We Lied To the Girls.....

.....but we called it a surprise!

Back in March when we booked this cruise we decided not to tell the girls about it. We travelled with our friend Hollis and her Mum Grace and Hollis's 3 girls. On Friday morning I took Lily to school as usual but warned her that I might have to pick her up a little bit early as I thought she had a doctors appointment but I wasn't 100% sure as I needed to confirm it. I had to tell her something so that it wouldn't come as a complete surprise when she got yanked out of her classroom and I needed to remind her to bring all of her things with her if it happened.
Sure enough she had a doctors appointment, wink wink, so at 11.30 I had to pick her. I had spent the morning packing and Jacob had already loaded the suitcases into the car. We ran home and I got her changed really quickly, we woke Rosie up from a very brief snooze and piled into the car. Lily was surprised that Jacob was coming too but we explained that it was a new allergy Dr. and that daddy really wanted to know what this Dr. was all about and what his plan of action was for her. She bought the whole story hook line and sinker.
As we drove towards downtown she was more concerned that we stop and visit one of my clients on the way back from her appointment. As it became very apparent that we were in the Port of Miami I said to Jacob that he must have gone the wrong way as were in the port so Lily started to frantically read the signs and told us how to return to the city. Jacob ignored her and pulled over and handed our luggage to the men. That is when we sprung it on her. We should have video taped her little face because it was excellent and she was actually speechless and that lasted for a good five minutes. Just after we got out of the car Jacob's phone rang so I kept the kids back a little so he could talk as I guessed it was Hollis. He walked away and came back and said it was the cruise director telling us we needed to go to the 11th deck to have lunch at a restaurant there.

We made our way there but with so many people at the buffet we couldn't find our friends so Jacob had to ring them. All of a sudden I spotted Hollis and we headed towards them. The kids spotted each other and it was absolutely priceless. Her girls had no idea they were going on a cruise either and obviously didn't know we were going as well. The rest of the weekend was pure magic. We laughed, had fun and the girls just had a blast. We snorkeled, oops they snorkeled I don't do that. We swam in crystal clear sea water, we walked through the straw market in Nassau, we gambled a little, we shopped and we ate, dear God did we eat. The 5 girls got on so well all weekend long and we just relaxed well relaxed as much as you can relax when you have 5 little ones but we really did relax.

Now for the 1,000's of photos.

Welcome aboard.








Each night a photographer set up his equipment right outside the restaurant and when the girls saw him they wanted to have a little fun. There was no obligation to purchase any pictures and since Hollis is quite the photographer we didn't think we would be tempted to buy but how could we resist?





we quickly found out that it isn't as easy as it looks to get 5 kids to all look at the camera at the same time...sigh!




The girls loved these bunk beds, to play in but sleeping in them was not going to happen!


The Big Girls


Ocean fun. We had been on board the ship for about an hour when we bumped into one of Lily's classmates. We happen to really like this family and we shared this floatie thing with them that was given to us when another family left. Boys are a bit rough though so we had to take it in turns!!


And here is my absolute favourite photo of the whole weekend.....the manic swimmer!


Yesterday morning as I packed the last of the stuff and we were getting ready to say goodbye to the ship, Lily announced that this was the best vacation ever. That is saying alot because this kid has travelled alot and done alot. So glad you had fun little girl. We had alot of fun pulling the wool over your eyes and you have no idea how many times we nearly spilled the beans.