Weekly Update: 26, St Patrick's day, face painting

This was the first St Patrick's/ Birthday that I was away from home and family.

Here's a love note from Josh:

 There’s really no contest when it comes to the best thing in my life. It’s you by a long shot. You’re my everything! I love you so much. Happy birthday, Luv you so much! - Josh

Here's our St Patrick's Day decorations

Lacey's St Patrick's day craft with mommy's help

 My birthday was great I got to spend it with my kids as Josh was at school all day and studying all night. I sure do miss not seeing him... We also had a little green party with our friends in the morning for the kids. We all dressed up in green.

 We made leprechaun hats.

 Lacey the leprechaun, she was so proud of her hat.

We decorated cookies with white and green icing and sprinkles.

The kids got their faces painted by Claire. 

Lacey got a butterfly.

Lincoln's a tiger, Eli's a green fox

...And Krysten was a butterfly.

That evening I got to go our with the girls for dessert. Claire and Camille are both med. student wires. Claire is from BC, Canada and Camille is from Lethridge.

Our Library visit. We got at least every couple of weeks. The kids love going. Heres a tree we found just outside the library that caught our attention. The branches grow down wards into the ground, it was pretty neat looking.

We bought a new tire a few weeks ago but it kept going flat so we went back to the tire shop that we bought it at to get them to look at it. Tire shops are pretty fancy here.

Lincoln waiting patiently.... It was just the air valve that we leaking so they replaced that, we are good to go.

Usually when we do chalk we draw in our back yard but this day we decided it would be fun to go in front of our place and draw on the gated complex side walk. Kids loved it as it was something different.
 It's getting too hot to do side walk chalk these days.

We even got to practice the letters that lincoln has learned so far.

Playing in our bath tub out side. Trying to keep cool.

Letter H

 This is a turtle that Lincoln drew on his on

KimSha Beach

 This week we did a beach day date with all the med. student wives (from our university and AUC) and kids at KimSha Beach (it's located just behind the Burger King in Simpson Bay). It's fun getting all the kids together and having some beach fun.

It's neat how each beach on St Maarten has different sand. Some is more white and some is coarse with broken up sea shells.  We also find that KimSha Beach the water is more salty for some reason, it burns the eyes.

Lacey still thinks that she always needs to be snacking at the beach.

Food and sand is not a good combo.

 Lacey keeps me runny with always wanting her buckets filled up with water.

There's a little climb on center at this beach for the kids to play with.

Lacey is cooling off with her foot in the bucket of water.

Lincoln can never sit still for two seconds to eat, he always has to be playing.

Lacey and Krysten have matching swim suits.

Lacey loves following Krysten around.

The boys being silly.

Lincoln and Eli also have matching swimsuits.

Pool Time

As I said earlier Lacey always has to be snacking, well its the same at the pool as we usually go there right after her nap in the afternoon. So she will sit and eat her snack on the bench while she wakes up then she will go swim after.

My fish

Lacey still has no fear. She will jump in the pool all on her own, Puddle jumper or no puddle jumper.

She has gone right under with no jumper even when I have explained to her that she needs to ask for help or get her jumper or she will go under. when i pull her out from going under she doesn't looked one bit fazed. It almost acts like that was fun.

Most days we have the pool to our selves. It's kinda nice.

 Lincoln got to have a nap with dad one afternoon.


On Friday Josh and I got to go out for our 6th Anniversary, we ate at a restaurant call Fusion. It was amazing. It was so nice to get out and go on a date.


Josh's meal - stuffed Halibit with lobster.

Here's some more info on what life is like on a island:
Locals seem to have no respect for you and look at you like your stupid if you ask any questions. 

FOOD: I always dread going grocery shopping each week. Even when I have my car. Grocery shopping is nothing like it is back home. Everything had to be shipped to the island, so most of our food had gone from Miami to St. Maarten. That’s a long journey to keep lettuce looking nice! It isn’t really an option for us to consistently be able to find good produce. Cooking take a lot of creativity, but mostly we just eat the same meals over and over…and over again.  Im not a fan of cooking dinner over a hot stove in this weather. So making meals can be challenging.

 MILK: It definitely took some getting used to, fridge milk just isn't the same as back home. I look forward to drinking a tall glass of cold Diary milk when we get home. You can also get self milk or powder milk.

ISLAND SMELLS: Okay, so on St Marten there are almost no side walks.  I’ve seen, like, one that lasted for 5 seconds.  So everyone has to walk on the side of the road, and usually you would think ‘no big deal’.  But they still have to have a way to drain the water when it rains.  Which it happens quite a lot here.  And so since they have no real curb to be their drain they have these little trenches, that are on the sides of the roads.  Unfortunately the water in the drains gets mixed with dirt and whatever else finds it’s way in there, so when you walk somewhere you are at risk of falling into the sludge, and some of us have. Plus it stinks.... Garbages along the side of the road also get pretty stinky in the heat. And I usually see rats wondering around the garbage cans.