Welcome to Grand Turk

We docked early in the morning and we were off the ship by 9:00 ready to explore the island. We took a couple of pictures of the kids by the ship. Next to the small dock the ship looked massive.

Another picture of us by the ship

Here is a better picture showing the size of the ship, check out the clear water. Grand Turk is supposed to have been the best island on our cruise for snorkeling.

Here are couple more pictures of the island itself so you can get a better idea of what it looked like and how crystal clear the water is.

Here is the beach area where we spent most of the day.

Here is a picture of Kenny snorkeling, one of your team members had a underwater camera so we took a bunch of neat underwater pics.

Another shot with the underwater camera

Yours truely enjoying the limelight

There were all kinds of fish and we had great fun swimming with them and taking underwater pictures.

We also rented a clear bottom Kayak and paddled around. Alan really enjoyed this as that was the only time he saw the sea floor very clearly.

We ended our time on the island in a nice restaurant area. Here is a picture of the boys with our ship in the background from the upstairs of the restaurant.

The boys outside the restaurant.

We had great fun on Grand Turk, and when the cruise was over the boys rated this island as the best of all the ones we visited.

family cruise adventure Day one at Sea

We spent the first day at sea heading to the Grand Turk Island. The weather was good and we all found our sea legs soon enough. The boys did not suffer from sea sickness at all during the whole trip. They actually liked the continuous gentle rocking of the ship. The Maasdam was quite small compared to other cruise ships so it rolled and pitched a bit more than on previous cruises the other members of my team told us.

Here is a picture of the boys ringing the ships bell.

More hanging out around the ship, we did not see anything exotic in the ocean the whole cruise though some of our team claimed to have seen a whale in the water right near the ship. (but that just might have been a good at sea conversation starter ;-D )

The kids liked the way they craved the ships name in the bench (and it seems on every other surface of the ship from the cutlery in the dinning room to your cabin bathrobe) So we took a picture here too.

Here we are hanging out by the pools, they enjoyed the time around the pools a lot one reason was the motion of the ship kept the surface of the pools continually rolling back and forth making small waves.

Here is a better view of the pool at the back of the ship where we spent quite a bit of time. It looks nice and empty now but when the sun was up you could hardly find a free pool chair. We had some amazing sunsets and sunrises on the open sea.

Can't wait tomorrow we land at Grand Turk Island.

Welcome to our family cruise adventure.

The first day of the cruise. We, as in the boys and myself went on a 7 day Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale. Which was like 1600 miles away from San Antonio. So really the first part of the adventure was getting there. Two fun fill days in the van. We travelled through Houston to Beaumont to Pensacola to Tallahassee to Jacksonville then down along the Florida coast to Fort Lauderdale. I had never been out east so it was alot to take in. Over all the boys found the trip quite interesting. We got into Ft Lauderdale around midday on the 2nd of Jan and boarded the ship named the Maasdam in the early afternoon. And got checked into our cabins. Which were nice and comfortable, but a little small like you would expect most cabins to be.

Here is the map of the Islands we went to. First stop was Grand Turk, then San Juan, Puerto Rico, then St Thomas and then to Half moon Cay (pronounced Key) and then home to Ft Lauderdale.

We will feature each of those islands on a separate update so stay tuned.

Here are the boys on the main deck under one of the life boats. There was a lot of detail

and the boys were interested in everything.

Here we are at the front of the ship with one of the ships aux anchors.


One of the other Cruise ships in the harbor from the Holland America line. Our ship sort of looked like this only smaller.

We had a escape drill on the first day and had to stand under our assigned life boat with the rest of the passangers. The best part that the boys enjoied the most was wearing the life jackets.

The boys happy to be alive and on the beginning of our fun carribean adventure.

Kids performing at Christmas

The kids were able to do a number of shows this Christmas which was very special and fun for them. The boys took part in a little play that they did of the Cobblers Guest story and Ashley and Jade sang some carols. They performed in two Assisted Care Facilities and also for all of our friends that help us.

Ashley and Jade singing, "Away in a manger"

Kenny as a poor blind man and Alan as a street sweeper in the Cobblers Guest play

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone we know and love!

Trip to a Fort and Pioneer Museum

This week we went to Fort Martin Scott. It was very windy, but the kids enjoyed exploring the old buildings and reading about the old fort which was more like at outpost. With lots of old log cabins where the soldiers used to stay.

Here is Alan and Jade on the ruins of one of the buildings. It was quite interesting how they established the fort and survived out in the wilderness on the frontier.

On the same day we also went to the pioneer museum in Fredericksburg. They had many old buildings and neat displays. They had an old fashioned one room school house which the kids stayed at for quite a while, as it looked like something right out "Little house on the Prairie".

Here is Kenny and Ashley next to a display of a cowhide frontier men's outfit. They had a lot of interesting stuff about life in rural Texas in the late 1800.

More interesting things that Kenny found.

This was a little cabin that was "found" in the middle of a much larger old house. Apparently they had built on to it and added rooms until the original cabin was "lost" and only when they tore down the house did they find the old cabin in the middle of the old house. So they restored it. They kids thought that was pretty cool.