Once again, I decided the best way to celebrate the holiday was to ignore it and instead, we traveled. This one was the big one. The kids and I spent the week in between Christmas and the New Year on a cruise.

Believe it or not, even though my dislike of the giant rat is well documented and I shudder every time we send our dollars his way, I booked the trip through Disney. My reasons for this were twofold.

One, I knew that there would be plenty of onboard activities dedicated to the kids, which would allow me to take some much-needed time to myself without feeling guilty about abandoning them.

Two, Steve and I had taken a Disney cruise as a sort of pre-honeymoon, and although we had always talked about taking the kids on one, the pandemic put the kibosh on our plans, and with all of the kids’ activities and the dogs, there hadn’t really been time to plan another one.

I wanted to spend a vacation where we could take as much downtime as we needed, without worrying about missing out on something.

Our cruise had a few days at sea, which were the perfect solution to do as much or as little as we wanted to do. A and I both planned to catch up on our reading. I think he polished off about 6 books. I got through three and a half.

G discovered that we had access to the entire Disney library of movies on our cabin TV and got us all sucked into a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie marathon. For some reason, maybe their semi-recent trip to Disney with the marching band, it finally dawned on my kids that there was a link between the movie series and the actual ride at Disney World. “Wow, they made a whole ride based on this movie,” one of them said, and all three jaws dropped when I explained that, no, in fact, the ride came first.

Regardless of what activities the kids did or didn’t pursue during the day, I instituted the rule that we would all sit down together for dinner. This is something we’d always done as a family before, but have gotten out of the habit of doing this last year.

The change of scenery and the charming waitstaff really helped us focus on having fun together and after a meal or two, we found ourselves telling crazy Dad stories and being able to laugh about our memories.

We had not been able to bring ourselves to do this before, and while the conversation hasn’t flowed quite as easily now that we’re back home, I am grateful that that dam has begun to break a little.

When Steve and I had taken the cruise, it had been during Lent, and Steve always gave up dessert for Lent. While I usually tried to support his annual fast, I was not about to miss out on dessert on a cruise ship, especially when chocolate lava cake was on the menu. It was truly the best piece of cake I’d ever had in my life, up to that point, and I begged him to cheat on his Lenten promise.

Steve, being the principled guy that he was, would not do it. I think I talked about that cake for years, and I frequently said that we would take that cruise again, just so he could eat the cake this time. I really wasn’t too surprised to find chocolate lava cake on the menu one night. The kids, having heard the story a million times, couldn’t wait to try it. No one was disappointed.

We had some other new adventures. The kids tried snorkeling for the first time, and we had the chance to swim with sea turtles. As expected, G had to be dragged out of the lagoon in order to get back to our bus on time.

I do believe he would have been perfectly happy to miss the boat. I don’t know yet if he will have a lifelong passion for it, but he has expressed an interest in getting SCUBA certified in the future, and I realized that it’s something that the two of us can enjoy together. Much like G and Steve had their hunting trips, I feel like snorkeling or diving could become “our thing.” A and E enjoyed it as well, but not quite like G did.

E and I had a mother daughter date at the spa and she got her first massage. She’s not entirely sold on it, but she was too young for any of the other “adult” spa services, and by her own decision, too old for the “kid” spa services.

Other than learning that my kids can sweet talk any server into slipping them another dessert, spending time with E was one of the most eye-opening experiences I had. For better or worse, the Disneyfied atmosphere made it painfully clear what an awkward stage of life she’s at. While she still remembers all of her princesses, and fairy tales, she has definitely moved beyond them, but wasn’t quite ready for the teen activities in the teen lounge. I don’t know that I have any answers for her right now other than to ride it out and that things will hopefully get better, but at least I’m much more aware of the challenges she’s facing.

We navigated the perils of trying to travel in December. We shared close quarters for a week. We tried new things, from activities to food. We challenged our new family dynamic. We finally were able to tell some funny stories about Dad without immediately feeling like we said something wrong or crying.

We didn’t wish anyone a Merry Christmas. We slept as late as we wanted to on Christmas morning. We felt a little out of sorts, and we also felt a little more settled in our quest to find a way forward.

As we waited to collect our baggage for the final time, the kids started kicking around some ideas for next year’s trip. I realized that we had actually traveled a lot farther on this trip than to the Caribbean and back.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News.