Edinburgh

We took a trip up to Edinburgh while I was there and even though we all had colds and the weather was beyond freezing it was so worth it. I'd love to go back there sometime in the summer and enjoy seeing everything again. The whole city is just full of history and you feel like taking a picture of every single building, street, alley and shop as it's all so full of character. We just had a hard time pulling our hands out of our gloves long enough to snap as many pics as we'd have liked to.
Besides visiting the awesome castle, we took a guided bus tour through the city, the only intelligent way of seeing as much as possible in the bitter cold with two babies. That was great fun! The tour guide entertained us with all sorts of stories and gave us a brief history of as much of the city as he could. I think one could spend weeks wandering the streets of Edinburgh just taking it all in.

Well, I wont bore you by posting all of my pictures, but here's a couple.

The Edinburgh castle. A real deal castle. I just wished I had my boys with me, they would've loved it.
here's a pic from the inside.


This, rather regular building for Edinburgh, happens to be a hotel.

A William Wallace actor on the streets, entertaining the tourists.

Jo and I, with our two munchkins, met up with Natasha in York for a day of sightseeing. It is such an awesome city with so much history. I love old buildings and had such fun walking through the town.

A very old house. Note how everything on it is crooked, even the window frame.

This is a street called "the Shambles" and it was rebuilt in 1400 to look like it does now. It was around at the time of William the Conqueror.


Warming up after our little trek through the town. Here's Nat and Dylan. I really understood why the British love their tea so much and why it's the solution to all of life's problems, when it's so cold, you've just got to have tea.


Jo and Dylan.

England

I thought it about time to put up some pics of my trip to England :D. Well, I had a great time and totally enjoyed myself. It was freeeeeeezing cold, but still beautiful and loads of fun!

Dylan and Jojo, two cute cousins having fun!

This was their typical play time routine, Dylan climbing all over Jojo and her contendedly being squished.

This was Dylan's camera smile. As soon as he'd see the camera he'd put on this hillarious smile. Such a little charmer!

Jojo making friends with her greatgrandma.

There's that camera smile again.

The cutest little rascal ever!

Jojo, having lunch at a nice english pub.

another family adventure

We recently were able to get a sailing boat at a give away price, it needed some repairs and there is still more to do on it. but we decided to take it for a test run this family day. So kenny and myself and Sam and Adrian took it out for a run. Here are some pics to tell the story.

Here we are all hitched up and pulling out.

Here we are at Boerne Lake getting ready to drop it in the water. The boat is 14 ft Hobie cat style. It was a beautiful windy day.


We had it out for the morning and learned how to use the front sail. It went pretty fast and everything seem to work well. There is a small dock there so we moored the boat for lunch. Sorry i don't have more sailing pictures of the boat. The only time i was dry and had my camera was when i was on the shore.

We figured out how to use the Jibe and got it to tack pretty good. We added the main sail and it really got going fast. The lake suddenly got quite small. Sorry I did not get any pictures of both sails up.
Over all we are very happy with the boat and it seems to work well. We will do some more repairs on it and give it a name. Something like the flying Dutchmen or something like that.
I really want to teach the boys to sail with it, But i gotta learn first so i got some books on it and we will see how it goes. Keep you posted.

Last stop Half moon Kay.

The ship could not get near the dock so it dropped anchor half a mile out. Here is a pic of the side right as we were stepping on to the ferry to go across.

Here we are making our way just Alan and me, Kenny stayed on board and rested. It had been raining that morning so it was a little overcast. But thankfully it stayed dry the rest of the day.

The docking area for the ferries was this very narrow little channel, I guess the island is very exposed so they built this little harbor to protect from the serious storms you can get out here. By the way the island belongs to the Holland America shipping line so everything here is geared to the ships passengers.

Here is a view of the beach, with its beautifully whites sands and clear water.

They had all these kids slides etc on the island which Alan really enjoyed.

This little hut marked the spot for viewing stingrays so we hung out there a while till we saw some.

The stingrays were harmless and you could go down and touch them for a small fee.

Alan having a small snack before heading back, they had free food on the island, courtesy of the cruise line.

Here we are heading back to the ship at the end of a day of fun and exploring on the island.

Our last sunset of the cruise, and that concludes are cruise blog updates. Adios till next time

Stay tuned for new updates from Leila's trip to England.

5th day Spent at Sea enroute to Halfmoon Cay

We spent this day at sea leisure’s hanging around the ship. Here is an old cannon in the casino that the boys though was pretty cool.

Here is Alan engaged in his favorite on board activity, they had a free ice cream bar, so we must confess, we had quite a bit of ice cream on the cruise. But we made up for it at the meals with plenty of fresh vegetables and meat etc.

Here is a picture of the other pool on the ship its got a roll back roof and today it was rolled back to let the sun in, so we got a good picture of it. They also had a couple of fun show and tell events featuring the history of pirates in the Caribbean. And also one about rum running that was big in the area in the early 19th century (they mentioned Horace Alderman in the presentation.)

Here we are minus Kenny (he wasn't feeling so good) all dressed up to eat in the 5 star Rotterdam restaurant. Unfortunately Alan did not enjoy the experience one bit, but besides that it was enjoyable. But I must admit fine dinning is not for young kids. Though they should get the practice.

Here we are with Susan and Grace who are also missionaries with us in San Antionio. We soon pulled the curtains back and enjoied a great sunset as we ate some of the best Itialian i have had yet.



Next stop Half moon Cay, then home to Leila and the girls. Boy, how i missed them.

St Thomas day 4 of the cruise

We arrived safely at St Thomas around six in the morning. At around 8:00 we heard announcements that there was a electrical fire abroad the ship. So the boys and I promptly decided to get off the ship and wait it out.

So here is a pic of us exploring things at the dock while we wait for the all clear, before we can go back on board and eat breakfast etc.

Eventually we got the all clear and went back to our cabin where Kenny began to throw up and he end up staying in bed for the rest of the day. In all we started our day off in St Thomas with plenty of excitement.

Alan and myself eventually went ashore and the first thing we noticed was these large iguana’s sunning themselves on the rocks near the docks. There must have been a dozen of them. Anyway we took a pic of just this one.

We walked down to a very posh little marina and they had all these really nice expensive sail boats, so we walked around talking to the different people about their boats and we took lots of pictures. So most of this update will be pictures of really nice expensive boats.

This boat was really unique it had belonged to General Patton and was over 70 years old its called the "when and if". It was being wintered here, down from Martha's vineyard. It is double planked with oak on the inside and African mahogany on the outside. It took a crew of six to sail her as everything was manual unlike the newer sail boats where the sails are all motorized and computer controlled.

When walked back to the ship the crew were having a full evacuation drill. So they lowered all the life boats one a time and tested them. It was not every day you see a ship drop its life boats so we stayed to watch.

Here is another posh sail boat belonging to the rich and famous, the security at the marina would not even let us come close to it. But I got a good picture of it from the deck of the Maasdam.

Here we are pulling out of St Thomas its about 4 in the afternoon (apparently some of the ships passengers got left on the island as the ship will only wait about 20 minutes past departure time for any late comers.)

Here is another pic of the "When and If" it really is quite the classic boat isn't it?

Another nice sailing boat

Another picture of the island and all the moored sailing boats taken in the afternoon as we were leaving.

There were all these small barren rocky islands around St Thomas which looked neat in the setting sun.

One of those beautiful sunsets at sea that we enjoied almost every day.