CRUISE Day one and two: flying to Miami and first day at sea

***For journaling purposes, I'm going to break down our vacation posts into days. I am going to post LOTS of pictures, just a warning. We took so many, it's hard to narrow it down.

Our trip was absolutely wonderful!! You may wonder why we even went on this trip...well, it's because I have two awesome bosses who decided to treat their staff to a week-long Caribbean cruise as our "bonus" this year. They took care of everything for us. SO incredibly nice and giving! They really are the BEST bosses, and just great guys. (If you ever get a chance to work at Jones Dental Care, do.) We got to bring out spouses and spend every day with my super fun coworkers. It's really unusual how well everyone in our office gets along. I love them all, and we got even closer from our big trip.

Every minute was entertaining in some way. Even the days on the ship were just so fun and memorable. I'd never been on a cruise before...and now I'm convinced it's the only way to go when it comes to vacationing!! Loved it...we made four stops in the Western Caribbean which were so different from each other, but all so breathtaking and fun in their own way...pictures really don't do it justice. You just have to go there to understand how amazing it is.

We sent Gracie with Grandma and Grandpa Jones on Friday, the 15th, (shed a few tears, but was excited at the same time to have time w/Jared by ourselves.) I was grateful that both sets of grandparents were able to watch Gracie throughout the cruise, she loved it.

Saturday, January16th, we leave for Miami with our large Jones Dental group. We stayed the night in Miami, then on the morning of the 17th we caught a taxi to the ship. The ships are so massive! There were three lined up in a row, and it was crazy how big they are. It took a while to go through security and all that, but once we got on the ship, I was blown away! We were on the Carnival Valor, which is one of the bigger Carnival ships, and only a couple years old. It was so beautiful inside, very fancy. Immediately we go up to the buffet and eat lunch :) They had wonderful food. Seriously. The best part, in my opinion, was the unlimited soft serve ice cream. It hit the spot every time. Here we are with our first of many soft serve ice cream cones admiring the Miami skyline:

We wondered around the boat the first day for a few hours, but never saw everything. It was huge! Even the last day I'd walk into a room and say, "hey, I've never been here before!" Crazy. We also loved being out on the decks. I could just stare at the ocean for hours, it's gorgeous. Here's Jared contemplating the vast body of water:

They always had fun activities going on on the ship...the first night we went to "Game Show Mania" in this huge theater onboard. I was chosen to go on stage against two guys from Utah too :) The questions were lots of "name that tune" and "name that movie/t.v. show". I totally smothered the guys! :) For extra points we had to dance to some of the songs too...I had to do some Michael Jackson and M.C Hammer. It was nice having my whole 20+ Jones dental group cheering me on too.

My prize was a "Ship-on-a-stick" trophy.

Every night we had dinner in the fancy dining room. We had assigned tables with our group which were surrounded by big windows overlooking the ocean! It was gorgeous! The thing about dinner is, they give you a menu of appetizers, en trees and desserts and you can get as many as you want for free! :) They were pretty gourmet too...lobster, fillet mignon, creme broulet...who wouldn't get multiple dishes with that kind of green light?! It was delish. Every night Jared got two warm chocolate melting cakes. It became tradition for him by the end of the trip.