Lindsay's 10th Birthday Bash

Lindsay celebrated her 10th birthday party a couple weekends ago and she was joined but her family and friends at local gymnastics place. As you can tell, most of the real fun was had by the older kids namely Trish and Jon. If I could post video here I would post some of Steve doing his floor exercises. Too darn funny. I wish the blog had video posting. Oh well, our lil girl is 10 and we can all hardly believe it. Enjoy the pics.

Nick's 5th Birthday party

We headed down to Trish and Rob's a couple weekends ago for Nick's 5th birthday party. He was thrilled to see all his family at his house and was of course thrilled with the gifts too. He is such a sweet kid and a joy to be around. All of our children are growing up so fast!! Here are some pics of the day! Jo, Grandma and Nana made the trip as so did Janet and Steve with kids in tow. Ali and Mike made the trip and i wish I had a picture of Ali but she can be seen in the background in the first picture standing next to Mike. I think you can tell which person she is. Shes due to deliver her first child Labor Day weekend. Next post will be of Lindsays 10th birthday party

Cruise dining staff and general pics

in one of the other blogs I wrote about our wait staff. They were fantastic. They remembered our names from the first night and made the kids feel so important. These two women seemed to work day and night. When you contract on a cruise ship its for 7 months. You leave home and don't go back. They work 70 hours a week over the 7 days and I all areas of food service. Its impressive how they managed to keep a smile on whenever I saw them. I would see them at out 8pm diner service then again at the midnight buffet and then at 8am breakfast! Crazy hours. I couldn't help be curious on how they could leave home 7 months at a time. Well having your boyfriend living with you will help pass the time. They allow couples to share rooms onboard. Nice way to get away from a crummy country and cruise the western Caribbean. These two women were awesome and Jon really like the shorter of the the two you see. irina was her name and she was part of the nightly diner entertainment. She would get up on a 4 foot round serving stations and dance during the show the wait staff would perform everynight. Jon took some video of her dancing. She was very entertaining and so was Ramona from Romania. She was the head waiter in our area and was fantastic. Catering to every need during our diners. I cant so how much we enjoyed their presence on our trip. We have exchanged emails and I hope they read this blog and write to us keeping us informed.

every night towel figure

Every night when we got back to our cabin the room was neatly made and a 'towel creature' laying on the bed. lindsay loked forward to getting these everynight. they were pretty cool the way they twisted and rolled the hand and bath towels into these creations. if you look closely at one of the pics you can see lindsay has a white stripe on the top of her head. she didnt wear a hat one day and sunburned her scalp so we needed to put some creme on it overnight.

formal night diner

These pics are from the formal night. yup, got jon to wear something other then a Texas tshirt and baggy shorts. lindsay is of course no probelm to dress up. they actually met us dressedfor diner. they were late to get back to the room so deb and i left them the clothes out to wear and directions to meet us the main hall. surprisingly they did it. This was the night we met the captain and the hotel mamager who was portugese. he was a great guy and helped us out in getting a great table to our dining time.

More Cruise Pics.

Cruise 2005

This was a trip we had planned for months and final the day came. The kids were really into the trip but Deb had her reservations. She was reality concerned with the motion sickness idea. We all know she has a hard time taking the escalator nevermind 7 days at sea. But she was willing to take one for the team. And she wasn't sorry!!! We sailed out right after hurricane Dennis had batter the western side in FL. We were pleased to see it pass well to the east of us as we departed Miami. We sailed the first day in fantastic weather and calm seas. The kids were completely into having some freedom. Jon and Lindsay made friends quickly and were out on their own a good portion of the day. Jon was out most nights til 2am. Yup that's right 2 in the morning. He was out with friends in the he arcade onboard. You can see from the pictures we had a great wait staff in the dining room. One was from Romania and the other from the Ukraine. They were really fun and were teaching the kid's basic words in their language. The best parts were the shore excursion. Lindsay and Deb did the swim with the dolphins and Jon and I did a Helmut dive. We all went to a sea turtle farm and snorkeling. The week went far to fast. We sailed back just ahead of hurricane Emily. She pounded the areas we had just visited. I hope the pictures do the vacation justice. MORE PICS IN THE NEXT POST. I CAN ONLY POST 4 AT A TIME

Jons graduation

This post is a little out of order but Jon insisted we post this picture. Its of his 8th grade graduation from St johns. 9+ long years and some fantatic friendships. He realized that some of his classmates are heading in different direction then him and will miss them. He's proud of the friendships and memories he created and will have forever.