Pirate King Shirley... and other such wonderfulness...

            Ok, one thing I learned on our week long family cruise was that some of the funnest and most moments were unplanned.  One of these moments occured on a night when I was feeling not too great and after tucking our girls into bed in our cabin we headed out with our books and some cocoa mix ready to just sit around like an old couple drinking our hot chocolate on a deck somewhere and reading...  Well long story short, we ended up in one of my favorite places on the ship called "The Dome" dancing under strobe lights to a live band that played everything from "Love Shack" to "Lady Gaga's Bad Romance"... our books and cocoa were left untouched on a nearby table.  Having five kids Mick and I had never had the chance to go out dancing like this, so to put it lightly... I freaking loved it :) 

Us ready to dance at the Dome















     





Me on another night outside the Dome





















            Another great memory, probably my favorite of the entire trip was when we went to the "Pirate Show" in the international show lounge.  Once again, that night we weren't even planning on going to the show.  Wendy and Jeff had volunteered to take our girls to see the fun singing and dancing Pirate Show put on by the cruise entertainers, which we all knew the kids would thouroughly enjoy while Mick and I were wanting to go check out the Kareoke scene...  Well last minute we ended up changing out minds and staying for the pirate show... and man oh man I am glad we did... because if we hadn't I would have never met Pirate King Shirley... the SEXIEST pirate alive. 
       During these performances they love to include the audience and pull people up onto the stage etc... And as the show went on they had done it several times, forcing people to compete in funny pirate themed competions while the audience would cheer them on such as catching fish and drinking the "rum", revealing the pirate map and finding the treasure etc...  Throughout the show I kept looking next to me at Mick who seemed pretty worn out and tired after a long day.  So when the lead pirate wench shouted out to the audience that she needed some strong burely men for the next competition I jokingly looked over at Mick and said, "Your a strong, burely man!"... which Jeff, who was sitting behind me heard, as well as our girls who were sitting all around us.  So when the pirates started scouting through the audience everyone in our row started pointing over to Mick and shouting, "take him! take him!"... and before I or Mick new it he was being carted up onto the stage!  I felt a bit bad for him when this happened, having seen only a few minutes before how worn out and tired he was...  But he took it well... Well BETTER than well! 
        When the pirate captain went over to ask Mick what his name was, before Mick could answer he pulled the microphone away from Mick and said, Shirley?...  Soon they started a contest between him and the other poor man brought up onto the stage to see who could put on their pirate clothes the fastest, and I started frantically trying to take pictures.  Then to my surprise Mick won!  And the whole group of entertainers broke out in song about Pirate King Shirley as they adorned him with a cape and everything... Then it got even better as I got to watch the pirate wench wrap Mick's arms around her and sing "A little less conversation, a little more action"... hmmm....  But truely the part that made it all so fun was when Mick broke out into his very own dance and the crowd just broke into applause for their awesome Pirate King Shirley...  It was a hillarious night and later on we heard that some people actually had thought he was a planned part of the show because he had been so entertaining! 
          Later after the cruise was over and all of us where deboarding the ship some fellow passengers recognised Mick and shouted over to him "Hey! It's Pirate King Shirley!"... Such a great memory.

Mick up on stage

Pirate King Shirley all dressed up...

The girls with Mick

Me getting my smooch from the Pirate King...