Life At The Circus

Our final port of call was St Kitts. . We didn’t really have a game plan for St Kitts.  All we knew was we wanted to find monkeys and a beach with some shells and snorkeling.  We found a taxi driver who could take us to both!   After getting a chance to hold the monkeys, we set off for the beach. Here we enjoyed several hours of sand, sun, swimming, sea shells, and snorkeling.   They found Dory! Everyone got to do what they wanted and we all had a wonderful day at St Kitts!

When we found out the itinerary for the family cruise, Scott and I were super excited to see that the ship would be stopping at St Thomas… this meant that we could take an excursion to St John and visit US Virgin Island National Park!!!  That’s right, another vacation with a sign pic for the circus crew!! National parks rarely disappoint and St. John was no exception.  St John was our family’s favorite day of the vacation (and there were a lot of good days)!   We even saw an iguana on St Thomas right when we got off the cruise ship…. you know your day is off to a great start, when you’re greeted by an iguana!     The kids enjoyed it all, from the ferry ride over, to the van ride to the park.   The snorkeling there was fun and amazing… even better than we had even hoped.           We saw so many beautiful fish and even an eel and a sting ray!  All 6 of us got to enjoy snorkeling.   I was so thankful for all the swim p...

Our youngest daughter turned 10 during our vacation.  It was the second year in a row that her birthday fell during our vacation.  At first she wasn’t very excited about having to celebrate her birthday away from home….but turns out a Caribbean cruise isn’t too bad a place to celebrate ones birthday.  She has told me in the past that SOMEDAY, she would like to have an ice skating party.  Um, Ice skating parties in July can be a tad tricky…. unless you are on the worlds largest cruise ship!    Once on board we learned that the ice rink was only open certain days and times…. While it wasn’t open on her birthday, it was going to be available the evening before… so her party got started a little early! After dinner on Monday we all went to the ice rink.  The next morning Scott and I decorated our room with balloons and streamers ( from Solomon's :-) to surprise her when she woke up in the morning.  She really liked it.   Her birthday was on a po...

Once we had our clothing situation resolved, a weight was lifted from our shoulders and were ready to show the kids the Caribbean.  We were thankful we were able to get our errand running out of the way early and get the kids so we could hit the beach.  We were off the ship for round 2 before 9 am! We had decided ahead of time that our plan for Nassau was to walk to nearby Junkanoo Beach.  We knew it wasn’t necessarily the best snorkeling around, but it would provide us with a beach to play around in and we were planning our big snorkel excursion for St John later in the week.  Junkanoo was perfect for our needs that morning.  We walked there in under 20 minutes.  We got to swim in beautiful clear water.  We got to practice our snorkeling.   My parents met us for part of it and enjoyed some beach time with us also.     After a few hours we headed back towards the ship, saving time for the girls to do some shopping.  Both girls ...