4th of July Fun

Even though it rained on the 4th of July and almost all activites in Yale were cancelled, we still enjoyed the time in Iowa hanging out with family. It's become an annual event we look forward to each year. Megan & I went up ahead of Ryan & Bruce. Ryan's team was in the KS baseball state tourney so they couldn't drive up until Ryan's team lost. They made it up on the 4th about 5pm after losing in the semi-finals.

Dad & Mom planned a tractor drive for everyone on Monday. They are experts at tractor drives and picked a great route. Megan decided she wanted to drive & Gpa took her for a test drive around the acreage first. Can you tell it was humid this morning after all the rain the day before - it was fogging up my camera!

Here's Bruce on his assigned tractor doing a little test drive too.

How many guys does it take to inspect Bruce's tractor? 3, I think! Haha.

Lining up the tractors - Dad wisely put Megan between Derek & himself. He had to help her once but she did better than I expected. She was on his cute little Ford that drives like a small car but you still have to shift it.

Bruce was between Derek & Tyler on his cute little Allis-Chammers tractor. For a town-boy, he sure loves these tractors & doing a tractor drive. Funny how Derek & Tyler are on bigger tractors than Bruce. He may be older but these boys are more experienced!

Ryan rode with Trey & they traded driving Dad's utility tractor which is new. This is the tractor Dad uses to actually work around the acreage. Dale was in front of Ryan & Trey and Tyler was behind them.


Mom led the pack on her John Deere and set the pace. Dad brought up the rear making sure everyone was okay. I didn't get pictures of them - Darn!

Deb, Amy, & Cooper rode with me in the convertible & we followed the crew with our flashers on. It was fun & someone mentioned making it an annual event. Good idea as long as Dad is up to getting all those tractors out & ready.

Thanks Mom & Dad for another fun year!

Final Sunset

Here's my favorite photo of the trip. Rare for all of us to get in the picture. The guy in the chairs next to us offered to take it. We are all relaxed, tan, & having a good time. It's a Christmas card candidate for sure.
We finally caught a good sunset on our last night at sea. The sun went down really early in the Carribean since we were so far east. Guess you need to get closer to Florida for an 8:30pm quality sunset.

The kids watching the 'big orange ball sinkin' in the water' (Kenny Chesney song reference)!

It was a great vacation. I hope everyone enjoyed reading this blog of our adventures as much as I did reliving them while posting.

No promises for daily blogs in the future. I'll try to keep the photos coming.

St. Maarten Part 3 - More of Orient Beach

Can you tell I loved St. Maarten - it gets 3 posts on the blog!

More views of Orient Beach: I have no idea what direction this is but I'm guessing the north end of the beach.
Each beach area had different colored chairs which made it very festive. Our beach bar & restuarant was called Waikiki & it did remind me of Hawaii but without the Oahu hotels.

This was the view from my beach chair -- I could sit there all day & just watch the waves.

Here's the view if I turned my head to the left.

We love jumping in the waves - especially Ryan. I don't think we'll ever get him to the Gulf of Mexico again since he loves big waves. Ryan is on the left, Meg in the middle, & me on the right. Bruce was manning the camera.

Ryan going into wave action...

This is the end of St. Maarten. I hated to see it go but it was a really fun day. Megan said she liked CocoCay the best. The boys didn't really have a favorite.

St. Maarten Part 2 - Orient Beach

We arrived on the French beach after an amusing ride up and down the hills of St. Maarten. Photo regret #5 ish - I didn't take any pictures from the bus ride. Our guide was nice & funny and of course had the standard tour guide jokes. She did a good job watching out for us at the beach.

I think I mentioned Bruce picked out this excursion with the cruise office. It was wonderful. We had a reserved section on this marvelous beach with free chairs & beach umbrellas. You only had to pay these cute French "beach boys" $3 to use the beach umbrella. I real bargin compared to other cruise extras. We got a free punch drink upon arrival and a free lunch.

Here Bruce & the kids toast to the beach with their punch drinks:
Mom (aka camera lady) toasting with my punch. I didn't add rum to mine cause Mom warned me it will knock you out & you'll nap away your beach time. Bruce asked for rum & got a pretty good poor but he did fine.

Megan assumed the position - tanning! She did come play in the waves with us too. These chairs were so cushy I could have slept on them at night.

I just noticed I didn't get any beach ladies in our pictures. These women would swarm you & try to braid your hair or sell you stuff. Carly (our tour guide) warned us about them & she would shoo them away if they got too pesky. I just got used to saying no thank you as soon as they headed my way.

Best part about this beach was big, fun waves. We played in them all day.

This beach was really neat. The pictures don't do it justice but I tried. Some of these are with the water camera so they aren't great.

This beach had another interesting aspect - it was topless, kind of. Some women (middle age ones) were walking around topless. Ryan thought this was very odd - so did the rest of us. The tour guide warned us that part of the beach was nude. Bruce & I walked the beach and did find the icky nudist part. It was at the far end so at least the kids didn't see it. We turned on our heel and headed in the other direction.

St. Maarten beach pictures finish tomorow since there were too many for one post.

St. Maarten Part 1 - "the friendly island"

Our tour guide in St. Maarten kept calling it the friendly island. That's because it's half owned by the Dutch & half by the French. The port was in Phillipsburg which is Dutch but the beach we traveled to was on the French side. There was no guard station or any indication you crossed over except a monument on the side of the road. I guess they are claim friendliness since they travel back & forth freely.

This is either pulling into or out of port. We got in early (like 7am) so it's hard to tell. We had to set the alarm clock on island days to get the max island time possible.


This is a view of our ship docked at port from the shopping area of Phillipsburg. See how industrial the port area is compared to St. Thomas. We took a water taxi from the shopping area to the port.Here are some views of the beach at Phillipsburg. If you go to St. Maarten, don't hang out here. There are no waves and the water doesn't seem as pristine. It's near the boardwalk which is cool but that would be the only reason. More views of the Phillipsburg area below:

Meg, Ryan, & me on the boardwalk - I am now the shortest of the three.

View of Phillipsburg from the water taxi - seemed like a fun town with bands playing, etc. but we had about 45 mins there. We spent most of the day at the French side beach.

I would love to go back to St. Maarten again and spend more time. The beach excursion Bruce picked out was fabulous & will be pictures posted tomorrow.