Okay we painted the boat.

So here is the finished product. I painted it green and black and put carpet down on the seats.

Ashy and I and our little dog spent the afternoon on the lake and had a great time.

we traded out the boat.

It was a sad day but we sold the fly dutchman the boys wanted something that would go faster. So we got ourselves a little duck boat with a 20 hp outboard. It goes pretty fast like 30 miles an hour.


Here are some pictures of us playing with it. It does tubing and i will use it to teach the boys wakeboarding. We will probably paint it green.

Jojo Christmas

Jojo says "Hi" to everyone out there, She is talking quite a bit now and getting into literally everything. She is such a sweetie and loves to talk to anyone she meets.

Decorating her own Christmas tree.

Jojo says "bye" to everyone in internet land.

Happy birthday Alan

Alan turned 8 and we had his party today. He has grown up so much and his favourite things to do are : computer games, reading, legos, playing wii. To all his friends Alan wants to say hi.

Look who decided to surprise us today.

Jolynn has been very hesitant to walk for the longest time. She would take a few steps with much help and encouragement, but for the most part refused to walk at all. Well, today she just started walking around the dinning room. It was really cool cause we were getting a little concerned about when she would finally walk. So we pulled out the camera and here we have it.

Enjoy.

Guess where we went?

We were able to take some time off at the beach with the kids in Corpus Christi. It was a blast and we had tons of fun. Here we are on Mustang Island.

Jolynn at one of the places we ate dinner at. I think it was golden Corral. Joylnn is getting so cute and makes friends wherever she goes.

We had a nice Hotel right on the beach, there were tons of seagulls and the kids enjoyed feeding them whenever we had lunch on the water front.

Here we are at a local attraction. The USS Lexington http://www.usslexington.com/ It was massive and we spent a couple of hours there as there was so much to see.


Kenny playing the part. Actually alot of the movie Pearl Harbor was filmed on this vessel with planes taking off the flight deck etc.

Kenny in the brig

Ashy pooh busy posing for the camera. Actually she is really into posing and ever since she watched Hanna Montana the posing has really been taken up a notch.


Here we are on the flight deck. There was massive steam powered catapult for shooting the planes off the deck. We are standing in front of some of the aircraft. It was all quite fascinating.

Another cool plane, with the folding wing feature. Kenny and Alan really had a blast on the flight deck.

This is the island which was part of the flight deck. We climbed to the top where the helm was and the captains cabin.

We brought the flying Dutchmen along, we had a great time sailing it. Ocean sailing is so much easier than sailing on the lakes. The wind on the ocean is very consistent and you can literally go for miles and miles without having to turn around so that was cool to do.
Mom, thanks for sending the Frisian flag from Indonesia. Quite a few people asked about the flag and why we called the boat the flying Dutchmen. So that made for quite a bit of interesting conversation. It all seemed very interconnected when we explained that the flag was Frisian and that the flying Dutchman legend was based on a Frisian Captain who was the fastest in sailing to the Indonesia for spices. We meet quite a few interesting people that way.

Jo-jo loved the water, and the sand. she was literally fearless and could not get enough of the beach and the ocean. She came back with a nice little tan.
Here is our trusty van which we drove for miles and miles right on the beach cause the sand was quite firm we were feet from the waves most of the run. The van has just reached 100k and is still going strong. We had it packed to the gills for the trip and it towed the boat nicely. Its probably going to be time to get rid of it soon, but for now it really does its thing.

Alan clowning around at the museum of history and science.

Here we are on the live size replicas of Christopher Columbus’s ships. These are built exactly to scale and were working replicas that they sailed over from Spain in the early 1990s.

Alan trying out the different gear on the ship. It was amazing how very small these boats actually were and they had like 30 crew on each one, with like zero privacy.

Ashy doing her thing again.

More neat things to do and see.

Here we are on board one of the ships. The Nina i think it was. The Spaniards back then were all very short. So the cabins were built quite low. Like very low.

They had all sorts of things for the kids to try that demonstrated the machines and technology they had back then.

Inside the Museum was all sorts of data about Christopher Columbus and his voyage. Which is just what Alan has been studying in his history books. So he really got alot out of it.

They had a treasure hunt organised by the Mueusm which the kids particpated in, they did quite well at finding the answers and of course stocking up on treasure.

We went to the Pinta replica which was moored nearby and is still out on the water. These things were really quite amazing. we could not climb on this one.

Here is a little vdo clip of our time at the beach. Hope you enjoy it.

Kenny's 10th Birthday

Kenny made it all the way to 10 years. Hurrah for Kenny. We found a nice tool set for Kenny to help him take his handyman/carpentry to the next level.

Leila's awesome creation once again.

All that fun. We had a wii bowling competition, then a outside treasure hunt, winding it all up with cake and ice cream.

Jo-jo just could not get enough.