The Great Gibson Family Adventure

The whole Gibson Family, all 49 of us, took our last big family vacation before the family starts to change.  Camilla just graduated from high school this year.  Karli, Kourtnee, and Juli will graduate next year, then not long after that it will be TJ, Ryan, Russ, and Breanna graduating.  There will be missions, college, weddings.... So, before the family starts to change so rapidly, we wanted to go have lots of fun together.  

Austin started things off well by biting this bar of soap as Devon tried to wash his hands.  He grabbed it as soon as Devon unwrapped it.  I'm sure he thought it was amazing that we went to this cool hotel, and there was a treat for him in the bathroom!  Of course I'm not sure what he thought once he tasted it.

Austin was in awe of the characters waiting to greet us.  He was so excited to say hi to Minnie.  We told him we had to wait in line for our turn.  He was really patient, and when it was finally our turn, he just loved it!  It was seriously probably one of the cutest moments on the trip.  I really wished I had a video camera handy!!  If you look at him in all the pictures, he is just watching her.

We had lots of fun seeing all the characters around the ship, and got lots of fun and cute pictures!

Dylan really wanted a picture with Donald.  I think he must be his favorite character or something, so we had him take a picture alone with him.

Lauren really didn't like the characters so much.  She usually cried - even with the princesses!  I'm not sure if she thought they were going to try to hold her, or what.

Lauren was exhausted so many of the days at dinner.  She wasn't the only one that fell asleep this way.  I think a majority of the little ones did this at least once during the week.

 

Austin loved eating in Animator's Palette.  It was so fun!  The "paintings" on the wall looked like aquariums and the ocean with a Finding Nemo theme.  It all came to life and fish would swim around in them.  Crush even came and talked to us! He would ask us questions, and could hear our answers, and keep the conversation going.  It kind of surprised us!  I think his expression here was as he watched Bruce swim right past us from one screen to the next.

St. Maarten was a beautiful island.  The adults took a bus tour of the island.

On St. Thomas we went scuba diving.  I was hoping to not get motion sick, so I had been taking some medicine, but of course forgot to take it the night before, so when we went diving, I got miserably sick again.  I don't know if I will ever find out if that medicine would help me dive.  I think I couldn't handle one more time of being so sick on a vacation.  It makes the dive completely miserable for me, and the rest of the day miserable too.  I slept most of it away.  When you are an amazing vacation, that is not what you want to do with your limited time!!  

 Devon took this picture as we came into the harbor.  Beautiful!

 


Pirate night was fun!  They had these bandannas for us, and we brought some eye patches.  Ethan got his face painted in the kids club (which I sadly didn't take any pictures of).  And later at night they had a Pirates of the Caribbean type show on the top deck that was a lot of fun.

One night at dinner someone thought it would be cute to order the make-your-own cupcake for Lauren.  She really enjoyed it, and made such a mess!

 



One night Jayden had a particularly grumpy night.  We were trying to get a picture of our whole family with mickey, since we hadn't taken too many pictures together with the characters.  Of course, it didn't quite work out...  My favorite line of the night was him saying "I don't like Disney, Disney is stupid!"  I just laughed because here we were on this awesome cruise ship doing so many things, and it was so awesome because of the way Disney does things.  Some day, Jayden will laugh about this with me, I'm sure.

This Muppet's door was Austin's favorite place on the ship.  Every time we walked past it, he would have to stop and touch it. Since it was right next to the kids club, we did that a lot!

Castaway Cay was the last stop.  We were so excited for the fun day at the beach, and it was all we hoped for, except that time went by too fast!

 

I could not get Lauren to stop eating the sea weed!  I finally decided to not worry about it, and later found out from a friend that sea weed helps with teething... so there you go.  No biggie.

Austin fell asleep after lunch pretty quick.  He was sitting with Grandma while I ran with Lauren somewhere. He loved the fish floaties Grandma bought for the kids.  When he finally woke up, not too long before it was time to go, he was so sad he couldn't play very long.  We finally convinced him to sit in the stroller with it around him.  He was happy having that, and even happier when we found the ice cream station still open, though it was in the process of closing.  Perfect timing!

Austin ate all the chocolates left for our family this night.  Little stinker!

After we go off the boat, we stopped at Kennedy Space center.  I knew the boys would love it, so I was excited to take them there.

 Austin snuck under the rail when we weren't looking.  I was just laughing as I watched Devon retrieve him.

Grandma and Grandpa's friends own this awesome chocolate shop in Orlando.  One thing they do is have groups come make their own chocolates.  We had a blast!!  If you have spare time in Orlando, this is such a fun thing to do!!