So the kids found some ducks—I didn’t even know this was a thing! We put their names on some of them and then they hid them again.
The other thing they did was scour the ship for all the Small Wonders:
Owen had started finding them on his own (they are very obvious in some places) but then he discovered how many there were and he wanted to find them all. He thought he should ask a random employee where they all were and write them down. I suggested he go to Guest Services because they probably had a list—and they did! So then it was a dedicated scavenger hunt and he got all the other kids involved, too. They had the list with them and crossed them all off!
Then Aden, Owen, and Linda went ziplining! It was unbelievably scorching hot on the pool deck waiting for them. Like I thought my skin might burst into flames. Crazy.
So one very strange thing about the ship today was that it was VERY tilty. I think we had one instance on the Harmony last year where we could actually feel the ship moving and even then it was slight. This ship, which is barely a titch smaller, should have been the same. But today? Water was sloshing in the pool and a few times it felt like you were drunk and you could REALLY feel it moving. And the weather wasn’t bad at all…so no idea what was going on. Again, no pictures or videos. It was just a pain to have my phone out—I didn’t have pockets so I was carrying it in my purse (and if I was at the pool, it was generally in a bag). Oh well, I don’t need photos of everything, right?
Tom hadn’t been feeling well so was spending a bit of time in the room resting. He made it out of his cocoon this afternoon…just in time to go to Windjammer for chili cheese fries! They weren’t easily accessible on the pool deck like they were on the Harmony, but you could get the same thing at the buffet…so we only had them once. SAD FACE. But Owen had them with us! Katie didn’t want to leave the pool so we brought her some buttered noodles (which we had to force her to eat like four bites).
Our friend Greg was in the Belly Flop contest and actually won 2nd place. It was really fun—and kind of made me regret not attending ship events like this on other cruises. But then I realized that it was only that much fun because we knew people who were participating…and I would NOT have been sitting by the pool in the crazy hot sun if it was just us on the cruise.
Then it was off to napkin folding—everyone had fun except Katie who, because she couldn’t do it exactly like they demonstrated, was a hot pouty mess. A few of us even won small prizes in the folding competition (which almost made her more upset)! (Sidenote: by dinner I had forgotten everything I learned but Aden was rocking it!)
After napkin folding came the Katie drama…we were all talking about what we were doing next and the older boys wanted to go off on their own for a bit. Katie wanted to go with them but I wanted her to come back and shower and wash her hair (and Zander was going back to shower, too) but as I was talking to her, she just turned and ran off to catch up to the boys.
WAIT, WHAT?
Linda was standing there and looked at me and said “Did she just walk away from you while you were talking to her?” She sure did. I walked over to the elevator and saw all four of them heading up. I WAS PISSED. I also half wondered why Zander was on the elevator as he was supposed to have been heading to the bathroom…but Linda convinced me he wasn’t in the elevator so I forgot about it.
So we went up the next elevator and quick checked 9 (Aden’s floor), 12 (our floor), and then walked all around 15 (the pool deck) and no kids. I wasn’t worried for her safety or anything as they’d been off on their own lots…but she had blatantly ignored me and ran off so I thought I’d do a cursory look for her and drag her ass home if I found her. We didn’t find them, so it was back to the room where I not-so-elegantly told Tom that I WAS DONE and Katie was his the rest of the night. She came home with Owen about a half hour later—we sent Owen out on his own and she proceeded to get in BIG trouble. She had to stick to us like glue the rest of the night—we didn’t even let her go see a friend across the room at dinner. Damn kids. Making me be a parent and give consequences on my damn vacation.
At dinner two things happened. First, we discovered that our friends had some drama with Zander after we left them. They thought he was going to the bathroom but he wasn’t coming back so they went to check on him and he wasn’t there—he HAD been in the elevator with the other kids! So they didn’t know this (and the in-app texting was laughable so I didn’t get their messages) and I was lost in my own kid drama, so they had ended up starting to file a missing kid report…when (I think, again, it’s been too long now and my memory isn’t great) he walked behind them at Guest Services. KIDS!!!!
The second thing was Mark told us how during the day, one of the crew members had asked if he was crew or guest (I may be misremembering the exact details but that was the gist) so he joked that he should be a waiter. So he actually asked our waiter for his name tag so he could go to our friend’s table as a joke. So this happened:
He grabbed the bread basket off our table, grabbed a huge tray on the way to their table, and then actually STOPPED BY ANOTHER TABLE AND ASKED IF THEY WANTED BREAD and they didn’t even blink and said yes! Ha! Then he went to the friend’s table and got a double take from them. We got a good laugh out of that.
After dinner we let Owen go to Kid’s Adventure with Aden while the rest of us went back to the room (we were all tired, plus Katie was being punished). But then I checked the hours for build-a-bear (“pet at sea”) that Katie wanted for her memento and this was the last night we’d be able to get it (since we’d be at CocoCay the next day) so since I am not a total monster, we took her to do that, even though she was on lockdown.
This was actually something I complained about on the satisfaction survey as well—they were out of the “good” fluff in the machines so they had to stuff the bears with cheap crap (she won’t ever care but I know, plus they didn’t get to fill it from the machine) plus they were out of the birth certificates. Really? You are out of a basic printed product? So you’re telling me your on-board print center that prints THOUSANDS of multi-color and multi-page documents a day can’t make a copy of a single page birth certificate for a $40 bear? REALLY?
I took Tylenol PM to make sure I slept well…but that meant I was falling asleep when Owen still wasn’t home. He had to leave the adventure club by 10 and wasn’t home by 10:15 and Tom wanted to go to bed so he had to go out and find him. Three last thing I remember is them walking in the door but I don’t remember Tom getting into bed!