Wednesday: A day at sea

Technically, Olen and Samuel are in one stateroom, and I am in a room three steps away with the girls. However, once we all get ready for bed, the kids have requested to sleep in the same room, and we switch back as soon as we wake up the next morning.  Last night the group stayed in the same room and obviously had a late night of playing card games.  We told them to "sleep in" this morning, since we have no specific schedule for today.  When Olen and I woke up, I went up to deck 10 and got breakfast for the two of us.  We waited in the "guy's room" until finally Sabrina showed up at the door about 10:15-10:30.  She was hungry, so we sent her down to get breakfast.  About a half-hour later Samuel showed up.  I checked on Maggie, who was still in bed, but was semi-awake watching cartoons.  Since it was "sleep-in-day" we left her alone a while longer, while Samuel and Sabrina enjoyed breakfast.

We had told the kids they could plan our last day since by now they were totally familiar with the ship and the grandparent-approved options.  They had one time slot in the day unassigned, so Olen and I filled it with a shipboard scavenger hunt (counting steps from one deck to the next, finding out the name of the captain, counting the lifeboats, getting the price of the necklace in the jewelry area, etc.). This took over an hour and filled the open time in their schedule very well.  We took this picture of them as they were leaving us with their assignment.

After lunch at what the kids now refer to as "the grazing area" of the ship, we played cards until they could take a few more runs down the 115-ft. water slide.  

Following that, they played another round of putt-putt.  They had decided we would have dinner in the main dining room tonight to get one last serving of the warm chocolate melting cake.  Our waitress, Alma, has served us the whole cruise, and she was lots of fun.  This is a photo of her serving us our final warm-chocolate-melting-cake of the cruise.

After dinner we went to see two different comedy shows, both very good.  This ended a very busy day at sea.  These kids really know how to plan a day's activities!  Tomorrow morning we end the cruise portion of our trip, but we begin two days of fun in New Orleans.  We are not done yet, so stay tuned.