Day 6: Heading Home

Our last day on the cruise ship, we were at sea all day again. I'm not a huge fan of sea days, because you know, motion sickness, but it's a much better 'travel' day than say, driving to Ohio, or having to change airplanes. 

The boat was moving just as much as it had been the night before. 

But nothing a few drinks on the top of the boat wouldn't fix (at least for Asa). 

And then Shenanigans. 

It was also SUPER windy out there. 

But otherwise, it was pretty nice. We had sunshine mixed with clouds, and warm (but not hot) weather. 

We had one last lunch at O'Sheehans (Does everyone notice Calib's missing?) 

Since O'Sheehans wasn't great with dessert, after lunch we went up to the Market Cafe. 

When we came back, we had a surprise mid-day towel animal. 

We loved our towel animals so much, we couldn't pass up the towel folding demonstration. 

The monkey and the dinosaur were my favorites. 

Oh, and you can't watch towel folding without more drinks. 

We found Peyton hanging out waiting for the teen club to open when we took Hayden up to kids club. 

I thought maybe Peyton was going to come watch the circus show the kids from Splash Academy, but he bailed last minute. 

Hayden got up and did all the circus tricks we had practiced that first day at sea. 

I did miss the picture, but for the first time, he got the plate to spin! He was so excited! 

When we came back we had our last afternoon snacks from Made, chocolate covered strawberries. 

Then we spent the afternoon at the pool. 

We also hit the water slides. 

Ok, so this is my favorite sequence of pictures from the whole trip. Sometimes Hayden likes to put on Asa's shoes or hat, or whatever, at home, and walk around talking in a deep voice going "oh, hi, I'm Asa". So, I picked up Hayden's hat and did the "Oh, hi, I'm Hayden", thing. Which he did not enjoy. Then we passed the hat around and all did our Hayden impressions. It was so funny. 

After our time at the pool, we all got changed and headed up to Deck 13 for dinner. 

Our last night we had reservations at Cagneys, the steak house on board the ship. 

A rare Calib sighting. Don't blink, you'll miss him. He'll be gone before dessert. It is worth noting, he did probably do more of the scheduled activities/shows/events on the ship than the rest of us combined. 

Another dinner, and more drinks for mom and Asa. 

For my starter I had shrimp cocktail. 

Peyton got these fun chicken wings. 

And Hayden got Waygu beef sliders. 

He must have liked them. I pretty much blinked and they were gone. 

Hayden also ordered the potato soup. Our waiter brought sour cream, cheese, bacon, and chives to add to it. 

Asa had a bowl too. It was creamy, and delicious, but lacked the big chunk of potatoes I like in my potato soup. But, the presentation: loved it. 

I also had a wedge salad, which was pretty standard. 

For a main course Asa got the bison strip. It was good, but he wasn't overly impressed. Peyton meanwhile got his-grandpa-would-be-proud-still-mooing-filet mignon. 

I debated steak, but a whole main lobster was on the menu. 

The only other time in my life I've had a whole lobster was in Bar Harbor Maine on paper plates, when I was a kid.  It was pretty awesome, and I'm glad I went with it. 

Hayden got a small filet mignon with garlic rosemary butter on top. He's not a steak eater, but I told him if he was ever going to like it, it would be that steak. He actually did enjoy it, and ate about half of it. I might have had a few bites as well. 

Mom got the same thing, only bigger, and without the garlic butter. 

Calib had a whole big plate of ribs, but he only ate about half. A few days before Calib hit the food wall, and he just wasn't hungry anymore. I thought that would never happen. Food beat Calib. Crazy. 

Oh, we also had some good sides. Asa had au gratin potatoes. 

Hayden got mac and cheese. 

And I got truffle fries. and while they weren't nearly as good as the truffle fries I had in Las Vegas, I wouldn't pass up the chance to have them again. 

For dessert, Hayden and I got the chocolate brownie and ice cream, with this brittle I could stand to eat again. I'm a soft kind of brownie girl too, so the harder crunchier one wasn't my cup of tea. 

Mom had to add creme brulee number 3 to her trip. 

Asa, meanwhile, opted for a dessert cocktail. I don't know what was in it, but I was not a fan. It tasted less like a dessert and more like a shot of Moscow Mule to me. Blah. 

Even though we had the ultimate dining package at the end of every meal, we would get the bill as if we didn't have it.... 

....and then it would be zeroed out. This was our most expensive by far. 

After dinner we headed back to the room to start packing up. 

But we took a break from that to go down to the penny slots. Where, yet again, I lost my dollar, mom turned hers into $5, and Asa turned his into $10. 

Then we hit the pool and the hot tub. 

We were the only ones in it for the second time. During the day, it was pretty packed, but at night a couple of times, Asa and I went and swam laps to try and burn off some of the food we ate. We did do the gym a couple of times too, the only thing that did't make me too motion sick was the bike though, the elliptical was like a motion sickness nightmare. Yikes. 

I did find the ship was very quiet that last night. 

Our bags had to be out by midnight, so I finished packing. 

There were also a few more drinks, bringing Asa's grand total to 36. (And I had a sip of all of them. The winner had to be the 5 o'clock somewhere Margarita, and the loser was probably the drink at Moderno.) 

But the toasted almonds were a close second. I think Asa had at least 6 of those. 

And then we realized we were going to back to Tampa way before our 8 am arrival time. 

Hayden came back from kids club with his friend's email addresses and numbers. 

And we could see we were approaching land. Hello, Florida! 

Hayden and mom were asleep by midnight, and around 1 we were approaching the Sunshine Skyway bridge, so Asa Peyton and I headed up to the top deck to check it out. 

There it is! Since we left late the first night, we missed leaving under it. 

It was pretty cool to see from down below instead of going over it. 

Going under... 

FYI, the boat BARELY clears the thing. 

I kind of wanted to stay up to see us get into Tampa, but our speed had slowed, and it was already really late. 

So off to bed we went, for the last time. 

We ordered room service for our last breakfast. We couldn't get anything fancy from Cagneys, but the normal menu wasn't too shabby either. 

We were docked by the time we got up, back in Tampa. 

Asa and I went up to the top of the deck for one last look. 

Check it out, it's the U.S.S. Victory we visited for Harry Truman's birthday! 

Asa had weighed himself at the beginning of the trip, I somehow neglected to take a picture of his starting weight. 

He gained three pounds over the week, which is better than the 8 in Alaska. I guess some nights in the gym, and some swimming laps plus the excursions helped. 

Around 9 it was time to get the rest of our stuff and head on out. 

Goodbye room 12506. 

Goodbye Ship. 

And Hello Home! Our neighbors were so sweet to bring two cars to come pick us up, so we had plenty of space for all our things! Plus, I know the boys missed Madison, so it was nice to see them. 

When we got home we had some fun mail, from the Office of Jimmy Carter!

We got some bookmarks, a picture, a note, and a wordsearch! 

The boys were happy to be home, it was a football day (thankfully the Bucs were away, but don't even get me started on their epic collapse) so while we watched the games, Peyton and Hayden tucked themselves in to watch all the DVRed things they missed. 

And Ms. Sophie was pretty pleased to see us too. 

Oh, and once we unpacked there was laundry mountain that needed tackling. 

Hayden wanted to change into his shirt from the ship, adding to the laundry mountain. 

I unpacked in record time though, and mom helped get all the laundry through (really she did it all, I just put it away, thanks mom!) Along the way, I picked up some cool magnets to add to my collection. 

I also got this bowl in Honduras. 

Asa brought home his two favorite beverages: tequila and coffee. 

And him and Peyton bought all kinds of new mugs. I'm going to need to go to Ikea soon for a bar to hang them all on. (My favorite is the one with the spoon!) 

We did pizza for our football food, since we hadn't been home to get a taco bar together.. 

...and I had forgotten about all the candy we had acquired at the Not So Scary Halloween Party. 

We got back on Sunday, and mom was leaving on Monday. She offered to take us to lunch, and the boys chose PDQ. So much eating out was fun, but I'm happy to get back to normal life. 

Asa and I took mom to the airport, but no worries, we'll be seeing her soon. She'll be back in a month, and I'm thinking about taking the boys to New Orleans to visit her at her conference in a couple weeks. 

Monday was also my brother, Cort's 40th birthday. I learned I'm not as good with a camera timer as he is, it's way harder than I thought it would be Also, Calib held his sign upside down. Opps. 

That's it, we're all pretty glad to be home, and the pets are are pretty glad to have us back. I won't tell them we're spending four days at Disney in a month. 

That's it for my cruise blogs. I'll be back tomorrow with our last October birthday. 

Next Up: Happy Birthday, John Adams!