Post Mini #1-The Top Ten

Wow!  What a fabulous weekend we had!  Jonathan had his first mini on Friday morning, so I got my uninterrupted 48 hours with him.  These 48 hours only come every 5 weeks, so we definitely took advantage of them!  We spent Friday night at Red Beard's which is, for lack of a more accurate term, a Pirate Pub.  He and Matt indulged in a little Red Beard's Ale, and Michelle, Kim, and I enjoyed some good old fashioned laughs (mostly at them).  Ha!  There were so many great high points this weekend, but I thought I'd narrow them down to the top 10.  So here we go (in no particular order)...

10- Taino Beach Tanning on Friday Afternoon

Nothing makes life sweeter than hanging out on Taino Beach, getting waited on while you lounge in beach chairs, and literally watching your tan get darker by the minute!

9-The Giant Dog at Tony Macoroni's Grill on Taino Beach

Meet Nero.  If you're not a dog person (and maybe even if you are), the sight of this big guy might make you a little nervous.  But lemme tell ya, he is such a precious boy.  He's sweet sweet sweet and so patient (especially since his owner's son is one of the most annoying kids I've ever met and Nero tolerates him beautifully).  Nero loves to play fetch with this giant piece of driftwood.  So fun to watch!

8-Getting To See Emma!

This is Emma Henderson's first 3D ultrasound picture!  I was so excited when Sara texted these pics to me!  Isn't she beautiful?  I have to say, though, that I've been saying for a while now that I think she looks like Jared according to her little traditional ultrasound image profiles.  This 3D image totally solidifies it!  She's gonna have Sara's sassy personality with Jared's features.  Watch out world!

7-Getting to Spend Time with Jonathan

I love hanging out with my husband.  Really nothing makes me happier.  He is amazing at making time for me all the time, but it sure was nice to have him all to myself for a few days.  I'm so proud of him and it's the least I can do to keep a nice house for him and food on the table.  After all, he's gonna be a doctor in a few years.  Actually, he'll get his white coat in like 4 1/2 months!!

6-"Cheap" Upscale Dining

This is what I had at Sabor.  It's a restaurant in one of the hotels in Lucaya.  This is their pan fried snapper with a tomato herb cream sauce atop garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed veggies.  I had a really nice glass of sweet Malbec (which might be making it's way to the top of my favorite red wines!). The whole meal cost us basically what a meal in the port would cost.  I was floored!  So note to self, if you're gonna spend the money, you might as well go big or go home...

5-Treasure Hunting

Oh my goodness the guys had AWESOME luck at both Taino AND Banana Bay this weekend.  Jonathan plucked a few starfish out of the ocean and he was so ridiculously pumped!  He's been searching for one since the very first week we were here.  He found on and I have to say it's probably the coolest thing he's found yet.  Second, maybe, to the sea biscuits!  The big oval shaped thing at the bottom of the picture is a sea biscuit (it's like a puffy sand dollar).  Believe it or not, so is the brown thing just above and to the left of it.  Only it's still "alive".  It has bristles on it just like a sea urchin only they're teeny tiny.  After you bleach them, they're white!  I have to steer pretty clear of the live ones, though, because the thing that makes them chocolate brown is pure iodine.  My new worst enemy here!  Trying to keep from having the be prescribed an epi pen!

4-The Great Starfish Find

Cuz who doesn't love a giant starfish??  It looks like it might be slimy, but it really wasn't.  It had these little sucker feet on the bottom that help it move.  The one in the picture here was kind of sleeping so we didn't see the feet until it almost walked off our front porch overnight!  Isn't he cute! (Jonathan...not the starfish...).  This guy was one of 3 for the weekend!

3-Who Needs Ariel??

Does this really need a caption...

2-Blue Skies that Rival Oklahoma

I will be the first to tell you that the most beautiful skies in the world are in Oklahoma.  They're just an impossible shade of crystal blue that just can't be beat.  But Sunday afternoon at Banana Bay, the skies were just spectacular.  Just enough sun to tan but not burn, and the perfect lighting that makes the ocean look impossibly teal and turquoise.  This picture was the view from my perfect little beach spot...

1-My Hammock...Sans Nude Beach

Yep!  I finally found a hammock that didn't have a bunch of naked nude beachers around!  It was seriously paradise!  Just perfect.  Jonathan even swung me on it for a while and the breeze was really nice!

So there you have it.  Post Mini #1, awesome weekend!  Couldn't have been much better.  We are officially 1/3 of the way done (can you believe it?!).  We are missing home, but weekends like these just remind us how lucky we are to be experiencing all of this.  We are blessed!

P.S.-Michelle and Matt were with us basically all weekend long!  So fun!  Her blog Cornstalks to Palm Trees has some more awesome pictures from the weekend!

A Sand Dollar Face Lift

So Jonathan survived his first mini exam.  He did really well!  They haven't received their official scores yet, but he feels good about it.  One of his classmates, Michelle Dalida, made the comment that there is nothing mini about this exam.  Certainly not the amount of studying and preparation that went in!  So thank goodness it's done.  He's 1/3 of the way done with the semester now!  1 down 2 to go...

In the meantime, Michelle Wells is back!!!  Woohoo!  It's been lonely during the week since she's been in Indiana, but it's also been kind of good for me.  It's forced me to focus on ADKOF stuff.  But it is SO good for her to be back.  My tan is already 2 shades darker just from the sun time with her since Wednesday!  We went out to Banana Bay Thursday (we haven't been there since the week before classes started!).  We have both been searching for sand dollars as long as we've been here.  Matt has found a sea biscuit and three sand dollars and we haven't found any!  Until Thursday.  Kim (a co-worker that came back with Michelle for a few days) was walking around out in the ocean and then just nonchalantly says "There's a sand dollar."  Michelle and I freaked!  So I grabbed it up.  Here's what it looked like straight out of the ocean:

I probably wouldn't have even noticed it at all because it was almost chocolate brown.  It had a cool little green patch on it too.  The tiny little spikes on the outside were moving really subtly which totally freaked Michelle out.  We brought it home and put it in some bleach.  Here's what I woke up to this morning!

It's so gorgeous isn't it!  The three that Matt found are bleaching now but they're already looking really cool.  But I have to say that if I wasn't obsessed about finding sand dollars before, I certainly am now!  Of course now the question is gonna be how the heck am I gonna get these things home??  I guess I'm gonna have to be creative...