A Well Deserved Break

Last May, Kathy attended the graduation ceremony at Gonzaga University even though she hadn't quite finished her degree program by then. The rule is that if you're finishing in the calendar year then you attend the May ceremony. She didn't officially finish until Dec 14. 

During the last 5-1/2 years, Kathy has completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from WSU and her Master of Science in Nursing Health Care Leadership at Gonzaga. My wife of 32-1/2 years went to school full time while working half time. Unless you've experienced this as a spouse, I don't know that you can truly appreciate just how much time and effort this takes. But I digress.

We decided we would take a vacation to celebrate her achievement and take some well deserved down time so we scheduled ourselves to go on a cruise in the eastern Caribbean and then follow that with some leisure time in South Beach. Kathy completed her remaining homework on Dec 13. We left the next day.

Geoff joined us from San Francisco, thus making it a true family vacation. On Dec 13, he completed the paperwork and paid the necessary fees to establish the LLC for the startup he is working on. If you checked out the link and don't understand what it's about, I can provide a simple explanation. It allows two programmers to work together on the same code (pair programming) regardless of where they are located. It's a small market, but it's a large enough to make a living from it. But I digress again. We all went on vacation together.

This ship had a couple of FlowRider systems on it and the kids each took lessons.

That water is moving pretty fast. When you fall, you are unceremoniously flushed away into the back area.

I was fearful my aging body would pay dearly so I abstained.

The cruise photogs are always taking your picture at every opportunity.

This opportunity was one of the formal dinner nights. Notice how my great-looking family makes me look halfway presentable?

Just finished snorkeling at St Thomas. It was Kathy's first time and she loved it.

The kids playing in the water on the French side of St Maarten. This was the wave that swept Josh's sunglasses out to sea.

Kathy and I are well aware that it's easy to over eat on a cruise so we made sure we paid attention to what we ate and took time to exercise. We both used the track instead of the fitness facility. As usual I got lots of strange looks from people who are unable to fathom running barefoot. But there was a young man from Brazil who waited for me to finish one day and asked me about it. I showed him enough to get started and wished him well. Slowly but surely, one at a time, you too will be assimilated. Anyway, as far as the weight watching went, I lost two pounds and Kathy found them. Not too bad.

After the cruise we spent a few days just hanging out in South Beach. We went out to the Everglades where we caught an airboat ride. Flying across water and vegetation was pretty cool. 

Seeing the wildlife was also cool.

I patiently waited as this egret poised for the kill.

Lightning fast. I was surprised by the big splash.

Success.

On our last day we rented bikes and cruised around South Beach. By now we were longing for home where all those familiar things about a home were beckoning to us: sleeping in our own beds, cooking our own meals, enjoying a cup of tea with the morning newspaper, shoveling snow from the--wait, not that one. It was a fun and relaxing trip but we were thankful to arrive home late last night.

Now that she's done with school, Kathy has all kinds of free time. I wonder if I could get away with handing her the snow shovel.