2-23-13

A sea day. 

Due to the random nature of the schedule, all of my days off this cruise have come on sea days.  I haven't seen much time off the ship at all.  That will likely change next cruise.  It really needs to.  Heck, I'm even first call on the next Ft. Lauderdale turnaround day.  Hey...what can you do. 

So, it started out nicely.  We saw the magic act last night, James Cielen.  His kids play with Michael and Max in the kids club.  It was a pretty good show.  So today, Michael wanted to see the close up magic show.  That was in the cards....man I hate myself sometimes. 

So, after breakfast, we wandered about the promenade deck, the walkway around the ship.  As we walked I saw a dolphin jump in the bow wash.  We all ran over and watched as, for about 7-10 minutes, a pod of dolphins played and jumped and swam about.  There was even a baby or two with them.  Then, they were gone.  Sarah and the boys really loved it.  After that, the kids begged and pleaded to be allowed to go to the kids club for a few minutes.  It was only open for 45 more minutes or so.  We let them. 

After lunch, we let them go back for a few minutes before the second magic show.  When we went to get them, Max decided he didn't want to go to the show.  So we left him in the kids club and took Michael.  Of course now Michael wants to buy all the tricks and make his own magic show.  Then we went to pick up Max.  He has been having trouble leaving the kids club because they have a ring of Xbox machines and they have Lego Star Wars.  He is a bit obsessed.  So much so we are considering not letting him play for a while. So we had a bit of a breakdown that bled into dinner and a breakdown when I wouldn't let him have pizza.  He ended up throwing a fit and going back to the room without dinner.  (Easy grandmothers, he got some cereal and an apple later).  Eventually we got him back to normalish and instead of sending the kids out, we stayed in.  We chatted and hung out and quizzed Michael on geography.  He remembers a startling amount.  It turned into a really nice night. 

Tomorrow will be a bit more work as we finish some of the per cruise tasks.  Hopefully our luck will hold and nothing tremendous will happen.  I had three first call nights and not one night time phone call.  It wasn't all bad.