The Family Sport

We have discovered a sport that every member of the family is excited about...snorkeling. We upgraded the girls snorkel gear from the BX stuff to the stuff from the Marina Store. They now have an "official" snorkel set consisting of a dry snorkel, mask, snorkel vest (Mommy insisted on this bit of kit), booties (the ones with felt on the bottom so you can reef walk when you are not in your fins), fins, and gloves. They also have their own carrying bag. The nice thing is that about the only thing they will grow out of are the booties!
Mr. Military Instructor Dad spent an evening having them practice donning and doffing their gear, coming up with various "equipment malfunction" scenarios to solve, and learn equipment maintainence routines. How cute. Today we headed up north to Oura Wan Bay with the Coles to test out our skills and work with the equipment in the a real world arena...The Pacific Ocean. We had our squadron picnic at this particular beach last summer. It is sparsely populated, wide, protected, sandy, and has a very gradual slope into the water. It also has showers and toilets....so cool. The girls spent hours swimming in the water here last summer so we thought it would be the perfect place to try out the sport of snorkeling. The girls had a blast. They were a little hesitant at first to go further away from shore but once they saw the big blue starfish on a rock, they were hooked. Brian and I each took a kid and we snorkled together like Mommy and Daddy dolphins with their babies (Emily's description). The girls were very brave. At one point Emily got a mouthful of ocean water and sputtered. At first she wanted to head back for shore, but she coughed it all out, put her snorkle back on, and continued looking for fishies. Kenzie went out the furthest, but Emily was right on her heels.
Brian and I were on opposite ends of the beach with our respective kids when the only "major drama" for the day occured. Kenzie lost one of her fins in about 12 feet of water and those babies don't float. So after some universal "get over here" hand signals, Emily and I made our way over to Brian and Kenzie. Poor Brian had attempted to go down and get the fin, but he had his snorkle out of his mouth and ended up with about one lungful of water in his chest...oops. He didn't give up though, he hacked it all out and stayed over the fin (which was cooperatively staying put straight up and down at the bottom) like a bouy marker. Little Kenzie was bobbing around a bit distressed over her missing fin. Mommy did a pike dive and rescued said fin, while Emily bobbed around with the rest of the family. So, years and years of lifeguard training culminated in one sucessful rescue of a fin off the sandy bottom of the Pacific. I hope Mom and Dad are proud of me! All is well that ends well.
The girls are ready for more. There were a few fishies and fun sea creatures in Oura Wan Bay, but it is mostly sandy bottom. So, we are using the birthday money from our parents to book a family snorkeling trip to the Kerama Islands this month. We will go out on a boat to 2, possibly 3, spots in the Keramas, jump overboard, and see lots of colorful ocean life with about 200 foot visability! It is one of the top 5 snorkle/dive spots in the world...right in our backyard. We are so excited...all of us! So thank you Moms and Dads...we are going to have some great family fun!