I spelling that right?). Ok, good, now I can sleep at night.

We were able to meet the families cruising with us for the next week at our lovely meet ad greet. There were a couple families from Indiana, woohoo represent! My soap/lotion/bath salts gift boxes were given out and my name was even drawn for a prize, lucky me! I was also given a special gift (neat journal) for being funny on the forums in our Facebook group or for bringing the gift boxes to give out… not sure which, but once again, I’m not prone to look a gift horse in the mouth (please tell me that’s how that saying goes) so I accepted and was thrilled with my journal. I really do love journals!

Conway tummies were rumbling so we stayed at the meet and greet just long enough to get everyone’s names and to hear Mazie explain that we had to do nothing for the beds… they would be all ready for us when we returned to our cabins after dinner. But… how will something get done if I don’t do it… what kind of crazy train did we board… this was all quite foreign to me as I am a “gonna do it myself” kind of person. If I can’t do it myself then I’m gonna have my husband do it… definitely not used to having others do so much for me!

To the Windjammer Café… We were hungry! Oh and the conference room was at the stern (back… right?) so we went up to deck 9 and foreward. Kevin is a big fan of stairs so no elevators for the Conways. We were all still very excited so we practically floated up those stairs!

Windjammer Café… food, food, and more food! Asian food, American food, Italian food, German food, Japanese food, South American food, every kind of food you could imagine! And desserts… oh my the desserts! Gunner tried the hamburger (of course) and fries… 5 out of 5 stars! Jackson went for a burger and fries as well… 5 out of 5 stars again. I had salmon, buttery herbed noodles, salad, a couple turkey baguette sandwiches, and lots and lots of desserts. Kevin had some kind of pasta with Bolognese sauce that he said was quite good and I should make at home. The lemonade was amazing, fresh squeezed for all of us!

There was muster drill (mandatory safety speech) back on deck 4 at 3:30pm sp we made our way down to our muster drill station (station 9… a very good station if I do say so myself). As we waited for all the fellow station 9 people to show up we chatted with a crew member. Marine who was in charge of the enlisted Marine Corps Band while he served. Played trumpet in the band aboard this ship, very cool! THe man had chops and played a mean trumpet! We got our safety instructions, they showed us what the impressive sound of the emergency horn sounded like, and that was that. We were all done with the safety drill.

It was almost time for the boat to shove off so we all went out to an upper deck to watch. The rain cloud stormed upon us as soldiers would take a beach during invasion. It opened its fury on the boat for all of five minutes and we ran for the minimal covering of the ledge of the deck above us. We watched as the ship shoved off and waved to the people below obviously waving directly to us. 4:15pm… “Free Spa Raffle Draw Event for $500 in Treatments”… ummmm yes please! I even managed to talk my husband and kids in accompanying me to the fitness center for this epic giveaway. Sadly I did not win but I was offered a package at a steep discount just for coming and Kevin urged me to jump on it… “The Perfect Day”… 50 minute deep tissue massage, foot and ankle massage, Frangipani scalp massage, full body exfoliation… 75 minutes of pampering (and Frangipani treatment which may or may not involve having my head covered in algae)… normally $269 and all mine today or tomorrow for $149… sure! I made my appointment for the next morning at 8:00am… I would most likely be up at 4am anyways so 8am didn’t seem so crazy.

We then proceeded back down to our room to relax a bit and see if our third duffel bag had arrived. As we were walking down we passed an area with a bunch of luggage. I spotted our third duffel and told the staff member guarding the said luggage. He asked what the liquid inside the bag was. I suddenly remember I had stashed our left over Gatorades in there and told him that’s what they were.  He said, “ok” and we were free to take our duffel bag. All those bags sitting there had mystery liquids of one kind or another which I guess will get you held up at “customs” rather quickly.

I unpacked and put everyone’s things where I though t they should go…no way I would risk giving up all control and have another person unpack for me while I was at dinner (I doubt they would do that but I was operating on very little sleep so anything seemed possible). Our dinner table would be ready for us at 5:45pm in the My Fair Lady dining room so I pulled out the boys’ collar shirts and slacks while Kevin changed into his slacks and nice shirt. I put on some slacks and a nice top as well and we were on our way to dinner.

Chairs were pulled out for each of us at our table and our napkins were infolded and placed in our laps by our servers… wow! Boys were a little weirded out by that but they went with it without shouting “stranger danger” so all was well. The menu was scrumptious! I had the fennel crusted salmon with rosemary potatoes, Jackson had the primerib, Gunner had steak, and Kevin tried the escargot (snails) and had cod for his entrée. He LOVED the escargot… buttery, salty… yummy.  No way you were going to get me to try them… the boys agreed and politely declined when Kevin offered hem some. We all loved our food. I had crème brulee for dessert and it was amazing! I couldn’t believe all this food was free… truly folks, that’s one of the amazing things about cruises… the food is included with your original ticket price!

We were stuffed but the night was still young! We headed down to our room to change into comfy clothes and to our surprise the two twin beds were lowered down from the ceiling and all made up! So neat!! The boys tried them out and gave their stamp of approval. The two lower twin beds were still separated and truth be told Kevin and I were too stuffed to attempt to get them pushed together and made up into one bed at this point. Day Two Cruise Compass was also waiting for us to check out! Day two… Coco Cay!

 At 7:45pm the Welcome Aboard Comedy Show began and we didn’t want t miss that. We stopped by the Starbucks on our way up to the show and grabbed some fufu coffees (yeah, free because of our drink package that we got).  The comedy show in the Orpheum Theater was so funny! We met our cruise director, Marc Walker there (fantastic) and watched comic Mike Pace do his thing. Great comic!

We didn’t make it out in time to go to the “Liquor Box Folding Competition”  at 8:30pm but we weren’t too bummed by that. We did head up to deck 9 to catch some snacks from Park Café and the movie “San Andreas” on the big screen by the pools. By 9:30pm Kevin was getting tired so he headed down to the cabin. 10:00pm had me and my sons in the Boleros Lounge for some “Bingo” which was actually quite fun.

Late night snacks of nachos and burgers after that from the Park Café and then we were all quite exhausted (and full) so we headed down to our cabin. The boys snuggled in their beds and watched out the window as the Atlantic Ocean slipped quietly by. We could feel hardly any rocking of the ship and so far none of us had even an inkling of sea sickness. We chatted about having something delivered to the room for a light breakfast before our main big breakfast. Room service is such a fancy thing we went for it… we all filled out what we wanted…pastries, orange juice, toast, and bacon and slipped it on the outside of our door to be picked up by the magical room service staff sometime in the night. I snuggled down into my twin bed and Kevin into his a mere 3 feet from me… we hadn’t slept apart in a long time… I missed my snuggle buddy but I was soooooo exhausted I drifted off rather quickly.

Day 1 is in the books… what will day 2 bring? Thus far the rain had only inconvenienced a few moments of our day but what would it bring us on day 2?