The Hughes Zoo

It’s a long haul to and from Hawaii, and again we were glad for the 5 days at sea. A lot of people disembarked at Honolulu and a lot new people got on. The demographic is quite a bit different - whereas the old mob were almost entirely white 60-80 year old retirees, the new mob are much more diverse. So it’s a little less like being in a retirement village, but only a little

One of the benefits is that some new kids have joined, including Annabell and Tom who are 3 and 7. Tom’s used to looking out for Annabell, so when Jeremy went on tour to meet the Captain with the kids club Tom automatically took care of him. We met up with Tom, Annabell and their parents for a post-lunch swim and all the kids had a great time.

Jeremy’s still not going to kids club, except for special events. We’ve been back a couple of times but even with us there he gets bored and sick of the other kids. With Annabell being his age, and Tom to look out for them, he might be a bit more interested now.

On one of our many random strolls around the boat, Jeremy and I came across a shuffleboard tournament. Pushing stuff around with big sticks instantly had Jeremy interested and once the tournament was over we had a play. He loved it, and we’ve been back a few times. It’s sort of like a cross between lawn bowls, air hockey and darts, though designed for people who can’t move. It’s sorta cool.

One of Jeremy’s other new hobbies is quilling. Ange has taken him to a couple of the courses with her, and although he doesn’t actually do any quilling at all, he seems to love it. For info, quilling is, from what I can tell, making pretty, intricate things with tiny bits of paper. It sounds like the sort of thing that would make my head explode in about 10 minutes, but Ange on the other hand loves it. We even managed to arrange things the other day so that she could go to a class without Jeremy so she could actually get something done.

As you can imagine, all this cruise food is starting to take its toll. With Jeremy not going to kids club, Ange and I aren’t getting to the gym at all. And 3 courses for every meal ain’t helping either. To try and stem some of the insanity (and the boys’ mood swings) we decided to have a ‘treat free’ day, where none of us had any sweet stuff. So no chocolate donut for Jeremy after breakfast, no chocolate croissant for Ange, and no post-lunch ice cream for any of us. It was all going well, until I made a (completely uncharacteristic) smart arse comment to our waiter at dinner (after the  boys were in bed) which ended with the him bringing us pretty well every desert on the menu. And, of course, we ate most of it. Ugh.

We’ve actually had a string of nice dinners lately, polishing off a bottle of wine between us for the last 3 nights. By the time we get to the end of the cruise our expenses (tours, alcohol, coffee etc) are going to cost as much as the damn cruise itself.

The moral of the story: if anyone knows where to pick up a Wall-E style hover chair, let me  know. I’m not sure if my legs are up to the task of carrying me any more.

Photos for the days

Tags: at sea, cruise

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 6:33 pm and is filed under cruise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.