Poodlehead is Open Water Certified!

A few weeks ago, Poodlhead went to Huntsville and finished her open water scuba certification. This is her story....

Poodlehead has had some anxiety over this. My parents bought us both a full set of SCUBA gear last Christmas (including my 9 year old daughter), but it took until August for her to finally finish up her certification. I finished mine up earlier this year after MANY delays due to family illness, scheduling issues, etc. In fact, we were both scheduled to do it the same day, but Poodlehead got super-sick and couldn't dive. She was kind enough to let me go ahead and do it, but it still took months for her to finish as well :( She's not one for cold, dark places, and I had bragged about this awesome quarry up in Huntsville that is really warm, lots of neat fish, and GREAT visibility. She was finally convinced it would be OK to try it there, and off we went! Of course THAT day, visibility was HORRIBLE and temperature was starting to drop from previous highs... Now HUSBAND has anxiety that wife will flip.

She did fantastic, however, and handled the very poor visibility conditions like a champ, and I think all in all she really enjoyed it!

Poodlehead hanging out waiting to demonstrate some skills... Looks nice and relaxed!!

On the surface manually inflating BC after a simulated "emergency" ascent...

Removing and replacing her BC at the surface...

Underwater Dancing??

Instructor and Students - Thanks to Britt at http://www.betterdiver.com!

"Shark Feeding" Huge catfish... we swam up to about 8' from the surface and my dad tossed in cat food to bring in the fish..

This is "Bob" he rules the roost.. you can identify Bob by the big patches of white scars on his top and side from growing up TO rule the roost... Unfortunately this picture doesn't show his battle scars.

Proud Hubby!

One of her fellow students acting out...

Hubby and his sister underwater...

Nana - Hubby's mother...