Jan. 5th, 2020 Cruise Day 2 of 128

Our first morning on the ship! Wow did we sleep great.  I haven’t slept that good in a really long time.  There is nothing like the gentle rocking of the ship to help me fall asleep, and ever batter, stay asleep.  Valerie and I had a lovely breakfast together just the two of us, while Megan and mom slept in.  I brought her a mimosa in bed to start her day.  Gave her a kiss and let them lounge for a while.  I next journeyed to our Cruise Specialist specialists.  Every sea day the travel company we booked with has two amazing people, Wendy and Steve, available from 10:00am-12:00am to help us with problems we may be having, answer questions we may have, or you can just go and say good morning and have a cup of coffee and visit.  It was nice to have familiar faces to see first thing in the morning.  I was having some Internet issues (as is many others on board) and Steve helped me to figure them out.  Next, I headed back to the room to grab the girls and we headed to the Explorer Lounge. Every sea day at 10:30 there is a group that meets to facilitate a gathering for Project Linus.  This organization is near and dear to our hearts and we personally know those who have received these blankets.  It was amazing to watch!!  There is mountains of yarn and easily a hundred people all there knitting and crocheting blankets to be donated to the Project Linus organization. They provide all the needed supplies and as you complete the blankets, you can turn them in and grab more supplies and make another.  The girls helped a couple of volunteers to turn large skeins of yarn into smaller balls. Let me take a moment here to say that having children on the world cruise is not common.  Everywhere we go people stop us and ask about the girls, where we are from and what we are doing for their education.  We have had people offer to help them with their schooling, how to knit and crochet and how to speak Spanish and Portuguese.  They are so delighted to see them joining in activities and I have received many compliments already on how well mannered and behaved they are.  They are truly going to have a 1,000 new grandparents by the time we get off this ship. O.K., back to the day, we head off to our first educational presentation today on Oceans: The Real Lugs of the World, a 45-minute talk on currents, food webs, whale migration, photosynthesis and coral reefs.  There was enough in that presentation to provide the girls with at least 6 weeks of science curriculum, all in the first day.  They weren’t too happy I made them go, but they were very attentive and both took amazing notes about what they learned.  Next stop was to the buffet for lunch and then a meeting with the Club HAL director Geoffrey.  Club HAL is the kids program on Holland America ships and we had been told there would be no one running the program while we were on the cruise.  What a wonderful surprise it was yesterday to learn that they were hosting a program.  There are five children on board, ages 7-14.  Again, I must squirrel and here to tell you this man is absolutely amazing and he really loves his job.  He has made arrangements for the children to have a quiet space to do the daily school work, is building activities around the places we are going to be going, is excited to get the kids involved in Project Linus, and really want the kids to also just be kids and have fun!  I love that we have the same philosophy for the kids on this amazing trip.  As a parent, I could not have been happier that they decided to run this program for us. To wrap up the remainder of our day, mom and I attended a reception and had the opportunity to meet the Captain, the activities Director and most of the other officers on this beautiful ship. I am going to tell you, I received an amazing phone call while at the reception, but I am going to keep you in suspense to write about it on another day.  After the reception we retrieved the girls and had our first meal in the main dining room.  Can I just say that so far the food on this ship has been absolutely amazing.  the service is impeccable, the staff is so attentive and so very nice.  After dinner the girls shot off to club Hal for a couple hours of kid time and mom and I attended the first evening performance “On Tour”, a performance of live music, singing and dancing.  Mom and I went and had a nightcap at the Crow’s Nest bar and talked about what an amazingly busy and productive day we had had.  A nice time to just decompress after all of today’s activities, to talk about how happy we are to have this special time together, and to just take a deep breath and take in all we have to be thankful for.  That about wraps up our day. It’s past midnight and the girls officially start back up with school tomorrow. Their lesson plans are all ready for the week and alarms are set.  Time to get into our daily routine that we will try to keep for the remainder of the trip, unless it needs to be tweaked.  Hugs and Love and Sweet Dreams to you all…Debra