I have never been on a cruise. Honestly it was never really high on the bucket list and neither was the Bahamas. What was high on it though was taking my kids out of the country on a vacation they will always remember. My friend Marie shot me a text one day from across our cubicles to tell me she just booked a cruise. Then told me to look into it. The stars pretty much aligned for this trip.

#1 It was affordable

#2 It was short

#3 It would work out that all of us could go ( no small feat with college and elementary kids )

#4 My husband actually said yes.

3 out of 4 of us have birthdays right around Christmas so money is always super tight at the holidays. I swore I would never short change anyone on their birthdays due to it being Christmas and I am proud to say I have lived up to this goal. This year however the cruise would be their big early birthday gifts and they were all cool with that.

The best decision made was getting a balcony room. It was by far our favorite spot on the entire ship.

We went with 11 other people which makes it a little more fun too. We all did not hang out all of the time, some had small kids, some had older kids some had no kids so we met up for dinner and activities here and there. My son enjoyed the cruise the most. Camp Carnival was a huge hit with him. He even left with a girls phone number that she wrote in permanent marker on his T-shirt. #ladykiller

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

Processed with VSCO with x1 preset Processed with VSCO with x1 preset Processed with VSCO with x1 preset

We left from Port Canaveral. You can see the NASA launch site from the ship.

We only had one port of call ~ Nassau, Bahamas.

Our ship

We wandered over to the Pirate Museum.

We learned about all the famous pirates and my personal favorite, torture methods.

They have actual treasure chests.

I know it is cliche but we have never been to Senor Frogs so we had to go. I don't care, it was so fun! I loved that place. So normally not my thing but anything goes on vacation.

We wandered around the straw market but I hate crowds and pretty much the whole port area had Ariana and I both with high anxiety.

We headed back to the ship to drop off stuff and head back out for our snorkel trip.

I took more video of us annoying Ariana but I'll save those videos for us :) Little man was not a fan of this excursion and opted to just hang on the boat and watch us. I wish now I had picked something else for us to do. This was not the best excursion, but at least there was a lot of free rum.

We watched the most beautiful sunset!

On the last morning Ariana and I bundled up and wandered to the top of the ship to watch the sun rise as we pulled back into port.

I did not take a ton of pictures. Most were on my phone and were of all of us being stupid and I will keep those for myself and my friends who were there with us. I did not understand how my best friend and former photography business partner did not take more pictures when she went on a cruise last spring. Now I totally get it. It was nice to disconnect. The last thing we watched before we left the ship was a group of dolphins frolicking just in front of our balcony, giving us a nice send off.

Save