Valentines Day, Banana Murderers, Motorcycle Accidents, and Markets

I'm so grateful for my digital camera. It's probably the best investment I've ever made, I'm so glad I decided to buy one before I left. My memory is atrocious, I forget SO many things, so looking through my pictures is how I remember all of the things that have been going on lately, since I feel like I'm taking pictures of almost everything.

I started to feel like more of a mom this week instead of just a nanny, coordinating meals, going out grocery shopping, taking kids to their activities, toting Piper everywhere, speaking baby language, it's nuts. I'm completely exhausted by like eight at night. I constantly think of my mom and her raising eleven kids and the thought of having to do that makes my brain hurt and I feel like I'm going to be sick. One thing I can say that I've made progress on is my cooking. Growing up I was completely spoiled because mom made all of the meals, packed lunches. I swear she could make an amazing breakfast in under three minutes. I'd wake up late for seminary (my church class before high school that started at 5:30 am, zzzz...) and I'd tell my mom I had absolutely no time to eat breakfast, and yet she had cooked something and it was in my hand as I was leaving. I swear my mom's a wizard. So my first week here I made pancakes, which seems easy enough, but even flipping them was hard ha. I put them on a plate and thought they looked good, gave myself a little pat on the back, Andi took her first bite into one and part of the butter wrapper came out of her pancake. Ha! It was hilarious, I took a definite shot to my ego right there, I decided I couldn't get too cocky about cooking until I ate least learned how to take the entire wrapper off of the butter first...

Now after being here a little bit longer I'm learning a little bit more, slowly and surely getting better. Cari helps me a lot which is nice since she totally knows how to improvise when we're missing an ingredient. I guess that comes with the territory of being a mom for thirteen years like she has been. She and I together made peanut pad thai noodles and it was SO good, plus it looked pretty so I decided to take a picture of it. Ha I felt so lame taking a picture of my dinner, I'll try and keep that to a minimum.
Tanner was playing on a baseball team in Phillipsburg, which is the capital of the island. When there's no traffic you can get there in about fifteen minutes, but most of the time there's a lot of traffic, and the bridge goes up in the harbor to let the boats through, and in that circumstance it takes about an hour. The drive there is pretty steep, but also really beautiful, you pass over the harbor where all of the cruise ships and from such high elevation from the hills we drive up it looks amazing. The scariest part of driving here are watching out for the "brave" motorcyclists who weave in and out of lanes. The other day when we were driving to baseball I said, "How scary would it be if we saw a motorcyclist totally wipe out?" Literally a minute later all of the traffic had stopped and we realized that not one, but two motorcyclists fell off of their bikes. I HAVE VOODOO POWERS, PEOPLE. They were both fine which was good, but the weirdest part was that they were just standing around with their bikes in both lanes, and they weren't moving their bikes to let the traffic flow again in either direction. It's not like the states when there's an automobile accident here. People don't get out and make sure you're alright, and they're not patient, they honk at you and yell for you to get your butt up off the ground and move your bike. After about ten minutes of waiting Casey decided he'd just take initiative himself and he got out and moved the bike out of the lane himself so we could all go. The motorcycle belonged to a police officer and he at first thought Casey was going to steal his bike or something, because he whipped out his handcuffs, but then realized Casey was just moving it and let him do it. The bikes are really heavy so we figured the guy just needed help, Casey having owned a motorcycle was familiar enough with moving them. But it was so funny and bizarre. Definitely an exciting drive to Phillipsburg.

While Tanner is at baseball practice we spend some time in the capital hanging out, that's where they have their Cost-U-Less grocery store which is essentially like a Sam's Club, all bulk foods, and I swear it's not costing any less (especially when you go shopping with a 2 year old and a sugar loving 13 year old who find huge bulk of their favorite cookies and cereal)
Andi was saying we should get this rug, its totally heinous, but I'd trade my first born for a bag of peanut m&ms, just kidding...There's also a bunch of shopping in Phillipsburg which my friend Katie has dubbed to P-Burg. There's a whole bunch of street vendors, every single one of them "will offer you a good price, sweetie." It is fun to barter with them, though. Sometimes I just like to mess with 'em, they'll tell me something is 45 dollars, I offer them five, and they don't look too amused. Side note: Not a lot of people here understand sarcasm, so I'm struggling wthout it. Ha. Their department store here called "Penny's" had a bunch of cheapish clothes, and household stuff, plus I totally found a yoga mat there!! I asked for it for my birthday, doing sit ups on the tile floor at home is killing my back, and its starting to bruise...not the cutest. Andi and Piper got exhasuted from shopping, and trying to find church pants for Tanner wasn't their idea of a great time, so they camped out in these lounge chairs, this series of pictures are cute because of Piper's hand gestures, she's such a mini adult, and she talks with her hands so much, she got that from Grandpa Holm.



This is just a funny sign I wanted a picture of, I plan to open my own salon/car wash in Minnesota when I move back ;)
It wouldn't be a trip to P-Burg without stopping at this bakery called Carl & Son's which sells American donuts for really cheap, and they're delicious. We kill time in that bakery drinking grape soda labeled as "Busta Soda" and taking pictures.
Look at those blue eyes of hers!I love the picture of Piper sticking her tonuge out while she concentrates on putting the soda cap back on because that is SO my trademark move, and it makes me happy that she does it, too. Whenever I cut hair, or concentrating on something really hard, my tongue sticks out. It's a weird little habit.< I'm tickling the crap out of her in this pic

Another thing we discovered in P-Burg is their library which was awesome. We went there for our baby play group and they had this amazing baby room, plus it was freezing in there! A/C costs so much here that whenever you find a place that's nice and cool you remember to come there in the summer when it starts getting even hotter.



These guys I saw outside when we were leaving the library so I asked if I could take their picture because they were so cute.

Valentines Day growing up my mom always had the tradition of waking up EXTREMELY early, like I said before we always had seminary at 530 in the morning, so my mom would wake up at like 3 and cook an amazing breakfast for us, heart shaped cinnamon rolls, pink yogurts, all that stuff. Plus she stayed up super late the night before writing a customary valentine for all of her kids which considering there's 8,000 of us kids, it probably took her about a year to write them all, she's such a talented writer. I love her Valentines. So this year I decided to pay back the favor and I stayed up super late writing an email valentine for she and my dad, made me homesick writing them. I miss those two. So the next morning I was really tired but Cari and Casey decided to keep the tradition going, and they got up early to make homemade cinnamon rolls and eggs and decorate the house and make us valentines. We also all got swimming noodles which was unbelievably exciting. We use them all the time already! Thanks, Cari and Casey!




After breakfast was finished Piper and I got ready for our weekly play group, I was in the midst of getting Pip dressed when Andi came in and insisted she wear her valentines day outfit which was SO cute, she looked like a doll. I took a million pictures with her, but of course she's not even looking at the camera for most of 'em. Stinker.


Play group ended up being cancelled because some babies were sick, so Piper and I walked down to the beach, and for some reason that day the waves were HUGE. It was an angry ocean but it was awesome. Our beach didn't exist, the waves came all the way up the shore, so we just stayed on the staircase, but I tried to get some good pictures of it.
We stopped at the abandoned pool on the way back to the apartment. Our pools have been closed for weeks because of some psycho courtcase battle with the owner of our apartment. Supposedly they're supposed to be reopened in a couple of weeks, mid March. Fingers crossed.

So last Saturday was a very fun day. We went with our friends Matt and Cecily to the market in the morning, it was like a farmers market, really cool. They had a bunch of nice produce and VERY fresh fish. They were gutting the fish right on the boardwalk, Casey took pics of them and one of the guys yelled and said you can't take a picture of me unless you ask. But of course whenever you ask them if you can take their picture they say no haha so it's a bummer, but he still got some good ones. After the market we went to Sarafina's which is a french restaurant with really yummy crepes, and sandwiches, and amazing pastry selections, it was so good, and the food looked like art. After Sarafina's we went to Guana Bay for some boogie boarding and we met up with our friend Katie and her mom who's visiting from North Dakota. It was awesome, the waves weren't as good as last time there my nephew said, but it was still a blast. I'm one of those people who scream every time they catch a wave like i'm on a roller coaster or something, trying to work on that... With the help of SPF 50 we didn't get too sunburned. Cari ended up the worst. That's what ya get for being a ginger with pale skin ;) She had aloe vera rubbed on her back what seemed like every five minutes, and now it's a lot better. Here's some pictures of the market, Sarafinas, and Guana. Picture credit on some of these to my brother in law, Casey.






















Piper and I are becoming best buddies, she's figured out how to take pictures on my camera now, and she took this one while I was changing one her nasty diapers, and the picture is hilarious.
This is her after a shower, I like to comb all of her hair back and make her look like Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter.
Piper and I are liking it here a lot. It's also really cool living with my sister the med student, helping her study I get to learn so many interesting things, but then when she has to go sit in lecture, we can go to the beach, so its like a win win. Funny Piper story of the week: Last week Piper and I were taking a walk like we do probably 3-5 times a day, and she likes to push her baby stroller that usually has one of her dolls or stuffed animals in it, but if she can't find one of those then she'll settle for a pair of socks, or this time, a half eaten unpeeled banana. So we're walking around the block as she pushes this stroller carrying nothing but a banana when a dog walks up. Piper loves dogs, but she can only really admit to loving them when you're holding her and she's high enough up that she's not in the danger zone anymore, and that's when she says how nice the dog is, or that she loves them. So we see this dog and I pick Piper up so she can look at the dog and we say "oh, the dog is so nice." Piper does this thing when she goes into a dark room and knows its time for bed, or when you offer her a food she hates, she'll shake her head and wave her arms and say "no." So i'm holding Piper when all of a sudden she does the head shaking, arm waving thing and she's saying, "Oh no, oh no, oh no." I look down and see that the dog had just eaten her banana out of the stroller which now of course is like her baby, and Piper loses it. She screams hysterically and is traumatized that the dog ate her banana. I felt like such an awful aunt when I was laughing as hysterically as she was crying, but it was too funny, I couldn't handle it. Now when we see that dog while we're out walking she says, "dog ate my banana, that's kinda funny." So she's recovered, she may have some post traumatic stress disorder sometime down the road, but we won't worry about that too much right now.

Hope everyone has a good week! We'll update and post more pics soon!

A beast of a blog post.

I apologize in advance for the lengthy blog post you're embarked on. I feel like I have nothing new to update, and our routine seems pretty similar every week, and then I realize while looking through my pictures that I have a lot of things to post about! Luckily I have great friends (Thea) to text and yell at me about my laziness of blogging lately.

First and foremost I want to start out the blog by saying we finally bought a car! After a month of not having full time access to a car, and having to mooch off of our friends for their cars, and taking advantage of the shuttle from the med school, we got hooked up with a friend to a mechanic named Eddy who sold us a 2004 White Isuzu Trooper. It was weird to drive again even after only a month. Not to mention how different it is to drive here than flat Minnesota. There are a bunch of very steep hills here, it resembles San Francisco to me sometimes, especially with the ocean off to the side. There are speed bumps here every 50-75 feet, so you're constantly slowing down and speeding up, not so great for gas mileage, not to mention gas here costs twice as much as it does in the states...so good thing we bought a gas efficient SUV...haha not. But it fits us all comfortably and it will be wonderful for the rainy season when it floods a lot and we're high enough up we don't drown in our own car ;) Here are some pics of the car, its been named "Moby Dick," after the great white sperm whale. (Surprisingly enough, I wasn't responsible for its name)




Now that we have a car we can explore the island much more. We've found a sailing club that Andi will start on Tuesday which seems awesome, and Tanner is playing baseball on a team here now, too.

Piper and I are staying busy with our daily naps, walks, swims, and baby einstein videos, plus shes recently discovered YouTube, and all of the nursery rhyme videos on there to watch over, and over, and over, and over...


Piper and I also have a weekly play group we've been going to. We're starting little outings with our other baby friends, this week we're going to the library in Phillipsburg which is the capital, its about half an hour away. It's so funny how much my daily life has changed now that I'm doting a two year old constantly. Piper is so fun to play with, though. Here's some pics of Piper with her new friends. She's still pretty shy, she stays pretty close to my lap, but as the weeks go on, and the more we see the same kids I'm hoping she'll come around.








Piper enjoying a smoothie at the local coffee shop after a long day of swimming and napping.

This is a random stray dog I saw by the coffee shop that totally reminded me of my best friends dog, Cleo. Makes me homesick.

Piper checking her "Baby Emma" for lice...?

Last Friday my sister Carina decided she wanted to take a night off of studying (which is SUCH a rarity--they weren't exaggerating in the least when they said med school is like drinking from a fire hose, because man, that lady works HARD) to go on a date with her husband, my brother in law, Casey. When they left I was in the bathroom peeling the sunburned skin off of my nose (cute, I know) Andi was taking a shower to get all the sand off of her from a day at the beach, and Tanner was listening to a movie on the laptop with headphones in. I came out of the bathroom and started looking for Piper. I should mention that in our apartment we have a screen door that we just picked up at a hardware store, its put up with hooks on the inside and a bungee cord, and that lets in an awesome cross breeze with the screen doors in the kitchen, and it really makes it a lot more comfortable in the apartment.




So the screen door needs to be put up from the inside of the apartment, whenever anyone leaves they just yell "screen door" and someone goes and puts it back up (this has relevance, I PROMISE) So Friday night I come out of the bathroom, and Cari and Casey have left for their date night out to dinner, and I'm looking for Piper. I start yelling her name, I don't hear her, I'm looking in the bedrooms, I don't see her. I ask Andi if she's in the bathroom with her, Andi says no. I ask Tanner if she's under the blanket watching a movie with him, he says no. Then I see the screen door is wide open because Cari and Casey have left and nobody put it back up. Holy. Crap. Piper. Is. Gone. I start to freak out. I yell for Andi to quick get dressed and help me look, I yell for Tanner to come help us find Piper, he asks, "where is she?" I shout back, "I DON'T KNOW!!" We grab the keys, quickly shut the door, and leave the apartment to go searching for Piper around the resort. Piper LOVES riding in the elevator, she knows which buttons to push to get to the pool, and which to push to get to the apartment, so I send Tanner to the elevator to wait for it and see if she's in there. Piper also loves to climb up and down stairs, so Andi and I run and check the stairs at both ends of the resort. We're running up the stairs, down the stairs, yelling Piper's name, praying to God that she didn't get kidnapped, or fall off a banister and die, just anything. I have the worst thoughts going through my mind this entire time, too. Like complete conspiracy theories. I was Liam Neeson in "Taken" and brainstorming the conversation I'd have with her abductors on the phone if they wanted ransom money, and how I was going to relentlessly threaten to kill them. I mean, it was an intense thought process, I'm not going to lie, my head was a mess. After 5-6 minutes of running up and down the stairs, not seeing Piper, I decide to go back to the apartment, try and get on skype, and have one of our island friends call our one cell phone that Cari and Casey have to tell them to come home ASAP and help us find their lost toddler. I get to the laptop that Skype is always logged into, and its password protected. I'm trying to brainstorm password ideas, no luck. So safe to say if Casey's laptop ever gets stolen and people try and break in and retrieve valuable information, they're screwed, there's no hacking into that thing. I look up from the laptop and to the kitchen counter and see the cell phone plugged into the wall charging, and I was completely done. Oh my gosh, the cell phone is here, we can't get a hold of Cari and Casey if we wanted to, I lost the baby, I'm going to die. I had a full on panic attack in the kitchen. Before Friday I thought I'd had a panic attack before, I was wrong, this was so different. My arms went numb in under two seconds, I couldn't breathe, my hands started seizing, I was completely destroyed and so scared. I started to cry hysterically and after a couple of minutes when I could feel my body enough again to start running to look for Piper some more I went down to the garage by the pool and saw Tanner with the guard also looking for Piper, and still no luck. I went back to the stairs running up and down the six levels just praying we find her, I pass Andi who sees that I'm completely hysterical and she tries to calm me down, tells me we'll find her, but I see in her face too that she's just as scared as I am. I go back up to our level and I'm running back and forth on our floor and all of a sudden I hear her crying.

Never before has a cry been such an amazing sound. Cari and Casey had taken something to drop off at our neighbors house before they left for their date, and they had taken Piper with her. Apparently Cari yelled in the house before she left telling us this, but with our being in the bathroom/watching movies, nobody heard her. I walked up to the neighbors door just completely sobbing and Cari gave me the saddest look and said, "OH NO! Did you think she was lost? I'm so sorry!" I just bent down and gave Piper the biggest hug ever, I was so incredibly relieved. It was the scariest 15-20 minutes of my life, BY FAR. The entire night Cari kept apologizing, they brought us home ice cream trying to make restitution, and now everything is good. Right after it happened I literally just sat Piper down on the counter starting at her for like twenty minutes, still crying and shaky, she was looking at me like a psycho probably wondering why I was such a hot mess. I also took the screen door down and locked the door almost imprisoning everyone in the apartment, I wasn't going to risk anyone else getting out. Also, I'm buying a leash for Piper.

So when I'm not losing babies, or having panic attacks, I've been doing some hair lately. I'm starting to miss it, which I swore would never happen. After a brutal year at Aveda and hours upon hours of what seemed like slave work, I have indeed started to miss it. Even the smell of my Aveda products I missed. I don't do my hair here, it just doesn't happen. People ask me how a hairdresser does their hair with all this humidity, and I just point to my messy bun on the top of my head, or my side fishtail braid, and say, "I don't." I took my second client this week. I've just been doing bang trims, and haircuts, I desperately need to see about buying color. My own hair is such a mess. It's like half grown out hair dye, half sun lightening, and half nasty blonde roots. PUKE. I wash my clients hair in the sink and then take them out on the deck to cut, its oh so professional...




But yes, I'll scrunch in some Aveda products after I'm done and reminisce on what it was like to shower and do my hair ;)

The island has a bunch of beaches, which I guess makes total sense considering we're completely surrounded by water. We've been branching out on different beaches to go to, Casey has declared every Friday as "explore the island day" which sounds great to me, since this place never ceases to amaze me. So many different weird and fun places. Andi and Tanner just got their own boogie boards last week, so we tested those out.

We all get a little better at boogie boarding (say that ten times fast) each time we go. Now we just need to work on our surfing/wind surfing/sailing skills :)

Another cool beach we found this week is right next to the airport, the giant planes land literally right across the fence from the beach, so you can go up to the fence when planes are taking off, and it'll blow you away. Literally. I think you can YouTube "Princess Juiliana Airport Planes Beach SXM" or something along those lines, and some awesome videos will pop up, I have a video on my facebook page, too. A family that left right before we got there were super nice and gave us their chairs, they also left us a bucket of empty beer bottles, I got some nice pics with that, my mom will love it ;)

Enjoying the Caribbean sea.

See how low the plane gets!

I'm trying to do that "bottoms up" hand expression, but I kind of just look like an idiot...



I tried taking a picture with Piper, and she wasn't having it.

Pipes maxin' and relaxin'


The wrap up of our week every Sunday is church. I always considered Sunday to be the end of the week, even though technically its the beginning, oh well. As I mentioned before I'm in charge of teaching the 4-7 year old kids, so I wanted to take some pictures of them. They all have a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of energy, but they're also really funny, and they say the cutest things.





This is Zhoja (zoy-uhh) once I started taking pictures of her, she kept asking me to do it again and again, and then she started doing a tiger pose and I couldn't stop laughing, it was SO funny. I probably have ten pictures of her doing tiger claws on my camera.

Some post-church pictures. Piper is always quite exhausted after three hours of Sunday School, these pictures depict it perfectly, her energy is non existent. It looks like Andi sucked all of Piper's energy out because Andi looks crazy and Piper looks dead.



I came home and had a nice relaxing Sunday. Caught up with some siblings and my parents on the phone, spent what seems like days on this blog, and didn't get to watch the super bowl, which is kind of a bummer. I'm just glad I didn't really care about either team playing, had my Vikes been in the superbowl, I'd have spared no expense to watch.

Hope all my friends and family are well! Miss you!