Zachary's Birthday at Sea

Zach's 11th birthday was our last full day on the ferry coming to Washington.  It started off wonderfully.  We got up, had breakfast in our little sitting area, and proceeded to lounge around for the rest of the morning.  It was really quite nice.  We were getting very confident we had the hang of this whole thing.

Then the boat started to hit some open waters and we were all kind of down for awhile.  I'm happy to report that I did not get sick once during all of our time on the water.  I am amazed by this since during this time I was feeling just on the verge of losing it.  Charlie and Brooke were feeling a little nauseous and even Zach had to crawl into the bathroom and sip water but he held on.  Now Miles was another story all together.  He started looking a little green and then Charlie started talking about getting greasy cheeseburgers and fries for lunch and that was the end of that.  Charlie was even able to move about and take photos of everyone....lucky us! So here is a photo of the boys hunkered down while we waited out the rocking of the boat.

Now after a few hours of closed curtains and napping we were able to resume our birthday festivities for Zach.  It went really well.  We had party snacks, a cake, presents....

Decorations for a party atmosphere...

We even had party games.  We invented a little game called "bomb the boat"... a kind of pin the torpedo on the ferry game.  Brooke kept yelling lets play "bomb the boat" again.  We had to shush her many times as not to draw attention to ourselves. Here is Zach playing the game, with a pair of pajama pants as a blindfold...

Here is Zach pretending to blow out the candles on his cake.  He was a very good sport about some of the adjustments we had to make because we were on the ferry.  We were not taking a chance on the whole candles thing as we were almost to our destination and didn't feel like delaying our return to the lower 48.

We were also able to go to the dining room and have a wonderful sit down dinner with a greatview of the water and surrounding mountains to round out the day.  It was really very nice and Zach was excited to open up his many presents and to be able to celebrate his big day.

So this is the final shot of us.  None of us seem too much worse for the wear.  It has been really rather enjoyable!  Team Nowak survives!!!!