Christmas in July Ornaments

Each year I participate in a CIJ ornament swap with some wonderful ladies.  These are the ornaments from this year.  The only one not pictured is the one I made.  

Disney Cruise 2017 Part 2

Last time we talked about boarding, kid's club and dining.  Let's start with our stateroom for this post.

We were in a Deluxe Family Oceanview Stateroom with Verandah.  Each child had their own bed and we had our own king sized bed as well with a privacy curtain that separated our bed from their area.  When you walk into the stateroom, immediately to the right was the bathroom with a sink, mirror and toilet.  Next to that was another room with a sink, mirror and the shower/tub (yes they were in separate rooms).  On the opposite wall were a set of cabinets that contained hanger space, storage space and lifejackets for everyone.  Next you would encounter our bed and then a counter top and cabinets to the left and a couch on the right and the verandah straight ahead with two deck chairs and a small side table.  There was a murphy bed that pulled down from the wall and a bunk that pulled out of the ceiling above the couch and the couch turned into a bed as well.

Now, let's talk about the ship itself.  There was the Mickey Slide for younger kids.

 The Funnel Vision huge screen where they showed movies almost all day long from around 8 a.m. until about midnight each day.  Below the Funnel Vision is the Donald Duck Pool.

 This is the Mickey Pool.

This is the AquaDuck!  It was a long waterslide with very cold water.  The rest of the pools on the ship were heated, but the water for this one was not.  I went on it once but the older two went on it multiple times.  It was quite fun.  

 There were two theaters on board.  The Buena Vista Theater cycled through three movies for the duration of the cruise: Beauty and the Beast, Moana, and Star Wars Rogue One.  I'm not sure what the Walt Disney Theatre played.

 This was the first thing you saw when you boarded the ship on Deck 3, this beautiful chandelier and gorgeous blue staircase.

To be continued.....

Disney Cruise 2017 Part 1.....

We arrived in Florida a day early so that we didn't have to rush the day of our cruise.  We sailed on the Disney Dream out of Port Canaveral.  I will say that boarding was much easier and faster through Disney than our last cruise on Carnival.  However, we sailed from Miami for our Carnival cruise and I definitely liked the ease of Port Canaveral much better.  It was expensive to park for our 3 day cruise ($64) but worth the convenience of being able to park and walk right from the parking garage to the terminal instead of being shuttled from elsewhere.

Since we arrived a day early, we decided to explore the area a bit.  Our hotel was in Titusville, FL.  We drove over to Cocoa Beach and went down to the beach for a short bit.  Addison stood in the water.  On our way home we heard on the radio that the beaches were shut down over the weekend due to shark sightings.

We had dinner and went back to our hotel.  The following morning we got up and drove over to Jetty Park near the port.  They had a pier, playground and were right on the beach.  It was a campground but you could pay for a day pass.  It was very windy which made it chilly but we had a good time and it was worth it.  We got to see a submarine enter the pier and let the kids play on the playground and walk the beach looking for shells.

We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the port.  Disney assigns a check-in time for you to arrive at the terminal but we threw caution to the wind and arrived about an hour and a half early or so.  We had no trouble checking in at all.  It was a very quick and smooth process and we were boarding the ship within 20 minutes.  The longest part was standing in the terminal after check-in waiting for the "family photo" to be taken by their photographers.

One cool thing about Disney is that they announce your family name as you walk onto the ship on Deck 3 into the Atrium where the grand staircase is.  There are staff lined up on both sides of the entrance and they welcome you as you walk through.  We didn't have access to our room until 1:30 p.m. so we headed to check out the Oceaneer Kid's Club on Deck 5 and get Addison and Eli their wristbands.  They were having an open house so we could walk through with the kids and see everything they had to offer, and it was a lot.

There were several different themed rooms within the Oceaneer Kid's Club and then we walked through to the Oceaneer Kid's Club Lab which had its own set of rooms and awesomeness.  We enabled Addison to check herself in and out so she could come and go for activities that interested her.  We had that option for Eli as well, but having just turned 8, we didn't feel that he was mature enough yet for that privilege.  He went to the club twice I think the entire cruise and the longest he stayed was a couple hours.  He really just wanted to play video games in there and not participate in the activities.  Samuel had two clubs he could access, one was Edge for ages 11-14 and the other was Vibe for ages 14-17.  He preferred Vibe and went there several times.  Vibe had its own Sun Deck at the very front of the ship but I don't think he ever took advantage of it.

There were three main dining rooms on the Disney Dream, the Enchanted Garden, the Royal Palace, and the Animator's Palate.  You rotate through with your wait staff and you have the same table number each night.  One thing I didn't care for was the fact that we had to share a table with another family.  We made the most of it and they were a very nice family with one child that was almost 9.  Him and Samuel talked video games most of the time, but I would have preferred the time to ourselves.  The order listed above was our order for dining.  We skipped the second night in Royal Palace because the menu was awful.  The menu wasn't great any of the nights but it was especially bad that evening.  The kids pretty much had the same options each night but ours varied.  This is where Carnival really shined as they would have a specialty for the area you were cruising in (Bahamas) to try and their menu was much more regular people friendly and so was the buffet on board.  Even the Cabanas buffet wasn't that great, which was very disappointing.  Breakfast was my favorite meal of the day because I knew I wouldn't walk away hungry.

To be continued.......

Photography

I've been working on my photography a lot lately.  I would like to think that I take pretty good pictures, but I need to learn how to edit and really make my images great.  I have Photoshop but have no idea how to use it really.  I have been slowly trying to teach myself as I have time here and there.

Yesterday I took my daughter out and took a few photos.  The lighting wasn't great but I did get to play with my macro lenses finally.  These are not edited with Photoshop.  I simply hit the edit button in my photo viewing program and clicked on Enhance and it adjusted the lighting slightly.

The photos below were taken at a different location last weekend.  I did not use Photoshop to edit these either.  They came out of the camera pretty darn good to begin with but then I did the same thing as above and hit the Enhance button in my photo viewing program.  

Farm Table

My wonderful husband finally built my farm table that i've been asking for!  It turned out amazing.  It's just over 8 feet long.  He's building a bench for one side for seating (not done yet) and we purchased mismatched chairs for the other side and ends from two different antique stores.  We had our first family dinner on the table last night.  Samuel even said that he may just sit and hang out at the table.  :)  Now I need to find a centerpiece.

This picture has all the types of chairs in it.  There are two gray chairs with no arms and two with arms.  They came as a set of 4.  The blue one is mine and the green one is Addison's.  Eli said he wants his gray chair with no arms to be red and Samuel is okay with his staying gray.  Chad is going to change his but i'm not sure to what yet.