Where have I been?

Like you don't already know....

Ok folks, sit back and relax. Here's my blow by blow of our cruise to Alaska - in sections, of course so that you don't lose your minds listening to me blab on and on!

Friday afternoon we loaded three checked suitcases, four carry-on's, three I-Pod's, one laptop and two kids into the Yukon. We happily headed to the airport for our flight to Vancouver - and we were on time!! That, in itself, is amazing! We arrived a sufficient two hours early and breezed through security. Yes, breezed. And how is that possible? Because of our blue eyed baby girl, that's how. She smiled at the security lady and the lady opened up an entire line - just for us! Don't know why, but she did and we were thankful. Being the OCD traveler that I am, I had previously logged in to aa.com and signed up for flight status updates. Just as we were going through security my phone rang - gate change notification! No worries!! I made sure Leigh and her crew knew of the change - they did - and we strolled to our gate, which was wiiiiiiiide open! We snagged a whole section and hunkered down for the wait. After hugs and hello's when Leigh's crew joined us, my phone went off again. Another gate change. Hmmmm. So, up we go. More sitting, more chatting, and again - my phone. Delayed 20 minutes. Wait some more and we were called to board! Nope - false alarm. Sit back down. Phone again. Delayed 40 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat and two hours later we were finally in the air. OYE! Thank you sweet baby Jesus for blessing me with patient children. We're talking serious medal winning behavior, folks. Keep in mind that the flight was a tad over four hours and that Texas time is two hours past Vancouver time...and my kids didn't complain a peep on the flight. Music was listened to, snacks were eaten, Tom and Jerry was watched. Seriously - that easy. Customs cleared, hotel shuttle caught, and we were tucked into our Holiday Inn beds at 12:30 am VANCOUVER TIME!!

I woke up bright and early with an excited ball of happiness in my throat. The day was finally here!! In just five short hours we were going to be headed to the pier to board our beautiful ship. I took my time dressing, laid out all the kids clothes, fussed with my hair....and a whole 45 minutes had gone by. Nobody else was awake yet!! ARGH! Soon enough, everyone was up and we headed downstairs to the attached cute restaurant for some breakfast. And then...and THEN!!! It was time to head to the pier! Mom, Dad and Grandma were in tiny cab #1 and we were in tiny cab #2 (a Prius!). Don't even ask me how we all fit - but we did. Luggage and all. I confidently told everyone to head to Canada Place pier - because that's where I was told to head by our travel agent AND by other cruisers on our same ship on a cruise forum site. Well.....(annoying buzzer sound), WRONG!! Turns out there are two main cruise piers in Vancouver, and we went to the wrong one. The actual one was on the opposite side of the harbor, about a 15 minute cab ride away. Well super. But 15 minutes later we pulled in to the correct departure pier and got our first glimpse of our amazing home for the next seven days. She was beautiful! Big, white, full of sparkling glass and windows...I honestly got a little verklempt just looking at her. How lucky, and I mean LUCKY are we that we are going to do this?? We made our way through customs again (because we were leaving Canada for Alaska), cruise security, cruise check in, blah blah blah and were in our rooms about 45 minutes later. The set up was like this: Grandma's room, Mom and Dad's room, our room - all right in a row. Then skip a cabin and Bobbie and Paul's room were on the aft corner of the ship and Leigh and Sid were right next to them. We pretty much owned that back corner, thankyouverymuch. We were very happy to notice that our balconies were larger than most of the other balconies on our level, by about 50%!! No complaints here!! The rooms were very nice and well laid out, I thought. We had Abbey-cakes with us on the pull-out sofa and Cole slept with my parents on this cool bunk/trundle bed that dropped out of the ceiling. He loved it! Our room was also adjoining with Mom and Dad's, so it was nice to be able to open up the connecting door and it gave us the added space of the extra room. We all made our way up to the Windjammer Cafe for a wonderful buffet lunch and just relaxed a bit while everyone else was boarding and making their way on board. We explored the ship a bit, went to make babysitting arrangements for a few evenings, made our way to the main dining room to see our table assignment (SIDEBAR: We had the BEST table on the second floor of the dining room. And I mean it - the best. Because Bobbie and Paul are Diamond Plus members with Royal, we were given a beautiful oval shaped table smack dab in the middle of the room right on a wall of glass looking out on the ocean. Amazing! Mom and I texted photos of our fabulous table to Leigh, and rushed to tell the maitre'd that we were thrilled and please don't swap our table out with anyone else or he would find himself flipped over the rail while nobody was watching.), the kids took in a quick game of putt-putt, Dad was furiously snapping photo's, and Scott headed to the bar! Right on time, we began to back our of our slot at the pier and we began to slowly pull away from beautiful Vancouver. We passed right under a beautiful suspension bridge, glided past the amazing Stanley Park, and saw a gorgeous lighthouse. The sun was shining and we were all in heaven! Here are some photo's from embarkation day:

Next up: At sea, cruising the inside passage.