Weekly Update: Party Week

Our week consisted of Preschool, library, groceries, play dates with friends, swimming and two friends Birthday Parties.

On Monday we had Gabriel (Gabbi) party. She had a princess party. The boys were even included with princes crowns. The little girls got to dress up in princess dress. Lacey loved it, it was her first time putting on a dress up princess dress. Lincoln even got to dance wight he birthday girl.

Beach time never gets old. This beach visit we saw a Ghost Crab, he was pretty fun to watch in the sand.

With how much we live in water. I think we are all going to turn into fish or mermaids

or some sea creature. Lincoln and Lacey loves the water and both have no fear. Lincoln is getting really good at diving. Lacey loves practising her swimming without her puddle jumper on. She loves it. She puts her goggles on and jumps in.

On Saturday Lincoln was invited to Brenner's Batman Pool Party. We had fun swimming, Batman cake and hanging out with friends.

This was the results from the party. Lincoln was so tired, from playing none stop

We've been counting down till when Nana-moto, Uncle Logan and Jessica arrive. 

Lincoln says " Why does it have to take so long." 

Lincoln walks around this week holding his fingers up ever so often, I'd ask him 'Why he's doing that' and he said "cause nana and uncle are coming in _ days, he's so excited".... 

This is the first time I think Lacey gets it. As she says "nana airplane, me Lacey" When I ask her of she wants Nana, Uncle and Jessica to come visit she shouts "Ya Ya " very loudly. We are ready for our visitors!

Cay Bay

We went to Cay Bay a few weeks ago with friend and just brought Josh here for his first time. Cay Bay is also known as Indigo bay as that's what the housing development is called in the valley. I've also heard it be referred to as Kokomo Bay as that's the name of the restaurant on this beach.  This beach is a small, very pretty cove, which owes its serenity to its remoteness, is popular with walkers, horse trekkers and mountain bikers. The water at this beach is an incredible blue. This is beach is only 5 minutes from our house.

 We were even able to find quit a few sea urchins while snorkeling. Lincoln snorkeled a bit and really enjoyed seeing the fish and sea urchins. 

We had a fun afternoon with dad for a few hours.

Land Crabs

You can find land crabs in our gated complex, 'Kool Baii Villas'. There holes look like gopher holes. The crabs only venture away from their holes at night or when it's raining in order to search for food. They eat just about anything they can find including their own young, dead things, and garbage. 

They are rather large crabs, growing to about four or five inches in diameter not including their formidable claws. During the day you may see them standing just outside a hole into which they will quickly descend as soon as they notice your approach... We also have this hole is our back yard which usually has a cover on. I'm not exactly sure what the hole is for. Any way in the evening we take the cover off and through bread in the whole and the land crab will come out to feast. The kids love watching them.

Weekly Update: Park in St. Peter's, Cupe Coy Beack Club

One week till family comes, Nana-moto, Uncle Logan and Jessica. We are so excited and ready for visitors. This had been the longest stretch with no visitors since living in the Caribbean. We have been truly blessed to have family come visit us as much as they have. We came in April 2013, then we got our first visitors in July 2013, then October 2013, then twice in December 2013, and our last visitors in February 2014.  This last stretch without family has been 5 months. So we are so ready for some family time. 

The count down is on.

Theres day that Lincoln and Lacey attack each other constantly. Driving their mom crazy. Pinching, hitting, kicking and  biting each other. Then there’s days they will play and have so much fun together. Always wanting to help each other, holding hands, putting on each other shoes. These days are picture perfect. I’m working on teaching these two that it’s more fun being nice to each other and we are all happy then attacking each other till they are both crying and screaming.

This is how Lincoln spends his afternoons.

Lincoln dropped his toy dinosaur into the toilet one night, I tried to save him as fast as I could. Luckly the toilet was clean. Lincoln bursted into tears. He was scared the carbs were going to eat his dinosaur. Lincoln must of thought that the toilets are hooked up to the crab hole out side. Luckly I was able to save his dinosaur. I haven't seen Lincoln that upset over something for a long time. He was really upset. Poor guy didn’t want his dinosaur to be eaten by a crab.

CupeCoy Beach Club- A new family, the Wilcox's from AUC moved to the island a few weeks ago with a 8 and 11 year old.  The Wilcox invited all the med. wives and kids over for a morning of swimming. CupeCoy Beach club is a beautiful gated community located in CupeCoy. The pool was massive about four times the size of ours. The kids had a blast, it was a great morning of swimming.

Park in St. Peter's

 This park is located just north of Costuless.  The park was a well treed area that reminded me of a place to go camping back home. The park had lots of flamboyant trees, they were beautiful. 

 The park isn’t like a park you would find back home. it was well used, weathered and run down. The kids still enjoyed the slide.

Lacey holding some sea grapes. They are ready to eat when they turn black. We haven't tasted them yet.

Here was an old house at the park that just had the frame of it. Lincoln thought it looked like the Three Little Pigs, stick house.

This is also where I got stung by a hornet on my hand. Boy did it hurt. Just glad the kids didn’t get stung.

There was also neat reunions. 

Church calling update: I have been released as the first counsellor. The primary president is moving off the island so a new presidency was called. Then I was called as the second counsellor. Josh finally received his first calling since being on St Maarten, we've been here 11 months now. He was called a a primary worker.

Weekly Update: Flat Tire, Nature park

It's been a week... good, busy and a bit crazy. We got yet another flat tire. Yes another flat tire, you read that correctly. Welcome to island life. Getting flat tires often is a normal thing around here. Wednesday night Josh took Lincoln out for a guys night out to the movie theatre. They went to see "How To Train A Dragon." Lincoln loved it! After the movie Josh goes to get in the car to drive a way and realizes we have a flat. So they had to walk home in the dark, luckly some friends of ours were driving past and saw them so they got a ride home. Josh has made several attempts to get our tire off and put our spare on... so we can get to the tire shop and get our tire fixed. But one of the lug bolts is striped, so there is no way we can get out flat tire off. Saturday I walked with the kids to Ace to grab 'fix a flat' ( it was a HOT walk in the HEAT), so we can fill our tire up and drive the two blocks to the tire shop. Then I realized it was Saturday and the Tire Shops aren't open on the weekends. So we will wait till Monday to take it in.... Any problem on this island is always 10X harder here then back home. If you ask anyone of our friends here they would say the same thing. Hopefully we get our car back tomorrow.

 We were still able to make it to the Nature Park, thats to our amazing friends who gave us a ride. We love visiting the NAture Park is like a petting zoo and the kids love it.

 Lacey loves the pigs.

Even Costuless had flags hanging for the world cup.

Here's Lincoln little lizard we caught in our house.

Lacey playing doctor.

Lacey loves crafts and coloring.

Lincoln's letter Z. We have completed the alphabet. We will now review both upper and lower case in weeks to come.

Lincoln's boat. I love kid imaginations. This is our cart we have in our yard provided by our landlord, that we use to bring our groceries home from our car to the house as its a bit of a walk through the complex. Lincoln thinks it the best. Sailing in the ocean with his friend Liam.

Even though we had tire issues this week which still aren't fixed. It was a good week. We ended the week off the SGA school beach BBQ/ boom fire. Thanks to friends for making sure we were able to get a ride.

Island Fruit

You would think with the Caribbean climate they would grow a lot of their fresh produce here but they don't and I'm not sure what the reason it. I miss fresh fruits and vegetables. In the summer months here the fruit and vegetables are never fresh as they have to be transported to St.Maarten by boat and it's hard to keep the food cool it this heat. So most of the fruit you find in the grocery store is overly ripe. Here's a few of the trees you find around the island.

Almond tree. It is a large tree (up to 115ft in height), often grown for ornamental purposes and the shade provided by its broad leaves. Parts of the fruit are edible, including the inner seed which resembles almonds in shape and taste. I don't know the correct name of these trees so we call it the almond tree as the nuts do taste and look like almonds.

SourSop Tree. The fruit is foul smelling and bitter tasting fruit that commonly grows on small trees close to the sea. The fruit is initially green, but turns white or pale yellow upon ripening.

Carambola (star fruit) tree. A fruit with a star shaped cross section. As it ripens it turns from green to yellow. The fruit has a tart taste and is a good source of vitamin C.

Bread Fruit Tree.  This fruit is sometimes round and sometimes oval, this starchy fruit has a rough green skin with a pale yellow flesh. Bread fruit is used widely in the Caribbean cuisine to make savoury and sweet dishes.

Jamaican Apple Tree. These apples aren't very sweet and has very little flavor. They taste a bit like a apple and has a alcohol smell.

Bamboo

Bamboo is an urban industrial feeling restaurant decorated with Asian design elements, and offering a contemporary menu of Latin and Asian-inspired menu items. Bamboo has a world-class Sushi Bar, described in many publications and reviews as New York-style Sushi with a Caribbean twist. This fun restaurant is located in Maho.

Route De L'Esperance

Route De L'Esperance is the St. Martin French Airport, known as the Grand Case Airport. It is located in Grand Case which is just north of Marigot. The airport is used only for smaller aircraft as Princess Juliana International Airport on the Dutch side of the island is served by all major carriers.

Incoming airplanes approach the island  over the bay of Grand-Case, which is a tremendous view, on final approach. 

Weekly Update: Canada Day & Independence Day

We had a GREAT week. I love busy weeks as they seem to go by so fast. Which was a plus as it was block week again, already. It seems like it was just block week not to long ago. So we saw little of Josh as he is cramming for his three block exams tomorrow.

We celebrated Canada Day in the Caribbean heat. We made Canada Day hand print shirts with some old white shirts we had. As you can't find Canada day shirts here. I thought they turned out pretty good plus the kids loved them.

Canada Day was kept pretty simple for us. We made hand print flags.  A Canada Day banner. At lunch time the three wives which are all Canadian made cakes and brought them to the school. I made a Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Icing, it was dealious.

We all dressed in red and white. The bottom picture is of two of our Canadian friends who made shirts with us. We had lots of fun even though we weren't in Canada to celebrate.

We had a pool day with friends.  We have to get in as much friends time as we can as Eli and Krysten leave in 36 days.

We also got to celebrate Independance Day with out American friends (Preschool friends).

For the July 4th party we went to our friends house and had a water party. Lacey loved the sprinkler. The water wasn't even cold. It was perfect!

Lincoln loved the sprinkler too. This is the closest to grass here and its not. There are so many rocks and dirt in it, so the kids had to keep their sandles on.

Here's the kids taking a break having some snacks.

From left to right: Maddi Maxwell (Idaho), Lacey, Lincoln and Quinn Adams (Utah)

They also had a little kiddie pool set up, and a climb of center. We had a great time with our friends.

Fun memories from this week:

- Lincoln asked for "wet cereal", he meant cereal with milk. Make sense as I ask him if you wants dry cereal all the time, so cereal with milk means wet cereal.

- Lincoln got some one on one mommy time this week. Which he loved and needed. We swam in the pool while it was pouring rain. When it rains here it's nothing like back home. It was down pouring. It was crazy. We had a blast. We were already wet any ways so why not.