A Week Gone By...

Last week was a busy one for us. We got a call on Wednesday morning from Elizabeth who needed someone to watch her daughter Hannah for the day. It was beach day and horse back riding day for us which is a light school day so I agreed to take her. Julian gets along great with her so it was a fun day for them. They played and read a lot all day. Elizabeth had a meeting after work so she was late getting back here to get Hannah so she had dinner with us too. She was a good guest and seemed to have a lot of fun.

On Friday it was our anniversary. 7 years!!! Wow, that's a lot of time that has gone by really quickly. And we've done a lot of things in those 7 years. I was going to make taquitos for dinner but I got busy cleaning out our air conditioner which took HOURS to get all the nasty build up off the inner fan roller. I'm so glad I cleaned it out because it looked really gross once I noticed it. Jaime got out of school early so the surprise of the dinner that I was going to make would have been ruined so we decided to go out to dinner instead. We went to Mango and it was really good. Jaime downloaded a movie onto his PDA for Julian to watch. When we got there it was very quiet. There were two other parties in there and that was it. There was a little girl playing on the rocks and Julian went over to play with her. All of a sudden she came up to me real close and looked me in the eye and said "Do you remember my mother...Loretta?" It was so weird. And I looked at her and recognized her as Lily a little girl that was here over a year ago. She used to do horse back riding with Julian. They left shortly after the semester began and we didn't ever know why. She left for the weekend for something and I never asked her why figuring it was probably something personal and I didn't know her very well. And they never came back. It was so weird to see her. She is thinking of going back to school and is taking the week to come back here and see if it's what she really wants to do and see if it will work out. She lived in a really nice villa on the property of a woman that she met when she first got here. We were sad to see them go because Julian and Lily were like twins separated at birth. They got along so well and he really missed her once she left. So...dinner was good. We had a nice time over there and on the way home we stopped by the Conways and had a drink and chatted with them. They are so funny. We really enjoy hanging out with them. We all sat on the porch and gossiped and joked around.

On Saturday Elizabeth asked if Julian could come over to play for the day. I was happy to oblige. I got the day to myself. We cleaned out the car and cleaned the house in the morning. In the afternoon I met with Jeanne Lash (Professor and wife of the dean of MUA). She wants to start running and needed some advice and motivation so we set up a schedule to follow to get her back into shape. We'll be getting together twice a week to run together and she'll do some on her own too. Then I went for a bike ride...in the rain. It was fun but I was a bit slow since I haven't been out on the bike for a long time. Then I went to go get Julian and came home and made dinner and watched Bee Season which was a very weird movie.

On Sunday we had brunch at the Turners with the Conway family in the morning. In the afternoon I went over to Oualie with Heidi and the kids and spent the day in the water. It was a beautiful day. Julian swam the buoys like a champion and I did some laps as well. And now it's Monday. In a few minutes we are going to pick up Holly from the car fix it place (notice I don't say car fix it shop...because people don't have shops here they just have an area or a place).

Update on our birds...they flew the coop unnoticed. Either that or something got them. I don't know how long it takes for them to mature enough to fly but 5 days didn't seem like enough. And that's that.

One Little Birdie Sitting in a Tree!

One of our little eggs hatched today. You can see it on the left hand side of the little remaining egg. It's just a little brownish colored thing. Just newly hatched. So cute!!!

New Feathered Friends?

Julian has been watching a new nest being built in our "Christmas tree". The bird must have needed to get it built fast because it wasn't working long before there were two little tiny eggs in there. It's a different kind of bird than last time. Maybe that's why it didn't just move into the other nest that's still there. It's a brown bird (not sure of the exact name of it). We're keeping an eye on the eggs so keep checking back for more pictures.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Today we had a fun day of school learning about Cinco de Mayo. Julian had found an old dried out gourd at the beach a while back and we turned that into a maraca. For dinner we had chicken tinga burritos and chips and salsa. And that rounds out the day.

Sea Urchins, Capes and Banana Flowers

Here are some interesting pictures...first we've got sea urchins at Nisbett Beach. These ones are pretty small compared to some that I have seen deeper out in the ocean. Don't step on them because they're really sharp! Yesterday we had to go out to pick up our consolation prizes from our "10k" run the other day. Our friends, the chiropractors, Miranda, Knox and Edris, picked them up for us because Jaime was going to be going to the chiropractor on Tuesday so they thought he could just pick them up then. He wasn't able to go so I had to go get them. I happened to be going out to the library in that area that day so I figured it would be easy to swing by and pick them up. I was with a new person in our SOS group, Rebecca. She must have thought I was crazy driving way out into the woods on a double track road in bad need of repair. But we finally got to the place. They have a huge piece of property and lots of fruit trees etc. Julian found a flower from a banana tree. You can see how underneath each pedal there is a small bunch of tiny bananas that would have grown. You have to pop off the flower in order for the bananas underneath to grow. Very interesting. We sat and talked with Knox for a while. He was born and raised in the Bahamas and met Miranda, his wife, at chiropractic school in Atlanta. I asked him if he thought they would stay here forever and he said no that he would like to go back to the Bahamas. He informed me that there are over 700 islands that make up the Bahamas! Some of them are populated only by pirates and drug traffikers. And last but not least there is a picture of Julian in his new cape. Our friend Holly, her guilt of leaving us for 6 weeks last semester getting the best of her, made a cape for Julian. She is quite a clever girl!

Church Ground "10K"

Today we ran the Nevis Church Ground 10K. It is really more than that I am told but I'm not sure exactly how long. It started out at the Church Ground area and winded around a bunch of back roads until finally you ended up in the sports field in town. It started out at 8:30 which was a little late for a long run but it ended up being a nice run. It was almost like someone ordered up a cloud for the event. The sky was blue all around but there was one cloud that acted almost like a shroud around the sun and kept the heat down. I was on my game today. My run was the best I have ever had. I really don't know about my pace because I don't know the exact mileage but I felt really good running and didn't feel like I was going too slow. I was 24th overall but don't know how many people ran either. I just don't know much now do I? We couldn't stick around for any awards ceremonies because we needed to pick up Julian from our friends house and get ready for a little get together at the pool. All in all it was a great race.

3rd Eye Blind is on the island and is all set up over at Mount Nevis Hotel to play. We hung out at the Conways house tonight hoping they would start so we could sneak down there and see them but we waited until almost 9:00 before we finally came home. I guess they are here with DirecTV who is targeting Nevis as a potential market. We'll see if that happens. So, that's the excitement on Nevis these days. School for Jaime starts on Wednesday. Tomorrow is orientation but he doesn't need to be involved in that so it's another day off for him. For Julian and I it is the first day back to school since my family came to visit. Not too much longer til summer though! I don't have any pictures to post because I have either lost or misplaced my camera.