Family Christmas

We had some of Luann's family over for Christmas and New years.

After the flight was held over to the next morning, they finally arrived on the 26th. The day's activities took the starch out of Papa's shorts.

This picture shows the gray wall-dragon Katrina received from her boyfriend, John.

Here we are, celebrating Jaime's birthday a week or so early so the family could be with her for her birthday.

Jaime did a nice job of carving up the cake.

Luann made this neat close-up shot of Jaime with her mother, Amy.

Next the family took a few laps on the go-karts. I stayed in the stands to photograph the hotshot moves.

Katrina is extremely focused...

Here is Mother & Daughter pacing each other, lap after lap.

Jaime's younger sister, Ambrosia, kept working on her grandfather.

Here's the family, coming around the bend in a pack.

Time's up and the karts head back into the bullpen, with Jason, Jaime's dad leading the way.

The next event on the list was bungy jumping. The girls are sitting in line, awaiting their turn.

Katrina strapped up first and demonstrated her back-flipping style.

Next, it was Jaime's turn and she held her own.

Then Ambrosia topped off her performance with a forward-backward roll combination.

Friday the 29th was a day of sailing and visiting the sponge docks at Tarpon Springs.

This is the Cajun tour guide for the sponge diving tour.

Taa-Daa! Here's the diver with a sponge he picked up from the bottom...

Ambrosia just had to fall for the very touristy 'stick your head here' snapshot.

While Papa & Nana toured Tarpon springs, Jason, Amy and Jaime went sailing with me and my First Mate, Katrina. Amy decided to sleep in the berths during the ride (like daughter, like mother), snoozin' while we're cruisin'.

After a couple of hours of sailing, we stopped at the Tarpon Turtle cafe for lunch (as planned).

Here we are, tying up Udara Tanda to the dock at the cafe. Nana took this picture from our dinner table.

As we waited for our order to arrive, the kids started getting antsy.

So we watched this little alligator we had seen by the docks the last time we were here.

After dinner, we set sail with Nana, Papa & Ambrosia on board, while Amy, Jason and Jaime went with Luann to the Tarpon Springs sponge docks

During the sail, we encountered stiff winds that tested the repair work I had made to the sailboat. She held up well to the gusts that heeled her over more than she ever had before when we sailed her, (the water didn't even touch the rub rail), it wasn't much lean to cause concern though.

At the end of the sail we tied up to the wall at the East end of Anderson Park so the kids could explore and play for a bit.

Jaime tried to make friends with this brave squirrel.

And Amy came across this cute little Green Tree Frog on one of the trails.

Well, all good things come to an end, so we pushed off from the sea-wall and headed to the boat ramp to haul Udara Tanda out.

And the break-down begins. Seems like Katrina & I are getting pretty good at rigging and de-rigging the boat.