The Great Family Vacation

 We had the opportunity of a lifetime this year to take an unforgettable family vacation.  We wanted to make some good memories before Tanner and Ashlyn graduate high school in May and take off to start a new adventure.  We put together a few vacation pitches to the kids and the one they settled on was a cruise to the Bahamas!

With Zac traveling so much with his job, he had enough flight miles to take us all to Orlando Florida for a very good price and from there we made our way to Port Canaveral where we boarded a Royal Caribbean Cruise.

Because of the flight miles situation, we were sitting in groups of two all over the plane.  Zac and Whitlee stuck together and Whitlee really enjoyed her flight watching movies, getting snacks, and snuggling dad.

Rather than getting a rental car, we decided to try Turo for the first time, which is a site that allows people to rent out their personal vehicles, which ended up saving us hundreds of dollars and was pretty convenient!

We stayed at some very fun hotels in Orlando.  Orlando is such a great place to vacation for families.  It is one of the few places in the world that has hotel rooms big enough to sleep a family of eight and also lots of other fun things to do at the resorts.

We also got really lucky and the day we got back from the cruise we were able to watch Space X launch a satellite into space, which was very cool

Port Canaveral

And the cruise was amazing!

Surf Simulator on the Cruise

We participated in some of the fun family events on the cruise such as family scavenger hunts and trivia nights.

This is how you fit four people in the cheap rooms on the cruise ship.  When we first got there, we were a little nervous because there was only one bed.  Little did we know that bunk beds lower down from the ceiling.  They really make these ships efficient.

There were also lots of fun family activities on the ship:

Nassau Bahamas

At Nassau, we rented a charter boat, where a boat captain took us fishing for a couple of hours, then took us to a place where we could swim with the sea turtles and also took us to an amazing snorkel location.  It was magical.  And on the way to the fishing hole, we got a beautiful tour of some of the 700 islands that make up the Bahamas.

We saw lots of cute little lizards all over and even caught sight of a little crab living in a sinkhole.

And the food truly was one of the most amazing parts of the whole vacation.  It was so good!

Before the cruise we had a little time to kill, so we took the kids to Sea World.  It is fun to me that my biggest kids are still mesmerized by the aquatic wildlife and animals that Sea World holds.  And Whitlee seeing it for the first time, absolutely loved it!

Sadly, on our first day of vacation at Sea World, I dropped my phone off of a roller coaster and completely obliterated it.  It was so bad for a lot of reasons, but one of the saddest reasons is that it took away my camera.  I asked Ashlyn to get some good vacation photos for me and here is what our vacation looked like through Ashlyn's eyes: