Livin' the dream...part one.

I've been procrastinating this post because how do you really blog about a month long adventure? I could easily create five or six posts for each stop on the cruise and the amount of pictures I have is completely overwhelming so bare with me.

Before we were even engaged, Chad had a Transatlantic cruise in mind and I'm pretty sure we made our first cruise payment before we ever had a ring or a wedding date. On April 14th we had our bags packed and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Florida. (By the end of our trip Chad understood how much fun it is to travel with someone who has a pacemaker/defibrillator...poor guy. We cut it close a few times.)
Although we would NEVER live in Florida, we highly recommend Gator Hunting!

How could you not love this?

This poor gator got into a fight with another gator and lost one of his back legs. He now spends his days swimming next to tour boats for a handout. We named him Brutus.

our sweet ride.

Can you spot the baby gator?

This "professional" gator hunter was a piece of work. His whole show consisted of making fun of women with a few gator tricks in between. Needless to say, we did not make a donation to his television show.

After walking the dock next to our hotel and secretly hoping someone famous would walk off one of these yachts, we took a taxi to our cruise ship. 

At one point traffic was at a stand still and we couldn't figure out why. Then we saw the road/bridge going up in the air! A cruise ship needed to get across, too cool!    

Wahoo! After winding through the cruise ship security maze, and finding out through one of the workers that my passport picture looks like Brittany Spears (the early years, yes I did ask) we made it onto the ship!

The lawn deck was one of our favorites! They had Bocce Ball (Shalise and Ryan, we're ready for a rematch next time we're in Utah!), Baggo, Golf, a Hot Glass Show, and Horse Shoes, plus an awesome view!

We won a beautiful ocean bowl in a raffle they had, it is now used for holding our endless supply of gum.

We would always joke that the little girl playing in the water was the closest to us in age on the ship.

Okay, this room cracked us up. It was an after hours club/bar for 18+ and our fellow cruisers were old retired grandmas and grandpas who sometimes had trouble making it to the 8:30 dinner slot. Unless it was Karaoke night, this place was empty. We had fun though! They had Wii bowling competitions in this room and due to the fact that we had to teach our competitors how to play, we did quite well.

Most of the activities on the cruise ship consisted of Scrabble matches and Bingo. One day they played name that tune, and we thought we'd do pretty well until we found out it was 60's music.

One night they had a Poker tournament against the cruise ship officers. Since there was no real money involved Chad decided to play. It was hilarious to see Chad come in as the underdog and end up becoming the poker champion!

Chad won a sweet trophy and XXL Casino t-shirt that can now be found at your local Goodwill

Later that week I played in the slot machine tournament against the officers and took 4th place.           

It's harder than it looks but definitely a crack up!

We had a fun time watching others throw away their money.

Rockin' our Celebrity Equinox Cruise t-shirts.

Most of the shows were pretty good, but again, they catered to our older friends. Lots of old western music, show tunes, and a juggler who thought he was also a comedian...we had a hard time appreciating it but enjoyed a good splurge on the virgin strawberry daiquiris.