The Beginning...

Almost exactly a month ago, we left the house in Breckenridge and set out on an epic journey.  We would cover over 10,000 miles by car, plane, ship, bus, kayak, zipline and foot.  And all because people kept falling in love and getting married.  Some of them more recently than others.

Our journey started early on a Thursday morning as we packed up the car and headed down the hill to our first flight - Vancouver.  We would have the afternoon and evening to catch up with the rest of the family before hitting the big boat the next morning.

We looked like this A LOT for about 3 weeks.

 We spent the day wandering around and catching up with family in Vancouver.  We had dinner with a view of the cruise ship loading station...

Ready to go!  We were quite the sight trying to stay together and walk our luggage for 2 blocks to the boat terminal.  But we made it and even made it through our check-in lines fairly quickly.

Finally, after a year of waiting and planning, we were ready to set sail!  We all gathered in Nana and Grampa's suite (only place large enough for 16)  and watched as the boat pulled away from the dock.

Aren't we cute?  (Even if I am sweaty from my run?)

Goodbye Vancouver!

Dinner- night 1.  Everyone got their photos taken by the professionals at dinner except these two so they have to make do with a cell shot.

Our first full day on the boat was at sea.  Which meant free time to do whatever we chose and the girls, Nana and I chose to take the cupcake decorating class that morning.  We were sat in front of a plate that looked like this...

We were then instructed on how to knead, roll, shape and assemble all of the pieces so that the final piece would look like a frog on a lily pad...

I think we nailed it!

Cute, isn't he?

And tasty!

We spent the rest of the afternoon in various states of relaxing until dinner that night at the steakhouse.  The dinner in which it seemed no one wanted their red wine and it all got passed to me as the white was brought around...

Cheers to a great first day!  The next morning, we hit the ground running in Ketchikan.