Tarantula

Long story short – My neighbor came over to chat. She backed off slowly with a disgusted look on her face… I speedily shut the door, went out my other door, walked all the way around her house to get to the front door of my house and… There it was. RIGHT ABOVE WHERE I HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN STANDING. A tarantula. Anyways… after some excitement and some tears we killed the beast.  Seeing that tarantula at my house has made doing the laundry almost emotional for me. Scratch almost. I have a very hard time doing laundry. (As the washer is outside under the house in a shed thing, and you hang dry your laundry. Josh has been great at doing the laundry on Saturdays for us. However, there are times when I have to do it- and … no words. Just fear.

I made my Grandma's Artisan bread :)

Life these days.

What’s new, what’s new. Let’s start with the girlies. Fay and Eden are growing up way to fast. They’ve found a new pair of shoes that we brought for them and they are LOVING them. Kris MacDonnell gave them these shoes J SO cute! They have a few new tricks! The other morning we were lying in bed and I asked Fay where Mickey Mouse was. She went and turned the TV on. They love Mickey Mouse Club House. They take their diapers to the garbage. They are learning how to fold their arms for prayer. They’ve started dancing J You know that cute little baby bounce? That’s the one! Fay’s new words are purple, swim suit and Pa-Pa. Eden’s new word is Bekam. (our little neighbor boy) She sounds like a little bird when she says it- ‘ba-KAHm’. So cute! They both say book, ball, apple, cheese and shoes. Oh the shoes. How they love them! They’re learning the word tree.  They still love animals. There’s a cat that comes around every once and a while and the girls love to play with it through the sliding glass doors. There was a cute puppy that came over one day, super fun! And…. A goat up on our veranda a couple times.

We took the girls to the fort to take some pictures for Josh’s mom (Marianne’s) birthday and Father’s Day. The results? Adorable! They’ve been giving mom and dad kisses for a while now but they recently started giving each other kisses. SO CUTE!

Fay

Eden

Father’s Day shout out to my incredible husband. I love watching him with the girls. He’s a natural.  Fay and Eden adore their dad and they will always have a special bond with him. My Dad is such an incredible example of what a Father should be-A provider, protector and one who presides in righteousness. My dad is selfless and sacrificing, has a great sense of humor, and is one who fulfills his dreams. I’m so glad that my girls have him to call ‘Pa-Pa.’ My Grandpa Reagh is another great man. He is a great example of charity and service. At family dinners he often shares words of love from his heart and seldom is there a dry eye around. I’ve gotten to know my Grandpa Jack a lot better over the past couple years. He is a meat and potatoes kind of man. He’s a great example of generosity. My Grandpa Earl passed a way when I was 7. He taught me how to fish and how to eat dandelion stems. He and Grandma Bev often took us camping and together we made some of the fondest memories of my life. I love these men in my life. And feel so blessed to know them and call them mine J

We were lucky enough on our little island to have a missionary couple (Elder and Sister Wright) come visit us from St. Maarten! Crazy enough, they are from Raymond! Such a small little world. They came for Stewart Beckett’s baptism. He was baptized in the ocean – what a neat thing to witness. We snatched the Wright’s up for dinner and enjoyed a meal and great conversation with them- not to mention Josh’s best pina-coladas yet! I then had my first Statia-driving experience as I borrowed my neighbor’s car to drive them to the Becketts, where they were staying. The tricky part of driving at night, is that most of the cars have super tinted windows so it’s even harder to see. The adventure to the Beckett’s house was eventless. I dropped off the Wright’s and made my way to Duggins (the grocery store).  I took a wrong turn and went down a one-way street. I stopped when a …kindly Black man had his arms wide open in question. I rolled my window down a little bit and another man looked at me and said (say with that cool Caribbean accent) “Sweet heart. Are you lost?” I responded with… “No, I think I just missed my turn.”

“Exactly.” He says sweetishley.

“Um, what do I do now?”

“You gotta turn around.”

“Um… these windows are tinted really dark and I can’t see to do that.” Pause… “Could you talk me through it please?”

“You bet.”

So they talked me through it and off I went-the right way. I’m sure they had a good little laugh at this crazy white girl.

Beach Days J

You should see these little chickellettes at the beach! Fearless!  They run into the washed-up waves. Sometimes they get knocked down, but it doesn’t seem to bother them any more. It’s such a fulfilling feeling to watch your babies learn something new or figure something out. Fay was chasing the receding wave and after getting knocked over by the wave coming in she learned that when she sees the wave coming back towards her that she needs to run up shore. So she’ll chase the wave out then get an excited look on her face as she sees the wave coming towards her and heads back up.

I took Eden into play in the water and she loves it so much. She just puts her head back into the water, closes her eyes and smiles while I swoosh her around. While I was playing with Eden, Fay was exploring the shore. She had our neighbors sand toy basket and was carrying it around. SO cute!

Eden, I’m sure has had consecutively new bonks on her head. Poor girl! She’s such a trooper! The little stinker has started to bite her sister.

They are getting SOOOO much better with their naps, especially the last few days. And I’ve finally tried to stop getting them in the night when they cry- and much to my surprise ;) they are getting better at sleeping through the night.

They are tackling the stairs. Their fine-motor skills are coming along. Yesterday Josh was teaching them how to put a popsicle-stick through a slot on a toy. Man it’s so fun to watch them learn! They love going for walks. On average we go 3 times a week to pick up Josh from school. The walk to the school is uphill, over, downhill, more downhill, over, downhill. So if you were thinking that Josh is the one that pushes the stroller home- you were correct! Home is uphill, over, uphill, more uphill, over downhill. Crazy hilly island. We need a car! Sad day! We had an awesome one lined up but it fell through. Sad day. Sad day indeed.

EMMA comes in 37 days! Can’t wait! I made my first Statia count down chain J

 

Internet. What’s That Again?

Oh, Nelly. I can’t even tell you the sadness we’ve got going on over here. Our internet is the pits. Stickier then the pits if you can imagine. It was surprisingly pretty good for the first while. Then BAM we didn’t have internet for a week and a half. What really doesn’t make any sense is that our neighbors’ (who share the same internet as us) internet was working perfectly fine! So our landlords put a security password on the internet in hopes that that would make it better, well it’s made it worse.  Sometimes our computers and ipods will recognize the signal and work and sometimes the will recognize the signal and not work and sometimes they won’t recognize the signal at all. AGGREVASION! Anyways… My sister-in-law, Jenna is sending along a wi-fi booster. So I have high hopes that that will work. At this point all our internet stuff is handled at the school with it’s speedy, awesome internet. SIGH enough of that depressingness.

June 30^th

A couple updates for ya. There are now only 29 days until Emma gets here!!! WAHOO! I cannot wait!

I’ve decided that it’s time to name the sharks down at the beach. They’ve made it their home. There are 2 so I’m taking name nominations. Feel free to leave a comment.

Banana Spider. In. My. Room. NOT COOL! It was on my dresser on my swimsuit. Ugly.

The girls are 14 months old now! They are loving the beach more and more. They seem to be understanding us really well, they listen pretty good when they’re told not to touch something. They have been taking their diapers to the garbage for a while now and are rewarded with excitement and high-fives from Josh and I. This morning they gave each other a high-five. So cute!

Eden and Fay's new faces!

Josh is continuing do to really well in school and is looking forward to the upcoming term break in August.

I have a love/hate relationship with hearing about what’s going on at home. I love hearing about their happenings but wish we could be there with them. I especially wish they could see the girls. It’s so crazy how much they have changed in 2 months. My mom, sister and grandma have been working on some fun projects at home including spray painting the awesome-est cast iron bed frame turquoise, repainting cabinets, modge-podging chairs. So fun! My little brother Benny got stitches in his wrist :S Matt, my other little brother is going to be in Jr. High next year! My dad went to California for a conference.

Our internet (or lack there of) still has a mind of it’s own. It won’t connect with our desktop, lap-top, or  my ipod. But it will connect with Josh’s ipod, and if I’m lucky it will have a good enough signal so I can facetime with my fam. It makes absolutely NO sense.

 So that's it that's all until the next blog!  

The Statia Wave
So everyone here in Statia is pretty friendly and they have this little wave. You just lift your hand up from the steering wheel, or raise your arm in the air, or honk your horn, or what ever. But pretty much everyone does it. So, seeming how we live here, we do the Statia wave. … Those of you who have been on a holiday somewhere where people speak a different language might be able to relate to the following. So in 2010 Josh and I went to Mexico for a holiday. We walked around a lot and Josh thought it was pretty cool to say ‘Ola’ and ‘grasious’ to people like he lived there. It’s totally fine that he did that, I’m not mad about it. It was just funny because we don’t speak Spanish and we didn’t live there. So back to the Statia wave… we LIVE here so we CAN do it haha.. but it feels weird. Like we are annoying tourists or something. Anyhoo enough of that!

June 4^th, I had the most amazing little scripture study. I’ve been a bit of a slacker as of late and needed a boost. So I decided to work on my Personal Progress (the Young Women booklet) I won’t go into detail here, but would be more that happy to if you personal message me. I’ll just share the part that I read that had the biggest impact and was just what I needed to hear. Alma chapter 32:17-43. If you don’t have access to that, I would love to share it with you and share the incredible experience I had, so again, just message me.

SHARK!

Ya. That’s right. That’s what I said. THAT’S WHAT I SAW! Ok don’t freak out. (I keep trying to tell myself that…it doesn’t help) Ok so I’ll try and make this quick. So I’m 99% sure I have a phobia of the ocean. I can go in it if my feet are touching the bottom, but that’s far enough. For years now, I’ve had this love/hate relationship with sharks. Heck! When Josh and I went to Mexico we fed sharks through a plexi-glass cage in an aquarium I love learning about them and love watching Shark Week on discovery channel. … but I am SUPER paranoid in the water, swimming pools included. Call me a nerd. Go ahead. Do it. But for real, I’m not even being over dramatic. So put me in the wild ocean where sharks live? And … I, well I’d say I’ve been doing pretty darn good. Yes, I might scan for shark fins almost constantly but I am in the water. HOWEVER!... So last week at the beach Kayleigh Wolsey and I walked into the ocean (and barely into the water I might add) when BOOM there’s this substantial, pale yellow looking fish. Just over 2 feet long and just out of arms reach from me. HOLY! I thought to my self, what a big fish. The night before Josh and I were watching River Monsters on TV and the dude was talking about cat fish.. so I thought maybe it was a cat fish. A couple days later there we were at the beach again and Joel Wolsey came over to me and was like, “So… you know that fish you saw the other day? Ya. Well that was nurse shark.”

Oh ya? No big deal right? WRONG! I was not ok with the fact that there was a SHARK swimming around with us. Where there’s one shark there’s more right!? Everyone keeps trying to tell me that nurse sharks are dossal creatures and more afraid of you then anything and that they don’t have teeth ect ect.

Josh went for a run and a swim the other day (by the way he swam with a sea turtle!) and talked to a fisherman who said that there had been a little lemon shark spotted at the swimming beach. Some people say that lemon sharks are very aggressive, some saw they’re very dossal-I have yet to google lemon sharks.

So what ever I got over it (as much as I could) and what happened yesterday you ask? I’ll tell you. I was going in again with Kayleigh and my babies and BAM! There’s that stupid shark again! This time, knowing that it was a shark, and not knowing if it was a nurse shark or a lemon shark, I could not handle it. I backed up and took a minute trying to talk myself into staying in the water… I stayed in up to my knees and scanned the water around my constantly, like a freak show.  So anyhoo, will I ever step foot into the ocean again? Yes. Will I ever be 100% comfortable in the ocean. Heck no! Sigh.

Moving on….

*adding a little tidbit. We’ve just learned that there are 2 sharks. Well 2 that we just SAW. It’s the ocean. I’m sure there are more. Anyways … video to come! Yes, we videoed the sharks.

ROCKED

So again, yesterday. Pretty big waves…At the beach it was rinsing time. So I rinsed Eden off in the ocean, wrapped her in her towel and Katie Bridge held her for me while I took Fay out. So there we were, Fay and I, starting to rinse, when I see a big wave. So I held Fay tight, turned sideways to stand my ground and… success! Still standing. So continuing with the rinse process when I see a very big wave. Uh-oh. So I watched the wave as it came closer, and watched the ladies that were a bit farther out then me, including Lyndsey who jumped when the wave got to her… so again, I held Fay tight looked that wave in face and… jumped. CRASH! Down we went, it happened so fast yet it seemed like forever under the water. My eyes were wide open, as my right arm held Fay tight and my left arm scrambled to find the bottom of the ocean floor to push us back up. Alas, we recovered from the wave and I looked at Fay to make sure she was alright-she did great by the way. Oh, that rush of adrenaline! Nuts, I tell ya! Holy salt water all up in my sinuses! Cleared me out pretty good. So that was a little traumatic, but I’m grateful we came out of that A-OK. As a side note, after I realized that Fay was ok and I calmed down a little bit, I’ll have you know that my swimsuit stayed intact. Fewf.

That was a heck of an exciting day at the beach.

Statia Hannah (sorry if talking in 3^rd person annoys you)

So … I know this may come as a shock to those of you who know me, or have ever been to my house.. ha.. I’ll have you know that Statia Hannah does her dishes every night. And usually every early after noon as well. Statia Hannah bakes, and Statia Hannah cleans her house daily!

You’d be amazed people! What I love is the feeling of waking up in the morning to a clean house, or watching a show with Josh at night and sitting in a clean living room. Such a liberating feeling! Why couldn’t I figure this out sooner! My goal in life is to become OCD neat freak. I think I’ve 5% there! Haha. But in all seriousness, if you suffer from a-bomb-went-off-in-my-house-and-i-could-care-less syndrome, I offer you a 21 day challenge of doing your dishes every night and tidying the living areas. Also, make your bed EVERY MORNING! Oh my friends, what a marvelous feeling J

Mango face Fay!

Ok .. what else is new? Emma is coming to visit!!!!!!!! 50 days! I am beyond exited! I miss my little sister.

Skyping with Uncle Ben and Grandma <3

Aw. Speaking of missing. I had my first home sick day. June 5^th.

I miss my family, of course, but Emma in particular. And Jenna (my sister-in-law) who often dropped by to say hi, and sometimes drop of slurpees. I miss hanging out with my friend Brittany and her daughter Laynie and our spontaneous, crazy trips into Lethbridge. I miss visits from Cas, and Jade, and visits and skor cake with Smiths. I miss the Atwood fam. I miss Sunday dinners at my parents’ house. I miss my visiting teachers and my ward family. 6^th ward is what?! Red Hot! Of course I miss the Brat-pack, but I’ve been missing you all since high school. BBCSH-4ever! I miss ice cream. Rootbeer floats almost every night. I miss my mini-van, Spock. I miss the dollar store and speedy internet. OK enough already! Anyways, where ever you are in the world, I miss you and appreciate your roll in my life.

Come visit soon!