Strings Performance

Hunter had a strings performance tonight. He is doing a great job learning how to play the violin.

Hunter preparing for the concert

Mom, Dad and Jane were able to come see Hunter perform. Unfortunately, Thom was teaching that night. We all enjoyed watching and hearing Hunter play. When he plays the violin, he taps his foot to the beat.

The concert

I'm so glad Hunter decided to take Strings this year. He has enjoyed learning how to play an instrument. His teacher is wonderful. I can't imagine teaching over 100 kids how to play a stringed instrument.

Hunter

Geocaching Pinewood Derby Race

Hunter and Jordan's scout council is having a geocache pinewood derby race. The council has several packs (cub scouts) and troops (boy scouts) in it. Their council basically contains all the Columbia area packs and troops.

Geocaching is like letterboxing but you use a GPS. Each geocache has its GPS location. You use its location to find the geocache which are hidden containers. Inside the container there are small prices. You can pick any price you want as long as you place another price in the container.

Travel bugs are basically dog tags with a unique tracking number. The travel bug items are picked up and carried from cache to cache. The geocacher logs the travel bugs unique tracking number so the owner knows where their travel bug is traveling.

So to enter the contest, you got a pinewood car and attached a travel bug on it. Then it is placed in a geocache. The car that travels to the most geocaches wins.

Jordan painting his pinewood derby car

The boys wanted their pinewood derby cars. So they made new ones to put in the geocache.

Jordan named his car The Black Knight. We drilled a hole into the car to attach the travel bug to it.

The Black Knight

Next we went geocaching to find a geocache large enough to place the car inside. While we were geocaching, we actually found another car in the race.

Jordan looking for a geocache to start the race

Hunter also had fun making his car. I think making a pinewood derby car was Hunter's favorite part of cub scout.

Hunter showing off his car

During Jordan's last den meeting, we made a geocache. This geocache is were Hunter's car started the race.

Hunter's Supersonic Machine

Game Ball

Hunter received the game ball at his game today. He got 4 RBIs, 1 run and hit a double. Hunter has a great coach this season and is really enjoying baseball.

Hunter and the game ball

Spring Sports

We are very busy with Spring sports. Hunter is playing baseball and Jordan is playing soccer. Today Hunter had a 6:00pm baseball game. So Hunter had to be at the field at 5:30 so the team could warm up. At 7:15pm, Jordan had a soccer game. Since Hunter was still playing baseball, we had to divide a conquer. Mom and Dad came to the games. So they were able to see both of the grandsons play on the same day.

Jordan at the baseball field wait on his soccer game to start

During the soccer game, it started to rain but the game went on. The rain makes soccer more difficult since the ball is wet and slippery.

Jordan and Dad at the game in the rain

I guess you must love your child/ grandchild to sit outside in the rain and watch him play ball.

Our sports

Jordan "field" trip

The third graders at Jordan's school had a field trip today. It was not a typical field trip since they had it at the school in the soccer fields. As Jordan put it, it was a true "field" trip.

An outside company came to the school and helped with the field trip. The theme was colonial days. There were numerous stations maned by parents. Each homeroom rotated through each station. I helped with the field trip and my station was Colonial dress. Each child dressed in a Colonial outfit and got their picture taken.

Colonial High Fashion

Jordan's favorite station was army training. The received a wooden gun and practiced drills. The dad that was at this stations was in the army so he did a great job as a Drill Sergent.

Charge

Other stations included candle making, sword fighting, writing (they wrote with a feather), bracelet making, and colonial games. The kid were given a dollar each to spend at the colonial store. Unfortunately, inflation had hit the colonial store as a dollar didn't buy much. Jordan purchased a gold coin.

Some of Jordan's homeroom with their goods for the Colonial Store

Day 8 - Back Home

We arrived back at Fort Lauderdale early that morning. The cruise was over but we had a wonderful time.

Now we had a 10 hour drive home. Chris and I took turns driving.


The boys mainly slept. In the picture below, Hunter was under the brown blanket sleeping. I guess the Florida sun was too bright for him.

Day 7 - at sea

They had a fun day at sea. The ship was a lot of fun. We swam, watched movies and of course ate. We all enjoyed the food. Jordan ordered fruit bowls for our room. We got a new one almost every day. Hunter enjoyed ordering room service for breakfast. Chris appreciated the coffee delivered to the room.

Jordan and the one of the pools

We tried to use the stairs as much as possible but we did use the elevator. There were 19 floors on the ship.

Chris

Talking to the cruise staff was fun. They were from all over the world with different accents and stories about their homeland.

Chris and Jordan at lunch

We went to a different show every night sometimes two shows. There was always something going on to entertain us.

Chris and Hunter waiting on a show to start

We enjoyed sitting on the deck at night watching a movie or looking at the stars.

Chris

The rooms were not huge but not too small. We laughed about the pictures being velcroed to the walls so they wouldn't fall out the walls in rough weather.

Hunter

Day 6 - Grand Turk

We arrived at Grand Turk in the afternoon. The island is only 7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide.

Grand Turk

We had planned to rent a car and explore the island but the boys were having so much fun at the beach and in the pool, they didn't want to go. So why rock the boat.

The beach

Jordan, Chris and Hunter

Chris and I went snorkeling. We had fun and saw some neat fish.

Snorkeling

The boys had a great time at Margaritaville. It is the largest Margaritaville in the world. They had a large normal pool with a swim up bar and a wake board pool.

Hunter and Kim

A group of parrotheads in front of a giant parrot.

Marganitaville

There so a letterbox on Grand Turk. The boys and Chris were enjoying Marganitaville so much they didn't want to come with you. So I went letterboxing alone. We can see how close it was to the ship.

Kim letterboxing

The best thing about this letterbox is that it was planting on the other side of the beach. Everyone was told to go to the left where all the shops, the beach chairs and Margaritaville were located. But the letterbox was on the right. The beach was beautiful so I walked down the beach. It was COVERED in conch shells which was pretty amazing when you think about how many people dock here. There were 3,000 people on our cruise alone. But they all must have turned left.

The beach cover with conch shells.
Click on the picture to enlarge it.

After a fun day playing in the water, we headed back to the ship.

Jordan embarking

Day 5 - St Thomas

That night we sailed to St Thomas. When I woke up that morning, we were docking there. I took this picture of Jordan that morning. He fell sleep fully dressed.

Jordan in dreamland

St Thomas was beautiful and it was nice to be on US land again. But they still drove on the left side of the road.

St Thomas

We took a taxi downtown and shopped a little. Then we took a taxi to the beach.
The beach was gorgeous. The sand was much softer than in St Maarten were the sand felt corse.

Chris on the beach

We sat under this umbrella on the beach. We all enjoyed playing in the crystal clear water.

Jordan and Hunter on the beach

We took a taxi back to the beach. The ship sailed at 4 that afternoon. We enjoyed sitting on the balcony outside our room.

Chris and Hunter looking at the ocean

Chris spotted this cool yacht transporter at sea. The middle of the boat lowers so you can drive the boats on the ship. Then it raises to move the yachts.

Yacht Transporter

It was formal night again. So we got dressed up for a night on the ship.

Chris, Kim and Hunter
Jordan was the photographer

After dinner, we went to a show about rock legends. The singing and dancing was good. There was lots of costume and set changes. They had 3 different musical shows during the cruise. They also had some very funny comedians or as Hunter called them "Funny Men."

Day 4 - St Maarten

St Maarten is the smallest sea island divided between two nations. The French side is called Saint Martin and the Dutch Side is called Sint Maarten. The dutch side uses the dollar and the french side's currency is the Euro. Since the exchange rates are so bad now, we shopped on the Dutch Side.

St Maarten

St Maarten was beautiful with rolling hills and clear blue water.

Welcome to St Maarten

We spent the morning in St Maarten shopping. Chris and the boys tolerated me jewelry shopping. I even brought a new ring. Something a rarely do.

We found this cool sign downtown in St Maarten.

Only 1458 miles to Charleston, SC

We went into a shop named That Yogi Guy. Nick Maley was one of the key contributors to creating Yogi. There were lots of Star Wars memorably there. We saw Nick Maley who was reliving some Star Wars memories.

Jordan and Yodi
The Force is Strong. Use the Force.

We took the Water Taxi (basically a boat) from downtown back to the boat so we could put away what we had bought. Then we took the Water Taxi to the beach.

Chris, Jordan and Kim
The Water Taxi is behind us.
Hunter was taking the picture. Great job, Hunter.

The water was a little chilly but I got in with the boys. You can see the cruise boats behind us. The Oasis of the Sea was dock here. It is the largest cruise ship in the world.

The boys swimming around me.
You can see Jordan's foot and Hunter's head.

Hunter and Jordan both loved the clear water. It was amazing how many fish were swimming around us.

Hunter underwater

Jordan underwater

After playing in the water several hours, we headed back to the ship. The ship we sailed on is behind us.
Jordan did a great job taking this picture.

Chris and Kim

We got back on the ship and dressed for dinner. We enjoyed not cooking or cleaning and leaving the table without paying a bill.

Jordan loved these Pina Coladas