Adventures in Amsterdam: Christmas in St. John's

After spending the months of October, November and December in the gray of rainy Amsterdam weather, we decided to boost our vitamin D levels with a little sunshine. And so we booked a family vacation to St. John's in the U.S. Virgin Islands and convinced some family to join us.

We spent a spectacular nine days in paradise. The water was beautiful, the beaches were pristine and uncrowded, and the company was entertaining. Marley and Sophie had a fabulous week playing in the sand, swimming in the water and soaking up the attention of their favorite older cousins Marley and Jack!

We rented a villa overlooking Cruiz Bay Harbor in St. John's which had a great little pool. We spent our mornings at the Villa enjoying the pool and views. And after the morning naps we ate lunch and headed out to a new beach. The beaches got better every day! The water was warm and calm enough for Maisy to swim in with her pink barbie life jacket. The beaches had enough afternoon shade to satisfy those wanting to avoid skin cancer. And the winding roads to and from the beaches gave the passengers in my taxi (I was the designated Island driver) the feeling that they were at the amusement park. If you haven't been to St. John's before, they drive on the opposite side of the street, and the roads are steep and winding! Driving was a daily adventure.

Papa John was our designated photographer. Toward the end of the trip we started taking guesses on how many photos he had snapped. Cousins Jackie and Dan, gave inexperienced guesses of about 200 photos. Those of us who have spent more time around my dad guessed higher, 350, 400, someone even ventured a guess of 500 for the week. But Johnny and I knew they were all wrong. You see, Johnny and I are the ones that have to download and categorize all of "scrappy's" photos for him. A task so time consuming that it requires hours of undisturbed attention. Johnny guessed 600, but I went even further and said 700. Jackie was astonished, she didn't think it was possible to take 100 photos a day....but I knew better. When we got home from St. John's and I downloaded the photos there were close to 800 on his camera, even I hadn't guessed enough!

I immediately began the tedious task of weeding through the photos to delete the bad ones before my dad could download them onto his own computers. The beauty of the digital camera is that you can take 800 photos and then print and save only the good ones. But my dad thinks the beauty of the digital camera is that you can take and keep 800 photos! There has to be a clinical diagnosis for my dad's attachment to his photos. He is literally incapable of deleting bad photos. He doesn't care if you have six chins, cellulite oozing from a bathing suit, or food in your teeth...he simply won't delete a bad photo because "you never know..." Ummm, I'm pretty sure that I know which photos of myself I don't want others seeing. And I'm pretty sure I have the ability to judge which unflattering photos the other ladies in my family would want deleted, banished, burned. I took the 800 photos down to about 500.

After all that work...I forgot to load my dad's photos onto my memory stick to bring them back to Amsterdam with me. So, for this blog post I had to rely on the 50 photos I took during our visit to St. John's. However, if you want to see a few more pictures of the girls on our vacation, check out my facebook album.

Beautiful beaches, beautiful water, and plenty of beautiful babes in

bitty bikinis for the guys to check out. It certainly wasn't me who took this photo.

Maisy enjoying the sunshine in St. John's.

Cousins Marley and Jack chilling in the truck with Maisy.

Maisy sacked out on the couch after a long day of playing at the beach.

Marley relaxing on the beach.

Papa John photographing the crazy roads out the back of the pick-up truck. Fortunately for me...the taxi driver for the week...I couldn't hear his comments as we cruised around the island. The vehicle that we rented was a Ford S10 pickup truck that had its rear flatbed converted into passenger space by welding on a canopy top and bench seating. It wasn't the safest vehicle to ride in, but was the only one on the island that would accommodate 12 passengers! And since the roads were so steep and windy, we never went faster than 20 miles per hour.

My passengers had one rule for me to follow, if an accident was impending, I was to steer the truck into the oncoming vehicle rather than off the road. Everyone figured their chances of survival were better in a head on collision than falling 100 feet off a cliff. We passed about four guard rails on the entire island, and in my opinion every road needed to be lined in guard rails!

Joel and Sophie in the mangrove trees.

Johnny baby proofing the refridgerator in an attempt to mock papa John who spent most of his vacation worrying about a cascade of various events that could somehow bring harm to the girls.

Maisy getting her hair braided. She never sits that still for me!

Bridget relaxing on the beach.

Sophie on the beach

Grandma Cindy joining her

Cousins Marley and Jack sitting in our truck with Sophie who was thrilled to spend a moment in the back with the big kids...since her regular spot was in a car seat in the truck's cab as mommy's navigator. Fortunately for mommy, there are only three roads on St. John's, so Sophie's help was sufficient.