A Year Later Rememberance: Swimming Pools and Ice Skating Rinks

We were experiencing temperatures in the 80s with 100% sunshine on December 28th and 29th of 2009! Quite a bit different from our weather here at Pure Water Hollow exactly one year later, with the ground still covered with snow and ice! The major difference: location!

Last year at this time we were on board the Freedom of the Seas cruise ship out on the high seas in the Caribbean!

The 28th was spent mostly poolside and boy did the children have a great time!

One of the amazing things for us all was the unlimited soft serve ice cream by the pool. It was a "help yourself" machine and you better believe that we did! It was open from morning until around 8:00 at night, so we could go up there and get ice cream whenever we wanted! Even though I didn't feel like swimming, it was fun to sit in the lounge chairs, watch the children play, and enjoy good cold chocolate ice cream! They also had vanilla and swirl, but those never found their way into one of my cones. Not while chocolate was available!

Here is Simon in the water park part of the pool:

Erica, Matthew, and Christina enjoyed the water falls in the pool:



It seemed that Simon made friends easily:

It was the very first time Timothy had ever been in a swimming pool! (And come to think of it, this has still been the only swimming pool Timothy has ever played in.)




He wasn't too sure about it at first, but soon he was having a blast with Christina and Taddy!





This picture looked like they were having a serious conversation:


The pool area was a neat place for impromptu visiting with the rest of the family. My group was there (looks like it is time for an ice cream cone re-fill):

And so were Chelsea, and Tad, and Sheri:

Walk on a bit farther and you might run into Joe, Kylie, and Nikki:


Or perhaps Kristi and Brett:

Here we found Merrie Anne:


(I'm sure we saw everyone around the pool at one time or another, but I guess I didn't get pictures of everyone up there.)

Here is a picture of Lisa enjoying the sunny day up on the pool deck:

On Tuesday, the 29th, we were scheduled to stop at the private beach at Labadee, Haiti. Instead, we woke up to some heavy swells that would not allow the ship to come into port at Labadee. I guess several folks were disappointed, but another full day aboard the ship sounded good to us! We're not great big fans of beaches, and we were not planning on doing anything special there. And we knew that there was much more to do on board than we would get a chance to try as it was! Like ice skating!


We knew there was an ice skating rink on board because Matthew and Simon got to see a professional ice skating show Monday. (It was before the formal dinner Monday and Simon and Matthew were the only ones in my family who had gotten ready in time to make the show. The rest of us got to see a later performance and it was spectacular!) It is hard now to recapture the excitement of ice skating in tropical weather. I guess it would be similar of ice skating here in July. By Tuesday, we had already gotten use to the heat and sun and the cool air coming off the ice was very refreshing!

The one hanging onto the side to prevent a wipe out is Simon. Matthew was near to help him if he needed it:

They went ice skating several times. I think this picture is from another day because Simon is wearing a different color shirt:

Who would have thought that the first time my children go ice skating, it would be in the Caribbean? What a memorable experience!

Where in the world can you press a button in a glass elevator and zoom from swimming pools on the the 11th floor to an ice skating rink on the 2nd floor? We could on the Freedom of the Seas, one year ago today!

I will share about some of the other activities aboard the ship in future posts.

A Hog Buthchering Evening

This afternoon was a nice sunny, 45 degree day! It was enough to begin some of the melting of all this snow and ice laying around!

We decided that this evening would be a good time to butcher one of the hogs. The weather was comfortable, but temperatures were quickly dropping back down to freezing. It's 26 degrees now so we should be good letting the carcass hang overnight.

The hog we chose for tonight was one of the sows that we no longer want to breed. She had given us two litters, but the piglets didn't grow very quickly. She, herself was a small sow and I guess she had been passing on her small genes to her offspring. (We will also butcher the other sow soon for the same reasons.)

Matthew did the shooting this time. I don't know what our homestead ever did before we got this Marlin 30-30:



Matthew's shot dropped her immediately, and then Simon did the "sticking". It was his first time slitting the throat of an animal and he did great!

The hog thrashes about and shakes after it is shot and it is during this time that you have to cut the throat. You have to cut pretty deeply and thoroughly so it will bleed out.

With his first job going so smoothly, it looks like Simon is a natural!

We got the old John Deere backhoe out to make the hanging easier. Matthew is our backhoe operator:

Here is something we got for ourselves this Christmas. It is a scale we can use to see what the hanging weight is of our animals we butcher:

This was the first time we had a scale, so we were eager to try it out:

This picture didn't take very well, but it says this hog weighs 260 pounds:

Here is Matthew and Christina at the beginning of the skinning job:

And the next pictures are of the scene when it was all finished. We will let it hang during this 26 degree night and cut it up sometime tomorrow. This was the first time we used our John Deere to help in butchering and the front end loader made everything much easier:

This should be some good pork, and we are thankful to God for His provisions!

A Year Later Remembrance: Grand Cayman

Much could have been said about our visit to Grand Cayman, but since it has been so long I think I'll let a few of our pictures do most of my talking.

The adventure began with a boat ride on the tender to the shore.

 Among the beautiful scenery we saw an old-time pirate ship in the harbor!

Many adventures awaited us on the island!

 The Nautilus was a submarine excursion that we thoroughly enjoyed!

The children did some snorkeling!