Cruise Days 6 & 7

 The last two days of the cruise were at sea.

Andy and I woke up and enjoyed our balcony while the boys slept in.

Ben was given 9 ducks by random people throughout the cruise.

This one, on day 6, a very soft spoken lady came up to us while we were leaving the buffet and asked if he liked ducks.  We told her he did and so she said she was going to go leave one on the rim of the planter for him to find.  We hung back while she went ahead.  As soon as she put it down another woman came up and grabbed it!  We watched as the first woman explained what she was doing. The second lady put it back and we were able to go up and point it out to Ben for him to pick it up.

It was my favorite one that he received...a 3D printed spa duck with cucumbers on the eyes and a towel wrapped around it's head :)

The kids went and watched a skating show together...

Andy snapped a pic of them while they were spectating.

And then our brave Josh got up and sang during kareoke!

The boys had been talking about possibly doing it and Josh just went for it!

He sang Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John.

When I was shown the video later (I had been in the room with Ben) I realized I was not familiar with the song at all but I was so proud of Josh!

Andy spent a lot of time looking out at the ocean and was rewarded with a lot of wildlife sightings...

Rays, dolphins, a whale, a hammerhead shark (not pictured), and flying fish.

He liked to remind us occasionally and make us jealous :) 

Ben with some of his many treasures at dinner

Andy and Josh had lobster.

Matt comparing his sunburned arm to the color of the lobster

Abby with her baked Alaska and Andy with another sugar free dessert

Another comparison...not quite as red as his red velvet :)

More dancing :)

I had bought a fancier dress in Cabo and wore it for our last fancy dinner night.

Andy had seen that there would be dancing in one of the lounges so we left Ben with a willing Josh for just a few minutes to go steal a dance (Abby followed us to get a picture...see below) but sadly, no one was dancing to the live band and Andy and I are not confident enough to dance anyway so we found Josh and Ben and were told that Ben had gotten out of hand and hurt Josh's eye and thrown and broke his spa duck :(

So we got Ben back to the room and when we saw that he was under control we left Josh with him again and went and got a few pics of us in our fancy clothes :)

Some of our towel animals...

Well, we were glad we went but it wasn't a magical solution for vacationing with Ben like we had wondered about.

There were still frustrations and inconveniences but there were definitely some perks...like having food constantly available :)

Talking as a family, we decided that we wouldn't be opposed to ever going on a cruise again but it's not going to necessarily be our first choice from here on out either.