Good Morning Friends!
My husband said when we got home: "It's a shame that more people don't get the opportunity to experience a Stampin' Up incentive trip. After going to one, I cant imagine not wanting to go to all of them." I thought that was a pretty profound statement. He's right, I make it my goal every single year. Where else can you go on vacation with 700 other people that are all brought together by our love for stamping.
With that in mind, my daughter Alexis wrote a report for school about her week long adventure aboard the Allure of the Seas, the largest cruise ship afloat. I think she did a great job, and I wanted to share a recap of the Stampin' Up incentive trip through my daughters eyes.
Alexis wrote:
My Caribbean Adventure
by Alexis Kempton
May 4th 2014
On
the first day of our trip, we had to get up before the sun came up.
Sunshine and fun here we come!
We finished packing and had Grampy drive us
to the airport.
We had breakfast at
starbucks, yum!
While we waited, we ran
into Tami White and her family, my mom’s friend and waited with them.
We took lots of selfies with their cell
phones.
We boarded on Jet Blue and flew
to the Ft. Lauderdale Airport.
When we
got off the plane, we claimed our luggage, and found the Royal Caribbean
representative, who helped us find our bus.
She also tagged our bags so we wouldn’t have to carry them anymore, and
were delivered to our room.
We took a quick bus ride to the pier, and waited, and
waited, and waited. We finally were able
to get on the big boat, about 3 hours later.
When we walked up the gangway (which is the entrance to the boat), there was a shopping mall right there when we got on, complete with a
FREE pizza place, a cupcake shop, shopping galore. We found out that it is the Largest Cruise
ship on the Seas. It holds 6,300
passengers, and 2,500 crew members. The
ship SO big, that it had neighborhoods including Central Park, The Boardwalk,
The Pavilion, the theater district, the Royal Prominade and more. I don’t think we even got to see the whole
ship!
That night, we set sail at 5PM and went to a private party
for my mom’s company at the boardwalk.
We saw a show called OceanAria.
They had acrobats high jumping into a pool. They compared it to a Las Vegas Show, but
reminded us that the pool doesn’t move in Las Vegas. We sat under the stars and moon, and watched
the most amazing light show as a part of it, and they took a group photo, with
all 700 people from our group in it. We
had squish together to fit everyone in.
__
Day 2
The second day we spent at sea. I was very excited to go find out what the
kids club was all about. Mom and Dad had
a meeting to go to, so I was able to go explore the kids club to see what it
was all about. There were all kinds of
new friends to meet there, and we played all sorts of games like ga-ga ball and
crazy tag! We had so much fun
there. My mom and dad went to the
“formal dinner” that night and I wanted to stay with my new friends in the kids
club, so they got a date night. We hung
out at the boardwalk and tried out the ice cream stand. Then I went on the Carousel that was right
there. The carousel was amazing because
all of the animals were carved by hand! They
had some strange animals you wouldn’t expect on a carousel like a frog, a
tiger, a cheetah, a leopard and some horses.
It was just so much fun!
--
Day 3
The
third day, we arrived in Labadee, Haiti.
My mom, dad and I went on a boat ride to a private island. We got to sample fruit punch from the island
and went swimming there. We found all
sorts of fun sea shells, and took
pictures of a sea urchin and everybody gathered around to take their own
photos. There were local people on the
beach selling their artwork. My mom
bought a painting to match her art studio.
When we got back from the private island, we went into Labadee for
lunch. We tried some local food and my
dad bought me a flute that someone carved from bamboo. We pulled out of port around 5 PM and enjoyed
the ship for the evening. That night we ate at a sushi place on board
the ship and the food was really tasty.
Day 4 The
fourth day of our adventure we arrived in Falmouth Jamaica, mon. We went on a
bus tour to Montego Bay. The bus driver
told us as we stopped along away, people would try to sell us things and told
us to say “me no want”. We went to a
really cool catholic church there and went inside to take pictures. Inside
there was a really amazing picture that when you look at it from the front, it
looks like a picture of a worker, but if you look from the side, it’s
Jesus. The pews inside the church were
raised. The pulpit in front of the church
stood high above the parishioners so the priest could see if someone wasn’t
paying attention to the service. The
lady inside told us that the pastor will often call people out who are doing
something that they shouldn’t be. (like
sleeping). I bought the coolest hat ever
outside the church, and it helped to keep me cool. It was so hot there! After visiting the church, we stopped at
place called Pier One. We sampled local
banana bread and my mom let me try my first sip of coffee. It was Jamaican Coffee, called Blue
Star. I was still very hot from the
weather there, and we ordered frozen strawberry drinks just to cool off. We continued on to Montego Bay, where they
had lots of shopping. The sales people
really wanted you to buy stuff, and they followed you around and wouldn’t leave
you alone, so we decided to get some lunch at Jimmy Buffets
Margaritaville. When we got inside, we
ran into mom’s friend Onie from Australia (who also works for stampin up) and
we all had lunch. After a 2 1/2 hour bus
ride, we were very hungry, and it was SO good!
We got back on the bus and went back to the port, then we walked through
shops and boarded the ship. I got to go
back to the kids club that night, and we had a ga-ga ball championship.. I won
a bronze medal!
Day 5
On day five, we slept a little bit late, but then headed
down for Stampin’ Up service project. We didn't get any pictures, but we all got matching orange shirts. Everywhere you turned, you saw someone with one of the shirts on. We all walked laps around the bottom deck. It
was a Walk-A-Thon for project hope. The
goal was to raise enough money to build some houses for the people of
Haiti. Haiti suffered a really bad
earthquake, and many people lost their houses.
Many are still living in temporary shelters. It costs $6,000 to build a house for one
family and there are so many families still without a house. My dad said that we raised enough to build 6
houses for the people of Haiti. At 5 PM,
I got to go to a cupcake decorating class for kids. I learned how to make waves in my frosting
and decorated a beach scene cupcake. So
fun!
Day 6
On the sixth day of our adventure, we got off the ship early so that we could
go swim with dolphins! This was my
favorite part of the trip. We boarded
the bus with our leader Jose, who told us to FIND HIM when it was time to come
back and not to go with anyone else unless we wanted to live in Mexico
forever. We boarded the bus and went to Chankanaab
National Park, Cozumel, Mexico. It was a
beautiful day!
Our whole group got fitted
for life jackets and headed down the pier to the dolphin cove. Our dolphins name was Emilia, and she was so
fun to hang out with! We went down the
stairs in the cove and they had a chain link fence for us to stand beside so we
wouldn’t float away. The water was about
4 feet deep, so my mom and dad had to keep one hand on me so I wouldn’t float
away. There were a bunch of tropical
fish floating around at our feet and I got nervous they were going to take a
bite of me, which they did not!
First, the trainer had the
dolphin swim by us so we could touch it’s skin.
It felt cold, slick and smooth.
Next, the trainer had us take turns.
He asked my mom to go first! You
had to put your hands out in front of you, like you were receiving communion,
then the dolphin would swim up to you and put his nose on your hands.
At that point you could lean
forward and give him a smooch. We had a
photographer right there that took all the pictures so after we kissed the
dolphin, we had to look up at the photographer to take our picture.
Next, we got to dance with
Emilia. To do this, we put our hands
straight out. The dolphin came right up
to me and wiggled her fins back and forth and we danced.
Finally, the dolphin did one
more trick for us. It was called
target.
You put your hand straight
out in front of you and raise it up, and the dolphin comes up to meet your
hand. What a smart dolphin we had. After all the tricks were done, we spent a
little more time in the cove, and the photographer took more pictures while we
watched the dolphin do jumps. She could
swim so fast, from one side of the cove to the other in seconds. Then, she did
a big jump over our heads. It was so
awesome. I will never forget it! Here’s a photo of me and my family at the
cove.
After we met the dolphins, we took showers and headed to the
sea lion show. I got to touch the sea
lions. All the kids at the show moved
down, to front row and got splashed as part of the show.
We didn’t mind, it was so hot we were dry in no time!
For lunch, we went to
senior frogs and had two servings of their fresh made guacamole. They made it at the table. That night, you would think we would have
been tired, but we went back to the boat and I went to the kids club. My parents tried to pick me up early and I
begged them to stay late because it was awesome being around so many other kids
playing. We stayed up until 1AM, but I
wasn’t tired. Mom says I was a
chatterbox when I came back to the room, and fell sound asleep, mid
sentence. (maybe I was a little
tired).
Day 7
My mom had a business meeting in morning, so dad and I took
off to the pool! The pools and water
park on the deck were so cool.
The first area of the waterpark had a baby splash zone with
warm water, the rest of the water park had cold water. In that waterpark area , there were sprayers
that had motion sensors, so it splashed me as I walked by. Another pool was like a wave pool and
overflowed onto the ground. The third
pool was just a regular pool that you could swim around in. There was a giant whirlpool that looked like
a giant donut, about 15 feet across. The
whirlpool had a current that went in one direction, so you could put a float on
the water and just float around in circles.
They had a pool where you could surf, called surf-rider and they had
another one so you could boogie board.
There were two hot tubs that had shades so you were out of the sun.
After the pool, I went back to the kids club for some night
time fun!
Day 8
The day you have to come home is never fun, but we went to
the 16th floor for breakfast at a restaurant called the windjammer.
We waited for them to call our number so that we could leave the ship. There were so many people on board, they had
to do it in sections. After we got off
the boat, we took a bus and waited, and waited, and waited. About 5 hours in total at the airport. Mom passed out and took a nap right there
while we waited. By this time, I was
really missing my friends and thinking about coming back to school the next day.
Thank you for letting me share my adventure with you.
Love,
Alexis Kempton, Age 9
