Christmas cheer continues. And I am beat tired.

Been a few days since I blogged here, which has been pointed out to me (Thx Janice!) I have been busy doing what my husband says I do EACH and EVERY week when I run charters. That would be pack too much into a day so all we do is sail around the BVI at breakneck speed!. I cannot even argue with him there. Right now I am about hitting a wall and wanting to crash. I completely understand once again why Xmas is so stressful and tired in the real world and it will be another 15-20 years until I do it again! That is getting ahead of myself though...
We had Xmas dinner on Xmas eve since my boys were heading home on Xmas day. Grampa cut the turkey.

And I mostly took pictures of the table!





Are you getting sick of seeing pictures of my kids yet? I would not blame you, I was getting tired of seeing them in person by this time! Kidding...maybe. I always find with my adult children that once we visit for a bit, I take them shopping or to a movie and feed them, then they are about bored with the old folks and ready to go on with their own life. Or maybe it is the other way around???

A fairly early night and Bazza had to nudge me the next morning saying "we better get up and have Xmas with gramma" This was about 830. She had only been up since about 4!

She had the candles ready to be lit, the log ready to go on the fireplace and the chocolate on the table and under the tree mostly ate!

I like this picture of all the colors in the living room...

My children were not quite sure why I was giving them DNA profiling for Xmas. They wanted to know REALLY quickly if I was wanting to make sure that they were really my kids. Good idea, but I tell you, I can relate every single one of my stretch marks back to one or the other of them!!!

My brother, just sat back and watched quietly...

My 30 year old quickly reverted to 3 years old when he had a hot wheels and proceeded to drive it around the living room and make as much noise as he could, prompting my father to get out the vacumn immediately after the openings to vacumn all the marks out of the carpet!

Bazza put good use to his new socks by using them as a sun shade for a nap....

I spent an hour making a traditional Xmas morning meal in our house, potato pancakes. We all love them! The tray of desset in the foreground is just to get me through the process with lots of energy!

Ate them around noon and it was a good thing it was left over later on i the day.

We took my boys to the airport in the early evening so they could get back for work the next day and this is the start of me biting off more then I could chew. Two hours after dropping them off we were back at the airport to pick up my youngest son Kevin, and his girlfriend Sam...

They were happy to arrive.

We spent the next day wandering around town, where it apparently that Sam is also 21 going on 3, as she is all decked out in pink and little kitty designer wear!

We attempted to go to Avatar, but it was sold out so we went to see have you heard about the morgans? It had a priceless Sarah Palin line in it! More driving around, more food...

To see Avatar the next night, packed full, and then yesterday was putting the kids back on a plane to go to Ontario and we were heading to the airport ourselves.

Instead of heading to the airport we should have been curling up into bed and watching TV for a few days, but my sister had said " they have direct flights between Victoria and San Francisco" and we had a friend coming down to visit her..... We had contemplated driving down for a few days, but it really did not work as we have to be in Vancouver January 2nd. In a moment of weakness I bought tickets.

We checked in on line, printed our boarding passes, checked that we were not checking any bags, only taking a small carry on and then arrived at the airport and the fun started. While standing in the line to go through security we were told that we were not permitted to bring any carry on bags on the plane. Not even laptop bags. Everything had to be checked except for small purses. This had just come down in the last couple hours. Back we go to check bags. We were lucky, as just about that time it was decided that we COULD take the laptop bags on. Many people who had checked in before us were stuck carrying around their laptops in their hands for the flight, smartly deciding checking the laptop bag was one thing, but checking the laptop was quite another.

At United we were told that they were "nicely" waiving the baggage fee for that day. No comment. The staff was all in an uproar as they said directives were being changed from one moment to the next and they had no idea on what they were supposed to do. Really they were just being screamed at by every customer.

Managed to do that and get back to security, while emptying out our laptops the TSA said "no laptop bags" someone came up and said they were allowed now and TSA (or the Canadian equivalent) just rolled their eyes.
We went through the extra pat down and baggage check before boarding. The only place we were not patted down, was the one place I would probably carry something if I had a mind to.

The flight was only 1 hour and 40 minute and the last hour you were not allowed to have anything on your lap, go to the bathroom, drink or eat anything, use any devices and had to keep your hands in full view. This meant that there was a line up down the plane for the bathroom before the cut off, when we had our "warnings" Every one has their ideas on the knee jerk reactions of things so I will not get into it at all. I will just say that as soon as I entered the bathroom I realized that a lot of men could not hit the toilet and it smelt like the worse urinal I had ever been in! I had to put tissue over my nose just to stay in there and take a pee!

Upon arrival at San Francisco, Bazza and I looked at the Immigration lines and joked that no matter which lane we picked it would be the slowest. It was a joke cuz there was about 200 people behind us as well, but it became less funny when there was 5 people left in the lanes in the entire cavernous space and we were two of them! We were closely questioned on why Bazza had a B1/B2 Visa, where we were going, why we came into the states so much and on and on. He wanted to see our return tickets but I told him that I did not have them printed, but he could look at them on my laptop if he wanted. He told me that I could not open my laptop in there.

By the time we found the sky train, took the shuttle to the car rental building, found out that they car rental company place we had picked this time meant we had to take ANOTHER shuttle from there to their place (And I did not even pick the cheapest!), got to the car rental place, waited for them to clean a car for us as I did not want a mustang that they thought i would be happy to get...it was over and hour and a half since we got off the plane. Longer then the flight was. Plus we were at the airport in Victoria three hours in advance. Traveling is such fun!!!!

My sister met us for dinner at, wait for it, outback steakhouse... She said somehow she knew we wanted to go there before she even asked! Had dinner and then made our way to the hotel we reserved. 20 minutes after we checked into the hotel, we checked out again, but that is a story for another day!

By the way, it is Princess LuLu's birthday on the boat today...I want to know why she had to make her own dessert and ice cream for her Bday?? Come on Rich and Bruce, you can do better then that!.

I also hear through the grapevine that our new boat owner Bruce had an interesting (make that expensive...) week his first week of doing charters. Things that somehow I missed reading about on the boat blog! Not only did he rinse his camera with salt water at the bubbly pool, but lost an expensive watch on the banana boat, tore the foot rest on the banana boat by over inflating it, and sent his wallet to the laundry! Welcome to the expensive world of boating! Been there done that! Those are just minor baby expenses I tell you...fair warning!

And in a creative accounting mood for the marina, since we use A/C on dock they decided they were going to charge us so much per day for using it. Fine, they negotiated a rate which was half what they wanted. THen the new dock manager wants to charge them 2 days rate when the boat is on dock from noon to noon!! Cuz, in his mind that is two days! Had to giggle. Sorry we are not there to help with these things guys..... Been there done that again...