Day 2- Nassau and Blue Lagoon

After a fabulous night's sleep (the rocking that made us a bit woozy last night worked wonders for rocking us all through the night) we woke up to a new view- we were in the capital of the Bahamas!

We ate another delicious breakfast at Cabana's- this time outside- and then gathered up all of our things for a day on the beach!

The sun was shining but it was windy!  

But so bright!  A very welcome change from the endless days of gray back home.

We took a boat ride down the coast of Nassau, past Atlantis,

and into the beautiful Blue Lagoon Island.  

We wanted to try something new this time around- the semi-submersible we did last time was not an option (I swear I've been seasick ever since), and we didn't want to stay on the ship.  Our family decided to do the dolphin encounters, and since the Hulls had done that before, they opted for a full day on the beach.  Both at the same secluded and not at all crowded Blue Lagoon Island.  It was so beautiful there!

We spent the first two hours altogether on the beach, the kids braving the water and the adults lounging on the beach and talking about the weather- it was cloudy and a bit windy but at least it wasn't raining!

 

And the water was beautiful.

There is nothing so entertaining as a beach full of sand! 

 Heather and I took a walk over to the undeveloped side of the island.... where the real waves were.

And the wind.

 Cloudy, but this is one of my favorite pics.  Emma and Noah had so much fun on this tube together, and more than anything I wanted them to make their own memories of fun on this trip. 

After a few hours of enjoying the beautiful water and the occasional sun peaking through the clouds, it was time for our family to head over to the dolphin part of the island.  We bought all of the pictures and videos of the trip, so I'm going to make that adventure a post of it's own. 

For now I'll skip forward to the end of our excursion, when we reunited with cousins, got back to the main island and had a bit of time for shopping in the market before we got back on the ship.  The kids each brought their own spending money and had a general idea of what kinds of souvenirs they wanted to bring home.  We wandered through the market long enough for Emma to pick out a shell covered box and Adam to select a hand carved wooden shark.  It is quite a cultural shock to see the rows and rows and rows of tourist junk and the women parked at every corner pressing toys into the kids hands and encouraging them to "buy this! tell your mommy you want this!" or offering to braid the girls hair or tying bracelets around Noah's wrists.  Combine that with the extreme effort of keeping six people together in such a maze and we got out of there just as quickly as we could.

Back to our beloved ship!

We grabbed a few pictures on dry land before we reboarded.

Notice the sweatshirts and gray clouds.  Again, we were grateful that it wasn't raining, but the weather wasn't exactly perfect.  But we were actually there!

 We had dinner in the Enchanted Garden for the next two nights, and our time in there was one of the absolute highlights of the trip.

The food was delicious, we were tucked away in a corner of the restaurant that felt like it was completely ours, and our servers were so attentive and fun! 

Their names were Marta and Skarlan, and they knew our drink choices (pomegranate lemonade for me, chocolate milk for the girls, lemonade for the boys and Diet Coke with cherry for Jason), food preferences (uncrustables and Mickey bars at every meal!) and more than anything, they knew that our kids needed to be entertained while the grown ups ate in peace! 

So Skarlan performed magic tricks!  He made coins appear, cups disappear, he did the funniest jumping bunny napkin trick and scared me to death with a tiny creepy hand trick. 

And Marta did origami, which is basically Adam's love language.  The best part of the night was when Heather and I realized that they were actively entertaining our kids so that we could eat our food while it was hot.  What more could a mother ask for??

You can tell in these pictures that we were already pretty wiped out from all of the fun of the day.

But we didn't slow down!

Next up was a bit of pin shopping for Leah

a pose with a Golden Mickey for Adam, 

and a Goody hat for Noah.  Which did not come home with us.

Then we headed over to the theater for the second Broadway-caliber show of the trip, which Noah promptly slept through.  I tried and tried to wake him up when Woody and his friends were dancing in Andy's room, but sleep won out.  It was still a great show for the rest of us!

 Then we headed back to our rooms, which had been transformed again and were sporting seals in sunglasses!

Three months later Noah says he would still like to know how our fairy godmother transformed his bed from a couch to a bunk bed and back again every day.  There was magic everywhere we looked!  And at the end of this long day, we all passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillows.