Indian River Hike

A few days after Christmas, we decided to go on a hike called The Indian River Hike. This hike was Crazy!!! We went with our friends Charlotte and her kiddos, and the Sachek Family. We had fun but it was SO muddy. And then it started to rain while we were hiking. Nenji's shoe got stuck in the mud and Rylan slipped like 20 times. Good memories though. Oh, and this river is actually where they shot a part of Pirates of the Caribbean (Dead man's Chest). I think it's where Calisto lived. Yup, pretty cool. 

Going into the jungle. 

As you can see, the trees had these crazy roots that were twisted like snakes! It made it really hard to walk.

Almost there!

We MADE it!

Silly Boys!

Spencer likes to eat like a little man. Feet up and all. 

My poor Rylan got his finger smashed by a door on New Years Eve. :( 

His fingernail fell off. And it's his middle finger. So he's been flipping us off every time he shows us his finger. 

Nenji and Ry fell asleep on the couch and Spencer just thought it was the funniest thing to sit on his brothers while they were sleeping. 

Look at that little boy smile! He even said, "Cheese". 

He's so cute!!!

Now Ry's turn to be sat on.

Believe me when I say I love to kiss this little face. 

One word...jolly!

New House!

 So we moved to a new house during the Christmas break! The family who lived here before us were members of the church. My first semester here Kasie invited me over and I thought to myself, I NEED to live here! Even though it was deathly hot and humid, the house had a really nice breeze and I just liked the setting. I told Fi Dan that we needed to live there. We didn't really think anything about it but now that we will be living here for another year, we thought this would be a good location for our family!

We absolute love it here so far! We right across the street from the school and Main Gate. We live on the 2nd floor and we have great neighbors downstairs! Ok, they are actually our friends from church, but they are great! We get the most fantastic breeze coming through the house. And Fi Ddan studies like 1 minutes away from the house! It's pretty great. 

The ONLY thing is that we've seen our first centipede here! YIKES!!!!!! It was HUGE by the way. I was so scared that I threw a binder at it and completely missed. And then we had to wait for it to come out again. A few minutes later I saw it crawling on the wall. AH! I almost died. Fi Dan tried to kill it and missed it. So I sprayed the cracks and it came out and was squirming around and it was just GROSS! 

That was a few weeks ago...and just yesterday I killed a huge cockroach! It was scary. Fi Dan was studying and trust me, I was screaming my head off every time I smacked it with fly swatter. Eeek! And I did spray the heck out of with some BOP (insecticide). Besides those two gross incidences, we love the house! 

Back porch view! And that's our washer. 

Another view. 

I have to admit...I am starting to really like this place. :)

View from our front porch. That's the school!

OH, and the centipede! AH! Just looking this picture makes me want to just grab my BOP bottle. Yuck. 

Christmas in Dominica

So staying here in Dominica turned out to be awesome! Of course we missed our family like crazy and the FOOD, but it was so nice and relaxing and it wasn't hectic and crazy! Here are a few things we did.

Making Christmas cookies. 

Making some icing. 

Yum! So good!

Thanks Aunty Kathy for sending us our Ninja turtle stuff!

My boys. 

Love their Ninja faces. 

Our Christmas Tree. 

All of the presents set out for the boys.

We LOVE Christmas!

Raphel and Rylan. 

My little Dinosaur baby. 

My favorite picture of him!

Love him!!!

Sand Castle Building

Instead of building snowmen we built sand castles instead! It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun! There were about 5 families that came out and built sand castles with us! We had a sand castle building competition and we tied for 1st place! 

Me and Spencer building a castle!

Rylan and Nenji swimming!

Done with the sand castle.

The finished product. :)

Christmas Nativity Making Day

There were about 5 families that stayed here on the island during the Holiday Season. So ladies and I decided that we need to get together and do things! One of the things that we did was make Christmas Nativity Sets! This was actually something that I really wanted to do and I saw something similar on Pinterest, but couldn't find the right materials to do it. So I thought maybe we could make it out of drift wood. It turned out GREAT! It was so much fun. 

Here's Charlotte sawing some wood for us. She was awesome!

Taran making a dirft wood wreath. 

Creative juices running!

Our finished products. Love it!

I went home and decided that my Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus needed a stable. So I made one out of more drift wood and some palm tree parts. Then I had the brilliant idea of making a sand dollar the star! I love that it looks like it's shining! :)