Vaca recap #3....You still with me?

Time to dive into Tuesday, May 31st! Our day at Nassau, Bahamas!

But first, let me remind you that there's a giveaway going on here right now! Leave a comment saying what fun moment you're going to create with your family this weekend for a chance to win one of these necklaces (or a magnet) with the photo of your choice! Don't be shy!

If you haven't noticed, I'm taking this recap a day at a time. It is easier on my brain. And this post has a gazillion pictures. So pop some popcorn, and sit back for entertainment, Disney cruise style.

This day our port was Nassau, Bahamas. It was our 3rd time going there, so we planned to spend the day on the ship. Although it may not appear as such in this picture, we really think that Nassau is the armpit of the Bahamas. Yuck. We were not the only ones who spent the day on the ship either, let me tell ya! Here we are pulling in:

Here the boys are watching us pull in. I swear, we could just put a bed out on the balcony and they'd stay out there :)

You can tell by Brooke's attire that the plan was to hit the pools! She also had her autograph book ready to go, because we had big plans for the morning!

This is that fabulous chandelier in the atrium taken from standing straight below it. We went there after breakfast. Guess what we did?

We attended a Princess Gathering!!! Whoo hoo!!! We got there early and were towards the front of the line, and got to see...

Snow White

Belle (Brooke's favorite)

Aurora-Sleeping Beauty

Tiana

Ariel

and Cindy


This was great. The girls were so excited! It was when they walked up to Ariel that I came to the conclusion that I could never be a princess. Sure, I have the penchant for shoes, charming men, and things that sparkle. But I am not syrupy enough. When the girls walked up to Ariel she said in a sweet sing songy voice "hello my little angel fishes". I guffawed. The one time in my life that word actually can be used to describe me. I just can't be that sweet all day long. One time I tried to be sweet, syrupy mommy all day, and by the time the girls went to bed, I was so exhausted and looking for Excedrin migraine! Yes, my friends, I know you are shocked to hear that I could never be a princess.

So we met the princesses and then we went swimming!!! Brooke rode the Aquaduck for the first time (the water-coaster) and she loved it. (Matt, Papa, and I had hopped on it the night before). It is a lot of fun. I should insert picture here but it will mess up all the ones I uploaded. We did a few of the pools, Hannah jumped in about 6000 times, and we also played in the Nemo Splash zone too. I know I know, I should insert pictures. Fine. Here's the aquaduck again, and the Nemo area.

Make no mistake- cruise ship pools are NOT Olympic sized by any means.

This is the Nemo area (duh). I took it one night, didn't have my camera there with me when we were playing.

Part of the Aquaduck!

After water fun, we ate some lunch, and the kids went to the Kids area for awhile. I was supposed to meet up with Matt, but I couldn't find him. So I took some pictures (like always) and then settled into a deck chair on deck 12 above the pools and read my smutty romance novel for awhile.

This was part of the putt-putt course. I would love to have this golf bag that says "goofballs" on to hold all our backyard balls.

I found Matt. Guess why he was grinning? And wearing that hat? Because we decided to get 50 more points in our DVC (Disney Vacation Club) ownership. We were happy!!

Isn't this a great pic of my guy?

We went to pick the girls up in early afternoon, so we could go to another character greeting before rest time. In the main atrium, there were these awesome mosaic tile murals depicting two different princess/castle themes. Got some pics of the girls in the fancy chairs in front of them.

Waiting for the "Mickey and Friends" gathering on the grand staircase.

During the character greeting we met Mickey, Goofy (who was twirling and dancing while waiting for us to finish with Mickey), Minnie (who was scolding Chip and Dale to get away from the piano), and Chip and Dale.

The Chip and Dale encounter was so funny. Hannah ran right up to Dale and gave him a big hug. Brooke was talking a cast members ear off.

Then Hannah ran over to chip and flung herself at him.

Chip took her in for a gigantic, wrestle-y hug...see her legs sticking out?

Then silly chip picked her up like a baby for the picture. It was so funny and Hannah was just a giggling away!

You do know how to tell Chip and Dale apart don't you? Dale has a red nose, and chip has a black nose--like a chocolate chip!

After all that excitement, mean mommy made the girls have some rest-time.

That night was PIRATE NIGHT! Whoo hoo! Always a fun time!! And I noticed our Navigator (daily schedule of events they give you) said that Tinkerbell was going to be available for pictures before dinner. Now, while Belle is Brooke's favorite princess, Tink is her favorite character overall and we had never met her!! This was hugely exciting!

Of course we could NOT walk past the line for Pirate Minnie without standing in it. I told Hannah we had already seen Minnie that day, but she did not care.

Pirate couple.... like Matt's shirt? I made it :)

Leaving Nassau

We went up to Deck 13 (which hardly had any people there) to chill after dinner.

Then, Yo-Ho my friends! It was time for a Pirate party. One of two that evening, this one geared towards the kids. But i had a lot of fun too!! Check out the crowd:

You know, there were 4000 passengers on this cruise. That doesn't count the crew, and I think there's about 1700 crew members. While a few events like this were a bit crowded, I didn't really think they were any more crowded than the other cruises that we were on. I never felt tired of people or sick of the crowds or anything.

So anyways, our pirate friends came to teach us some pirate stuff, like dancing like a pirate, wielding our sword, etc.

During the show, this guy popped up right next to us, to warn the crowd of impending doom. Someone was coming to take over the ship!

Argh!!! Captain Hook!!!!

Fortunately, Mickey and the gang and the rest of us pirates were able to defeat Captain Hook and take the ship back over!!!

Disney is the only cruise line that shoots fireworks off the ship.... and that night was the fireworks (Buccaneer Blast). It wasn't until 1030 though, so we took the girls back to the room to go to bed. If Brooke hadn't crashed, we would have taken her back up, but she did, so grandma stayed in the room with them.

Matt, Papa and I went back up for the next party and the fireworks.

I just love the Aquaduck at night!

Well, I love the whole ship at night!

During this portion of the show/evening, my beloved Cap'n Jack arrived for some adventure.

Yum. :)

After the fireworks were over, they started the Club Pirate dance party. They were playing some great music. The boys went back to the room, but I wanted to hang out for awhile. I usually really hate dancing, but I was in the mood that night. I was hoping to find some message board friends to hang with for awhile, but alas, I searched to no avail. After about 15 minutes of feeling like a goober being up there by myself, I gave in and went shopping and back to the room. Maybe next cruise I'll find someone to shake their booty with me for awhile!!!

And so ends another fabulous day with Disney Cruise line! What do you think? Looks like a blast huh!? Totally is!!!!!!

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don't forget to leave your comment to enter to win a prize! xoxox

My Montage 6/15/11 at OneTrueMedia.com

trying out a new iphone app.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

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!

Worthwhile Challenge Week 21 & 22

I get to play catch-up every now and then, right? I'm still recovering from vacation!! (Which, the next installment of our trip recap will come soon!).


I owe you a recipe from vaca week, and one from this past week! I did actually try some new cookies shortly after we got back from vacation... I was itching to bake.


I am not really a fan of plain chocolate chip cookies...I always make PeanutButter Chocolate Chip ones. I think plain ones are boring. But on our cruise, they serve some very yummy, very large chocolate chip cookies. I'm bound and determined to figure out how to duplicate them. So right after we got back from our trip, I made some plain chocolate chip cookies. I used this recipe from allrecipes.com because it was the 2nd best rated one. They were good, but they weren't the same as the ships.


On Friday we had friends over for dinner and I made Beef Barbeque. In our Fish Extender exchange on the ship, I rec'd a little recipe book of one of the girls' favorite recipes. This might be one of the best meat recipes I've ever done!! I'm going to give you the recipe the way it reads, and then will go on from there:

4 pounds beef stew meat (I used brisket)
1 large can crushed tomatoes
2 chopped onions
1/2 tsp chili powder
1.5 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup white vinegar (I used cider vinegar, that's all i had)
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
Dash of tabasco
Water, adding a bit at a time as needed to keep moist and from getting too thick.
Combine in large saucepan on stovetop. Simmer UNCOVERED on low 5-6 hours or until beef is shredding. Mixture is thick.

I thought I'd put this in the crockpot. However, turns out that the crockpot needs a lid on to really make much progress.... and this recipe really needs the lid off so it can thicken up, etc. So while it started in the crockpot, it did end up on the stove as directed the last two hours, then I shredded it and put it back in the crockpot and poured the sauce over it to keep warm until dinner. I served on butter-toasted buns.

Fabulous yummy. I cut the brisket up into large chunks so it would cook a little faster.


This is post#300....!!! So it's time for a giveaway. I'm not sure what though yet, so stay tuned! We'll start the giveaway out with the next vacation recap.

Back from Vacation! (vaca post 1)

Did you miss me?!

I've been gone for over a week.... we went on that fabulous vacation I told you about recently!

We flew out on Friday afternoon, May 27th--thanks to Airtran Airlines who changed our flight from crack-of-dawn-with-a-45-minute-connection-Saturday Morning flight for NO CHARGES. Whoohoo.

We got into Orlando about 9p.m. and just stayed right there inside the airport at the Hyatt. Chik-Fil-A for dinner. Comfy room. Small beds.

Saturday morning we got up, snagged a quick breakfast and headed to the Magical Express to ride to our pre-cruise hotel of Disney's Old Key West. It is another DVC (Disney Vacation Club) property and we thought it'd be fun to try some new ones. Plus we were not planning on going to any of the theme parks...and if the girls could SEE Magic Kingdom (which they could from our home-away-from-home Bay Lake Tower), they might get really ticked off. Nothing but pretty resort to see at Old Key West.

We got checked in around 10a.m. but of course the room was not ready yet. (Official check in time was 4p.m. but we were sure hoping our room would be ready early). Met one of my dear message board friends, Chuck, and his partner Mark while we were checking in. They were staying there too. Fabulous guys. You'll see mention of them a few more times in this trip, but I sure wish I could have hung out with them a little more!

I had read online about bike rentals at OKW and saw they had a four person surrey-bike. We decided to rent bikes and check out the (very large, spread out property). I talked the guy into buy one half hour, get a half hour free. But after the first half hour, we were pretty much done and sweaty! The surrey bikes were totally hysterical. We had Hannah in a basket in front, Brooke on the backseat, and Matt and I pedalling from the front seat. There were two steering wheels in front, but about 10 minutes into it I realized that mine was just the dummy steering wheel. Funny how I kept cranking that thing though when I thought Matt was not going to make a turn. There was water on our canopy so we all got wet on occassion going around the sharper curves. It was a total hoot, and so much fun.

11:15a.m. and our room was still not ready (of course), so we changed into swimsuits that we had in the carry-on and hit the pool. We ate our lunch at the pool too, and were there until 2:30. Hannah just wouldn't quit. We enjoyed some pool games and a little dance party. I shook my booty "all the way to the floor" in my swimsuit, and thank Jesus that no one was video taping (that I know of).

I went to the lobby and begged for our room to be ready and while I was there, it finally cleared housekeeping and we were good to go! A very spacious, beachy themed villa. Loved it. Totally different from Bay Lake Tower, which I also love.

I want this lamp.


We were in the room about 10 minutes before I found Hannah literally passed out on the floor, she was so exhausted:

After Hannah woke up, we headed off to Downtown Disney to eat at Wolfgang Puck Express. We had purchased a one night, quick service dining plan, and WPE is the best bang for your buck on a quickservice meal. So worth it! I mean, where else do you get creme brulee at a "fast food" place? Yum.

The view from the Ferry over to DTD:

It was hot and crowded at DTD. We were supposed to meet up with some of my other message board friends at 6 to say hi. We stopped and said hi for a few minutes, and then went on our little way. Before we got really much of anything done, we were headed back to the hotel because we figured we would hit DTD again after the cruise. Whatever, off to the hotel we went.

The next morning, (Sunday if you are having trouble keeping track!), we got all our luggage ready for the bell guy to pick up for the ship, and relaxed in our villa until 11 (checkout time). I'd hoped to be on the Disney cruise bus by then, but no luck. Our bus pick up time was 1245p.m. Boo. We hung out in the community room of the resort... the girls colored and played air hockey, my mother in law and I played checkers. It was just a relaxing, fun place to hang out in the air conditioning. After that we grabbed a few snacks to eat in the Den/Lobby area of the hotel while we waited for our bus. I chatted with Chuck and Mark some more, and they sat with me on the bus too so that was nice.

We were all a little perturbed to be staying at a Disney resort, riding a Disney bus, to a Disney cruise, but yet we didn't get there till about 2:30. While this made us miss the crowds at the terminal which was nice, we just really thought it sucked to get on board that late! We didn't have time to hit one of the lunch buffets, who wants to eat that much when our dinner time was at 545?

There was a Meet and Greet of my message board friends scheduled at 3. This was the "official" one of the whole group. We threw our bags in the room and I wanted to stop by there to say hi and get our bracelets (to wear during the cruise so we could spot other message board folks), before we went up to Deck 11 to grab a bite to eat. Everyone was hungry, so we just breezed by there for about two minutes and then up to eat.

The first evening went by in a flash. Lifeboat drill (that we didn't have to wear life vests to anymore),

(Brooke found this fabulous gift basket waiting in our room for us. It was from Mickey and Friends, or so she thinks. Really mommy ordered it)

sail away party (where i met another message board friend);

dinner at the new Animators Palette where we met our very wonderful wait staff. They had these huge screens where Crush from Nemo would swim around the room and interact with the tables nearby. It was pretty cool, but our table was not near one of them.

We took the girls to the kids area before our dessert came, and went to pick them up later. A few pictures before we got them:

deck 4, one of my favorite places to hang out on the ship.

When we picked them up, they were having a luau with Lilo, and were very excited. Hannah said she cried a little and missed me, but she really seemed to be doing fine!

We caught Princess Tiana on our way back to our room:

Got the kids to bed at a decent time. I wandered around the ship taking some pictures, and then came back to bed. Slept like a baby. Comfy beds. The pillow on our bed, love it.

Stay tuned, coming up next, our first day at Castaway Cay!!!