Windy Possibilities: June 2008

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Kevin & Cory's Wedding

Well, Heather's been blogging for us for quite a while. I guess it's time I got involved too.

This weekend is Kevin & Cory's wedding. I have known Kevin and Cory since high school. They started dating after Heather and I moved to Houston and we haven't had the chance to hang out with them much since the started dating. We are excited to hang out with them and a few of our College Station friends that we haven't seen for a while.

Last night we started the weekend off with the Wedding rehearsal and dinner at Messina Hof winery. They are getting married at the A&M United Methodist church in College Station. It's one of the oldest churches still around in College Station. It's very pretty inside, lots of stained glass windows and a real working pipe organ! Everything seemed to come off with out a hitch, unfortunately the batteries were dead in the camera so we'll be posting a few photos from today instead.

We finished up fairly quickly and headed over to Messina Hof for a wine reception and dinner. Kevin's parents did a lovely job of setting things up for the evening. The room we were in looked out over the vineyards; with the sun setting it was a nice evening. The wine, food and company was great. At some point the word was passed around about going to the bowling alley. I am not one for bowling except for on the Wii, but i couldn't give up the chance to hang out with friends I don't see very often.

The bowling ally was a blast, Joey and I decided to partake in the consumption of cheap liquor and laugh at everyone bowling. Heather might be a "Pro" Wii bowler but it doesn't show on the real lanes. Although she was bowling in socks?

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Cozumel Trip

While we were in Cozumel, Connor and Katie stayed with Jeff's parents, I'm pretty sure they had fun playing in the yard and getting spoiled for the week. Tom says Connor was in charge and Katie was the guard dog. Thanks Tom and Judy!

This is the mural painted at one of our breakfast spots, Rockin' Java

We saw lots of cruise ships all week, but it was never too crowded in town

This ship had a big water slide

Jeff asked me on the plane if I thought Cozumel would have a Starbucks now, I said yes, I bet they do, he said he didn't think they would, you can see who won that bet.

Last day of diving

Monday was our last day of diving. Our first site was Palancar Caves

French angelfish

Brittle star on a sponge

2 arrow crabs, they're about the size of a daddy long legs

brittle star in a sponge

Jeff likes these little fish

Jeff coming out of a swim through

golden crinoid

close up

I had the divemaster take this picture, I had to fight the current to get back over to where Jeff was after handing off the camera, it didn't work too well

this is a tiny little jelly fish about the size of my thumbnail
Our second dive was at Yucab Reef

Jeff giant striding off the boat

There was a strong current on this dive. My parents call these super man dives, Jeff is demonstrating

lobster

pipehorse, it's very small and looks like a leaf, they are related to seahorses and very rare. I was really excited to see it since I love seahorses

Jeff with Miguel, one of our favorite divemasters from this trip

Juvenile fish

I love to see the juveniles of different fish species. It's amazing how different some of them look from the adults. Most juvenile fish are pretty tough to find, they hide really well. We got to see some really cool juvenile fish on this trip.

Juvenile queen angelfish

adult queen angelfish, I think she's looking right at me

adult queen angelfish

Juvenile trunkfish, these guys are one of my favorite juvenile fish, they look totally different from the adults. Jeff found this one and showed it to me, I spent so much time trying to get a good picture that I almost got left behind by the entire group!

adult trunkfish

Juvenile yellowtail damselfish, these are dark blue with tiny bright blue diamonds all over them, this one was tiny, smaller than my thumb.

He was also really good at hiding and really hard to get a picture of

Adult yellowtail damselfish

juvenile spotted drum, these are really hard to get pictures of because they dance around constantly, this one was really small, about the size of my thumb, not including his oversized fins

Intermediate spotted drum

adult spotted drum, now you can see why they're called spotted drums

Yummy fish

Sunday a couple of guys (James and Matt) who had been diving with us all week decided to go fishing instead of diving. Our dive boat was pulling up to the dock just as their boat was coming in, we were motioning to them asking if they caught anything, then they held up a mahi mahi that was almost as big as me! They caught 2 huge ones and one smaller one! We got off the dive boat and watched the fishing guide fillet the fish right there on the boat.

So that night they invited us and another family that had been diving with us all week to go over to Kelley's and have fish for dinner. We each got 2 or 3 big fillets of mahi mahi and I was stuffed!

Misha the cat at Kelley's begs worse than Connor!

After dinner James, Matt, Jeff and I walked over to the town square and saw that they were having a bike jumping contest. they had a ramp in the street and everything.

They guys all decided they wanted dessert, how could they still be hungry after all that fish?? So we walked down to Margaritaville and hung out for awhile.