March 11, 2018 we set off to Florida to head out on a Norwegian Cruise for 12 days through Central America. With our kids!! How fucking crazy are we? As it turns out, very crazy but it was fantastic!
Let’s begin with packing. How does one pack for such a long vacation, so far away with a three year old and a five year old? For me, it’s simple… light. Pack light! Our travel agent set us up for what to expect, also laundry service on the boat if we needed. Phew! Since we were leaving 30º in Colorado and arriving to 75º in Miami, we wore our warm outfits and had our shorts and tanks in our backpacks. Shorts can be worn more than once and thankfully tanks are little enough to roll a weeks worth into a tootsie roll.
Luggage keys tucked away safe.
Kids in one case, parents in the other.
Luggage tags, a must!
All packed!
I have wicked anxiety, traveling with the hellions at midnight to a place I am not super familiar with was nerve wracking. However, a little prep for them and for me paid off. We explained how important it was to stay close to mom and dad, not to wander off and to keep up with their backpacks. Both kids were great at this. They packed one toy, their special blankets, that we call”B” and a snack. Just enough for them to not run a muck through DIA.

The 5 a.m. arrival was tough. We were tired and checked bags took an eternity to retrieve. Our Uber driver down into South Beach was kind and our breakfast was fantastic. We cruised through the beach and discovered Lucas outgrew his flip flops as we were putting them on! Gap to the rescue with some cool new shark flip flops!
Embarkation was long but smooth, thank you baby Jesus for gummy bears, granola bars and silly songs! The hour and a half wait in line to get onto the ship could have been a nightmare for these rugrats. Lucas was the most popular kid in line and made about 500 friends. The state rooms weren’t ready of course so we just cruised the sundeck and waited for the arrival of our in-laws to join!
Yada-yada-yada… it was wonderful. Enjoy some of these photos.
Belize
Panama Canal
The locks into Gatun Lake
Costa Rica Banana Plantation
Costa Rica
Roatan Bay
Little French Key
Honduras
Little French Key
Swinging
Gutamala
Gutamala
Guatamala
Hot Springs
Belize
Belize
Mexico
Costa Maya
Mexico
Parents looking normal.
The cruise deck
This is more like us.
Did I mention there was plenty to drink……?
We had so many great experiences and not enough pictures. We did splurge and utilized the photography on the ship. Free sitting fee and no obligation to buy but damn they looked good, how could we not?! We had Marco and Michael from Perspective Photography Studios follow us around the beach in Belize. Wowza, they captured some candid moments I couldn’t have dreamed of!
Overall, we had such a great time. We look forward to the next family vacation, it just won’t be quite so long….
I’ll totally drop a line in for our travel agent too. Again, she set us up for such a good trip and even spoiled us with a little gift before we set sail. Our Peek Family bag had a few items to help us stay organized, a shoe caddie to hold well our shoes and other large items (sunblock, my flatiron, etc.) for the cabin so there wasn’t clutter all over the place, lanyards to keep hold of our cruise cards and cruise tags for our luggage to be brought up to our room.