What a Nimiety of Riches Have We Here!

Holy cow. What a night! What a day! I don’t know if I can fit this all in one blog entry but I am going to try. Saturday was an amazing day where we crammed ten days worth of activity into one.

We all woke up fairly early. For the parents this wasn’t as easy as we had been out late the night before and partied like rock stars. But we made it. The girls were all scheduled to be Dolphin Trainers for the day. They woke up ebullient in anticipation. Ingrid and I went and made sure they were safely in the hands of the staff at the Dolphin Cay. They could hardly contain them selves.

Next we screened up and went to the beach. On the way Coulter and William went rock climbing. William is 10 and went straight up 3 times. Coulter I was a little worried about but he climbed 2 walls and made it with in a foot or so of the top. He was so cute and is amazingly strong. Poor Kees, he was too little. While watching the rest of us almost melted because it was so hot and humid.

We spent a little time at the beach floating, reading and generally relaxing. Kees became buddies with a girl about 12 years old. She was helping him surf on floatie that she had. Nice kid. He, like the little prince he is, kept telling her, “Push me, push me.” And she did. Coulter and I went around the lazy river, that isn’t really very lazy. Coulter was terrified when he flipped off his raft in the middle of the wave section. I was afraid of that. I jumped out and grabbed him and assured him he would be fine. When I had suggested that we get a double raft the first time he didn’t want one, he did now for sure. We did it one more time and he was fine.

Brian left to go SCUBA diving. He said it was great! Definitely better then the previous day when it stormed and terrified William. There is a ship wreck right off the island and they went to investigate that.

Next Coulter, Bob, William and Kees left to go to the Atlantis Speedway. There you can build and race your own remote control race car or monster truck. The boys thought that was awesome. Of course they wanted to build their own but even we have some limits. Not many right now but some.

While the boys raced Ingrid and I went to the Dolphin Cay to watch the girls swim with the dolphins. They were so excited. Apparently everything up to this point was training for the girls and feeding for the sea lions and dolphins. So the girls got on a boogie board and then a dolphin would push them on their feet. They went FLYING across the water. And each one of them giggled as if they were babies. You know that honest, total and complete joy laugh. That in and of itself made that experience complete from my point of view. I can’t explain how much joy that gave me to see them in total bliss. They all got their pictures with the dolphins and were grinning from ear to ear the whole time. They were in the water for about an hour with the dolphins. There were quite a few dolphins there with the girls.
Apparently there are 31 dolphins, 4 of which are babies in the Cay. Some of them were the dolphins that were from New Orleans. That is an amazing story. Their habitat was destroyed and the dolphins were forced into the gulf. They were later recovered and responded to their calls. All were recovered but some of them had sustained serious injuries from the storm. There was a lot of coordination and work that brought them here to the Atlantis but they are happy and healthy now.

Ingrid and I took a ton of pictures but we still ended up buying the $149 picture package. It’s amazing what you’ll pay for here. They pictures are great and I really want them to remember it. I think they will.

The girls got back to the room about 5:30. We all milled about and had pizza for dinner in our room. We put the kids to bed and then it was time for the grown ups to start our evening. I can’t remember the last time my night started at 9:30. I am too old for this. We met George (between Brian and Bob) and Sarah at a bar and started our night. Anna was there and we saw another friend Michelle. She is a hoot and we make eachother laugh…a lot….it’s kind of silly.

First, Carmen Electra showed up and we all got our picture with her. Then the real party started at 10:00. Being the VIPs we are Anna took us in an elevator up to the party and were thrown into the middle of the action. When we got up there the Girly Show girls were there already in the VIP section. They all started waving and saying, “Hi Heather! Hi Heather” Hooray, my friends are here! We all chatted and got the party started. We planted ourselves in the VIP section. Then Miss USA (in red)and Miss Universe (in purple)came up. I have to tell you, Miss Universe is the MOST BEAUTIFUL woman I have ever seen in my life. It’s like she’s from another planet, like a different species of woman. It’s a whole day later and I still can’t get over her. AND she’s nice to boot. That girl is the whole package. We met Caitlin Moe. You probably haven’t heard of her yet but I think you will someday. She plays rock violin and the crowd went wild. Also a really nice girl. The DJ from the previous night was there. Her name is Sophia Lin but she goes by DJ Hustle-Lin. Bob thinks she should DJ his 40th birthday party.

So all these cool people are partying with us in this little VIP section. You couldn’t help but talk to everyone. We didn’t get individual drinks they just brought big pitchers and bottles of anything we wanted. Luckily we had them bring some Perrier too. That was a life saver. I know I alternated a glass of wine, a Perrier. There were 2 big guards at the entry to keep the riff raff out and protect us VIPs. You should have seen the guys hanging on the glass wall watching what was going on in our area. There was one guy there that I thought was going to pee his pants. He couldn’t take his eyes off the women. They were all really funny to watch from our side of the wall. We partied like ROCK STARS. Seriously, it was crazy fun. Out of all these people I still liked the Girly Show girls the best. Laura, their leader is fantastic but really they all were. We all had a blast and I got some great pictures. Brian and Bob were like little boys in a candy shop. Ingrid and I didn’t care. Go for it boys.

We stayed out until 3:00 in the morning. I don’t think I have done that in the past few years. Hummmm, maybe it’s been since the last time I was here. Yes, that sounds about right. We laughed a lot, had a great time and we so thrilled to be included in the big party.

Next blog….Sunday.