St. Maarten Pictures

I wanted to share some of our pictures from our short stay on St. Maarten, the island we flew onto. It is a much bigger island than Saba, more touristy based. Here's our first amazing feat: My husband got ALL this luggage:Into this little car: Yes, I'm not kidding you. Isn't Jaron amazing? To make it work, after shoving in all the suitcases, Jaron tied the stroller to the back using the back seat seatbelts and left the hatchback open. Alden and Eli and I squeezed into the passenger seat in the front which sounds shockingly dangerous to you but is common practice here. Hardly anyone has carseats - kids for the most part just kind of hang out the back windows. But, fear not Grandmas, the roads are so steep and curvy here that no one reaches speeds of 20 MPH very often.

Here's the second beach we visited on St. Maarten. I know this looks like a tourist brochure but I actually snapped this picture. (Not saying I'm an amazing photographer, it was just so picturesque!) Alden LOVES the beach, Eli not so much. Alden loved the waves, the sand, the seashells, you name it.

The following picture is NOT photoshopped. When we were about to land on St. Maarten, Alden and I were watching out the window and I had a split second of panic when it looked like we were seriously going to land in the ocean. Then this glimpse of a tiny beach skirts by and, voila, we've landed safely on the runway. Well, when we stopped at this beach to eat our dinner, I realized why I'd felt that way. THIS is how close the airplanes get to the beach. On the fence at the edge of the beach was a big sign warning you (with a nice little demonstrative picture and all) about how heat blast from an airplane's engines can be dangerous. No kidding, eh?!

Jaron and Alden kickin' around in the sand:

My little beach bum. Can I take a moment to talk about this kid? He has always been our "hot and cold" baby. He's either really, really happy or really, really not and he's been like that pretty much since birth. He's still like that but lately the happy has been winning out and I am re-falling in love with this kid. He's SO FUNNY. He wants to be like Alden in every way and he is SO pumped that he can finally run, even if it's not as fast as Alden yet. He loves wearing flip flops and is always bringing me his and then holding his foot up to me. He is Mr. Independent these days and insisted on walking all the way down the STEEP hill to Windwardside the other day. Someday i'll take a picture of that hill and you'll realize what a feat that is! Cute, cute kid! Both my little blondies are cute, must be why they're so often mistaken for twins. (You wouldn't believe how much that happens - they're 20 months apart for heaven sakes!)

Our little neighborhood in Windwardside. I can't remember if I posted this already so sorry if it's a repeat. Perhaps the biggest differenc between Saba and the surrounding islands is that it is so quaint. All the houses are similar in color - white walls, red roof, green trim. It gives the island an almost storybook appearance. Apparently a lot of the surrounding islands are kind of "inner city" looking - lots of poverty and run-down buildings. Saba is certainly the exception amongst the Caribbean islands!



P.S. I got a hot shower last night for the first time since we got here! Up until then, I'd been sponge-bathing out of the big tupperware tub that we brought to be our kids' bathtub. We'd been doing that because we couldn't get hot water out of our shower but our landlord came over yesterday and fixed it. YAY! We still have to get wet, turn the water off, soap up, then quickly rinse off but, I feel like I'm in heaven! Here's to warm showers!!!

Humidity

Like I mentioned before, my first thought when we got off the airplane on St. Maarten was HOLY COW, it's HUMID. Well, although it hit me like a brick wall, I really had no idea.

I have done laundry twice since we've got here. Although I am blessed to have a washing machine like I'm used to, it is still a 3 day process BECAUSE...I have to air dry the clothes. Let's take this week's experience, for instance. The first load I washed went great. It happened to be sunny and windy for a morning and the clothes dried in a matter of a few hours. My next load, however, didn't dry by the end of that day. I left them out on the line and, of course, it rained that night. It stayed rainy off and on for the next 3 days. At first I played along and brought the clothes in the house during the rain and then re-hung them outside when it was only partially cloudy. Then I got tired of that game and just hung them all over my house - over curtain rods, lampshades, bed posts, you name it. It's 3 days later and I still have socks draped all over my couches. Bottom line: by the time the clothes dried, they stunk as bad as they did before I washed them. Sigh. BUT, please don't think I'm complaining. There's some conveniences I'm giving up for an amazing experience!

Our First Day On Saba

Sorry, still no pictures. The SOS (Significant Others Society) at the med school dropped off a $5 WiFi card so that we could e-mail home. That $5 gets us only an hour so instead of loading pictures, I'm just going to quickly describe our first day!

We barely made the ferry last night. The driver said he didn't want to take that many people but I pretty much begged him so that we wouldn't have to haul ALL our luggage back to another hotel for another two nights (the ferry runs every other day). He let us on in the end and what a ride! We had pretty much the calmest seas you can get and the maybe 4-8 ft swells rocked the boys to sleep. They slept for the entire 2 hour ride. Other people weren't as fortunate and barf bags were plentiful.

But we made it and our landlord picked us up and delivered us to our GREAT new house. It is three bedrooms and very clean and pretty spacious as compared to our teeny-tiny hotel room on St. Maarten. The house is a termite's dream - everything is done in beautiful wood. All the furniture is wood, the walls are covered in wood panelling and the roof is vaulted wood ceilings. Water is an issue and they've had a bit of a drought right now. We have to be pretty conservative, not flushing very often ("if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." :-D), taking careful showers, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find a real, authentic Maytag washing machine in a cranny under the deck this morning but I'm too worried about water consumption to use it! I think our cistern that collects rain is small compared to most people's and that has me nervous. Hopefully we'll get some more rain soon.

I think I am quickly falling in love with Saba. We wandered down an incredibly steep hill today to get to Windwardside, the village that has most of Saba's commerce. All the shops were closed because today is their labor day but we liked walking around and seeing what people live like. Since no stores were open, we stopped for lunch at a little cafe. All of the people here seem so friendly and nice. Our landlords, Wayne and Imelda, are great and live not far from us. The lady across the street, Clover, is just a doll and since she knew we wouldn't be able to get groceries, she brought us over a bag full of milk, eggs, butter and freshly baked sourdough bread. Her daughter is a medical student just about to graduate, as is her son-in-law (who's from Idaho). They are LDS and are coming tomorrow with their baby daughter so it will be good to meet some more LDS people, even if they'll only be here a month. There is no branch of the church here, it is just us and one other LDS family starting this semester. Jaron thinks he may have met a single LDS guy on the ferry last night but we're not sure.

Genny - the air here smells like nothing. But, that's good because it's clean, but it's not a fruity smell like we thought it would be. The whole island is a steep mountain of rain forest. There are fruit trees all over but most seem to be in people's yards. There were two coconuts lying in our yard this morning. I went out to get one but it was covered in bugs and I chickened out. When we went out for our walk a few hours later, they were gone! We did knock a papaya out of a tree out back but it's not ripe yet. There are also guava trees all over but they don't seem ripe yet either. We're not sure, though, because who really knows what a ripe guava looks like anyway?!? Our neighbor, Elias, reached over the fence with a bunch of bananas which the boys quickly gobbled up. I couldn't taste a difference but Jaron said he thought they had more flavor than other bananas. When we saw Elias again this afternoon, Alden asked him for another banana and Elias obliged him. Like I said, everyone is just so friendly and nice here.

The towns are so quaint. Everyone's got whitewashed walls and red tile roofs and everything seems kept up quite nicely. We seem to have a lot of room compared to many people in the village but there are tons of huge houses set throughout the hills. We are definitely going to have to get a car before we explore the cove or the beach - after our short, extremely steep jaunt down to Windwardside this morning, we're not sure we should attempt a longer trip with just our trusty little double jogger.

We can see the ocean from our front yard and it just amazes me. It is so fun being in a place that is so different. I was feeling pretty lonely the night we spent on St. Maarten. It was fully hitting me how different everything is and how far from home we really are. But I haven't felt that here yet. I think there's a different feel to this island than that one, if that makes any sense. I feel like our neighbors are going to become like family and that will help a lot.

Well, I'm eating up our precious internet minutes. Hopefully I'll write again soon!

We are IN the Caribbean!

So it's been an entire month since I've blogged! And what a month it has been!! It went so fast. We got to visit lots with Jaron's family while we stayed at his parents house. Then me and the boys made a trip up to Canada to visit my family and we had a fun visit there.. I also got to hang out with a bunch of friends from high school while we there. Anyway, lots of great fun with lots of great people. Maybe someday I'll catch up and post pictures but today is not the day.

Yesterday Jaron's brother drove us down to Salt Lake to catch our plane. The downside: our flight left at one in the morning! The boys ran around the airport until Eli crashed at 11:30. Alden followed around midnight. We then had a 3 hour flight to Atlanta followed by a 4 hour layover. Our flight from Atlanta to St. Maarten lasted 4 hours. Even though Jaron and I are running on an hour and a half of sleep each in the last 36 hours or so, WE MADE IT!

As soon as we stepped off the airplane, my first thought was: Wow, it is HUMID here! My second thought was: Wow, it is HOT here! Third thought: Wow, it is BEAUTIFUL here! It has really actually been hitting me how wild of a thing it is that we're doing here in the last 48 hours or so. It is so cool to be here but it is still kind of scary because so much is still so, well, foreign and unknown to us. We found a great hotel, though, and as soon as we had our bags in the room, we hit the pool. NICE! We are definitely going to have to make that a habit while we're here. Then we drove around and found a little grocery store and bought sandwich fixins for dinner. We took them to a little beach we saw on the way and Alden LOVED it! He kept running into the waves (fully clothed) and kept trying to build a "sand castle." Eli couldn't keep the sand off him or out of his mouth. Even though he just sat there, he was covered in sand from head to toe when we left (and now so is our rental car). We then drove around the island a little bit but didn't find anything like what we were looking for (i.e. the ferry we're supposed to take to Saba).

Here are my first impressions of St. Maarten: Even though it is very touristy, a lot of it seems to be kind of run down. I love the quaintness of this place. For instance, our hotel is surrounded by trees bearing coconuts and cages filled with exotic birds and monkeys. Not your average American Inn, by all means.

Sorry, my pictures aren't posting. I sure hope this gets posted!

We've moved! Well...kind of.

We've moved to Idaho. And all I have to say is:

What a trip.

Just kidding - that is certainly not all I have to say. Since when have any of you known me to be a woman of few words?!? So here's the story: (Sorry, no pictures.)

We started preparing to move by selling most of our belongings on Craigslist before we left and kept only what we thought we could squeeze into the back of a pick-up. Jaron's Dad was planning to drive his truck to us to pick up our "junk," as Jaron likes to call it, but wasn't sure if he was going to make it because Castle Rock got the BIGGEST SNOWSTORM OF THE YEAR on the very weekend we needed to move. But in the end h made it and got to our house Friday night and can I say, he SAVED US! We are so grateful for all Jaron's Dad did for us this weekend! Saturday morning Jaron and his Dad loaded the truck - 47 stairs down each load! What a workout for those two! After we were loaded, we cleaned the rest of the apartment and took off around 2:30 in the afternoon. The kids slept great in the car and all was well until we hit a SNOWSTORM in the mountains of western Wyoming. We spent the next hour or so driving 35 miles per hour. Amidst that snowstorm, some moisture got into our headlight and it went out and as our luck would have it, we immediately got pulled over for it, before we even realized it was out! I think the policeman pitied us and our overfull car with me squished in between two carseats in the back at 1:00 in the morning and he let us off with a warning to get the light fixed. So we made it to Jaron's parents' house at just after 1:30 in the morning. WHEW. I was getting ready for bed that night (morning?) thinking, wow, I'm exhausted and it makes this crazy adventure we're on seem even more challenging at the moment. I knelt down to say my bedtime prayer and it totally hit me. I am SO BLESSED. Number one: We made a long trip safely and with our sanity in tact, despite travelling with two rambunctious youngsters and snow-packed, icy roads. Number two: all of our stuff made it safely, despite the wet snow hammering our exposed cardboard boxes in the back of the truck. Number three: We had Jaron's Dad. Like I said before, we can't thank him enough for all the sacrificing he did for us just this weekend alone! Number four: We have a great opportunity to spend lots of time with family and friends in the next few weeks - something we haven't gotten to do in far too long!

If I've learned anything in the last eight months, it's been time and time again a lesson in perspective. Things are only as bad or as good as we think they are!

So we've made it safely this far in our adventure. Our plan is to spend a couple weeks here and then swing up to Canada for a week or two to spend some time with my family. Then we'll swing back down here and organize what we will take to Saba. Then we're off for two adventurous years on the island!

I have OCD.

What exactly is OCD some of you might ask? It is obsessive compulsive disorder. According to wordnet.com, it is defined as "an anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent and persistent thoughts and feelings and repetitive, ritualized behaviors." And here is why I have it:

1. I often check the stove to make sure it is off before leaving the house, even if I haven't cooked yet that day. If I think about it but don't check it, it drives me NUTS.

2. This may gross you out but I pop my fingers and toes in bed right before I go to sleep. Every night.

3. One wall of the Kids Club where I work is painted as a chalkboard. It causes me great anxiety when there is chalk residue all over it. I wipe it down twice whenever I get a chance.

4. After I lock the door when I'm leaving, I always push on it because, obviously the lock "clicking" into place wasn't confirmation enough that someone can't get in.

5. When I make a sandwich, the condiments absolutely have to go on the two "matching" sides of bread. Meaning, the bread has to fit together as a sandwhich the same way I pulled it out of the bag.

This is just the beginning of my list of strange habits. Anybody else OCD out there??

P.S. Because I never post pics of the chillins anymore, here's a few. Most of these were taken at the park. We've been enjoying mostly great weather here lately!

We're moving! Out of the Country!!

Our little family is in for some big changes in the next few years. Jaron has been accepted to medical school and will begin in May! In the Caribbean! Here's the story:

Since starting his own chiropractic practice, Jaron has found that chiropractic is not all we thought it would be. It involves a much bigger "business" side than we had anticipated (meaning, having to constantly market and sell yourself). Jaron has loved helping people with their pain but feels like he wants to be able to help people in a broader sense. So we looked at our options and decided that if we're ever going to change from Chiropractic, now's the best time for our family.

Now, you're all probably thinking, "Didn't they just get done with school?" Yes, we did! But by going back to school and becoming "career students" by going to medical school, we'll open up many doors for our family. Number one, when we graduate we will (hopefully :-D) have better job security. Number two, we will be able to live near either of our families in Idaho or Canada (something we may never be able to do with Chiropractic). Number three, although we'll be WAAAYYY far in debt by the time we're done, we'll probably be able to pay our student loans off quicker.

So where are we headed? To the CARIBBEAN!! WOOHOO!!! When we decided to apply to medical school, we contacted many to find out how long the application process is. We found out that a school in the US will take between 18 months and 2 years to be admitted. An American-approved school in the Caribbean would accept us as soon as we were able to get ourselves there. Since our family is only getting older and our student loans are only collecting interest, we decided to take an immediate course of action! So we searched the different schools in the Caribbean (there are 4) and decided on Saba because: 1) it is one of the safest, and 2) it is one of the cheapest. Our friends and old neighbors, the Swenson's, introduced us to the school and have been a huge source of information for us once we decided to go there as well. Now that we've been accepted to begin at Saba Medical School in May, the plan is to spend 20 months on the island, 20 months somewhere in the US doing clinical rotations and the next 2-4 years in residency somewhere, depending on what Jaron chooses as his specialty.

Here is a picture of the island of Saba:




And here is a map of where in the Carribbean the island is located:


Okay, my map was blurry so Google Earth "Saba, Netherlands-Antilles" if you want to know where it is!!

Thank you Andrea and Jonathan for being such an invaluable resource to us! We really appreciate your friendship!!