Thanksgiving and my Top 7 list

Thanksgiving was a great time this year. We flew down to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma Aurora in Arizona. The weather was warm and we spent our time swimming, playing tennis and just goofing around. We couldn't have had a better time. (Notice the dollar in Ava's hand--she was constantly snoggin' money from Grandpa.)

We were also able to see cousins and catch up with one of Gale's old friends the Farnsworths.

Just to show how much fun the girls had we took a couple of pictures of "To infiniti and beyond" onto the air mattress.




Okay-so let me be honest. When we flew back from Arizona we left 74 degree weather and landed in 40 degree weather. I had a bit of a hard time readjusting to life in Oklahoma. For the next day I gave Gale all the reasons that we need to live in Arizona. Let me share my list.

1. There are 7 different juice stores within a three mile radius in Mesa instead of the one jamba juice in Edmond.
2. Mesa has a Cosco.
3. There are a gazillion restaurants in Mesa. Not the same 5 we eat at in Edmond.
4. The WEATHER is my type of WEATHER! WARM
5. There are electric towels in all the restrooms in Mesa.....not the kind you have to turn yourself in Oklahoma.
6. I have family in Mesa.
7. There are sidewalks to run on and bike paths and bike lanes to bike on. I have to bike on the road in Edmond.
So I let Gale know of all the differences and why we should move to Arizona. She then reminded me of all of our friends here, all of our children's friends, how much we love the schools, the great piano teacher and tennis coach's and also this is where the good Lord wants us right now. So hence--we stay! (For now..............) Give me a couple of days and I will be back to my Oklahoma self.

A Pirates Life for me! Yo Ho......Arrrggggg

We didn't get up so early this morning. I think the surfing last night did us in pretty good. I woke up with a sore rib and the others had their own share of bruises. A small price to pay right. After breakfast Nate Richins and I headed into Soppers Hole to get some shopping done. I know that I had better come back with some pretty good stuff for the girls after having been gone a week. I dare not show up empty handed. I would have to walk the plank. I found some good gifts...(for once not junky ones that the lady sells on the beach...actually here they come around in small boats to your sailboat and try to hock their wares that way) So I am excited. I decided to go the route of just a nice gift for each girls instead of a lot of smaller gifts that were less expensive and would end up being thrown away when we cleaned house the next month. I will be interested to see if my idea works.

After shopping put up the sails and were off to Norman Island or "Pirates Cove". A beautiful cove that is known as a rest stop for pirates...ARRGGHHH! The wind on the way to the cove was unreal, we were flying with both sails full mast. I think we hit 8 knots at some points, which for a boat our size is pretty fast. It was fun.

Once we arrived we immediately headed over to a floating pirate ship for lunch. It was really fun, complete with a canon that they shoot off. After lunch Brian, Nate Bray and myself hopped in and snorkled for a good hour and a half to 2 hours. We didn't need scuba tanks at all as their were tons of fish everywhere and it was only about 6 ft where the coral reefs were. I was exhausted when we came back, but Nate Bray and I decided to head to shore (nothing their except for beach and one small restaurant) and just hung out while everyone else napped. It was good catch up time for us, but now I am exhausted! It is so fun to be with Nate as we don't get to spend that much time together living in different states. But we sure make up for it when we get together. We have pretty much had a great time from sun up til sundown! My gut hurts from laughing so hard and then you throw in Nate Richins and Brian and it just adds to it.

We are eating at Pirates restaurant tonight and then I am going to hit the sack after dinner. Even if it is 8'oclock!~ I can't wait to see my girls! Thanks girls for the notes I loved reading them and they made me want to come home even more. See you in two days!

Day Five--Hang Ten!

This morning we sailed early and hit a little island to snorkel. We got in and checked it out but the water wasn't very clear, so we hiked around the island and just checked things out. As we were leaving another boat saw us and unloaded a couple of passengers onto the island. After realizing there was no snorkeling she decided to head back to the boat and on her way out she got nailed by a wave that took her half way up the beach. The poor lady didn't know what hit her. She did have help immediately from her group that was still on the beach!

We then launched the sails and headed to Jost Van Dyke, a secluded little beach area. This is what paradise looks like. I was amazed at how beautiful and peaceful the area was. We hung out in hammocks and just chilled out for a while. It was relaxing----I hated to get back on the boat.

We then sailed for Soppers Hole which was about a two hour sail. I was exhausted from sitting in the hammock all morning, so I grabbed the IPOD and laid down in the front of the boat and took a two hour nap. It was GREAT! The sun, the wind, the tunes. Life couldn't have been better at that moment. When we arrived at Soppers Hole we learned that there was a surfing beach about 10 minutes away so we took off, grabbed some surfboards and hit the waves. Well, at least tried. I think what really ocurred was that I was put in spin cycle in a salt washing machine. It was brutal. The waves were big and my extensive experience in surfing..lol....caused me to swallow half of the caribbean ocean and take some serious spills. Nothing more than a few scraped knees on the reef. We had a blast, but it was exhausting. To do that much work to catch about 5 waves...hhhmmm....should we surf again on Friday. Have to think about that. The waves were about 4-6 feet high and just getting out to catch the wave was a feat in itself. I seem to have a hard time getting better at surfing living in Oklahoma.

After surfing we headed to dinner at the Jolley Roger Inn on the ocean and we could barely stay awake for dinner, so it is a miracle I am able to get this out. But I don't want to disappoint my girls who will want an update in the morning. I love you guys and I will see you in two days!

Day Four--Why am I so itchy? Are you guys itchy?

We woke up to some dark clouds and big wind this morning. After breakfast (6 chocolate eggo waffles with strawberry jam on top) we headed out snorkling near the edge of Cooper Island. There were absolutely tons of fish everywhere. All different kinds. It started to get cold and crazy as the storm picked up and started to pelt down on us. The rest of the crew went back to the Dingey and Nate Bray and I snorkled back to the boat. On the way back we saw a school of squid (it was really cool) and a huge jelly fish. I hate jelly fish. There is nothing I like about jelly fish. Well as we swam up to the boat I noticed I was swimming through a small school of about 200 little teeny jelly fish. I panicked and turned on the legs to get out of there. I hate jelly fish. They are like mosquitos--of no use. We got back into the boat and started to sail to Cane Garden Bay and I noticed that I was itchy and no one else was itchy. Then I got really itchy to the point of asking another guy to scratch my back. (I had no takers!) So I pulled out the calamine lotion Gale and got for me and lathered it on. I am feeling a bit better, but I need my girls for some scratches!

As we sailed the storm got worse and there were some big swells. No one got sea sick....once we arrived it was to stormy to really go do anything so we just stayed in the boat and napped, read and played some cards. Just relaxed. It was fun. Gale will laugh at this, but she knows I can never remember card game rules or really even how to play them. So we all sat down to play some cards and none of us knew any card games. Well, I do know how to play hearts, and after trying to explain how I had completely explained it wrong. My brother kept saying "are you sure the spades give us points and not the hearts? Isn't the game called hearts?" After three practice games we finally figured it out. It actually took Nathan Richins about another three games to decipher what to do with the queen of Spades. He could never seem to lay her down at the right time and always took her points.

Later this afternoon Nate Bray and I headed out to find some snorkeling, but because of the storm there was little visability. We did spot a 5 foot stingray, but he was pretty deep so we couldn't do anything to get him to move. We were only out about 45 minutes before we decided to come back. It was a bit spooky with little visability at dusk time. Isn't that shark feeding time, but alas we had no sightings.

So dinner--dinner needs its own paragraph. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, (like there are so many here, I think a total of two restaurants) Anyway, I ordered two pounds of Carribean lobster and steak. Pretty much everyone ordered the same. We couldn't believe it when the food came out. It just kept on coming and coming....Lobster, baked potatoes, vegetables, bread etc. I am now sitting back at the boat ready to blow up. I literally can't move I ate so much food tonight. Don't think I will need to eat for the rest of the trip. It was so good! Think I need to hit the sack and let it digest. No night swimming tonight.

It was nice to relax today and just enjoy hanging out in the boat. Hope my ladies are doing great at home. I love and miss you guys!

Day Three--Is that a barracuda staring at us?

Day three--slow down! It is all going to fast. We started off early with a breakfast cooked by Captain Dad. Eggs, Eggo Waffles and Bacon. It was a breakfast fit for a king. We cleaned breakfast up and headed straight for "The baths" Local folklore says this is where the pirates stopped off to hit the fresh water that was collected in pools or "baths". The place is incredible. You have to dingey to the shore but then you can't dingey on shore as there are no moorings or docks, so you have to go back out a ways to the mooring ball and then swim back in.

Once on shore we grabbed our snorkel gear and had the most incredible hour and a half of snorkling known to man. There were rocks just off the beach which created underwater canyons and valleys which were full of every type of sea animal. You would swim through the canyons and you would be in 20 ft deep water and then turn a corner and be swimming in 4 ft water. After being out for a while. (NO shark sightings) we decided to head back and our route back included a swim through a 4 foot wide canyon with rocks on both sides. As we started into the gap right smack in the middle was a barracuda (about 3 1/2 long). We couldn't go through. We thought we would swim through underneath him, but as we got close he opened his mouth to eat us up--so we quickly swam away. Nathan Bray has mastered the reverse doggy paddle in a most unique way. He says, "I can go really fast that way." Nathan Richins being 6"2 and close to 200 lbs never even swam in as his fear froze him! Brian Campbell wasn't so brave with the barracuda, but he did discover an underwater arch and took it upon himself to find out if there was an opening on the other side. Once he made it I was good to go!

Now that we will all have barracuda nightmares we headed back to the island and we hiked to the restaurant at the top of the mountain. It was cool, there were lots of caves to climb through, you had to rope through certain parts and half of it was in foot deep water. I have some great pictures I will post later. Once you make it there is a nice clean pool (a bit of to much chlorine if you ask me) and some great virgin pina colada's waiting at the top. We ate luch took some group pictures and then headed back to the boat. We immediately took off for Cooper Island. There was no wind, but we put up the sails just to look like professionals, but then realized when no wind was catching the sails we looked like idiots so down they came. When we arrived at Cooper Island the lunch, snorkeling,sailing and the sun took its toll and we all had to take naps...except for myself and Nate Richins. I had to catch up on a bit of my online class I'm teaching and Nate's excuse was he couldn't find anywhere comfortable to sleep. There was a bit of brotherly mentoring on common courtesy for my brother Nate Bray as he did not obey the following very obvious rules.
#1 Do not crawl into another man's bed with a wet sandy bathing suit.
#2 To alleviate the problem of #1 do not take off the wet sandy bathing suit and try to sleep in another mans bed in your birthday suit.
All alarms on the boat went off as I made sure he didn't break the two above rules. All he could say was "What?, What's wrong?" Nice try---playing dumb didn't work. My 12 year old pulls that trick and it doesn't work for her either.

After our nap (3 hours) we headed to dinner. The food was amazing! The next time you are at Cooper Island I highly recommend the B-bque chicken or the steak. It was incredible. The funny thing was after dinner we came back and everyone was exhausted from their naps so they all went to bed early. Around 9. Nate, Nate and I stayed up and laughed. What a great day! I miss you Gale, Chloe, Olivia, Elle and Ava. I miss your shining, happy smiling faces. It just isn't the same when I don't see you everyday. I love you and I am thinking about you!

Aye, Aye Captain! (Day two)

You have never seen a sunrise like that in BVI. The open green ocean, endless horizon and a blue sky that matches Elle's eyes. So peaceful and beautiful and so calming. We were off around 8:00 a.m. because it is a four hour sail to the Virgin Gourda (North Sound). We wanted to get there early so we could have a full day to explore. On our way we passed Richard Branson's Island (Necker). He bought it for $250,00 in the 70's or 80's. It was a good buy! It is beatiful and in a great location. I wanted to drop in and say hello, but the crew wouldn't let me.
Once we moored in the North Sound we quickly jumped in the water with our snorkel gear and headed to the nearest reef. We were exploring when we discovered hidden in the sand a sting ray! None of us dared get close (visions of Steve Irwin are still haunting us) so I grabbed a small counch shell and dropped it on the thing--you should have seen it take off. Wow--so cool. I started laughing and about chocked in the salt water. We then discovered some lobsters hidding in a rock so we tried to pull it out but it wouldn't work--I didn't have gloves so I didn't dare just stick my hand back in the rock. I will try to get him tomorrow. Do I see Lobster dinner in my future? I would be such a great survivorman. We then hopped in the Dingey and headed to the Bitter End grocery store so Dad and Jim could stock up on more food. The hits so far have been Wheat Thins and Peanut Butter, Chips and Salsa and Oreo cookies. We tried to go rent some kite boarding equipment but the kite boarding guy was missing in action so we stopped by the dive shop and it just so happened that a dive trip was leaving in an hour. We grabbed our gear and headed to dive! It was the best dive I have ever been on because I saw two sharks. Nurse sharks. Nathan Richins and I were in awe--and a bit panicked. They were both about 7 foot long. We saw some other great marine life, but nothing compared to the sharks. It was down hill from there. We dove with two gentlemen from Sweden. One looked just like Beckham. Hair and all. I know Gale and the girls would have wanted me to get a picture of him, but I thought it a bit wierd to ask if I could get his picture. Sorry girls.....

We got back about four o'clock and ate chips and salsa and just relaxed. It was then off to Saba Rock for dinner.

Day One in BVI (British Virgin Islands)

First of all girls I miss you like crazy all ready, but Grandpa, Uncle Nate, myself and the other Nate, Brian and Campbell are all glad that we could sneak away for a guys week!

We woke up early so we could eat breakfast and go hit the grocery store before check in time for the boat. When we arrived to pick up our boat they had new sails for us. Beautiful! It took a while to get them on, but we were on our way around 1:00 p.m. The wind was perfect today, we practiced our tacking a couple of times and each of us took a specific job and we had that 45 foot boot ripping across the ocean in no time. We didn’t even use the engines today—only to moor the boat.
After about four hours of sailing and just laughing and goofing off we moored at Marina Cay. It was a couple of hours before dinner so we all grabbed our snorkeling gear and jumped in the water. I thought I would be bummed I didn’t grab a scuba tank and some gear from the boat dock, but I didn’t even need it. Everything to see is only 8-12 feet deep. At that moment we just didn’t realize what was lurking underneath--

As soon as we jumped in we noticed we were surrounded by a small group of fish. It was a bit weird, but then when we saw that there were about 6 tarpon surrounding the school of fish and darting in and out with their mouths wide open we all made like a seal being chased by a great white and were back in the dingy. I have never seen four grown men move so fast. It took all of about 2 seconds. At the time we didn’t know they were tarpon, they looked more like barracuda. After regaining our composure, we jumped back in and snorkeled for another hour and a half. There were so many cool fish that I can’t name them all. The water was about 80 degrees and you could swim in it forever.

After dinner on our way back to the boat, we noticed a gigantic yacht that was engine powered. On the back of the boat there were literally 3 huge lights submerged to the rear of the vessel. It created a large area of water that was lit up and we could see 40-50 tarpon. We decided to take the dingy back to the yacht and ask them if we could snorkel right behind their boat. Now picture this, black water, pitch black night (there are so few houses and buildings here that you can’t see anything except the gazillion stars up in the sky.) So as we were loading in the dingy Nate and I ended up being the only ones willing to go in the water with these 6 foot creatures. It was a reenactment of JAWS! Now I have been on two night dives in my life and never had a problem, but for some reason being surrounded by 40-50 fish that are 4-6 feet in length was a bit disconcerting. But we braved our fear, counted to three together and made sure we went in at the same time. After a while Nate Richin’s saw that we were having so much fun he dipped his head in the water from the boat and checked it out. The picture explains it all. I thought that I was going to die laughing. What an incredible day. It is nice to be with Dad, Nathan and the gang and catch up and just relax and enjoy. The islands are green, lush and beautiful and the weather was perfect today. I think this trip is just going to get better and better. (Although there is still some guilt for leaving Gale at home!) Till tomorrow!