Alaska! Part One

 About 4 weeks ago Chandler and I were blessed to be able to go on a week-long Alaskan cruise with Chandler's family - my first cruise experience. Chandler's grandparents on his mom's side put the whole thing together, and in total there were 67 of us in our group! It was truly a memorable experience - and I am so grateful we got to go (I was almost too pregnant to be able to go since the cruise line doesn't allow pregnant women after a certain point). It was a great trip with lots of amazing moments.

There are a few things I want to write about, but pictures can capture much more than I can explain. So, here goes for the longest post yet (if you can believe it), but thankfully for you this post is long simply because of the amount of pictures - not because of my usual long-winded-ness.

A few things I want to mention before the picture frenzy:

I was surprised at the amount of daylight in Alaska. It messed us up the first few days because we left our curtains open so we could catch all the views from our stateroom. After our first night on the ship we woke up to a beautifully sunny day - but it was only 4am! It also didn't get dark until around 10:30 pm. Not much night time to say the least.

The views in Alaska/Canada are to die for. I have never seen so much majestic beauty in nature before. And we were blessed with incredible weather the entire trip so that we could really enjoy each place we visited.

The food was amazing - and it was so much fun to be able to rotate tables almost every night and visit with different members of the family. It is a miracle that there were so many of us there. It was fun to be served at each meal (every pregnant woman's dream). :) Every one of our servers had accents from all over the world.

The culture on a cruise is interesting. The best way to describe it is it is a party all the time! There was so much wonderful service everywhere you turned (can you say cookies and milk? That's right - we were just playing a game and a gentleman came by to offer us cookies and milk! Or 24 hour cafe? Yep - all the pistachio pudding Chandler could want at any time of day), and there were so many fine things on board (expensive jewelry shops, wine tastings (we didn't taste), an art gallery, constant live music, etc.). We were always checking our "Princess Patter" for the next entertainment or we were simply walking around exploring. I didn't use my phone for a whole week - it was glorious. But even though it was really relaxing, we were also walking around a ton and doing a lot so my feet and ankles swelled up. Every moment was completely worth it though.

One of the greatest things was to really feel our little boy kick on this trip! I don't know whether it was all the food or what but our little guy loved cruising! So do we :) He kicked a lot, and Chandler finally got to feel it too. It was really fun to share this experience with so much family - and it makes us really excited to do things with our kids in the future.

Pictures Part One:

We flew on Delta early in the morning July 13, 2013.

Our view from the plane as we flew into Seattle, WA

Driving through Seattle to our port

My first real look at our ship - the Star Princess!

Our stateroom - in a great location on the ship, and right by Chandler's immediate family.

Eating lunch before we departed from Seattle

Safety training!

Family meeting in the Skywalkers Lounge at the back of the ship - this is where we had all of our family meetings.

Tom Franek! He was our favorite entertainer on board - he played piano, sang, and danced around/on the piano. He was so talented and funny!

We ordered breakfast in bed one morning :)

Our first excursion - in Juneau, AK - the whole family went whale watching. We saw a bunch of humpback whales! This was the first whale we saw immediately after we stopped the boat.

Whale watching!

It's hard to see, but there are three whale-tails sticking up in the distance. Very cool.

Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, AK. One of the many wonderful beauties in nature that we got to see.

Juneau, AK

Chandler and I took a late-night stroll around the ship to explore on one of our first nights on board. It was so peaceful and the air was so still and calm. It was so relaxing and beautiful. I loved our ship!

Yummy food! It was always presented so well - and it all looked so good we only remembered to take a few food pictures.

Our Stateroom - it was so nice to have a place to relax every once in a while.

The Piazza - this was the center of the ship and we were so close to all of it. There were a bunch of shops and always live entertainment on this part of the ship.

A better view of Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier

One of the ship decks

The walkway up to the Skywalkers Lounge

Our first day on board with Seattle in the background.

 Stay tuned for more pictures from our adventures in Skagway (and Yukon territory/Caribou Crossing) and Ketchikan, Alaska, formal night, and Victoria, Canada!