Spring Break 2011: Baltimore

It all started with me telling Richard that I wanted him to take a few days completely off of work for Spring Break and just spend time with us doing fun things. And Richard honestly replied that he couldn't NOT work when he was at home - since home is also his office. "Fine", I replied, "Then we'll leave!" So, we did. Off we went to Baltimore where we scored a two bedroom suite hotel room, including kitchen and dining table, for the price of other one bedroom hotel rooms in the area. Below is a great picture of the view outside our window ... Or maybe not. But, it's there. Baltimore was just outside our window.

The first place we went was back to the National Aquarium (where we went with Ruth a few weeks ago) to let the kids take their time looking at the things we had rushed them through before.
This time we even checked out their Rain Forest exhibit.
Later in the day we walked around Baltimore's Inner Harbor to enjoy the ships and sights there.
The next day we headed to Port Discovery Children's Museum. Another "don't miss" Baltimore attraction.

The boys enjoyed running around from exhibit to exhibit, working in a pretend diner, building domino trails to see cause and effect, and blowing the train whistle. Naomi and Daddy climbed, crawled, and bounced their way to the top of a three story jungle gym thingy. Here is Naomi, triumphantly at the very tippy top.

Richard and I also escaped for a night on our own. We were supposed to see a Yankees/Orioles baseball game, but unfortunately it was rained out. But we enjoyed our seafood dinner and silly movie anyway.

The highlight of the vacation, by far, was on our last morning there. We went on an hour long "Pirate Cruise". We stepped onto the great ship "Fearless" where we were first dressed up as pirates. Even the littlest pirate, Sammy.
The kids were given pirate names (Nice Naomi and Pirate Poochy - Asher was cowering on Richard's lap at that point because of the hanging skeletons) and pirate tattoos.
It was a little chilly that morning, so Pirate Sammy stayed bundled up most of the time.

But the Pirate Parents took care of him.

This cruise was very elaborately choreographed. We learned to talk like pirates (Aaargh!), dance like pirates, and play pirate games (like limbo and pass the coconut head). Then we discovered that Mad Dog Mike had stolen our treasure! And we spotted him in his red dingy! So we shot water cannons at him.



Then we negotiated a trade with Mad Dog Mike - the treasure for a skeleton we had that he apparently admired. But in the end we tricked him (because, after all, we're pirates!) and didn't give him the skeleton.

Then we passed out the treasure! Naomi had the same ring as one of the main pirates!

And Asher even perked up a bit about the time we were shooting water cannons and joined in the fun.

It was seriously the coolest thing I've even done with my children. It was a total blast! One last photo (I think this is how pirates flip the bird).

The entire week was a complete success. We enjoyed being together so much, we bonded, we played, we laughed. It just was seriously fabulous.

No Spring Break will ever live up to this fabulous adventure. ...At least for a year...