The Mailbox Is Full

 Oh yeah…this is the time of year our sweet mail delivery guy starts to get cranky.  The Hub is a catalog shopper from way, way back and that puts us on every catalog list you can think of.  I am a catalog lover, not so much a shopper, and that must be their nightmare!  These are 3 of my all time faves:

 

 Imagine my giddiness when all 3 of these arrived on the same day!!  I could hardly wait to get them open.  My usual is to wait until the house is quiet, The Hub is asleep and the clock is telling me it’s just after midnight…catalog time!!  A cup of mint tea, no make up and catalogs…ahh…heaven.

From Pottery Barn I want this:

 

 

 

Instead of this:

 Hmmm..vintage birds, Minnie ears, flying monkey, Travelocity gnome…there must be a key to my real self somewhere in this mess….

Here’s the best…

The Grandin Road Halloween Catalog with Martha Stewart!  I am not a Martha fan, but I am obsessed with her glitter! Really…so many pretty colors and if you are a glitter person, you must love this stuff.

Look at this cool banner.…and I can remember having a skeleton like this in our classroom when I was in elementary school…ahem.

 

 

 

The best of both worlds…Skeletons AND Glitter!!!

 

 

 

 

But these are my absolute favorites and I am hoping I can get them mixed into the Halloween decorations without The Hub anyone noticing….

 

 

This guy is running a close second…isn’t he so neat?  We already have a vampire with glowing eyes and a talking butler so I am guessing I won’t be able to sneak him in.. 

 

 

Can’t hardly wait for tomorrow’s mail!

The Rest Of The Story...

There's a bunch of pics to follow...then we will be done with this trip and we can move on!

I went back and found a few more inside pictures...there were 5 cameras on board and we all took different views and I copied everyone's pictures to my computer...so you can only imagine how many there are to sort through. Anyway....

Here's the sofa......





And the TV we watched when we were on the sofa. You can also see the inside driving controls.

2 fridges, stove & microwave. Plenty of counter space and storage. There was also a double sink, dishwasher and under-counter icemaker.

This is the dining area...seats 10...just next to the kitchen.

Another bathroom...more counter space.

This is one of the upstairs bedrooms and the towels that were supplied.

One of the best things was just the absolute freedom to go anywhere on the lake and stop anywhere that looks good. You don't have to tie up everytime you stop...we did just float for a while and, if you're not staying, you can just put the boat on the shore. The guys were really anxious to fish....

The Hub didn't catch anything.

Seems like there are lots of pics of the scenery and the boat and the kids...but here are the 2 sons....

Here are the 2 wives....

And here are the 5 kids!!

As long as we are outside, here's another view of that top deck and the slide...

And, a great pic of the hot tub! While the boat was moving, the heat was turned off and the kids just sat in the cool water, like a pool.

One son brought his smaller boat along and we towed it behind the big boat. It turned out to be a good idea...they were able to take rides down the narrow parts of the lake and the kids got to do some tubing.

It was a long swim to the shore & back!

Look at those pink cheeks...and the view! This was taken while we were just cruising...the boat only goes about 10 miles an hour.

We had 2 special things happen on our last night...first, these guys came out of nowhere, just begging to be fed some snacks.

And, second...we had a Luau Party! I surprised everybody with Luau decorations and plates and napkins and all of that. It was really fun...

But these guys really had a blast!

What A Trip...I Mean...Vacation!!!

Okay, so...in case you don't know, we just returned from a wonderful adventure...a Houseboat Vacation! Never done it before, so we had no idea what to expect. The brochure pics were great, but traveling to Kentucky just based on a brochure...well, risky at best. But after months (and I do mean months) of preparation, scheduling and decisions, we all headed for Jamestown!

The Hub tries to do something big for the two sons, their wives and the grandkids every year. Always given as a family Christmas gift so they look forward to that. Well..we never expected everyone to be so excited and take so much interest in this...I mean, who knew?? There are lots of pictures to share, so this is part uno.

Here's the picture from the brochure......3 levels, 87 feet long, 8 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, full kitchen, washer/dryer, hot tub, grill, curly slide, central AC ( in order to live, of course), satellite TV, TV in every room with DVD player....sounds great, right??? I'm here to tell you it was all true...every bit of it. The boat was clean, stocked with dishes and utensils, linens...no kidding, it was amazing! We brought our own food...grill stuff, breakfast stuff and snacks...

The night before was, as it always is before we go anywhere, hectic. Seems like the kitties always know something's up and Woody was quick to let us know we couldn't put anything past him.....

The regulations in Kentucky for houseboating allow for 13 passengers on this particular boat. With sons and families the head count was 11. It was so fun to have our good friends (that went with us to Alaska a couple years ago) join us. We had to rent a big van to carry all of our stuff and we were almost full when we got to their house...

Just one picture before we leave...sheesh....notice the sunglasses on the guys and the glasses on girls' head.

We took our time getting there...2 days...and this is looking out from an overlook in Kentucky. We were getting ready to cruise Lake Cumberland and are actually in Lake Cumberland Park. Look at the trees, look at the water, look at the size of my butt...Lord, help me. Good thing this was taken from the car....

Really...how pretty is this?? Nothing at all like Central Florida!

Here's the marina...see the cars way over on the left...parked on that hill?? That's where you park and they have kids that get your stuff and load it in big rubbermaid containers on wheels. Then once you get checked in, you park your car in a special lot, get the shuttle back and the kids take your stuff to your boat.

Uh...yeah...here's our boat at the dock. Even though we had looked at pictures almost everyday for the last 3 months, I don't think any of us were really ready for this.....

While The Hub was getting all signed in and the kids were unloading our stuff, I walked ahead and took some quick pics. Front deck......

Up the little stairs (to the right) to the middle deck...counter and bar, hot tub and you can see the slide...it actually begins on the next higher level. That top level is a sun deck, but only accessable by a spiral staircase, not much wider than my above mentioned butt. Since I was dealing with a broken toe (ouch!) and there was that chance that I might get stuck, I never made it to that top deck. But...it looked very nice...

There was also a place to drive up here, but I didn't get that either. Oh well...back down to the living room and kitchen...just like home. Very weird to be cooking on the stove or making a cup of tea while your house is moving! That stuff on the counter is buns....bags of hotdog & hamburger buns. Now go down the hallway to the left of the kitchen and there are 4 bedrooms with king sized beds and the 2 main bathrooms and the door to the back deck of the boat.

In between the 4 bedrooms there were...stairs!! Yep...the other 4 bedrooms were downstairs and this is where we kept...er, I mean...let the kids sleep.

One of the bathrooms...plenty of room.

This is how most of the shoreline looked. We found out that the water was down about 50 feet. There is some big construction going on with the dam and they had to lower the water....but, even with 50 feet of water missing, the GPS/Depth Finder was still reading 100-150 feet deep!

Other houseboats on the lake all parked together. I'm guessing these are private boats and they must have been out on the lake together...

Lake Cumberland is over 100 miles long and about 1 mile in wide...so you just cruise around and look at all of this until you are ready to tie up for the night.

The guys picked a nice cove and we just pulled right up and they got off, tied the ropes to some rocks and that was it! We did get off to do some lookin' around and take this picture...pretty cool.

The water was so clear.....

And, who wouldn't be able to get a good night's sleep under this Kentucky Moon??

Enough...I will post the rest tomorrow!!

Hope you guys have a great weekend...