Since this was big year for Birthdays, Erin turned 30, I turned 60, Dawn turned 70, but my Mom hit 90!  So our family decided that instead of trying to find a place to celebrate at someone’s house, we would take a family cruise to celebrate.  My 3 sisters and 3 brothers were all in on the idea and we got a lot of the grandkids to jump onboard also.  In all we had like 25 people come to help celebrate Mom’s birthday.  My older sister Dawn was sprung from Canada, Jill made us all shirts, Jan served as all around cruise director having done more than thirty cruises, and everyone made plans to all meet in Long Beach for the four night cruise.  So here are just some of the pictures….

Our spot in Joshua Tree…

Girls chilling at my Mom’s….

Pictures from the start of the cruise and Catalina Island…

All the cousins handing together before dinner.  It was really neat to see them spending more time together during the cruise, especially since they are spread out on either coast, bringing them together on the cruise was brilliant.

Erin took some great photos of the entire crew….

Carnival did a great military celebration which for our family means a big deal in that 5 of the seven kids spent time in the Navy with Dean retiring after 20 and I did 30 years…. Jan’s husband Mike, my best friend in High School spent a stint in the Navy and Jills Son Dan also was in the Navy, so it touched all seven kids in some way…

After the cruise we decided to do a last stop at Knott’s Berry Farm.  It had been like 40 years and it was nice to see it again, and we all got together for the famous Chicken Dinner that knott’s is famous for….you can Google it….

Doing the cruise was a great idea, it got 25 of us together, allowed more interaction between family spread across the country and even Canada to get together and interact more in four days than what we would normally have in a decade.  No one was stuck cleaning up, doing dishes for the group and we had such a good time we are thinking about a repeat.  Carnival was very good hosts, they went out of their way to recognize Nana turning 90 and all the family members.  Overall, it was fantastic to see and get to spend time together and celebrate this milestone with 4 generations.