The Cruise!! part one

This is the story of one of the craziest, if not THE craziest thing I have ever done.  Back in December my parents announced to the family that they would be going on an 18 month mission for our church the following fall and so in celebration of that and my Dad's 60th birthday they paid for all the adults to go on a cruise to Alaska together!  I didn't know at the time that I was pregnant but I had an idea that I might be.  I mentioned this to my parents for planning purposes but at that point I had no concrete evidence so they went ahead and locked in the date.  So it turns out that I was pregnant and my due date was Sept 5th and the cruise was August 17-24.  That's right, my baby was due 12 days after we got home:) I completely planned on going since I have never had any of my babies more than one day before my due date but as we looked more into the policy I realized I wasn't supposed to go past 24 weeks of pregnancy.  BOO!!  So I was not going to go.  As the months past and it got closer and every one was more and more excited I was so bugged that I was going to miss out on all the fun.  So my Mom and I were chatting one day and we came up with a brilliant plan to sneak on the cruise.  The first concern though was to make sure it was medically safe for me to go.  So my mom called a friend of hers who has been and OB/GYN for several years and explained the situation.  She said there was absolutely no risk of anything going wrong with the pregnancy as a result of going on a cruise, whoever, she did say that going anywhere that close to your due date is slightly insane and that there was a risk that I would go into labor on the boat.  So after I knew that nothing bad would happen to my baby as a result of being on a cruise I decided to go for it!  My mom went out and bought a 42 DDD bra from good will and sewed pillows into the boob spots and then got me a giant moo moo to go over the bra.  Our thinking was that if the boobs stuck out as far as my belly then you wouldn't be able to tell that I was pregnant; I would just look really fat.  

So here I am in all my giant bra moo moo glory!!  BTW if any of you ever use this picture for blackmail purposes I will kill you:)  So I talked to several of my friends who had cruised recently to ask if they were asked about pregnancy at check in because I really didn't want to have to lie point blank to anyone.  They all assured me that they were not asked that and then talking to another friend I learned that as long as they allow you on board and then find out you are pregnant they can't kick you off.  All of this being said, I was pretty freaked out while we were standing in line waiting to check in but it all worked out and no one asked me anything about pregnancy so I didn't even have to lie!!

We were at sea for Friday and Saturday and ate tons of yummy food, played games, went to a few of the shows and mostly just did what Monsons do best, talked.  All day!  It was so much fun and although I really missed my kids, it was amazing to be able to have as much uninterrupted adult conversation as I wanted to.  

The first port stop was in Juneau on Sunday.  We all sort of wanted to do different things in Juneau so we split off for the day.  Garrett and Ben were very excited to go fishing so after we got them off and on their way, Molly and I wandered around Juneau exploring the cute shops.

We stuck together since we are the two preggos (she was only 20 weeks so she was actually allowed on board:) and we were both coming down with a cold.  It was really fun though and we got to see the Medenhall glacier from afar.  We were sad to find out at dinner that we could have gone with the others to "hike" to the glacier.  For obvious reasons we weren't feeling like we should do the 7 mile hike but as it turned out they were driven right up to the trail and the trail up to the glacier was totally flat and we could have easily walked it.  Oh well.  At least we got to see some really pretty pictures of it.  My mom and Abby and Matt went on a dog mushing excursion.  That looked really cool too.  Everyone got to do fun things and it was just cool to be in Alaska!

 The next port stop was the next day in Skagway.  This is us at the port in the morning.  We all went on an excursion together on the yukon and white pass railway.  It started out with a bus ride all the way up the pass into Canada.  The views were amazing.

We stopped for lunch at this little lodge and ate Bison chili.  It was really yummy and the view was beautiful.  There was a cool suspension bridge going across a huge river right behind the restaurant.

After lunch we boarded the train and took that back through the mountains down to Skagway.  The train is built right into the mountains so it is a little scary at some points since you are looking straight down into valleys way below the train track.

 This was one of the picture stops along the drive with the whole gang!  Don't mind my nine month preggo fat self:)

This was a shot from the train

Right before we drove into Canada we made a stop to see these crazy rock statue things.  They are called anuk shuks.  Our awesome bus driver/tour guide told us he would give a prize to whatever group or person could build the tallest anuk shuk.  So naturally being Monsons and therefore highly competetive, we took up the challenge!

Here was the building crew.  The rest of us gathered rocks to help.  After much effort and strategic planning we came out victorious!  

We had amazing weather!  It was sunny and beautiful which was really awesome since we were told that a lot of the time it is too cloudy to see all the waterfalls and mountains along the bus ride.

How awesome is this train conductor?  Garrett had to get a picture with him:)

That's the train tracks going across the falls!

It was really kind of crazy thinking about all the thousands of men that hiked this trail with a ton of supplies strapped to horses backs all in the pursuit of gold.  Unfortunately most of them never found any.  

 Seriously the views along the drive and the train were amazing!  

 Our tour guide was a student at BYU Idaho and he was really cool. 

 He told us that the horses that were used for the gold miners were usually old and sick to begin with and then after loading them so full of supplies, most of them ended up dying.  They also had to travel through something like 14 feet of snow in the winter.  It sounded like a pretty miserable journey.

 I was happy to get to ride on the comfortable bus and train to view the beautiful scenery myself.  I don't think I would have lasted long back then:)

After the excursion was over we got to walk around Skagway and shop.  It was really small so it didn't take too long.  One of the facts we learned on the bus was that there are no doctors in Skagway and that when women there are pregnant they make them fly to Juneau 2 months before they have their babies in case there are any complications since there are no hospitals there either.  I have to admit it made me a little nervous to hear that in my "current condition":)  We headed back to the boat and set sail for Tracey Arm Fjord the next day and of course had lots more yummy food!