Greetings from the Sea!

We are at Sea!!

Today is our second day at sea and we will be arriving in Bay of Islands in the morning. We have an afternoon tour booked for a dolphin cruise!

I think most of our days have revolved around Grace. She is a celebrity on the ship. Everywhere we go people are saying "oh, there is Grace." All of the waiters in the dining room know her and where they will find her every night at dinner. Our waiter brings out her very own bowl of fruit (she is quite the fan of watermelon and grapes) every night. Then he will bring her the special plate (this is made JUST FOR HER!! They don't serve this at dinnertime but they have made arrangements to have it ready every night soon after we arrive) of peas and asparagus. Yes, she has become a fan of asparagus!

Every morning at 9am we go to the Fisher Price playgroup. We have played with lots of new toys. Yesterday was a cooking theme so we had food and tea pots. Today was musical theme so we had drums and pianos. They had done this theme on the first day also so they brought out a few of the toys for the older age group - little people farm toys! And every afternoon we are at sea there is a special arts and crafts time for Grace. Today she made a fish! There are only 4 kids under age 3 on the ship and we never even see 2 of them. We also were able to visit the Pets at Sea booth (like build a bear) where Grace made a Kangaroo named Skippy after an Australia cartoon that we were told about. The look on her face when she got to take Skippy home was priceless!!

We have also watched a belly-flop contest (hilarious!), gone to a scrapbook session (or at least I did), watched a fruit carving demo and an apple strudel demo, and just explored the ship. One of Grace's favorite things to do is climb the stairs. She is becoming quite the master!

We are having a great time! I hope the weather stays nice because we have heard that coming back from New Zealand can be quite awful. The last cruise experienced horrible weather and the ship was pretty rocky. So far it hasn't been too bad but I don't think I will ever forget I am on a ship. We can almost always feel the swaying from side to side.