It's been a while...

Hello everyone. It's been a while since my last post. In case you hadn't guessed we really haven't been up to too much. We're on our 2nd 3 day weekend because of the MLK Holiday. Last weekend we had a 3 dayer because of a Puerto Rican holiday. Let's see, what did we do...On Saturday of last week we went to the caves in Utuado again. The Dills, Tom, Tori, and Sara hadn't been there so Courtney and I went as tour guides. It, of course, was beautiful again. When we got there we went right for the caves and nothing too exciting happened. We walked through and I did not take pictures because I only have about 100 from that place! We saw the window again and it was as usual breath taking. Our guide dog didn't tag along this time but when we got back to the cars after hiking he was there waiting. He's so cute and such a good dog! Courtney had to buy him another sandwich and feed him. Then we went to the lake near there called Lago Dos Bocas. You can go to the dock and take a boat to 3 different restaurants on the lake. We chose 1 and hopped on a boat. It was a nice place and the food was very good. It was a little more expensive than we thought it would be...they even charged for a tiny plastic cup of water! After that we drove home and stayed in Sunday for football. Damn Tony Romo -folding under pressure...that's all I'll say about that. Last Monday we also did nothing because there was nothing to do because of the Holiday. This week went rather smoothly in school. Just working on getting the kids back into the swing of things. That can be a chore itself! This weekend we've not been up to a whole lot. Friday night we did nothing. Saturday we did laundry and watched "The Kingdom" - fabulous movie. Yesterday we did our shopping and then went to Tori's house to watch the football games. Both teams we cheered for lost so that was very unfortunate. Katie and I made Tori a cheesehead to wear during the game because she's from Wisconsin. I guess the cheesehead wasn't very good luck for the Pack yesterday. Today we were going to go to Fajardo to the beach but it rained all night, cloudy here this morning, and according to the weather Fajardo has an 80% chance of rain today. I guess we're not meant to go to the beach as much this year. Oh well, I suppose I'll find something to do today...or not... Here are some picks from the last couple of weekends. Did any of you know that bananas grow off of a strange tail looking thing??

SNUBA

I know I already posted about Snuba but I'm addicted to Smilebox and this one turned out so cute!!

Make a scrapbook - it's easy!

Are you for Snuba?

Why yes, yesterday we were for Snuba! We (finally) got to go on my Christmas present trip yesterday! We were supposed to go Snuba diving last week but our trip was rescheduled because of bad weather. So yesterday Courtney, Sara, Mendez, Tori, and I traveled to Fajardo to have the Snuba experience. We arrived at the marina and found our boat. It was a 60 some odd foot sail boat. I wasn't expecting a sail boat and I was a little nervous because Courtney sometimes get seasick when a boat isn't moving so I was afraid he might feel that way on a slow moving sail boat. We got all checked in, met our Snuba instructor Barry, and climbed aboard the East Wind. Wow! There were so many people on the boat! I wasn't quite sure how everything was going to work but our guide Barry was so helpful. We traveled to the small island Icacos (Joy, Scott, Jason, Courtney, & I went there in September) and hung out for about an hour. We ate lunch on the boat - so nice. They had a huge spread of deli trays, cheese trays, pasta salads, veggie salads, fruits, etc. We didn't eat much because we still had to Snuba and didn't want to take a chance of getting ill or cramping. They also had soda, juice, and oh yes an open rum bar!! Of course we were not allowed to partake of the free bar until after Snuba. After lunch it was off to our Snuba adventure. In case you are not familiar let me explain: Snuba diving is much like Scuba diving but without the heavy gear. You do not carry the oxygen tank on your back but instead you are connected to a raft that holds your tank. You are connected by a long tube from the raft that can go 20 feet down. I think we went farther than 20 feet but noone else does. Anyway - we put on our flippers and snorkel masks then climbed into the water. Barry put a weight belt on each of us so we wouldn't float up and then we got our oxygen hook up. It really was a fantastic experience! We didn't get to see too much but I think maybe that was best because we were able to focus on breathing and what we needed to be doing. We did see fish, and plants, and coral, etc. The worst part of it for me was the pressure in my ears. In case you don't know, I have terrible ears! I've had many sets of tubes in my ears and they are now filled with nasty scar tissue. I got through the pressure though and really enjoyed myself. We are tired today though! On the trip back to the main land Courtney helped raise the sails and so he got free beer (I said the rum was free...not the case for the beer). Tonight we have a Three King's Party to attend and if we weren't going there we would have found a way back to Paliminito Island because the very boat we were on yesterday was being rented by Mariah Carey to go to Paliminito today. Here are some pictures of our trip. I don't have any of the underwater pictures yet but will get those developed soon. Overall it was a GREAT Christmas gift and I would love to do it again!!

Happy 2008!

I am going to try this one last time for this post. Believe it or not I've tried 4 different times and it hasn't been saving my changes. Instead it just wanted to post my heading and leave everything else blank...isn't that special?! Where to begin...

After Christmas Courtney and I decided to take it easy and relax. We then began to go stir crazy in our house so we had to get out. We went towards Santa Isabel in search of a new beach or just something fun to do. We didn't find any beaches but we did find a nice restaurant for lunch. It had a beautiful view of the water and it was out of the way. After eating lunch we went to see the 2nd National Treasure at their new big cinema. I thought it was a wonderful movie...if you haven't seen the first one you should see it and then go see this one! Here are a few pics from the restaurant.




Next came New Years. We were going to have a very low key, stay at home night when we saw Sara. She wanted to have a bonfire and we thought it was a great idea. When we got to the beach to get wood it was so windy. We thought we might not be able to start a fire let alone keep it going. We had also taken our little BBQ grill out for dinner. We ended up being able to start the fire and keep it going, we just had to continually add firewood which meant we had to find wood. Sara gets the firewood finder award for the night. She had a little lamp on her head and she went hunting. Overall we had a great time - very relaxing - and I can't wait to have another bonfire!!






We took it easy on New Year's Day and then the following day we went to Fajardo in search of a beach we had heard of. We had to go to one beach and hike past it to another beach but it was worth it. Beautiful soft sand, calm water, and plenty of things to see if you snorkel. We had a great time there until it started to rain which is when we decided to hike back and go home. We ran into a woman on our hike from Connecticut who has been living in PR for 2 1/2 years now with her husband. She told us about a few things that she likes to do that we need to go check out now. Overall it's been a great start to 2008 and we know it will be a full and exciting year. We start school again soon...but not before some more fun!

Happy 2008