Mexican Riviera Family Cruise 2014

Well, I will have to finish my catching up later because I really want to post about our cruise right now while it's all still fresh in my memory. 
*UPDATE- I want to update this post so that it shows in the correct chronological order along with the other posts that I have just finished catching up on! Whew! Glad that's over.

We went on a Mexican Riviera cruise with the whole family out of LA.  Rob's parents and Stephanie and Jeff  Killpack joined us with their family.  It was a seven day cruise and we made three stops in Mexico: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. It was an action-packed, super-fun family vacation!!

As always, we had the customary two days of driving prior to our boarding the cruise ship.  Thankfully, the kids were well-behaved and it wasn't too bad, as drives go.  We arrived in LA on Saturday about midday, so we had some time to kill when we got there.  Which was good, it gave us a chance to clean out our car (at least a basic clean--two days of living in the car takes a toll!).  While we did that, the kiddos played some games in the hotel room.

DAY 1: Boarding the Cruise Ship.  We got on the ship around lunchtime and spent the first day mostly exploring the ship and unpacking our stuff.  Our ship was called the Norwegian Star and it was my favorite cruise ship so far!

We're excited to be cruisin'!

Our cabin.  Although small, our cabins on this cruise had portholes!!!! Amazing how much of a difference a little natural light can make.  We loved loved LOVED having windows!

Sailaway Party!  One thing Norwegian does well is its parties.  I thought that they did a great job of being entertaining while still being family appropriate. 

The kids were loving the balloon animals!

Sailing away!

I love the sailboat and the lighthouse in this picture.

Shaelyn joining the game as a pawn.

That evening we had our first meal in the dining room.  It was GORGEOUS! But unfortunately, the food was less than stellar.  It was okay.

Trying to get a good picture of how beautiful the dining room was.  It's difficult to capture on our rinky dinky camera.

That evening, we took the kids swimming in the hot tub.  The kids had been begging to go swimming since the previous day when we arrived in LA.  We foolishly promised them that they could go swimming at the end of our two day drive, assuming that it would be warm in LA.  Unfortunately, it was POURING rain that day and not very warm, so swimming was cancelled, and my kids were sorely disappointed.  Even though it wasn't raining the day we boarded the ship, it still wasn't really warm enough to swim.  But after dinner we all got in our swimsuits and just sat in the hot tub for awhile.  It was very nice.  They had a great kids' pool area, which we more thoroughly explored on...

DAY 2: First Sea Day

The kids' pool area. There were four pools plus a hot tub here, with two big kid water slides and one baby slide in the baby pool.  It was adorable, and all the kids LOVED it! We spent a lot of time here.

The baby pool

Claire and Kate...with a couple of really cute Asian kids in the background! Wish I knew who their parents were...I'd get them a copy of this picture!

Look at that blue ocean!

Hallie was great with Shaelyn.  And I love Braden slipping in the background there.

 

Splashdown!

That evening was formal night, so we all got dressed up! It was fun.  We got a lot of attention on the ship for having four kids, especially four girls.  Shaelyn in particular was adored by all, with her Shirley-Temple-esque curly locks. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera with me that evening, so I have ZERO pictures of us all dressed up!! What was I thinking? I have about a million and a half pictures of everything else! Here is a shot from Stephanie's camera though--

And the Killpacks on formal night

All of our group!

And after all the fun:

Sleeping arrangements: We had Hallie in the top bunk, Evie beneath her, Claire on the other bed, and Kate on the trundle.  Shae slept in the adjoining room (mine and Rob's room) in a port a crib.  We loved that adjoining room feature.  Super convenient when Shaelyn was napping!

DAY 3: Cabo San Lucas.  We didn't arrive in Cabo until about noon, so we spent the morning swimming in the main pool since it was pretty much deserted, and the kids wanted to try the adult water slide (it ended up being kind of slow, but the kids enjoyed it nonetheless!).

This little splashdown pool was only a few inches deep, so me and Shaelyn stayed there most of the time while the big kids played on the slides.

One of the 4 main pools.

Trying out the big slide! It is designed for people a lot heavier than the kids, so for them it ended up being kind of slow, but they figured out that if they leaned a lot with the water, they went faster.

Tummy slide!

Playing games with my baby!

Evie warming up in the hot tub

And now we're ready to go onshore to Cabo San Lucas!

At Cabo San Lucas, Rob went on a sport fishing excursion with his dad.  They were deep sea fishing and hoping to catch something big and...

Success!! Rob reeled in this huge marlin and basked in the glory for the whole rest of the trip! It's by far the biggest thing he's ever caught.  What a cool experience!! Definitely a highlight of our vacation.

Since Rob was out fishin', the rest of us went shopping onshore and then chartered a little glass-bottomed boat to take us on a tour around the cool rock formations of Cabo and then took us to the beach to play for an hour.  It was a fun time! We like Cabo.

On the shuttle boat.  Since our cruise ship can't dock in Cabo San Lucas, they use the lifeboats to shuttle people on shore. 

Shopping in Cabo

At the time, we had no idea our Daddy was catching one of these! He's been on several deep sea fishing expeditions where they didn't catch a thing.

Beautiful Cabo San Lucas

The kids with their brand new dolphin whistles!

Time for the boat tour! There are so many cool rock formations, and it was such a beautiful day!

Our ship: The Norwegian Star

The sea lions' sun rock.  They were awesome to see, but very stinky!

 Beach time!! They dropped us off on Lover's Beach to play for an hour before going back to the cruise ship.  The sand was fantastic and the waves were fun! The only thing we were missing was seashells.  There were none of those. 

The rocks had tons of little caves and places to explore.  The kids had fun climbing on them.

Building a sandcastle

It was a fun excursion! I am very grateful for the help of Steph and Jeff and Mom Henderson.  There's no way I would have been able to do that with all my kids alone.  Thank you!

DAY 4: Mazatlan.  This was our least favorite stop.  We didn't do an excursion there, so they might have some nice ones, but our experience was less than stellar.  We let the kids stay in the kids' club on the ship and us adults went onshore to walk around and check out the shopping. It was awful.  The city was dirty and crowded and the markets we went into were pretty unfriendly towards tourists. They didn't barter and one shopkeeper was downright rude, calling us "stupid Americans".  Totally not worth the taxi fare. Overall, next time we will just stay on the ship in Mazatlan.  Better yet, we won't go on a cruise that stops there again!

Had to take a picture by the meat market--Rob could have taught them a thing or two.

In one of the shops

We bought this cute little baby hammock swing.  Just couldn't resist!

Shaelyn picked out this hat, so we tried it on

Cool oven!

The best part of Mazatlan was the cruise terminal right as you get off the ship.  I wish we wouldn't have even wasted the money on the taxi into the city.

I love spray paint artists! They are so fun to watch!!

Mazatlan is best enjoyed at a distance.

It looks so cute from far away...not so much close up.

That evening, we had Filipino food by special request at the dining room.  It was SO good!! And afterwards, we caught this lovely sunset!

New little Mexican dresses! Thank you Grandma!

Even Shae had one.  So cute!

That evening, we decided to try to take the kids to the live show for the night.  It was awful.  When they started pulling out poles and having girls wearing hardly anything dance around them, we got our kids and got out of there! I was offended and disappointed that it was so inappropriate.  There is a difference between scandalous dancer costumes and portraying strippers on the stage.  If I wanted to go to a strip club, I would go to a strip club thank you very much! I have no desire to expose my KIDS to such blatant trash. Ugh.

The theater itself was so beautiful, but hard to capture in pictures.

This was before we knew what we were getting into.

 So, after a less-than-pleasant experience that cut our theater visit short, we went upstairs to get some dessert.  To our surprise and delight, we were met with this sign:

Yeah baby! Those are two magic words right there.

I loved all the creations made of chocolate! So cool.

 Also at the Chocoholic Buffet, we were introduced to Bernardo the singing chef.  He was so good and entertaining, he had the whole crowd on its feet and getting into it! Too fun! It was just what we needed after our disappointment at the theater.  So the night ended on a good note after all. 

Our first towel animal! Our stateroom steward came in and showed the girls how he made it, and they loved it! I wish we would have gotten one every night.

DAY 5: Puerto Vallarta. Oh my goodness, this port was AMAZING!!! My favorite day of the cruise, definitely.  At the last second Rob and I signed up for the Vallarta Outdoor Adventure excursion, which turned out to be a mind-blowing, adrenaline-pumping, and all-around out-of-this world adventure! Totally worth every penny! (It was $130 per person) But before all that awesomeness, we had a few pictures near the cruise ship:

Puerto Vallarta from the ship window.

Since our room was on Deck 4 (the lowest deck that is still above the waterline), we could see this guy with the donkey right outside our porthole windows! The girls loved it!

Isn't that parrot beautiful?

Fun in Puerto Vallarta!

Our tour guide, Ruby, collected us at the cruise ship and then we all got on a speedboat that zipped us down the coast probably a good 20 or 30 miles in a flash.  If we had traversed the same distance in a car over the mountainous terrain of Puerto Vallarta on who-knows-what quality of roads, it probably would have taken us a good 2 or 3 hours. Along the speedboat ride, I got some pictures of the beautiful mountains and jungles of Puerto Vallarta.  That was when I fell in love with this place. We are coming here again for sure!

Look at that cool umbrella tree!

We got off the speedboat in a cute little cove and waded onto the beach.

After the speedboat ride we all piled into this massive Jeep/Hummer with no windows, just a canvas roof, and it took us up into the mountains on some very poorly maintained and bumpy roads.  But in the Jeep it all felt like part of the adventure. :) On the way up, we had some good jokes from our tour guide, who was full of personality.  Once we got up to base camp, it was time to change into our adventure gear: they provided each of us with a rashguard shirt, bandanna, and helmet, not to mention our harness and ziplining/rappelling gear. It added a good 10-15 pounds to our weight.

That yellow truck on the right is the Jeep we took.

Little Mexican town

Our tour guide, Ruby and a couple of fellow adventurers, Josh and Carly.  We got to know them by the end of the adventure. Look at those pretty flowers in the background too! It was such a beautiful jungle.

At base camp.

It's so pretty and we haven't even started the fun stuff yet!

All outfitted and ready to go!

Let's do it!

We had to leave our cameras, sunglasses and basically all our belongings down at base camp--at first I thought that was a silly precaution, but as the day progressed, I saw it was totally necessary.  We were rappelling down waterfalls into pools of water, and jumping off platforms hundreds of feet in the air secured only by our ziplining gear, and we got pretty much completely submerged at a few points.  It was very intense.  Anyway, the end result was that we had no pictures of our awesomely amazing hike/zipline/rappel/rope bridges/climbing adventure.  Luckily, they brought a professional photographer along who took lots of pictures for us that we could purchase at the end of the day--they were a pretty penny too, but again, totally worth it.  Here they are:

The Jeep that brought us up the mountain

For the final ascent, we rode these little mules up the mountain.  They were really fun to ride.

My mule liked to race and be in the front.  I was the third person in line and my mule wasted no time in passing the two mules in front of me.  Every time another mule tried to pass us, my mule would start running to stay in front.  It was really fun! It was also an efficient way to get us to the top of the mountain where cars can't access.

 And we got a couple of videos too.  these are from the very first zipline.  Imagine hooking yourself up to some cables above your head and then just jumping off a platform into thin air over a huge canyon:

Pics from the first zipline--what a rush!!

Flying!

 We went on several ziplines, the first two being the highest ones, the second zipline being the longest one.  Sometimes we would zipline to one platform and take another zipline off the same platform, and other times we would hike to the next platform.  Interspersed were hikes over rope bridges, line bridges, and some sweet rappelling!! Our first rappel was a 100 foot drop down a waterfall into a shallow pool at the bottom. That was the first time we got wet.

We did it!

More hiking, and then the true splashdown: Zipline into a chest-deep pool at the top of another waterfall. 

A little chilly, but mostly refreshing!

Right after this one, we went down the first big waterslide--and by big, I mean it parallels the waterfall and goes down in three big drops.  We went on it together, with Rob in the front.  He took the brunt of the splashing, but it was still a pretty crazy ride! 

 We did lots of normal ziplines and a few fun ones, like this tandem ride.

Then came the freefall rappel: Pretty freaky if heights bother you.  They built a platform that went straight out over the 100-ft. waterfall and all of us strapped ourselves to a rope and jumped off of it, trusting our guides completely to lower us down safely.  It was pretty beautiful, though.

 One of our last ziplines, we got a surprise--upside down ziplining! What?! It was crazy, insane, and awesome!!

We were just dangling over the trees! It was crazy and a bit disorienting.  But we got a really good view of the jungle!

Our final zipline was surfing mixed with ziplining.  We stood back to back on a wooden board that was connected with cables at all four corners to the zipline above.  It was so fun!!  That was our final zipline.  But there was one final rush.  So we get off the final zipline and they tell us to take off our helmets and put on hockey helmets with face bars, and put on elbow pads.  At this point, after all the crazy stuff we had done, I was a little freaked out by the extra protective gear.  What the heck? What am I about to do?

Finally, the adventure was over.  What an action packed day! I was so impressed with the company that did our tour, they were so professional and did a fantastic job keeping our group moving at a brisk clip through the jungle.  There was very little standing around and waiting for the next zipline or rappel.  We had nearly as many guides as we did participants, and they were super friendly and efficient.  The company is called Vallarta Adventures, and we will definitely use them again when we next visit Puerto Vallarta.  I highly HIGHLY recommend this excursion for anyone that is in good physical condition--what a ride!

Once we got back to base camp, they had chips and salsa for us while we changed, picked out our pictures and recovered a bit.  Our tennies were wet, but we were energized!

The salsa was pretty good

But the scenery was better

Goodbye beautiful Puerto Vallarta!

DAY 6: Second Sea Day.  After all the excitement of the port stops back to back, we were ready for a relaxing sea day.  We spent the morning swimming together, then in the afternoon it was time for the circus show put on by the kids' club.

Baby goggles!

While we were out playing on deck, Rob's dad spotted a few dolphins swimming along with our ship.  We all got excited to see the dolphins and watched them for a few minutes.  The ocean was really calm that day and so you could see really far off.  As we watched, we saw a few sprays come up out in the distance.  We guessed they were whales spouting their blowholes, and then we actually saw one come up and slap its fin on the top of the water a few times.  It stayed at the top of the water and played for a minute or so then we saw its tail as it dove back down under the water.  The whale was quite far away from the ship, so I couldn't get a decent picture (the zoom on this camera is notoriously bad). But it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! I have never seen a whale in real life before, so it was a really fun experience. 

 Shaelyn and I went to the baby activity for messy art/playing with paint.  It was cute, lots of little babies and toddlers playing with paint

Playing games in the Atrium was also a favorite activity.  Over the course of the cruise, we played ten thousand, Uno, Chutes and Ladders, dice tic-tac-toe, and we tried Clue but the game they had on the ship was missing too many pieces. 

Cool stained glass ceiling

 Ladies and Gentlemen, now presenting...The Big Top At Sea Kid's Show!!

Feather balancing

Evie's age group (3-5 year olds) were the tigers jumping through the ring of fire.  They were so cute!

Grand finale!

The girls with their face paint

Hallie's flower was really cool

Every time we would walk through the Atrium, Shaelyn would start dancing and get mad if we made her keep walking.  So we did a lot of dancing in the Atrium.

Cute little dancer!

Then we headed to the theater for the Magic Show.  It was much more appropriate and the kids loved it! The magician used birds, bunnies, cats, and even a giant snake! "How did he do that Mom?"  My kid's eyes were huge!

The beautiful Atrium all decorated for the White Hot Party

Daddy dancing with his girls

Bernardo the singing chef!

Can you see the white and blue balloons falling from the upper balconies?

And all of a sudden, the party became super entertaining for the kids!

Look closely and you can see Evie smiling through that blue balloon.

Like I said, the parties on Norwegian were stellar!! We had a great time!

DAY 7: Final Sea Day.  We did a bit of everything that day, starting with playing some games.  Since we were coming back north and it was a bit windy, it was just cool enough that we didn't want to swim.  The kids went to kids' club while Mom and Dad packed and then we all went and got some ice cream.

Cool mural next to the game tables.  Also, you see that stand with the globe thing on top? That is an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser.  They had these all over the ship, it was so great.  I think that this one difference really helps all the cruisers to stay healthy while on board.

Shaelyn loved taking the stairs whenever we would let her.  She loves stairs.

Stylin' shades--Thank you Grandma Kelly!

 That evening, we decided to have a quiet dinner with just the adults (and Shae, since she was too little to go to kids' club).  So the kids ate at the buffet and then went up to kids' club, and we adults had a nice, uninterrupted dinner in the dining room.  On our way to the dining room, we caught this last oceanview sunset:

Whoa. Blogger must have some kind of auto-brightness correct, because this picture looked way darker on my camera, like a silhouette photo.

Shaelyn loves Aunt Stephanie and calls her mama.  It is sweet!

DAY 8: Disembarkation.  Time to say goodbye!

Pretty sunrise through the porthole welcoming us back to America!

Shaelyn isn't too sure about leaving this awesome vacation!

One final family picture.

Thanks, Norwegian for an awesome cruise!

Killpack family picture

 And, just like that, it was over.  We got off the ship in a very quick and easy process, and by 9:00 we were picking up our luggage and heading back to the hotel where our car had been parked all week.

Dancing in front of this awesome mirror at the Crown Plaza hotel.

We were all in church clothes because it was Sunday and we found a ward to stop at on our drive home.

Funny story, the ward we chose to stop at was in Apple Valley, CA and as we sat down I realized I knew one of the men sitting up on the stand.  He was the stake president and also my first cousin once removed.  After the meeting we went up and said hi and had a nice conversation.  Interesting coincidence.  I'm really glad we stopped and went to church though.  I had been missing it since we didn't get to go the previous Sunday either.  I am so grateful for the gospel and for the Lord's loving hand in my life.

And after that, it was two days of driving to get home.  Phew! Now I really should unpack and do the laundry....sigh.  I'd rather be cruising!