I thought it was going to be simple to sum up our second day here: breakfast, beach, scuba class, dinner, sleep. And in fact the beginning of the day started out just like my summary. By dinnertime though, the action heated up with a tear-filled dinner, a father-daughter moment of a lifetime and some high-tech shenanigans that turned Emily into a ghost.

The entire family met for dinner at the ocean-side restaurant, Schooners. Schooners was standard surf and turf fare for most, but apparently when you are a family of 13 with special needs it meant a deluxe table in the courtyard overlooking the beach. The kids played in the sand while the elder kids chatted.

Dinner was also the first opportunity for Les to wax poetic and deliver his obligatory well lubricated, “I love you guys…it’s all about family and drop a reference about Mary in here and there” speech. The man knows how to orate, and there wasn’t a dry eye at the table.

We headed for Café Paris for dessert and I pulled off of the path to wait for the trailing Emily. It was in the roadside hammock that we had a father-daughter moment of a lifetime. With the tear stains still wet from Les’ dinnertime speech, I sat back in the hammock and was soon joined by my daughter. She nuzzled my neck and draped her foot over the edge to give us a gentle swing. After a few minutes of cuddly small talk, I told her we’d better catch up to the others and get some dessert. If we didn’t leave now we might not see them for the rest of the night.

Emily’s sorrowful whisper came quickly and seemed to wrap itself around my throat: “Awww. I’d rather just stay here with you like this than have dessert. This is my favorite part of the trip so far.” I could neither talk nor move for fear that I might wake myself up from some sort of crazy parent wet dream. The image of the two of us silently swaying in this was captured in my memory for an eternity.

An hour or so later we captured more memories by trying out an old special effect on my new digital camera. When I discovered a “starry night” mode, I took a few test shots and then posed Patrick and Emily around the pool after dark. The goal was to create a shot that was similar to a double exposure but by using the lengthy exposure meant to shoot the stars in the sky. We got pretty good results in short order. Click the photo(s) here to see a larger version and look for the ghosts of the two girls that drowned in the hot tub only a year ago.

Tomorrow’s plans: Lisa and I completed our SCUBA refresher course and tomorrow we take our first dive off the leeward side of the island. Emily will participate in a fashion show tomorrow night, and Patrick? He seems pretty much content wherever we drop him, like in the middle of our bed when it’s time to call it a night. That’s where he is right now in fact…sigh.

Click the photo(s) here to see a larger version. Also make sure to check out the rest of the photos from the day