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Allure Day 3: Sea Day

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While we were hanging out in the room at one point yesterday afternoon and I was looking through the app to see what was going on the next day, I saw that there was an opening for a private Flow Rider lesson at 8am. We thought that would be a special cruise treat for Owen (Katie had a cupcake decorating class with Tom scheduled for the day) so we were up early to be on the pool deck early! Papa and Grannie made it there, too! It was really nice and peaceful and quiet that early!!

Owen had fun, but unfortunately, I think the lessons need to be revamped. I know that everything on a cruise is a money grab…and this was no different. I knew my $69 wasn’t going to get an hour of personal time, but it was ridiculous to have to sit through SIX OTHER PEOPLE—especially because your own time relied totally on the whims of the instructors and how well you were doing. If you fell a lot, you got about three tries in three minutes. If you managed to stay up, they let you stay up until you fell—and then maybe let you go again. So Owen maybe got seven minutes total and another woman probably got 12 because she was better and didn’t fall as fast. It would be somewhat better if your lesson was a dedicated 10 minutes (and I said as much on my survey).

The kids played mini golf.

We played our elevator game—we’d all predict which elevator would arrive first!

I enjoyed my first quiet time on our balcony…

Then it was cupcake time! Owen and I were off shopping for lanyards and then came to check them out at the end of their class. They invited us in and we ended up taking home the instuctor’s cupcake plus she gave us EACH free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (it was for class participants only). We bought Katie an apron and a pink bag.

Katie did really well!! The cupcakes weighed about 2# each with the amount of frosting on them!! And we had THREE to carry back to the room! But Katie had decided that she was giving hers to Mark, and he was actually next door at Sabor, so we went and delivered it! Then it was back to the room where we ran into Papa and brought him back to the room. He enjoyed eating the remains of one of the cupcakes.

The kids then headed off to the pool and I went for some margaritas. 🙂 The avocado one was strangely good—every sip was like THIS IS WEIRD but then ended with BUT GOOD. Then we sat by the pool with our friends and drank while the kids played in the pool.

Some artwork in the vestibule on my way to the bathrooms.

On our way to dinner and playing the elevator game!

At one point they had a conga line with the staff and all the kids went off and had a blast!

And Hai was doing toothpick games for us.

Zoltar worked this time! But we didn’t get a card or anything. It was a little disappointing.

I can’t remember where we were but apparently the kids were at another bar with our friends and their kids…

Our towel animal!

We let the kids run around while we went out and about, and apparently they ended up with friends on the Rising Tide bar!

We called it a night pretty early since we would be in St. Thomas first thing in the morning and our excursion started at 8:30!

Allure Day 2: Sea Day!

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We didn’t get great sleep because Katie was coughing all night (even with NyQuil). The kids got up about 6:30 and I was able to ignore them until about 7—they wanted to go out and run around so I sent them out with instructions to be back by 8 for breakfast (Tom was working out and that gave me time to shower). It’s really great to be able to send them out on their own.

Tom and I had to stop to get our usual breakfast Bloody Marys (though the bar here is called Bow & Stern instead of Boot & Bonnet) and Linda joined us. We also enjoyed the people watching.

Then we introduced the kids and grandparents to the huge Windjammer buffet for breakfast.

Owen really wanted to to the flow rider so that was next. The little kids were bummed they were too small to do it but they had fun hanging out together.

He practiced twice on the boogie boards (stomach and knees) which then allowed him to upgrade to surfing at the more advanced station.

Now, just because he passed didn’t mean he was that good, LOL. It just meant that he had passed the bare minimum. Unfortunately he got super bummed on the next level because he kept falling—and they told him he was done. He misunderstood, though, and thought they meant he was DONE with the flow rider… but they just meant his turn was over. But he was also bummed because he didn’t stand up by himself and thought he was a failure. So we had to talk him down from that.

And we might have had a drink or two.

The rest of the afternoon included lunch, a veterans service (we all got medals and cake!), just hanging out around the ship, eating lunch, and watching the ice show.

Interestingly, I noticed this piece of art. Notice where it’s from?!

Tonight was also the first formal night. We were coming from the ice show so were already running behind, and then Tom realized he had forgotten his cuff links…so he ran down quick to the gift shops to buy some…and no one had any!! What?! So we were trying to figure out what he could use…and we ended up using a pair of Katie’s earrings (far from perfect but they worked for a bit). We also took formal family photos on the way into dinner…and one was good enough that I bought it!

The menu is good every night but some nights you just need to order four starters (they typically have four selections that change nightly and four “classics” that stay the same). I definitely took advantage of the Escargot many nights and Tom (and Owen) got the French Onion soup many nights.

Our server Hai was really great with the kids and was already making them balloon and napkin animals on the second night! We wondered what the rest of the week would have in store!

Owen was in the bathroom while this was happening and Aden was super sweet and made sure that she made a sword for him as well.

We took the kids to the Adventure Camp daycare after dinner with our friends’ kids and then went and hung out in our old favorite bar, Schooners. I tried to order my drink that I basically lived on last year, joking with the bartender that he had a lot to live up to…and surprisingly he was less than inviting. And I’d even go so far as to say he was a bit short with me. It was very odd, because normally all staff are very considerate and jovial and he…was not. Needless to say we didn’t go back there after that night.

But! We did have fun, as we ended up meeting our friends’ friends and their friends’ friends that night! So the eight of us just hung out talking and half singing along with the piano guy and having fun for a few hours.

The big joke was that Greg looked like Blake Shelton so I was taking “sneak shots” pointing at him behind me, saying I was going to post them on Facebook saying LOOK WHO I SAW ON MY CRUISE! (If you look closely you can see his wife laughing behind me because we set this up and he was posing.) And then he kept making fun saying JENNIFER HUDSON IS IN THE HOUSE!

Well, come to find out, he is an actual country singer! He joked that he’s famous within a 5-mile radius and I told his wife Anne that it was killing me not to be able to Google him which she found hilarious. So we just called him Blake and it was most of the night before I learned his real name was Greg. The other couple were were with—Mike and Melanie—were great, too.

Then we took a break for everyone to go get the kids from daycare. (Sidenote? They all said they hated it! Apparently all the other kids were rude and mean! No one wants to go back again!!)

And then this happened. I opted not to buy that photo.

Then we sent the kids to bed…and I made this happen because why not?!

From previous conversation, apparently Blake/Greg has a real knack for winning stuffed animals so we ended up going to the casino so the boys could try their hand at the Cash Claw game where a few of them tried unsuccessfully, of course, to win wrapped $100 stacks. It did provide us quite a bit of entertainment, though.

After we left the casino, the professional photographers were still out so we made the boys do this:

Later we determined they were the Bad Back Boys (a la Backstreet Boys grown up).

Shortly thereafter we called it a night and this is what we found when we got back to the room.

Allure Day 1: Embarkation!

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Sunday—Fort Lauderdale, FL

We had a quick hotel breakfast and then it was time to board the shuttle at 9:30. Embarkation went really super easy and fast—our shuttle left the hotel about 9:40 and we were getting on the ship about 10:50! After we got through check-in, we were just finishing getting our group picture taken when our friends came around at the corner…so we were able to get a group photo together! It turned out really good so that was one of the six that I bought!

Some quick snaps while the professional was taking her photos.

Then a little bit of check-in (the kids had to get security bands that they would need to wear the entire cruise) and playtime (there was a playset in the waiting area).

And before we knew it we were headed up the gangway!

The first thing we weren’t expecting was NOT walking right onto the hustle and bustle of the ship’s Promenade. We actually had to walk down about 30 yards. But we headed straight to Boleros, the bar where we got our first drink on the Harmony—and the place we got our beloved wrist bands. AND LEARNED THERE WERE NO WRIST BANDS ON THIS SHIP!! WHAT?!?!?! Yeah, they don’t have the technology for it on this ship—they will (hopefully) after the upcoming spring 2020 renovation but for now it’s old school.

Well, it’s certainly first world problems but that was really disappointing because we’d talked them up so much to the kids and were excited that we’d actually managed to save our bands from the last cruise. But we didn’t plan ahead with lanyards because we thought we’d all have wristbands!! (Note: I did happen to throw in two lanyards so Owen and Katie were able to use those but Tom and I just used pockets or my purse.)

Since we were at a bar…we got our first drinks—of course a margarita and a mojito.

We sat down to gather our thoughts a bit since Dad needed to sit and rest. The kids went to check out the pizza place and our friends wandered in the bar. We then explored the ship a little and the kids and Grannie rode the carousel.

And I got a margarita from the Mexican restaurant…I started with the Sweet and Spice and it was yummy.

Then we all met at Chops for lunch. I had to sit in the big fancy chair in the lobby.

We really enjoyed it, but BIG SURPRISE Katie didn’t like anything. She did start with the jumbo shrimp cocktail but didn’t like it and it was downhill from there (she didn’t even like the mac and cheese).

You can see all our shirts!! Kind of.

When it was time for dessert Tom said he wanted nothing. He got it.

Then he and Mark were joking about it being the Marine corps birthday so Mark told the waitress that it was Tom’s birthday…

It was really fun, the food was excellent, and we all had a good time.

After Chops, the kids explored more with Papa and Grannie and went to the pool while Tom and I decorated the room door as a suprise.

And Papa and Grannie’s door:

We were also finally able to get in our room (though we had no luggage yet)…and we were really surprised by the differences between the Harmony and the Allure. We had thought it would be pretty much the exact same…ha.

The room was definitely a little smaller and not laid out as nicely (the bathroom and balcony were smaller, the closet was in an awkward spot, and the couch/kids’ bed was closest to the window), we didn’t have nice big desk drawers for clothes, and there were only two outlets in the entire room! (And you can’t bring extension cords so you’re stuck.)

There were other little differences that jumped out, too. For example:

  • The bar where we get our Bloody Marys doesn’t have the nice high back leather chairs we used for people watching (and drinking our bloody Marys) in the morning. And the Bloody Mary bar (shrimp, bacon, etc., is apparently somewhere else).
  • We can’t text. You have to use their app and it’s constantly logging you out and dropping the wifi signal.
  • They didn’t have the chili cheese fries at the pool Cafe!!!

Tom stayed in the room to rest and I went up to find everyone at the pool and sat on the lounge chairs for a bit. Katie had her first of many ice creams…

Ignore my lips. I put it on waaay too thick so it came off.

Then it was time to leave!!! Tom did make it up to join us.

We showed the kids the room and got changed for dinner. Soon it was time for dinner and it was great. Owen ordered from the adult menu and had steak and Katie got pizza from the kids menu. They had fun with their friends. We enjoyed French onion soup (Tom) and crab cakes and oysters (Jen), prime rib (Tom) and a seafood mash (Jen), and pear blueberry crumble (Jen) and molten lava cake (Tom). It was all good except the crumble was pretty plain (it was sugar free). At the time I thought I didn’t really need to take pics of the menus because I didn’t need to record everything we ate… But now, after the fact, I wish I had.

I do know we had dessert shots every night—our friend Mark had heard about them on his previous cruise (they aren’t on any menu). They were always very good and were always something mixed with Bailey’s!!

After dinner we went back to the room and the kids were excited for their first towel animal!

(They had been bummed there was no towel animal so we asked our steward about it. So we were nicely surprised after dinner!)

Then it was off for the big water show Ocean Aria. They did a little crowd warm up and this happened:

The show really was something to see—divers and acrobatics using a tiny little pool. The kids loved it, though, and eventually went and sat right up front and got splashed! After they went down, a huge group of kids joined them!

Afterward we let the kids roam the ship on their own (we wandered as well) and gave them instructions to be back to the room by 9:30 and they were! So then they were allowed to go out again on their own until 10:30. They were out playing ping-pong and who knows what else. We did sign them up for the kids adventure camp thing so they’ll do that later this week.

It’s time, y’all! We’re Florida and Royal Caribbean bound!!

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Look who we ran into at the airport?! (We actually knew they’d be there as their flight got changed recently.)

As luck would have it, we were in rows 25 and 27…and they were in row 26…so we rearranged to all sit with our friends!

Zander is always twirling Katie’s hair. They both like it.

The kids were all amazing on the flight…

In one week our family will be on this ship…

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I honestly still can’t believe it’s real. This will be our first cruise with the kids and they are beyond excited.

And I am extremely thankful for SeneGence for providing me the opportunity to treat my family to this experience. Yes, you heard that correctly…this entire cruise from flights to excursions to souvenirs is MY TREAT—paid for totally by my little side gig. That was my main goal when I started doing this 2-1/2 years ago—totally a pipe dream and little did I know that the business would take off and I would be having so much fun and earning enough to spoil my family like this.

SeneGence has also totally changed my self confidence, changed my look, given me a whole new set of friends, and showed my kids that when you set goals anything can happen!

#senethankful

Halloween 2019

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I got a new tiara… It’s for my Halloween costume, but still. Also, I obviously decided to dress up this year. Practice for this week when I am volunteering in Katie’s classroom for her party. It’s supposed to rain buckets today so fingers are crossed it holds off a bit.

Mal (from Disney’s Descendants) and Ash Ketchum (a Pokémon trainer).

(It ended up training right after we started out. We had umbrellas but the kids didn’t care. But they did tire more quickly and we only stayed out about an hour and a half.)

Our cruise shirts are done!

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As soon as I knew we were going on a cruise, I knew I wanted to make personalized T-shirts for all of us…thus begin the search on Amazon and Etsy and eBay… betsy was the winner with the best choices but I knew that I wanted to create my own with our names or initials (or something) and not just buy a generic one. So then I managed to find a friend with a cutting machine who volunteered her machine and her services…

It was actually quite a long drawn out process because she had really not done many T-shirts before and I had never done T-shirts before and it was literally just a comedy of errors but we had a great time working on them together.

So without further ado…

They are all the same on the front but the kids have a warning on the back of theirs and Tom and I have a similar warning on the back of ours. (My dad and stepmom escaped warnings on their shirts.) I figured we are literally only going to be wearing the shirts for a few hours on debarkation day so it really didn’t matter what we put on them…and we thought it was hilarious.

The sidenote to this whole story is that Tom and I are now the proud owners of a Cricut Maker and a crap ton of accessories. I had thought about getting one of these machines in the past but knew I would literally go down a huge rabbit hole of projects and expenses so I always passed. So when this came up Tom asked me again if I wanted to get one because he wouldn’t mind having one in the future for some of his projects…so many hours of research later (and YouTube videos and reviews watched and debating the merits of the different machines and getting input from friends)… we decided on one. So stay tuned for many projects!!

Answer: How do you get burrs out of human hair?

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Question: Things I didn’t expect to have to Google tonight?

Katie came home from playing in the woods with neighbor kids with a bunch of burrs in her hair. Of course I immediately saw the work involved and she was basically like “Oh what? This is a problem?”

Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared at first glance, but it wasn’t fun with the olive oil picking bits of prickly Burr off her head and then showering to wash her hair at bedtime.

That said, I do hope I put the fear of the devil in her about it happening again.

Scout camping weekend

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So long story short… Owen has kind of joined scouts. A few of his baseball friends (and dads) are involved and of course they talk about how fun it is and of course Owen wants to do fun things with them…so Tom and I talked and I basically told him I don’t want to be involved so if HE wants to do it with Owen, be my guest. 😄 So they went to a few meetings and then it was time for the big weekend camping trip to Starved Rock, a local State Park campground. The whole family was invited but I opted to stay home for some alone time and Tom was looking forward to taking both kids.

DAY 1

So come Friday afternoon they were all packed and ready to go! I even got Owen out of school a bit early since they had a 2.5-hour drive to get there.

I’m not sure they have enough stuff for 1.5 days (Friday night, Saturday, leaving really early Sunday). We borrowed a tent and then had to take sleeping bags, air mattresses (because how can they sleep on the ground like animals), pillows, backpacks, rain gear, etc.

Fast forward to later that evening when I asked for proof of life and got a text that they (and some friends) were at a local bar because by the time they got there and got set up the camp kitchen was closed. But as it would happen, a marine was having his retirement party so they all got invited to a free buffet!

And then later they did actually sit around a fire for a bit.

DAY 2

Tom taught the boys how to fold flags.

Getting ready to go on a hike by themselves! (The parents followed behind enough to be unseen but still keep an eye on them.) They also took pack lunches.

And then I got this from Tom about noon…and he said he was contemplating packing up and coming home.

I told him to suck it up—he wanted to go camping. 😜

So this is what things looked like later when everyone was gathered under our awning while it rained cats and dogs.

And everyone ended up back at the bar again for dinner—and to get out of the storm. I may have gotten a few THIS REALLY SUCKS texts.

DAY 3

They were up and on the road by 7 Sunday morning so they could get home in time for the last baseball playoffs game. (Our team was so awesome that they won the first game of the playoffs without the coach, two assistant coaches, and three players who were all camping!!) They pulled in shortly before 9:30 and I immediately proceeded to do laundry because everything was wet and muddy.

Tom’s overall feeling on the weekend was it totally sucked because of the bad weather but the kids had fun and he wants to do it again…though maybe in a pop-up or something bigger. The kids did have a blast and can’t wait to go again.

Baseball Wrap Party

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The whole team was invited to Richardson’s Adventure Farm to celebrate a great fall season of baseball. Not too many showed up, but we all had a great time! We rented a site with a fire pit and the kids enjoyed the Jumping Pillow, a 100′ slide, and the World’s Largest and Most Intricate Corn Maze (lots of cool details here). Lest you think I’m kidding about the maze, here it is:

Richardson Farm 2019 Corn Maze

We brought plain hot chocolate but Jess brought this… You can see why we’re friends.

Mom fun!

Yes I went down this!

It was actually really fun and not scary at all!

This place was huge!

I might have eaten something delicious.

Then once the moms were back at the fire, the dads took a group of kids through the corn maze.

And within five minutes of being in the car on the way home…

ROAR Run 2019

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This was our third year doing the Woodland PTO ROAR Run fundraiser! We thought it might not happen as major storms rolled through a few hours before, but it cleared up in time! I didn’t get as many good pics this year…

Practicing football sprints.

She’s still good with the hula hoop!

Guess who pinned his own number?

This is the only pic I took with my phone. I just thought it was cute…but Anna said they look like cell phone reception bars!! I love it!!

Her face is how I envision everyone feels after running. 🙂

And our friend Evan…

RESULTS!

Katie’s second grade picture outfit!

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We didn’t really plan for her hair to be pink, but earlier in the week she wanted half purple and half pink hair and I didn’t realize when I agreed that school pictures were coming up. Over the summer the color never lasted long because we always were at the pool and the color comes out pretty easily in the pool in one day. But we had no pool this time, so her hair was still really colored…so we just went all pink!

Kids ruin everything.

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I have had this game of Life for probably 35 years. I have moved it around the country for almost 20. And never once did anything happen to it—it was basically pristine. I let the kids start playing with it and within six months all the buildings have been removed from the board, consequently buildings are missing, and the box has been stepped on and crushed.

This just pisses me off…and kinda breaks my heart. I know it’s just a game and it’s just a “thing” but it just reinforces that our kids (and I’m thinking kids in general) just don’t give two shits about taking care of their things OR things that belong to others (not all the time of course, but more often than I’d like). I try to instill good behavior—and I know overall they’re great kids—but something like this seriously makes me want to throat punch them.

#itsbeenamorningyall

Katie’s Curriculum Night & Tornado Warning

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Parents who do their kids school projects for them? UGH. Our second graders had to create a square about themselves/their family. Are you kidding me with these?! I mean she they’re GORGEOUS and amazing but c’mon.

The letter Katie left for me:

All the things she references are other projects hanging around the room:

Baseball sheet:

Her shirt (her goals):

And she wins the most organized desk over Owen:

When we all walked in it was sunny and nice. Then we were in the basement and couldn’t see because it was getting dark out. Then everyone’s phones started going off…

Then there’s nothing like being sent into the hallway to wait out a tornado warning! There’s a first time for everything!

I checked in with Tom because they had been at baseball practice and he said it had been cancelled so they were actually already at home…eating dinner in the basement. And Owen was showing Tom what to do in case of a tornado. (Interestingly he wasn’t nearly as scared as he used to be with wind issues. So that’s a bonus.)

They ended up cancelling the rest of curriculum night as we had had ended up waiting for like 30 minutes. Thankfully our teacher had been about done.

An unexpected new friend for me!

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Katie was invited to a birthday party for a friend from first grade. I dropped her off since it was at the same time as Owen’s baseball game…and because I didn’t know the mom at all and staying at a four-hour party where I don’t know a single person is one of my personal hells. That said, the mom seemed super cool and I did promise to come back after the game and hang out because it was also a party for the adults if you catch my drift. I can get behind that kind of party for sure.

Fast forward to post-game and I really didn’t want to go because, you know, personal hell. But I went. Walked up to a garage of strangers. Made funny small talk, they laughed, okay maybe this won’t be hell. First room of strangers… Second room of strangers. Ugh. Deck full of strangers. I wanted to grab Katie and run out. I head into the tent to get Katie and leave early and she’s having an absolute blast making an unholy mess with paint, glitter, glue, and assorted craft paraphernalia. (They had already done paintings and were on to photo frames.)

There was so. much. glitter. Another personal hell to be honest.

So I talked to Katie for a minute, she obviously wanted to stay, so I just kind of hung around until I ran into a mom that I’d met before and chatted with briefly…and we did the somewhat uncomfortable chit chat for a bit (she’s PERFECTLY lovely, it just felt a bit weird). Then I finally found the host and we started talking and…y’all?? I found a new friend. We really hit it off, literally chatted for almost two hours straight, and planned a morning hangout in a few days!

This is the kind of party it was and the people they are. Can you see why we might have hit it off? SIX FLAVORS OF MARGARITAS Y’ALL. SIX.

Kafie decided to combine her two projects into one. It’s pretty cute but there’s so much glitter…