Our Babymoon

8/22/11

Our Alaskan cruise was fan-freaking-tastic.  BBH was on PERFECT behavior.  He may have even made up for all of the grief that he caused me on the Disney trip back in May!  I experienced zero puking episodes and zero nausea.  I didn't even experience the acid reflux that started plaguing me the week before the trip.  The reflux did return with a vengeance on my flight home, but I was thrilled that it didn't bother me while on vacation.  My mom, dad and Blake all took more naps than I did.  I felt rested and energetic for the entire week.  Yay for experiencing some 2nd trimester bliss (which I previously thought was a myth)!

The weather was beautiful and cool.  It did rain in Juneau, but the remainder of the ports and days at sea were perfect.  Temperatures hovered in the 50s and 60s for most of the trip.  Needless to say, many groans were heard on the plane home when the pilot announced that it was 101 degrees at DFW (at 9:30 p.m., nonetheless). 

The food on the ship was really, really good.  I ate ice cream a MINIMUM of once a day.  The four of us began to affectionately call the trip "the Ice Cream Cruise," as we all pigged out on it daily.  Pure bliss for a preggo like me.  I also ate soup daily (a prior pregnancy craving, as I am sure you know by now).  Between the soups and the ice cream, I was a very happy girl (and BBH was a happy little fetus).  That being said, I'm NOT excited about my next weigh-in at the doctor's appointment.  I'll be lucky if I gained less than 10 pounds on that cruise.  I don't even know whether I'm experiencing cravings at this point in my pregnancy... I ate so much and so often on the cruise, that my body didn't have time to want or crave anything in particular.  Now that I'm back to reality (and hopefully back to eating smaller quantities of nutritious food), we'll see whether any cravings kick back into gear.

I also gambled... a lot... at the ship's casino.  I probably played around 10 hours-worth of Black Jack during those 7 days.  I ended up dead even.  I consider that a major win.  Bingo was played (and lost) several times by the Moses/Halpern clan.  I think it was rigged.

We got to see tons of interesting wildlife on the trip including: seals, sea lions, sea otters, salmon (jumping out of the water), bald eagles, black bears (Ro and Blake), LOTS of whales and puffins (to name a few).  As always, Blake got some awesome photos.

What Blake and I did NOT do on the cruise: Pick a name for our baby boy.  Several awful names were thrown out by my father (thanks "BudMo"!) such as "Bastion" and "Blane," but I think Blake and I are better off sticking to our short-list.  I'm still holding out for *****, but I haven't been able to starve Blake out yet. 

Pictures to come!