Finding Nemo

 The moment I think Doug has been waiting for his whole life--a day on the Great Barrier Reef.  With such wonderful things in store for us today and a three-hour round-trip boat ride, we didn't think the little girls would be the best companions.  So what do you do?  Leave them with a total stranger for the entire day and head for the boat. (Technically it was a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend; we did meet her at church before we left the girls with a total stranger).

 We had to be to the pier early in the morning to catch our boat out to the outer reef.

 Once we got to the reef, the boat stopped and everyone could jump out to go snorkeling or scuba diving. James and Doug jumped in, but I wasn't sure if we were going to get Spencer in the water.  He said he'd get in if he could be on my back.  Jumping in with Spencer on my back about drowned us both, so we decided to use the pool noodle to hang on to each other.  It was the first time the boys had ever been snorkeling in the middle of the ocean, and Spencer hated the salt water.  He did stay in the water for quite awhile even if I had to keep telling him, "You're at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia! Put your face in the water and look at it!"  

In our snorkeling glory Spencer, me and James

When I first put my face in the water, it really was quite unbelievable!  They say that pictures are not the same as seeing it, and I must agree.  Doug took almost a hundred pictures of it, but you can't get the idea of just how big it is from the pictures alone.  It just goes on and on and on.  The people with our boat told us we won't be able to come close to seeing even a small fraction of the reef since it is larger than Japan, but just enjoy what we could see.

I got to scuba dive for the first time. I figure if I'm going to ever scuba dive in my life, the Great Barrier Reef is the place to do it, right?  Doug, who wanted to scuba dive more than anyone, has asthma and had to miss it.  I scuba dived at the second place our boat took us.

We couldn't get Doug back in the boat after he got out to snorkel.

Nigel is a pretty famous fish in these parts.

Doug and Nigel.

We left the boys alone on the second and third stops because by then they had lots of food to keep them company.  The boat fed us an all-you-can-eat lunch at the second stop and then afternoon tea at the last stop.

This is the boat we were on.

Truly an unforgettable day.  One more tick on my bucket list.