Thanksgiving in the Caribbean

This past week Sean and I got to go to the Caribbean with his parents, Glenn and Norine, and his two sisters, Rachel and Natalie. We flew to Puerto Rico then caught the "Crown Princess" cruise ship and started south. It was a fabulous vacation and exactly what we needed--a break from school. We had so much fun at all the islands and the ship itself was amazing. It's practically a floating city--it has everything and more! We ate too much and got some sun (although no one really got burned because we were faithful about the sunscreen.) Thanks Glenn and Norine for letting us join you!! Here is a small clip of what we did. (If you notice, we're not in any of the pictures. Unfortunately, we dropped our nice, digital camera into the ocean and it was completely ruined. The memory card was also ruined with our pictures on it. Sad day!!! These pictures below are off the internet just so you get an idea of what we saw.)

Sunday was a low-key day in Tortola. (no picture) We just walked the island and looked at some beaches. I wrote in my journal and we all read scriptures. We tried to find a branch to go to but the only one started at 8 am and we wouldn't have gotten there until about 9:30. It was still a nice day.

Monday we docked at St. Thomas. Then the 6 of us took a ferry to St. John which is a beautiful and less-crowded island. We were on our own time schedule and we just "beach-hopped" all day long. We snorkeled, swam, built sand castles, and body surfed the day away. It was a little cloudy and rainy but it didn't ruin anything. This picture (above) is of Trunk Bay where there was great snorkeling.

On Tuesday we were at Antigua (pronounced Antiga) where we took a speed boat all the way around the island. On the excursion we swam with sting rays (yes their stingers and sharp teeth were intact). I was a little nervous but they said that in 6 years of doing tours, no one had ever been stung. It was cool because we held them and touched them and fed them gross squid. The female rays are larger than the males and get up to 5 feet in diameter. They're huge!!! That day we also snorkeled along some gorgeous, deep reefs, where there were lots of colorful fish. We also saw a couple mansions of famous people (Eric Clapton, Oprah, and the rehab place where Brittany Spears went for a day) =). It was a fast-paced day but we did a lot of neat things.

On Wednesday we were at St. Lucia and for our excursion we took a land tour. We saw a volcano, a waterfall, a banana plantation, a couple small fishing village, these gorgeous "Teton Mountains", and more beaches. It was a fun tour but unfortunately the main attraction was the free local rum and beer they offered. We stuck with bottled water but it was still fun to see the island.

We spent Thanksgiving Day on the beautiful island of Barbados where we went on a gorgeous, huge, catamaran sailboat and went snorkeling and swimming with sea turtles. I know that's not a normal Thanksgiving Day activity but it was awesome. This day was probably our favorite of the whole week.

Happy Halloween!!!!

Sean and I wanted to carve pumpkins for the holiday so rather than carving a boring face for our jack-0-lantern, we decided to carve a scary black cat and a tombstone. I think it turned out pretty well. The whole process actually took quite a while but it was fun.

A Visit from Dave

My brother Dave come down from Seattle a couple weeks ago to visit us. We had a fun weekend of playing football outside, going out to eat, drafting fantasy basketball teams (well...the boys did that, not me) and just relaxing.

A Touch of Fall

I have to admit that never in my life had I raked up leaves. Growing up in Arizona we didn't have large trees that lost their leaves. The ones that did fall could just be picked up with the lawn mower. So Sean and I decided to help Grandpa Oborn rake their backyard which was covered in yellow leaves. We ended up with 7 garbage bags full of leaves!!!