Day 1- Dec 24- Ft. Lauterdale, FL

Greetings!  By the time you read this, I will be back in the United States, but right now, I am at sea.  Since I cannot get Internet connection in the middle of the ocean, I am writing these blog posts each day on the ship and I will upload them when I return.  Also, I will upload them in reverse order, so Day 1 will be first on my page, and Day 2 second, and so on, so you can easily start at the beginning.

Right now it's actually Day 2, but let me tell you what yesterday was like.

Becki and I woke up at 10:00, since we were supposed to leave my aunt's at 11:30.  We packed up our room and got dressed, then hung out until it was time to leave.  The harbor is about 45 minutes away from Aunt Jan's, so we played our DS's on the car ride.  Once we arrived, we got through the check-in process very quickly, since Aunt Jan and Uncle Stan had a suite, so we were able to skip all the lines.  We got on the ship almost at one, so we were right in time for the staterooms to open.  Becki and I found ours quickly and spent several minutes freaking out.

We were unaware that our room would have a balcony.  This was a huge surprise.  We were so excited.  We unpacked our backpacks, and followed with our suitcases, once they had been delivered.  Back home, I bought tiny Christmas trees and ornaments at Hobby Lobby, so Becki and I had fun decorating.  We also had a little wreath that we hung on our door with dental floss.

Then we decided we were hungry, so off to the buffet we went.  We tried not to eat too much, since we had dinner in a mere three hours.  After that, we went back to our stateroom to make our final phone calls before the ship left, but the stupid captain kept making noisy announcements about the upcoming muster station drill.  The drill, surprisingly, was far less painful than in previous years.  We were not required to bring our life jackets, and our muster station met in the roomy, air-conditioned theater.  It was pleasant.  We met up with some of our younger cousins during the drill and, after considering Becki's and my goofy behavior (It was boring, okay?  We had to entertain ourselves.) we decided that we needed little-kid wristbands like them, since, in the event of a real emergency, we would probably be unable to conduct ourselves in a fashion necessary to save our lives.

After the drill, we hurried to our balcony to watch the ship pull out of Ft. Lauderdale.  We enjoyed watching the ship sail and the sun set so much we had to scramble to get ready for dinner.  Once there, Becki and I both had chilled watermelon soup and I had Prime Rib and Becki had Fillet Mignon.  Her's tasted better, so she won the dinner for the night.  We had Chocolate Cherry cake for dessert.  During dinner, our cousin Aubrey got seasick and had to leave early, so we tried to convince our cousin Emmy, her roommate and companion, to come to the casino with us and Adam since she just turned 18 and it's legal to gamble at 18 over international waters.  She resisted at first, but once she discovered Aubrey was going to bed, she decided to join us.

So down to the casino we headed.  Blackjack is our game.  I started off with $24 and the minimum bet per hand was $6.  At the end of the night, I had $52 (after I had tipped our dealer $5) so that made me $28 richer.  Becki did extremely well, making about $100.  We had planned on going caroling, but the casino had taken up more time than planned, so we went to the 18-20+ Meet and Mingle that the ship had scheduled, but unfortunately no one else showed up.  We ended up taking Adam and Emmy back to our room, where we ordered room service and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Then we got tired, so we sent them on their way, and so ended the first day of our cruise.