Stowaway's

This might be one of my favorite stories EVER.  That says a lot.

Yesterday - July 1.  My day of new beginnings.

Nolan, Lily and I take to kayak's to an area called Captain Cook.  (Lily is my summer daughter - more on that later).  You have to "drop in the kayak" about a 30 minute kayak ride south of Captain Cook.  You pay the nice guy (Rufus) to help drop you in the water and help you back out.  (Worth every penny of the $10).

Favorite moment of the day #1:  I say to Rufus - you've been working here a long time right?  Yeah.  You had to swim out and rescue me last year when my boat had a hole in it.  Oh, that's right - you haven't been here in a while.  Then he proceeds to tell everyone how he rescued me last year (see the First Ocean Water rescue blog to read the story).  Pretty funny.

We set off - Nolan and I are in the double kayak, Lily in the single.  (They were fighting over who got the single).

We get to the Captain Cook statue (he "founded" the island) - they later ate him.  Yes, roasted - as in Cooked!  ;-)

We tie up the kayaks, we snorkel, we get out at the statue, we snorkel some more.  We are sitting watching the tourists boats.  Lily remarks, Oh, the Fairwinds, we did that last year.  You know what?  We should just go over and get on the boat.  (I promise you this was NOT my idea).  We laugh, we come up with funny stories about what we would say, on and on.  Finally, Lily says "we should do this - they are cooking hamburgers, I'm hungry".  So, I say, "Ok, let's go".  The look on their faces was priceless.  Really??? Nolan:  "Mom, are you serious?".  Sure, let's go.

We swim over to the boat, we climb up the ladder.  We are trying so hard not to just giggle.  The kids go off the boat slides, they jump off the "high deck board".  Then the food is ready.  I'm like "no, we really shouldn't".  After they opened the chips, Lily gets a cup full of chips and we standing there when one of the crew says to Lily - "you don't have to just steal a cup of chips - go get a burger".  Then he says to Nolan - aren't you hungry?  Nolan replies "no"  He says, well then take one to go.  I guess it was obvious that we hadn't been there on the whole trip.

We go get burgers, sodas.  As we are eating, the boat starts to move.  Turns out, it was a false alarm.  We ate, played a bit more.  Then we dove off the boat and snorkeled back to our kayaks, and went back to our harbor.  Yelling at the boat the whole time "Thanks for the burgers"...........

These two kids may be 13, but I'm getting to be 13, just for the summer......