Let the Cruise Begin - Welcome to Miami and Day 1 on the Ship!

The Sunday immediately after my sister's wedding we got up, finished packing, dropped Brynn off with her grandparents at church, and headed off on an anniversary cruise.  Ryan and I celebrated our fifth anniversary, and Erika and Tab are celebrating seven.  Even though the timing was a little hectic, we planned it that way, because Erika and Tab were already in town for Lindsey's big day.  That way they wouldn't have to fly in again (from Dallas) to drop their kids off with Erika's mom (my Aunt...my mom's sister Tina).   So we headed to the airport and flew to Miami.

I hope Brynn is as close to her cousins as Erika and I are!

LA ROSAS!
We flew to Miami a day early, just to make sure we were there bright and early to board our cruise ship.
The night before, our hotel shuttle took us to an authentic Cuban restaurant for dinner.
It was really good, and we felt so cool eating authentic Cuban cuisine...Tab only said "La Rosas" (the
name of the restaurant) about a billion times on the cruise.   HA!

Look at Erika's shirt...that was the Sunday night that the Bachelorette finale was on TV, so Erika wore her Team
Sean shirt (her best friend is Sean's sister Shay) even though he wasn't really on the episode.  After dinner
we headed back to the hotel to watch!

Monday morning we woke up and got ready to head to the cruise ship!  We got on the ship around noon, but didn't set sail until around 5ish.

This is how you get ready when you have to shave your head every day...looks like a lot of work!

That's the Miami Heat arena in the background...pretty cool! 

Miami seemed to go on forever in lots of directions!

Sailing Away Party!

After sailing away from Miami and soaking up some sun, we looked through our cruise guide at all of the activities for the evening.  I saw "team trivia" and thought that sounded soo much fun.  Everyone else was laughing at me, but our motto for the trip somehow became "no regrets" and they decided to play!  It was hilarious...as soon as we walked in the trivia room we saw this team that all looked like they had just graduated from MIT and had IQ's in the 200's, but we laughed and had a great time anyway!

When we walked in there was only one team (the MIT team) and us and these guys playing music.
HILARIOUS!

Here's how Ryan felt about being forced to listen to elevator music and play trivia.

There actually turned out to be quite a few teams, most of who did just about as well (or not well)
as we did.  I'm not lying when I say it was so much fun!

And then we got ready, watched a Welcome Aboard Show, and had a DELICIOUS meal!  

Our first day on the cruise ship was a success!  Next up...waking up in Nassau, Bahamas!