The Best Vacation EVER - Part 1

As many of you know, our family goes on a big family vacation every July to celebrate my brother, Logan and our Mom's birthdays!!  We've gone to Dallas, Colorado, New Mexico and San Antonio...this year, Logan turned 21 and my beautiful mom turned 49 - SO, we HAD to do it up big!!!  We began planning this vacation in January, paid it in cash (Go Gazelles!) and finally left July 21st for our voyage on the Grandeur of the Seas with Royal Caribbean!!! 

We flew out Wednesday at 4:00p.m. from the Amarillo airport - you can see who the star of the show was!  I think all eyes were on our sweet baby from the second we stepped into that airport to the second we stepped out of it back into the Amarillo heat! 

He LOVED the airplanes and couldn't wait to get on!

Once on the airplane, our long day REALLY started.  Our first flight was only an hour from Amarillo to Dallas.  Our second flight began after a 30 minute stop in Dallas to pick up more passengers and then it was another hour flight to Houston Hobby.  We had an hour and a half layover then we were supposed to fly out at 7:40...we didn't actually leave until almost 9.  This put us in Fort Lauderdale at 12:00...where we finally settled into our hotel around 1a.m.  Thankfully Malachi slept from Houston to Fort Lauderdale so the travel there was fine!!  Unfortunately, he thought it was time to wake up once we were all ready to go to sleep so it took us a while to get him back down!!

Malachi and Daddy from Dallas to Houston!  Hands up for takeoff!  WEEEEEE

And from Houston to Florida!  Isn't that sweet?

The next morning we all got up pretty early because we were so freaking excited!  We could see the ocean from our hotel rooms and we could even see our ship from Mom and Dad's room!  Here's my sweet husband and our beautiful (albeit very sleepy) little boy waiting for the shuttle to the ship!

On the way!!

THERE IT IS!!  We were literally only 5 blocks from the port!  SO exciting!

Yes, I know, I'm a dork!  This is just the most anticipated trip we'd ever had!!

Stomping down the gangway after waiting in several lines!  He did SO well!

If you know me well, you know that I was more than a little apprehensive about being on open water.  We West Texas girls aren't exactly used to that much water!  So yes, I took a picture of the lifeboats!

This was the view from the looking towards downtown Fort Lauderdale!  BEAUTIFUL!

Of course, our first stop on the ship was to the Windjammer Cafe - all you can eat nearly 24 hours a day! 

Then it was time for Muster...they allowed us to leave pretty early on since we had a young child!  Oh, and yes, my son has a leash on.  I HATE HATE child leashes, but I was terrified (see above) of the water.  I had MANY nightmares leading up to the trip...so, he wore a leash for the first few hours until I got comfortable with letting go of him.  It really was very safe...I just needed to get comfortable!  No apologies!  At least this one was a monkey!  Malachi actually loved it!  Thanks go out to my boss and his wife...they lent this to us!

Finally, it was time to shove off!  Thanks to the Coast Guard for keeping us safe and guiding us out into open water!  (Oh, and that big boat in the back...it was a Dole boat carrying either bananas or pineapples and it was HUGE!) 

Stay tuned...part two will include our first couple days on the ship including the Captain's Dinner!!!!