Carnival Magic Cruise: Part 1

This is going to have to be broken up into several posts. I just have too much stuff to put up.

I have to start by saying, we don't really vacation with twins.
We went to Baton Rouge for an LSU game at 7 weeks old. And that was a totally different kind of hard.  We went back to Baton Rouge at 8 months old for Scotts graduation, and that required packing up our entire house, meals being boxed up 'to go', and Mommy staying behind to babysit while everyone partied.  So, not really a vacation.
We've taken them to our family bay house several times, but more than one night was almost too much work too. They are just into everything and almost fell into the bay several times. So, once again, not really a vacation. Just more like outings.

So a cruise with my entire family, sounded do-able. Until the week before came. I tried to remain calm. but was really worried it would be the worst week of my life.

Things I packed that really helped:
My entire medicine cabinet
Power Strip
Bed Rails
Dish Soap (to clean sippy cups)
Sippy Cups
Snack Traps
Snacks I knew they would eat
Portable DVD player
Night time CD
Laundry detergent
Diapers, Wipes, Disposable Diaper Bags
Books, Trains, Tracks
2 single umbrella strollers
White board and sticky tack for outside the door. (We would write twins napping, or where we were so our family could come find us.)

Prepare yourself for embarkation and de-embarkation to really suck. Bring snacks, Ipad, DVD players, etc. Honestly could have been even worse but some Carnival angels saw us and saved us a few times by letting us jump the lines. And having Luke throw a complete fit on the floor helped too.

Anyways, we got the twins their own room.

It was adjoined to ours. We had connecting balconies as well. It had a king sized bed, and we put the bed rails up. It WAS AMAZING. We could put the twins down for a nap, and then go into the other room and hang out, watch tv, read, etc.

Our Room

Their Room.

 I was also really worried about how I would get Hudson to take a bath. He really doesn't like showers, but he will tolerate them if you are in there with him. But who wants to have 3 people in a cruise ship shower?
But if you take the shower head off, and let them control it, problem solved!

Meals:

We went to breakfast and lunch at the Buffet in the Marketplace right off the Lido deck everyday. They were fine, one of us would stay behind with the kids, while the other got them food. Then we would switch and get our own food. It became sort of a challenge trying to keep them entertained so we could each have time to eat.

Case in point:

Notice we are the only ones eating breakfast at 7:30 am.  Apparently everyone else on the ship is still sleeping.

I am going to do a separate blog on dinner. Dinner on a cruise ship is formal. White linen table cloths and napkins, 3 course meals, and a showtime. They last over an hour. And I have a strict rule of not getting out of your high chair. We went Every. Single. Night. It deserves its own post.