Trashers take to the seas!

We started planning for a family cruise about two years ago.
You know how hard it is to find a date that works for everyone?
Well our long planned for cruise finally arrived so on December 2
we departed for Miami, Florida.
We had chosen to do a Carnival cruise because they are the "Fun ships".
Seriously, we debated about doing a nicer cruise line, but we
have had a blast on our Carnival cruises, so we booked a cruise that was to visit,
the Dominican Republic, Nassau, Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Well, in the mean time Hurricane Maria happened so they rerouted us from St. Thomas and
Puerto Rico. We were disappointed, but what do you do?
We knew we'd have a great time wherever.
Taylor who lives in California, arrived at the airport in Miami 

about the same time we did.
I had reserved a couple of rooms at a nearby hotel,
so we met up there and then the 3 of us found a Cuban restaurant,
"Caribe" to start off our trip right.

Taylor was loving the plantains and all the other Dominican flavored food. 

They enjoyed Cuban sandwiches and I had paella with tons of seafood.

It could have fed our entire family.

Whitney was next to arrive and then Devin and Sarah arrived late Saturday night. 

Sara and Jon flew into Ft. Lauderdale, so they stayed at a different hotel.

We got up early on Sunday and found a Spanish speaking Sacrament meeting to attend.

Tom had rented us a car so we all headed to church.

It was awesome. They asked Whitney to play the piano and they asked me to 

lead the music. So here we were up in front of this large Spanish speaking congregation

leading from the Spanish hymnbook that I couldn't read.

It was all good, and their testimony meeting was inspiring.

What a fabulous way to start off our trip.

We got back to the hotel and packed up and waited for our 

Uber to take us

to the cruise port.

Yay! We finally made it on board.

It was such a beautiful day in Miami.

We all look so happy!

Goodbye Miami!

Miami Beach!

We were so excited for our first official cruise dinner.

They got our table wrong (only 6 seats instead of 8) so they had us sit at a different

table until they could find one for the 8 of us.

Yay for cruise food..

We went to the first evening show,
a 70's show in the Splendor Lounge with our cruise director, Mar Q

Devin and Taylor were excited to get the crowd going.

Monday, we woke up in Nassau, Bahamas.

We got off the ship and Tom arranged a boat trip for us to go snorkeling,

then go to a private beach.

It was a perfect day.

Here's Devin helping captain the ship

Look at that beach! It was beautiful and we were the only ones on it.

There were a ton of sea turtles also so we had fun swimming with the turtles.

 Devin got a soccer ball and they had a fabulous time fulfilling 

Devin's dream of playing soccer on the beach.

 Our guide took us on a boat tour after our expedition.

This is Atlantis resort.

 Hey there's our cruise ship behind those beautiful girls!

 Us, with our boat captain, Derek too tall Cox.

Devin, Sarah, Taylor and Tom took a tour through Nassau, but I headed back to the cruise ship.

Queen's Staircase

 Tom loves photographing the "sail away".

 Beautiful sunset!

Monday night we finally got assigned to our table and our serving staff.

The food was delicious and the service even better.

I think I ordered seafood every night.

Taylor ordered one of each of the ice creams.

Devin on the other hand ordered the cheese course every night.

We went to the show every night.

Here we are on the front row!

The shows were very good.

Taylor took advantage of the photo sets.

The photographers loved him.

Tuesday was a day at sea.  We of course played lots of trivia and won 

a few "ship on a sticks".

We took over the ship's yoga studio and Sara led us in Body Flow.

Tuesday night was formal night.

Of course we had to take more pictures with dinner,

and I think this was my favorite dessert.

Wednesday, was our favorite port.

We woke up in Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic.

The DR is beautiful!

Here we are disembarking
 

We had booked an excursion to Damajagua Falls.

We hiked about 45 minutes through the tropical rain forest,

in a tropical rain storm and ended up at the top of the falls.

We got in the river and jumped and slid our way down the river.

It was amazing!

I couldn't believe I was brave enough to do the 30 foot jump,

but I survived.

It was a crazy, never would happen in America, kind of adventure.

We even had a Dominican band on the bus ride back to the cruise ship 

(the tour guides gave each of us a Dominican instrument).

Taylor was in heaven being back in the DR.

He loves that place since he served there for two years.

Half the group headed into Puerto Plata after the expedition,
I was ready for a shower so I headed back to the ship.

 They found a restaurant on the beach and had some authentic Domican food.
It was a great day for Taylor to return to the DR

Here we are at dinner that night.
Tom and his mango soup

Taylor dancing with the wait staff

Then some ping pong matches up by the pool

The next day we were in Turks and Caicos.

We had never been to the Grand Turk,

so we were happy to go somewhere new.

The beach was beautiful!

The Hurricane ripped through there last fall and there wasn't

much vegetation left on the trees,

but the beach was great.

We spent the day swimming and snorkeling.

Whitney made me a sand mermaid.

We enjoyed a pina colada on the beach

and some volleyball

That night was formal night.

Another delicious dinner!

I love this family of ours.

 

We decided Whitney needed to entertain the photographers so she took over the piano prop

and played some Christmas jazz.

Taylor on the other hand took his head shot to send in 

to The Bachelor

We were supposed to spend Friday at a private island, Half Moon Cay,

but it was too windy for the tender boats,

so we had another day at sea.

We made the best of it and played lots of Triva and ping pong

and worked out in the gym and did more Body Flow.

Whitney hung out with the towel animals

 

Dinner that night was delicious as usual.

Don't you love Taylor's Christmas sweater?

Single and Ready to Jingle?

The cruise director, Mar Q, really liked Taylor (aka Justin) and his fun personality

so he'd get him up and dancing whenever there was an opportunity.

 Taylor posing with the dancers.

I have say, the Carnival shows were awesome!

Here we are on the ship's deck at the 80's Rock-glow light party.

We danced the night away

Taylor was up on the Big screen dancing, but the photo didn't turn out very well.

Saturday was supposed to be a day at sea, but because we didn't 

get to go to Half Moon Cay, they took us to Freeport, Bahamas.

The weather was iffy, 90% chance of rain,

so we decided to rent a car.

A clown car, it seems, yes, we did fit 7 people in that car.

Devin and Sarah, against our better judgement due to the weather,

rented a scooter.

All was well, as we explored the island and did a little shopping.

We found a beautiful but very windy beach.

Then headed to a grocery store to get a taste of the local cuisine.

That was when all heck broke loose and it started raining/torrential rainfall/tropical rainfall.

We hung out in the grocery store, hoping it would blow over, but to no avail.

Tom fell asleep while waiting.

We eventually just had to go for it,

so Sarah got on the scooter and rode for a few miles, then

Devin took over and thankfully we all made it

safely back to the ship.

It was a wet and wild ride

as Devin had to ride through thigh high rain puddles.

Last dinner on the ship is always a sad night.

Here are our servers, Suardika and I can't remember the other guy's name.

We celebrated Sara and Jon's 13th anniversary.

 

The servers were awesome!

We played some more music trivia that night.

Went to the show in the Atrium

and danced the night away.

Sadly on Sunday morning our cruise came to an end.

We disembarked and headed to the airport, where we all caught our separate flights home.

It was a wonderful trip where we played, relaxed, swam, snorkeled, jumped off waterfalls,

won triva contests, danced, ATE -A -LOT, and made tons of amazing memories.

Carnival was a blast.

I can't wait until the next time the Trashers take to the seas!