Heading home from the Caribbean

Another sea day and we get to just relax and let Oscar spend all of

 his time at kid’s club. He does spend some time with us on the top deck with a great sunset, playing beanbag toss, but it ends up being too windy to play putt putt because the golf ball blows right back at you. The older kids are in the lip sync 

 battle tonight that is the closing show for the cruise, so we’re all going to that, but Oscar is afraid that he will miss his last party at kid’s club.  We have to keep reassuring him that we will make it in time and I’m shocked that he doesn’t bum rush the stage when the other kids are on there because he’s such a stage hog usually.  Lena, Ethan and Brenden did great with their dancing on stage and we have a nice last night trying to find pictures of us in the

 gallery, using our drinks package to the hilt and getting John scared out of his mind that we’re in trouble when there is a summons for me to come to guest services.  What are they going to do at this point, kick me off at the next dock? 

 They’re doing that anyway.  It turns out that my credit card through our offsite booker didn’t carry over, so they need a credit card for me and Julie, so no worries.  With the final bill, I find that I averaged 14 drinks a day between having some myself and getting them for 

 Julie and John too.  So, I feel like I got my money’s worth there. Oscar gets a stuffed puppy from kid’s club for being such a stellar camper and I want to tell his counselors that if they had seen him at the dinner table every night, they wouldn’t have awarded him

 that toy, but I’m just so thankful that he liked the club this time.   We usually are left behind on debarkation by the Schillims, but this time we all get to get off together.  We have a nice leisurely breakfast, head up to the top deck to finally play putt putt when it’s not as

     windy before being called to leave the boat.  Customs ends up being a breeze and we hang around the port for another hour because we have a lot of time to kill before our plane out of Miami airport and found out that we can’t check our bag in until 4 hours before our flight.  But we head to the airport anyway and find out that we can check it, I guess they’re used to

 cruisers in Miami doing this.  Our TSA precheck has been automatically uploaded by American Airlines from last time and we get to hung out in the cool kids’ area, a large empty boarding area for Oscar

 to play with his cars in and us to catch up with emails and internet.  It was a surprisingly fast 8 hours in Miami Dade airport and the Schillims land in Chicago when we’re getting ready for boarding.  We land in GR with Oscar asleep and my ear hurting from not popping, but are determined to get in a 

 a car and head to the Schillims without bothering them, but are refused by our Uber driver, refuse to pay the cab $42 for a short trip like this, are so discombobulated by the extreme cold and lateness that

   we end up having Dave come get us at the airport since we can’t seem to think through options at this point.  Oscar is punch-drunk in the back seat, saying “Davey” and laughing maniacally throughout the trip back to the house to pick up our car.  We do get to see our beds at 1am finally and are glad that we didn’t have snow or ice to contend with on the way home.  In fact, there’s no snow in Michigan which is a little sad.  Glad to be home, but I already miss the warmth of the sun down there.  Even though Oscar has changed his mind about moving to Georgia or Florida now that he’s home with all of his toys here.