Jims Surprise Bowling Birthday!

Max and Jim wearing the birthday hat, the Lewis' added googley eyes just for Jims birthday (if you haven't seen it you have to watch Christopher Walken Saturday Night Live

to know why.......)
Max and Ava pretty much ate the whole time......its what they do best!

James and Gracie checking the score board, the kids did great at taking turns, we were pleasantly surprised.

James doing a victory dance.

It was hillarious watching the little guys bowl, it took the ball FOREVER to get all the way to the pins, but they wanted to roll it themselves and didn't like using the rail to roll the ball down.

They did so great, everyone had a fun time.

Merry Christmas!

We attended our church's Chrismas Eve Service with the Lewis family and then did our annual Freund family drive down Riverview Blvd to see the Christmas lights and luminaries while listening to Christmas music on the radio (it really is the little things that are so great!)

James and Daddy set out the cookies and milk for Santa, and the boys slept with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.......

Santa came!

Max opening his stocking

James really enjoyed his train set from Santa, it is awesome! This was the first year James really got into the whole Santa thing, so he was pretty excited on Christmas morning and promptly woke up Mom and Dad.

Thank you Nana and D-daddy! This thing is awesome!

Max and his first Tonka truck, one of his favorite words is still "truck", and every little boy needs one of these!

Max driving

Here is Max driving his new four wheeler, he thinks this thing is pretty cool. (please excuse the construction zone......)

Virgin Islands

We had a chance to go back to the Virgin Islands with our friends Dave and Diane, what an amazing Christmas present for us! The hardest part was being away from my crazy boys and adjusting back to the real world a day before Christmas after being in the islands for a week, your brain really does go to mush.....

This year we decided to take the boat to St. Croix, it was a little jont from the other islands (about 35miles) which took us about 6 hours. We had a rolley but nice crossing, lets just say we were all happy to be there. We grabbed a mooring in Christiansted which was a really neat town, very historic and reminded me a little of St. Augustine. We walked around town for a bit and had some drinks, our waiter told us we HAD to see the drinking pigs in the rain forest, we agreed.

A rainbow over Christiansted in St.Croix.
Sigh

We met some of our clients (Jay and Anne Dickerson) who left Bradenton less than a month ago and are cruising down the islands. They are members of the St. Croix yacht club and Dave and Diane had reprosity from their Buffalo yacht club, so we all decided to meet up there. Of course Jay had some jobs for Jim and Jim brought him some wire and supplies he needed.
The St. Croix yacht club was really low key (imagine that in the islands....) We took full advantage of the free showers and mingled with some of the regulars.

Virgin Islands cont

St.Croix Yacht Club

This is a very nice sailboat that Dave noticed floating by us one night in the anchorage while we were having dinner in the cockpit. It had broken from its mooring and was heading straight for the reef right outside the yacht club. Lucky for us, the men quickly engaged their super powers and jumped in the dinghy rescuing the boat. I've never seen three grown men who had been drinking rum all day move so fast! They were so excited, they towed her into the dock and the next morning anxiously awaited their hefty reward. Unfortunately the owner was nowhere to be found, and all they got was a "thank you" from the Yacht club. The owner eventually contacted Jay who told him to make a donation to the youth sailing club at the yacht club, maybe they will name a couple of hobie cats after them?

We rented a car on Sunday in order to see more of the island. This is a view from the eastern most point of US territory, Point Udell. Beautiful!

We drove all around the island, it was a fantastic drive, we saw the largest oil refinary in the western hemisphere, quite a site, kinda like the worlds largest ball of wax I guess..... St. Croix is a beautiful island and one of my favorites, very clean and lots to see and do, they supposedly have fantastic diving off of a wall right off the island, which we will definitely come back and see. We accidently stumbled upon the rain forest after getting lost, and literally ran into the "drinking pig bar".

It was basically a thatched roof hut/bar in the middle of the rain forest.

Give that pig a beer!

This is Dave attempting to give the pig a beer, he was a little jitterish, but I can't blame him, those things had some serious razors!

So the story goes, there was a wild pig that used to visit the bar (Buster), one day a man at the bar offered Buster a beer and he drank it. Everytime the man would come he would buy a beer for Buster. Before long, Buster became a show. Rumor has it he died of psorosis of the liver, so now they only give the pigs O'Douls. They take the can, crush it, suck all of the beer out and then toss the can on the ground, its pretty entertaining, I gotta say these were the biggest pigs I've ever seen!