Fun with Friends!

The flower cake that I inherited from Paula and Joe



Michael and Greg- making the beach even more easy on the eyes



I heard that our mugs weren't on here enough, so be on the look out for more of Chris and I. This is Michael's magical photography talents (note- Chris is actually smiling!)



There's my guys!



Taking advantage of the wonderful sunset...












Sharing a moment :)












Since we couldn't be prom dates, we decided to re-enact the photos pretending we were at prom (a decidedly un-formal affair, considering our attire, or lack thereof)


Well hello again!

We have had one fun, action packed week with all of our visitors so far and I figured I’d take a minute to catch you all up.

Michael and Greg arrived safe and sound last Thursday and were looking forward to some long, relaxing days in the sun. What easy visitors! As I mentioned before, they ended up staying just about 7 minutes walking distance to my front door, so location was great. It was a fun-filled long weekend with dinner one night at an Italian restaurant we’ve been wanting to try (it was great), beach time at the resort, a day trip to St. John’s gorgeous Cinnamon Bay, some BBQing at our place one night, pool time at our condo complex and a fun new game that Greg and Mike taught us.

It was great to see Paula and Joe on Saturday and we showed them where we live (not quite 100% together with the bathroom still being fixed) and then headed down to Bolongo Bay with Greg, Michael and Chris to sit at the beach for a bit and have some lunch at Iggy’s. Michael made sure that we had a cake hidden to bring out at the end, since it was Paula’s birthday. That turned out to be a pleasant (and yummy) surprise. It was great catching up, but the time went by too fast! We punctually got Joe and Paula back to the boat and I ended up a grateful recipient of a cake made of flowers, which was a birthday surprise placed in the cruise room for Paula, from Nancy and Michael. I do love flowers! I, unfortunately, did not have a camera with us for the day, but I will upload photos once I get them.

With so much action going on, Chris and I ducked out of a couple of dinner nights and let Greg and Michael explore a bit on their own. I’m sure we missed some good eats! All in all, we had some great laughs and a lot of fun.

Presently, we have Jenny and Jay here and I will update you all later on our excursions together. I don’t want to give you all too much excitement in one blog ;). We’re having fun, though, and are taking some time now to decompress a bit after an action packed day. More on that,soon enough.

I hope everyone all is well and will talk to you soon. Miss you!

Mid-Week update

Hi all,

I am writing just because I said I'd check in, but nothing too new has happened since my last time touching base. We do see the bathroom progressing everyday, so that is a definitely encouraging. The rest of the place is a bit of a disaster and I'm just counting the minutes to getting the place back to a reasonable state. We had a very low-key weekend and stayed at home base, since the contractor works through weekends and there were many Home Depot runs to make. Chris had the best of intentions to cook me dinner for Valentine's day, but with the contractors working kind of late and, literally, no counter space unclaimed, it seemed the best solution was to go out to eat. So, we had a yummy, romantic dinner at Mim's, located just a few minutes walk from our house.

Sunday was a much needed decompress day for Chris, where we made a point to do almost nothing and enjoy it. Everyone needs those once in a while!

Tomorrow, I get to greet Mike and Greg at the airport and look forward to showing them the islands and must-go places and we eagerly anticipate Paula and Joe Metivier's brief showing during their cruise stop on Saturday. After that, we look forward to the same touristy fun with Chris' sister and brother-in-law, Jenny and Jay. Yay! Funtimes ahead.

I will talk to y'all in about a week and 1/2 and really try to take more pictures this time. Much love and hugs to all!!!

Company first and then comes Chaos

Chris and Vanessa enjoying Cinnamon Bay

This is our bathroom now. That toilet is the one lonely facility left in there...

Hi again!

Well, I’m back on-line after having our first guests (Chris Nadeau and his lovely gal Vanessa) joined us this past week. We had a lot of fun and were excited to have some company. Our week was action packed: we went to Iggy’s one night and then hit Tortola for the weekend. I came back early to work, but the rest of the crew went to Jost van Dyke to check out the party scene. On Monday night we celebrated Chris (Nadeau’s) birthday at Havana Blue and then kept it simple Tuesday night with dinner in. They also got a chance to check out St. John and lot’s of shopping downtown, so we think it was all a success.

Chris and Vanessa left on Wednesday and on Thursday morning the workers came to start demolition on the bathroom. It has been quite the experience. The bathroom is stripped down entirely, though we are happy to still have a functioning toilet in the evenings. Yet, we can’t quite use it during the day since they are working quite intensely in there (which means watching the liquid intake!). We do not, however, have a shower anymore until I don’t know how long. Until then, we have to rely on the sink, and gym shower, and pool. Ug!

Much like any renovations, things seem to hit glitch after glitch today, but that’s the way it typically rolls. Other than the craziness, we hope to have a low key weekend at home and a quiet Valentine’s day; some wine and movies and maybe a little beach time.

We are also very excited to have our next round of visitors. My good friend Mike Metivier and his friend Greg are visiting and staying in the Bolongo Bay Resort, just a hop, skip and a jump away from here. We can walk to where they are staying. At first, I tried to convince Mike to take us up on our offer of staying at our place but now,thank goodness, they are not. They might find we use their hotel bathroom and shower, instead of the other way around (just kidding, Mike, I’m sure we’ll manage!). And, to make this visit even better, Mike’s parents, Paula and Joe, who are like parents/family to me, will be here on a stop on their cruise next Saturday, while Mike’s in town. We are very much looking forward to entertaining them for the day.

Finally, we are also looking forward to having Jenny and Jay, Chris’ sister and brother-in-law, come a week from this Wednesday for a few days, kid free (thank you Bruce and Susan!). We have been missing our family and friends, so all of our visitors could not have come at a better time. We fully expect the bathroom to be done by then, so no worries. ;)

Although it’s a bad time for tourism and I am not getting many hours each week, nor having luck finding something else, it will come in handy because I will hopefully be able to give my undivided attention to our friends and family coming.

I hope to check in before our next round of visitors, so until then, Happy Valentine’s day and I hope your weekend is full of love and laughter.

Last weekend in St. T

Heidi's Honeymoon Grille









Honeymoon Beach Bay






This sign made us laugh

















Inside the "fort'





The "fort" that was never completed.








Iggy's beach bar

Roots of Creation doing a Police cover

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I don’t have too much new and exciting to report here. We had a very low-key and pleasant weekend. We had a “date night” on Friday and went out to a restaurant called Grande Cru that offers almost a tapa style menu. Yum!

Saturday morning we did a few things around the house and then went to try to find the elusive “Stumpy’s Bay”. This is supposed to be a gorgeous, less populated beach visited mostly only by locals. This was our second attempt to find it and believe that we were in the general vicinity (down a long, unpaved road that dead ended at a house with several parked cars and caged dogs). While this description sounded like what we were told (and yes, we still went- they left out the caged angry dogs) and we knew we might be in the right place, it seemed any direction we took from there might take us into unknown and somewhat shady territory. So, we packed up and went to another beach. We will not try to look for Stumpy’s again, unless with a local who knows where he/she’s going.

Saturday night we went down on the beach to Iggy’s. A pleasant little beach bar that is a fun place to hang out on most given nights. For this weekend and all of February, they are having different bands come and play on Saturday nights, so we went to check out Roots of Creation play. To hear them play: http://www.myspace.com/rootsofcreation.
We enjoyed the music quite a bit.

On Sunday, we decided to go and explore the lesser known USVI (just added in 2005), Water Island.
Fast Facts
Population: 161 (2000 Census)
Size: 491.5 acres
2½ miles long and ½ to 1 mile wide
Highest Point: 300 feet
More info: http://www.seestjohn.com/water_island.html
We walked most of the island (not too big, as you see from the facts) and enjoyed some of the island history. Such as, in 1944 the United States acquired Water Island for $10,000. They immediately began construction of a defense installation called Fort Segarra which was intended to protect military installations on neighboring islands. The fort included plans for barracks, gun emplacements, watchtowers and underground bunkers; World War II ended before its completion (that’s island time for you). Transportation, water, sewage and power systems were established during military presence. The Army's Chemical Warfare Division used sections of Water Island for several years as testing grounds for poisonous gases (eek!).

After a while, when we were hot and hungry, we stumbled upon Honeymoon Beach. My friend, Taffy, had told me I had to go there, but I never quite knew where she was talking about. I wish we could stumble upon Stumpy’s someday in the same way.

The beach was beautiful and I see why Taffy recommended it. We caught a glimpse (we think) of Eric Clapton’s boat, the Blue Guitar, anchored in the harbour. But no Eric. We also had some fantastic burgers from Heidi’s Honeymoon Grille.

Alas, it was time to go home and check out the Superbowl. We hope to bring some people back to that cozy little island. Since there were no Patriots involved in the big game, we were merely watching because you are just supposed to. Sadly, my favorite part, the commercials, was mostly in Spanish. I guess I should take that as a hint to brush up on my Spanish.

Well, that is it for now. We welcome our first visitors this Thursday, so you might not hear from me again until the end of next week.

I hope all are well and warm!

Weekend in Tortola

Sugar Cane











The overrated rum distillery







Okay, I might as well get this over with and begin where we left off. I contemplated leaving this part out of the blog, but I deserve to be shamed. So, my much anticipated trip to Jost van Dyke for work was to be last Friday. I kept hearing how fun of a “work” day it is for staff and was eager to see for myself. Proudly, a few nights before my trip, I stowed my passport in with my binder since Jost is in the British Virgin Islands and I didn’t want to forget my passport. Well, lo and behold, on Friday morning the Captain asked for my passport to gather my information and I pulled it out and opened it up to… Chris’ very cute, but not necessarily what I wanted to see, face. Yup, I grabbed his passport since I recently had decided to store his in the same place as mine. After a short deliberation on whether I should go to the beach until 4:30pm to avoid admitting my mistake to Chris, or to go home with my tail between my legs, I decided I did not deserve beach and went home. Fortunately, my superior was very understanding and assured me that we all do that at some point and actually felt bad for me.

So, Jost was not to be. Another time, I suppose. After that, our weekend was very enjoyable. We skipped on over to Tortola to see what the BVIs (British Virgin Islands) have to offer. We had a very lovely day checking out different beaches and driving the island. We were told that there was this neat rum tour on the island and we figured we'd check it out, expecting an hour or two tour. After locating the distillery, we spent a whole 5 minutes on the "tour"- this consisted in walking into the only room around and getting a quick speech on how the rum is made and a few sentence history of the place. But we left with one bottle of spiced rum and a couple of pics more than what we came with. Later on in the evening, we went out to a nice dinner at a restaurant called the Sugar Mill. We stayed over in Tortola and enjoyed brunch and then made our way back to the ferry to go home. We think Tortola is beautiful and love it there, but have also realized you can do most of what you want to do on the island in one day. Any more time spent there should be in short excursions to the islands that are very close to see more sights
Once home, Chris caught up on some work and I started cooking some eggplant and chicken parmesan for our neighbors that live downstairs. It was our first “hosting” at our place and was casual and easy. Erin and Bill are younger, 24-25 yrs old, and are on the island since Erin works as a traveling nurse. They are fun and really nice and it was an enjoyable evening. It sure was nice to socialize.

So, that leaves us to another week on the island. Today I got to go on my first work excursion off island and enjoyed the day on St. John. I got to go on a tour of the island and then was in charge of the snorkeling group. It’s a tough job!

I finally heard from the wedding coordinating company. The main contact out in Miami called me on a different position. She offered me a part time to possible full time job in the main office on the island, since they are over-worked and they liked my experience/personality and was hoping I’d want to work on the planning portion. Unfortunately, they did not recall that I was leaving in May and this was more of a job that they want for someone more permanent. I am kind of bummed out because it would have been good experience, and a set weekly schedule, but it is not to be. However, I have to admit got a bit of an ego boost by how disappointed she was when I couldn’t accept the job. Anyway, she did say they were hoping to get me out in the field soon, so we’ll see what that means!

Well, that’s it for now. We have no big plans on the immidiate horizon. Our first guests arrive next week and we have some more household things to get done before. I will touch base when anything new and exciting happens.

Love you and miss you!

Weekend Re-Cap

Agricultural Fest


Well, we did not go on any of our grand adventures this weekend. We had decided on a third option, Tortola, in the BVIs, which would have been an overnight trip. But, when we got up bright and early on Saturday to catch our ferry, it was pouring, pouring, pouring. In checking our islands forecasts, all islands were supposed to be like that until this Wednesday. So, we decided to stay home and work on the bathroom. However, mid-morning weather turning for the better, so we made our way to check out the west and north end of St. Thomas, since I had not been there before and we were directed to a couple of places.



The first place we tried to find was a beach known as Stumpy's, which is supposed to be hard to find and very locally known (meaning few tourists and more often than not a beach to ourselves). Well, true to what we've been told, it is hard to find and we have yet to find it. We did stumble upon an agricultural fair that is held annually and we were told it was pretty cool to check out. It wasn't all that great, but an interesting side track. Then we went off to Hull Bay, another beace we were told about that has a restaurant/bar and plays music on Sunday nights. I was a nice little beach, but we decided that we can get the same atmosphere and food at our Bolongo Bay beach, just a short walk from our doorsteps.



Finally, we parked ourselves at Magan's bay for a bit and enjoyed the view and the atmosphere- it is a beautiful beach. Then back to our nest and into the pool!



It was a lovely casual Saturday! Sunday was spent with Chris in the bathroom doing some demolition and putting in venting and a lot of grunt work. I dutifully stood nearby on call. Hopefully next weekend we will visit Tortola and put this bathroom stuff behind us!



As for my working week, my job brings me on an excursion to Jost Van Dyke on Friday. Sounds like I'll get to check things out first before Chris and I make it there on our own. Work has not given me too many hours this week, so I hope to let them know that I am available for more hours. If that doesn't work, I will be knocking down some more doors. I have not yet heard from the Wedding Coordinating position and am beginning to think that might not work out. Oh well! Perhaps I am really, really not meant to coordinate weddings. I should take this as a sign...



I hope everyone enjoys their week!

Hummingbirds!!!

I will be shocked if this works but, if so, then you will be seeing a video of one of our new little friends. We got a hummingbird feeder and, after being mislead that they would love rose water (they didn't), we made a sugar water recipe that has led to much action.

In fact, since hummingbirds are territorial, there seems to be some turf wars between these delicate little birds. With that and the finches that often try to sneak a drink, we have constant action on the back porch.

We've also purchased a Venus Fly Trap to try to fight the mesquitos that have made our casa their casa. I think it might be working! Those are fascinating little plants that visibly close their jaws on their "kill". Morbid, really, but not when you are talking about eating those miserable little bugs that keep me scratching my legs all day long. :)