Cold Pool Party

We had some friends over today for a pool party. The pool water is not exactly warm and it was overcast and raining throught the day. The kids had a great time and the moms had fun visiting. The girls opened a beauty shop and did each others hair (putting conditioner and detangling spray in their hair).

The Gray's come tomorrow! Fun fun!

Hopefully the electrician will come and fix our lights tomorrow. For some reason the lights in the kitchen stopped working. It has been interesting to trying to do things in the dark. Instead of fixing them today my landlord decided to clean ceiling fans. Oh and we are out of propane so there wont be any cooking on the stove anytime soon. They(the propane company) are having a hard time getting propane. Propane soon come.

Baby Spider

My friend Becky found this inside of her car door today. It was the size of a juice glass. It is probably a baby tarantula. Welcome to the island!

Christmas Day

Christmas EveWalker finally got the recorder she had been dying for! I know, I've lost it!

Where are my presents?

The end of the presents.

Christmas morning comes early when you don't go to bed until 1. It took that long for Santa to assemble everything. We had a great day! The kids loved everything they got, thanks everyone! Quinn can now play basketball outside with his new basketball goal! No more dribbling in the house. Walker's American Girl doll Julie is decked out with lots of new goodies.

After breakfast we headed to the beach for a few hours and a few naps. We got rained on a couple of times but it was very refreshing. We came home and had an early delicious dinner. The kids were in bed by 730. I am on my way shortly, Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve Day

The kids decorated a gingerbread house with Janie and Mary. The house had difficulty staying together!

Sunrise on Christmas morning, yes they were up that early, 615. I got out of bed at 645 because I knew they were up but I had not heard them for a while. Who knows what they could be up to. No worries, they were just looking at all of the presents.

Merry Christmas

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas!!!

In case you are wondering, yes Santa comes to the Virgin Islands. He is still assembling the basketball goal with his father, its 1213 here, time for Mrs. Claus to hit the sack.

Merry Christmas!

Visitors

Our first visitors come today! The kids and I are headed to St.Thomas to pick up Mary, John, and Janie. I think we are ready. My house is as clean as it is going to get!

Student of the Month

Last Thursday at school we had our student of the month assembly. Walker received 2 awards!!! One in her 2nd grade class for always being a positive role model. The other was in PE for alwasy being a good team player! Way to go Walker!!!

Quinn just shrugged it all of.

KATS

Walker had her final rowing and seamanship KATS class today. In January she will start sailing. Quinn and I stayed in Coral Bay today and watched. They rowed around the bay and then practiced thier human knot skills.

Pond Bay Model

The Model at Pond Bay is finished! Well, not really but it should be by Tuesday. We took a quick tour today compliments of Jay...he is working for commission...not really. The first picture is the view from the master suite. The second is of the kitchen. The third is the master bath and the fourth is our children hiding and taking passport photos! The outside looks great too! Landscaping is going in and pavers are being put down.

Snow

No it did not snow here. Yesterday as we were driving home from Coral Bay it was raining out. In some areas it was a light mist. As the sun reflected off of the rain it made it look white and for a few brief minutes it actually looked like snow. It is the closest we will get this year.

Christmas Tree

We put the tree up the Sunday after the Army Navy game, Go Navy! Jay let Quinn put it together. Walker had been banned to her room for back talking to her mother. We let her come out towards the end and help with the decorations. Yes we have a fake tree. I dont want to know how much a real one would cost and I dont want to take care of one. The tree looks very nice in our family room. We do not have anywhere to put the stockings so if you look closely in the first two pictures you can see what we did with them. We used suction cup hooks and hung them from our giant sliders.

Quick Weekend

We were in Orlando for Wharton-Smith's annual Christmas party this weekend. Hence the Waffle House picture. We flew out Friday am and back again on Sunday am. The kids spent the weekend with Mary and John. We finished up our Christmas shopping and picked up some necessary things, like peanut butter crackers and clothes! I made Jay drive me around all day on Saturday to various different stores. He was a trooper and never complained.

We are staying on island for Christmas. The Wicklund's arrive next week. Then its the Grays, then The Koch's. Vacation, what vacation?! We are excited to see everyone!

Waffle House

Breakfast doesn't get any better than this!

Rental Scam

A few days ago Jay received some interest in renting our house. Our previous renter moved out so it is available again if you are interested. Anyway, below is the email he received on Monday. It sounded too good to be true so we researched it some online and found out that it is too good to be true. They basically send you too much money and then want you to wire them the difference.


Hello, I really appreciate your timely response.I want you to know that am very much serious about renting the house and very much willing to offer two month rent plus the security deposit in order to secure this unit prior to my arrival. You can send me the lease application, to enable me to review it ahead of time I will be in the states for the next one year and during my stay I will be working with the Culligan International Corp on a private engineering work.I will be working with George .W Tamke, the Chief Executive Officer you can contact him on 832-615-1294. I have a financier that is based in the States and he will be handling the rent deposit payment on my behalf, I will instruct him to send you a Certified Check for this as soon as you give me the go ahead to make out payment to you.Due to the limited time that we have before our arrival,we are making arrangements with a furniture company to supply the home with furnitures,so we will need you to provide us with the measurements of the living room and bedroom so that we can send it to the furniture company so that they can supply the unit with furniture that will fit in well. Also send me a picture viewing the living room and the bed rooms
As regards the lease agreement, I want you to send it to me for my review. I will eventually have it filled and signed on my arrival in your place as I am of the opinion that such documents are best filled and signed physically. We can start the lease by December 1st and I will be doing a one year lease. You can prepare the lease in my name. Let me know how to move ahead as I intend to complete this deal before I move in a couple of days. I want all the arrangement to be solidified so I settle in comfortably when I arrive. I will let you know the exact date as soon as I get a booking on a flight to the states. I will look forward to your e mail with the required information.Thanks and sincere regards from me and my precious family. I await your urgent response.

Go Navy

It is that time of year again! Go Navy Beat Army! Yes we are having our annual party with our usual food, chili. Gotta stick with tradition. After the game we are headed to town for a Christmas parade and concert.

Home Safely

Our plane ended up being delayed about 2hours from Chicago. We are lucky that we had an early flight, things were only going to get worse. Our delay was due to the de icing of our plane. It took 2 tries. We landed in San Juan a little after 5pm. We boarded our plane to St.Thomas about 15 minutes later. We landed in St. Thomas a few minutes early. Once we got our bags in the car we high tailed it to Red Hook to try to make the 7pm people ferry. We did not make the people ferry but we did make the car barge. There is only 1 barge running, out of 4, so they do runs until everyone is gone on St. Thomas. Lucky for us that meant a 7:20 car barge. We were the last car on. By the time we got home, fed the kids, unpacked it was almost 10. Tuesday was a school day for everyone! Back to school and back to our daily life.

Some updates from while we were gone... Both islands lost power for about 36 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Jay saw Kenny Chesney out at Woodys on Friday. Our landlord has been fixing a lot of stuff in the house, I dont know what has gotten into him!

A snow covered plane

Up at 4am to catch the 430 shuttle to the Indy airport. Landed in
Chicago at 6 am to snow, lots of it! Let's hope we get out before
most of it falls!