Happy 5th Birthday Hannah XiaoFen!!!

(Thursday, February 27, 2014)

My amazing baby girl turned 5 years old on February 27th!  Happy, happy Birthday Hannah!!  Mommy loves you SOOO much!!

Hannah’s birthday was a day at sea and it was a wonderful time to spend so much time together!  Such an amazing blessing!

It was fun to surprise Hannah with new magnets on our stateroom door, all in celebration of her!!

The first morning we were on the ship she had a Krispy Kreme as part of her breakfast and liked it so much that she had one every single morning.  Ah, cruise life!  Soon enough she’d be back to her regular cereal and oj so this was a fun little treat!   I thought it was fun the way she would choose to eat them off her fork.

Nana and I treated ourselves to eggs benedict this morning.  Oh yes!  One of the many reasons we enjoyed all the walking and swimming involved in our time on the ship!

After breakfast we stopped to visit the big cheese himself!

As we left Mickey we noticed Jacob in line so stopped to snap a pic of our kiddos together.

We stopped at our room to find that Mickey had left a gift for her courtesy of Miss Giesel.  (It makes me laugh during the video when I refer to her as ‘Princess Hannah’ and she corrects me to say she’s just ‘Hannah.’  Whenever she wore her Rapunzel dress I could call her Princess Hannah but the moment it came off she was just plain ‘Hannah.’  Too funny!

Hannah had really enjoyed playing Midship Detective Agency earlier in the week so we signed up for a new mystery and Hannah figured out who had stolen the 101 Dalmations!

Hannah and I happened to be up on Deck 11 at noon and found out that this is what happens each sea day.  Nana, we’ve found a new job for you!!  Cruise ship horn playing!!

After lunch we dropped Hannah off at the Oceaneer’s Club for a while as Sharon and I had a galley tour booked.   We had left this restaurant only 15 minutes before the tour started so were shocked to see how they had already cleaned up and it was ready for dinner service 3 1/2 hours later.  What a fascinating tour!!  Hot line that meals are served from

Vimal our guide who is one of the head chefs onboard the Fantasy.

Soup and sauce urns

Mickey pasta anyone?

It was a great tour and all the way through we talked about Papa who spends much of his summer volunteering at a children’s camp in northern Ontario.  He would have loved this tour!

After we were done we went to pick up Hannah but she was having too much fun.  She was on a Heffalump Hunt with one of the counsellors and asked for more time.  I love how much fun she’s had at clubs when she’s chosen to go.  Even at those times when we’ve had something booked so needed her to go there for a bit she always went happily and sometimes like this time she required extra time before leaving.  We filled our time by taking a couple of pics in the beautiful port holes.   We were now on day 6 of our cruise and I was still pinching myself at the beauty of this ship and how blessed we were to all be here together!!

Nana headed outside to enjoy some time in the fresh air and I grabbed my laptop and sat in this port hole working on a blog post.  In the end Hannah chose to stay almost an hour after I initially went in to get her and I was so happy.  She was right where she wanted to be and having such a great time so I was glad I didn’t have to hurry her along.

As normal, the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Mommy!  Can we go swimming?’  Sure thing!!  (Loved having the DicaPac to put my camera in so that I could capture these cool underwater pictures and videos!!)

We ended our swim this afternoon with some time in one of the hot tubs.  These are beautiful and the view from there is outstanding!  They are on Deck 11 with Plexiglas walls and even a portion of the floor is Plexiglas!  Check out this view!