More Vacation Pictures

I got caught up in surfing for the best Christmas deals this past week and didn't make time to update my blog. Plus, Ron "fixed" my computer and now it takes twice as long (and still doesn't look quite right) to update it. But here are some new pictures to look at now.

Our third stop was in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. Although there were lots of nice places we could have gone, this was the only port where we could arrange a trip to swim with the dolphins. So we skipped the beach and took a taxi to Dolphin Discovery, where we swam with a dolphin.

There was a dolphin excursion we could have booked through the ship, but it was very expensive and did a little more than I thought our kids were ready for. I scheduled this one myself and probably saved us at least $80 per person! Plus, the excursion from the ship must have had at least 40 people in it. They all got in the water at the same time. For our swim, it was just the 4 of us and another mother with her 3 year old.

It was a really neat experience. We got in the water with the dolphin (his name was Osiris) and stood on a submerged walkway most of the time. Well, we adults were standing, the kids couldn't reach so we held them most of the time. We got to pet Osiris, kiss him, "dance" with him, and interact with him. We also swam out into the water and played a couple games with him. Our instructor also spent time showing each of us the dolphin's blowhole, ear holes, and inside his mouth. It was very educational. What I enjoyed most, other than watching the kids take it all in, was watching Osiris jump out of the water. It's one thing to watch it from land, but it looks quite different when you're in the water and he's jumping up above you. They look so gentle and graceful, but they are big and powerful, too.

I don't know if we could have taken pictures while we were in the water, but I didn't want to anyway. I did take a couple pictures of the other classes, so you can get an idea of what we did. Like I said, our class was much smaller, and our instructor was actually down in the water with us the whole time. They had a photographer capturing our experience, though, and that's how we got these pictures of the kids with the dolphin.

The place had 19 dolphins, including a dolphin "nursery" with 3 mommies and their babies. Danielle liked the babies. You can kind of see one of them in this picture. The dolphin excursion was all we had time for while we were in port. It was worth it, though. The kids really enjoyed it.

The next day was a day at sea. Danielle enjoyed our special chocolate soup at lunch that day. Tyler enjoyed trying the rock climbing, too. The water was suprisingly calm throughout our entire trip, even when we were in the open Atlantic. We discovered the hard way that Tyler is extremely sensitive to the boat's movement, but thankfully we brought along a prescription for him just in case and he was fine most of the week.

There was a chocolate buffet Thursday evening. As a perk of our level room, we were able to go to the buffet 15 minutes before it was open to the rest of the ship. There was a chocolate buffet on the first cruise Ron & I took, and this was nothing like that one. Still, the kids were impressed and enjoyed trying everything. In case you can see all the chocolate on my plate, I did not eat it all! I knew the kids weren't getting much of a variety, so I took it upon myself to gets lots of different things for us all to sample. I thought a lot of the goodies were dry and looked better than they tasted, but we all liked the chocolate covered strawberries. (I think Tyler liked them best.)