We were overdue for a real vacation. Not one where we vacation wherever Dave is stationed with the Army. Although those are fun and I love to travel it was nice to get away as a family with no work. This was our first real vacation in five years and we are going to make it a practice to do it yearly. We went on Carnival Cruise lines to the Mexican Riviera and stopped in Puerta Vuerta, Cabo, and Mazatlan. The crew was fabulous and so attentive. Excellent entertainment, I saw a couple comedy shows while the boys slept. The beaches were beautiful and Grant sat at the shore laughing while the waves crashed on him and carried him back and forth. Surprisingly he wanted to dance a lot on the Lido deck and learn the electric slide so we did. We stuffed ourselves with delicious lobster and steak, all you can eat cookies, ice cream the works. Thanks to Pinterest I brought zip lock bags so I could make a quick sandwich or bag some goodies to take to shore with us. My coffee mug and water bottles, magnets for the room to hang our maps, etc. Oh, now that I'm raving about the great time I just remembered I was sea sick 3 out of the 7 days. The last night while packing was the worst with the rough seas. Try packing and wanting to throw up at the same time on a deadline to get your suitcases into the hallway. Grant can see the cruise ship from the beach where we live because its docked in Long Beach. He thinks we can go back anytime and keeps asking to go on "his" cruise ship. Too bad he doesn't understand its big $$ and we can't do that everyday.
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| Dave reading for school out on the balcony of our room. |
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| Pirate excersion in Puerta Vuerta. Sword fighting with Spider. He got a spider tattoo drawn on him and when we went ashore to a private beach the pirates put on a treasure hunt for the kids. They dug up numerous piles of sand looking for buried treasure. One pile had a coconut and all the kids left it thinking it wasn't a treasure. Grant thought another mans trash is his treasure and proudly picked it up while holding the master treasure map and went to the next dig. |
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| His personal pirate "spider" made him a grasshopper out of palm leaves |
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| The arches, tourist trap |
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| Every night his steward Gregorio made him a different animal. We would come back from dinner and Gregorio said "Mr. Grant I left you a surprise." Grant went running in and always came out and yelled down the hall, "I love it, thank you." However, we had a melt down every night when the animal lost his shape |
