Vaca recap #2-our first day at Castaway

Time to dive into the next vacation recap!!! Note that there will be a giveaway announced at the end of this post.... so read on, and enter to win a prize! We're celebrating 300 posts here at Worthwhile Moments and I want lots of entrants!!!!

So the first morning on the cruise, for some unknown reason, I was up at the crack of dawn. Our navigator the night before had said that sunrise was at 6:40 a.m.... I got up there about 6:32 a.m. and the sun had already risen! I snapped some pictures while everyone else was sleeping...

Donald got flung off the Aquaduck and landed here.


Kinda missed the sunrise but still a pretty picture!

We stood on our balcony to take in our first view of Castaway Cay. Man we love it here. Then it was off for a quick breakfast. I always like to get off the ship quickly so we can get a good spot on the beach! Not that there is a bad spot anywhere!

I always like to take those squatty little beach chairs right down to the waters edge. In this picture, you can see Matt stole my chair for awhile. :)

A happy bunch of castaways!

Brooke and her can't-go-anywhere-with-water-without-them Goggles.

We all love the beach, but Hannah might love it the most. Love love loves it.

We were on the beach by about 9:15 a.m. Whoohoo!! We rode the tram from the boat to the first part of the family beach, and parked our stuff under an umbrella, on some beach chairs, right down from the restaurant and bathrooms. Our 3rd stop at CC, and our 3rd time parking it right about there. We like it there. Then we played in the water and the sand for the morning!

Matt and I had bike rentals booked that we could take whenever we wanted to that day. It was looking to be a very toasty day so we decided to go do that before lunch.

We rode down the old runway on the island, that was cool.

Look, we found a Beech 18!

We both felt like total goobers on these bikes, and I kept thinking of the Wicked Witch lady at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz. All we needed was a basket on the front.

We rode to the observation tower and got a birdseye view of the island. Fortunately, someone else was up there to take our picture!

Once we were done, we gathered the family to go grab a yummy bbq lunch. Here's papa and Brooke

There was character greetings scheduled that whole day on the island, but we knew we'd have plenty of chances to see characters on the ship, so we didn't make a point of going to any of them. We did, however, go to the splash-zone that was new to the island. It was called "spring a leak" and Hannah loves these places!!! While we were here, we ran into our message board friends that we had been emailing back and forth, so they ended up hanging on the beach with us for awhile too!

After nearly 5 hours out in the sun and sand, it was time for the girls to go on the Glass Bottom boat tour with grandma and grandpa. Getting Hannah to leave the beach, however, resulted in mega-meltdown... so she ended up just going back to the ship with us. She was overtired and had been in the sun all day anyways.

We stood on our balcony and watched the boat go by. Brooke is in the window under the word Tours.

Papa took this picture of us on the balcony when they went by. Hannah is standing between Matt and I...buck naked.

That evening, we had all decided to dress in green so we could do some family pictures. Made for a nice picture with Buzz too!

We were going to do the "professional" pictures with the all-white background, but the line was long, and we had to take our shoes off, so we went with this shot instead. I think it's a good one.

After dinner at the Enchanted Garden (gorgeous restaurant), we went up to deck 5 to take some pictures with the gorgeous chandelier behind us.

That night, we went to the 8:30 stage show called "Villains Tonight." I had heard mixed reviews about this show... but let me tell you, it was so funny. Hades totally ad-libbed, and plugged in lots of jokes about current events. And his weird-o looking side kicks- Pain and Panic- were so silly-funny. Brooke totally cracked up the whole time, as did I...Hannah fell asleep on Matt.

After the show we had a brief stop through the shops where I bought my new Disney Cruise Dooney and Bourke purse, then it was off to bed for the night!!!

*****

In celebration of the fact that the last post was my 300th post on this blog, I'm going to do a little giveaway. Thought it would be fun to pair it with something that goes along with this vacation since we are in the middle of vacation recapping. SO... Here is what I'm giving away!

Remember this post about the 'fish extenders' we did on this cruise? In that post, you can see the necklace/magnets that I made for the gifts. The winner of this giveaway gets their choice of a custom necklace or magnets!! The winner will send me a picture they would like me to use, and if they want a necklace or a magnet, and will win that prize!!

To enter to win your custom necklace or magnet; please leave a comment on this post answering this question:

What special moment are you going to create with your family this week?

Are you going to have a picnic in the backyard?

Turn the TV off for game night?

Go on vacation?

finger paint with your toes?

Be intentional about creating moments with the family..... tell me your plan and be entered to win!