Mediterranean Cruise: Day 11 (Messina, Sicily)

Adventure-wise, this was a fairly low-key day. But we had some fun at breakfast! After we had placed our orders, we handed out envelopes to the 6 older children, telling them this was their Christmas surprise but they had to figure it out for themselves. Inside each envelope was a slip of paper with a picture on it...

...a spider,
...an octopus,
...a squid,
...an 8-ball on a pool table,
...a magic 8 ball,
...and a hand of crazy eights.

Grandma J's eyes got really wide as she realized what message we were giving, but she didn't say anything out loud. Charis was shortly behind her, and a happy gasp escaped from her as she asked, "Are we having another baby?!" Slowly, one by one, the kids realized what the pictures had in common, and it was delightful to see their reactions and know that they were truly excited to hear that another sibling was on the way. I honestly had been wondering if anyone would figure it out earlier, because my clothes were honestly getting tighter and tighter even the week and a half we were on the cruise! But it seemed that Ted and I had kept the secret pretty well!

After breakfast we were ready to head out. This was another wandering-around day. We thought it would be nice to go inside a church on Christmas Day, so we set our sights on a large domed church at the top of a hill, navigating toward it as best as we could. We reached it and learned that it was a shrine, not a church! But it was a lovely building and situated in a location that gave us fantastic views.

We didn't have long in this port, and so we simply made our way back down to the main square, where we bought a couple of little souvenirs and ducked into the back of a Christmas mass that was finishing up in a beautiful cathedral.

It was a brief stop, but I guess at least we can say we set foot in Sicily during our stint in Italy!