Friends, Parties and Baptism - Mid June 2012

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One of our friendly neighborhood spider friends!  This guys was stranded on the floaty in the pool, much like a lot of out spider furry friends so I rescued him.  Not that I really enjoy having them around but I feel bad for them when they are stranded in the water or I find them floating dead/sinking in the water.  They  are just big and creepy looking.  I wouldn’t want one on me but I really have been trying to get the courage up to hold one and take a picture.  This guy is on the smaller scale of what we have seen.

*Late entry – Yesterday (July 25, 2012) Katie went to go roller blading around the house.  She put her foot in her skate and felt something in there, she then reached her hand in to pull out what ever it was, and it was a tarantula and it bit her.  They aren’t poisonous, and I called STENAPA just to make sure I was doing the right things for a bit – just ice and keep her calm – and she was just fine.  The spider was just scared and so was Katie.  However it has somewhat deterred me from the idea of holding on for a picture.  Hmmmm we’ll see.

Dr. Katie!  Todd was doing some sort of class or something using hospital masks and hats he brought some home for the kids to try on.  I do have to say that Todd seams to be a master skin stitcher.  Not that he would say master but compared to a lot of the other students taking the Hyperbaric course – that’s where they did the stitching, the teacher was telling him to do some different stitches that he really had no problem doing.  Dr. Berkel said, “Look people, we have a surgeon amongst us.”  Todd’s going to hate that I wrote that but I think that’s pretty cool!  A proud wife!

Pig anyone!!!  Debbie is always so good to us, and invited us to a big pig roast in honor of Matt graduating from High School!  Yay Matt! 

Here is the big pig!

I missed most of the de-meating  of the carcass, but I was able to help a bit by getting in for a little bit of the last part of the fun!!  Pig leg anyone??!!  The dogs got one!

It was a really nice get together for Matt, and we had another wonderful good time – of course!

This is Cashew Fruit.  Last year we ate one of these fruits and it was unreal good! But these one I found were not so tasty – bummer, but they are sure neat looking with the actual cashew seed growing outside of the fruit on the bottom.  You can’t eat these though; they are poisonous and have to be prepared properly in order to eat the nut – like the ones you buy from the store!

After Todd’s first block exams we really needed some family time together and find our own little private paradise on the island, and we found that on Zeelandia Beach.  The ocean was perfect for swimming that day, and the beach was awesome!  You could walk out into the water forever with the level of the water at your knees.  It was a long awaited just us time!  I think it has been our best beach day in a long time!

The boys were spending some time skim boarding.

It was pretty awesome watching these huge pelicans dive into the ocean after fish in the waves – they are really big birds!

Waiting out in the shallow water, having some fun in the waves.  A lot of people don’t go swimming at Zeelandia beach because of the currents and pull that can be on that side of the island – the Atlantic side.  You just have to be careful and feel the water as you go, and just use some common sense if you are going out there.  There are definitely many days on this beach that we wouldn’t dare go in the water, but today was perfect!

STUARTS BAPTISM

Here is the young man of the day, June 16^th, 2012, Stuart Beckett!  And his Family, Stephen, Megan & Emelia!

It was our pleasure, and the Group of St. Eustatius and friends pleasure to see Stuart get baptized in the ocean that day.  It brought back a lot of wonderful memories from Katie’s special baptism day in December 2010 on the beach right next door! 

What a beautiful morning as we gathered together to be there for Stuart!  Stuart’s aunt and cousin were able to come from Canada for him! The Group has sure grown from back in August 2010 from 8 kids & 8 adults to 12 kids & 13 adults and growing - and I have heard rumors we are getting more this September.

All the cute primary kids!

We finished off the morning at the Becketts house with Stuart’s confirmation visiting and fantastic treats!  I know I keep saying it was wonderful, but it just was!!

(I’d like to thank Iman Haroun for taking and sharing all of her pictures!!)

After the baptism we were the lucky ones to be able to show the missionary couple – the Wrights – around the island a little bit.  It was so much fun!  We kept telling them it was like having our parents come and visit us!!!  We loved every minute of it, and so did the kids!  We could really just call them Grandma and Grandpa J!  We took them up to the house first to look around a bit, have some lunch and a fresh mango smoothie! They were making funny faces with the orange peels!

WE then went out to the fort and took some pictures of them with their camera and this is the only picture I got – but its super cute!

On our way to the Botanical Garden we stopped off at a Tamarind tree because the Wrights have never tasted a Tamarind.  So Todd got up on the car to get some good ones because we are pretty much at the end of the season!  The tamarinds here are quite sour, but there is sweet tamarind tree in town that Jan (pronounced Yun) showed us and we picked a bunch a while back.  Tamarinds are really yummy dipped in brown sugar, I also made green tamarind juice with the kids that I really liked, but I was the only one.  So anyway we all tried some tamarinds on the way to the garden.

We are some Passion fruit from off the tree, it wasn’t quite ripe, it was tart, but it was fun to taste the passion fruit flavor and pick them off the tree!

Of course the garden is beautiful and I took some pictures of some flowers I haven’t before.

The last picture the kids took us on what we thought was a trail to no where land, and at the end of this ‘trail to nowhere’ was this fun magical looking grove – a miniature of what you can find in the quill!  It was a really neat find!

The following day – Sunday – we had a nice dinner at our house while everyone visited and said our goodbyes to the Wright as they headed back to St. Maarten.  It was actually sad to see them go.  Hopefully we will see them again!

We’ve been lucky enough to have made some great friends while here on the island and some of those friends are three young ladies named Sherifah Mohammed, Nikki Reddy, and Anjali Mohan.  Two of them cook some mean awesome Indian food, which Todd just dies for every time.  He gets well treated to some lovely curries and pickled curries, and all sorts of nice things.  They have has us over on a few occasions and this in particular was for the celebration of Anjali’s engagement surprise party.  It was a lot of fun with anticipation as we waiting, and the kids waited for Todd to arrive with her from the airport.  During the wait there were thumb wars, mp3’s, waiting, hiding (with Saad and Harry), and more waiting.

And then she came!

Left to right – Sherifah, Nikki, Anjali.

It was a very nice evening, and a very nice dinner – They always spoil Todd, “the old white man who loves hot Indian curry”!  J

And more parties!  We were invited to the opening ceremonies to the new dive shop that Scubaqua had renovated and restored for their new location!  This is the dive shop we attained our Open water, Advanced Open water and Nitrox courses from. So it was kind of fun being able to be a part of that.  Todd actually helped a little bit on the building with the over hang, over the patio.  Todd was at the beach and they were trying to put up the new tin for the roof and no one could get up there to get the tin on. So Todd obviously having a lot of experience ding this sort f stuff back home, jumped up there and help them get the roof on

the over hang.  Anyway it was nice to see the finished product and to be there for the opening.

Maike – our dive instructor – cutting the ribbon to open the shop.

Todd and BJ Queen

At the beach with some awesome friends!  Lyndsey Tolman, Hannah Farrell and super cute kids – Beckam, Maddox & Fay, Eden!!! And of course Katie & Sarah!