Sunday April 1st

The alarm goes off at 8am and we snap wide awake. 1 hour to get some food before Easter Mass!

Room service arrived with our continental breakfast orders. Waking up the boys was a bit of an adventure as Nicholas got in just after 1am. Teenagers...

We got a bit dressed up and then headed down to the huge auditorium with a thousand seats that looks like something from the Titanic!

We sat right near the front as Father John Quinn from NYC presided over us. It was a simple affair predominantly sitting for the whole event with prerecorded music for communion and closing hymns. Communion almost ran out for the folks that arrived late and some 'quartering' was required to 'make ends meet'...

We left and proceeded top deck to the Windjammer Cafe with a thousand others for the last remnants of the breakfast buffet.

A quick bacon and eggs then back to the room to change into beach wear for a few hours. Rick and Michelle had secured 4 great chairs for us in the front of the ship in the secluded and adult only Solarium. It was incredibly windy at the top but our seats were just right as we settled in for some sun tanning and consequent naps in the heat. After a few hours of tanning, we grabbed some light lunch including salads and ridiculously healthy options in the Solarium.

Someone had the foolish idea that a workout was necessary so off we went to the spa for an hour and sweated our buns off with some serious cardio, too many crunches to count and some mixture of upper and lower body free weights and exercise equipment. Once I couldn't find the energy to stand, it was time for a quick shower and off to the Schooner bar for the 3pm Harry Potter trivia show of which there were a couple hundred people. Adam/Ryan combined for the best overall score with 4 other teams and will receive a prize of some type this week.

Jacob and I decided to spend some quality dad and son time and went off for a flurry of activities including a swim and a loaded hot dog to wrap up our afternoon. We hit the volleyball court with Nicholas joining in as we crushed the other team quite handily all afternoon.

I left the boys to head back for a quick shower and get ready for formal night complete with my 3 piece tuxedo. The boys arrived after 7 and threw on some dress clothes as we took a multitude of family photos and headed down to deck 5 to promenade with the rest of our 830pm dining crew. We strolled through stopping to have some photos with penguins while enjoying our free champagne and appetizers served everywhere. It was quite neat to see the majority of the 5th deck overflowing with extremely well dressed folks on their way out for supper.

We had more photos taken on stairwells and made our way into our dining hall for another fantastic meal of seafood and beef starters with Beef Tenderloin for a main and delicious desserts. Bayu and Raffi took care of us well.

Jacob decided to skip supper to go off and do teen activities while Rick and I tried on 15000$ watches pretending to be millionaires. Ha! It was fun pretending for awhile for sure.

We headed over to the huge Royal Theatre and grabbed some pop and popcorn before settling in for a wicked production of Grease the musical. It was extremely entertaining but went until after midnight so we headed to bed. The boys weren't back yet but arrived by 1230 so we finally got to sleep around 1am. Wake-up call set for 8 am for our first day off the ship. What adventures would we find tomorrow?

Easter Morning Mass in the Royal Theatre