One of Bryn's friends has been taking horse back riding lessons while on Dominica and asked us if we would like to go one day and just ride a horse during the lesson.  The kids were so excited about it and couldn't wait to go.  When we got there, Bryn was a little unsure until Kyler went first and then she was all about going.  The kids had a great time and enjoyed the evening.  The lady who owns the horses will do guided tours on the beach, or up in the mountains.  This is what she does for a living and then she does the lessons on the side as well.  It was a really fun day.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had an amazing Thanksgiving yesterday.  We were reminded of how thankful we are for family and being together, but for the circumstances, we had a great day.  Erick and the kids had school that day, so in the morning I was getting things ready for our FIRST feast!  The day school where the kids attend school had a thanksgiving lunch at the school.  It was every nice with everything you would expect at thanksgiving.  Which was amazing to me since they don't celebrate the holiday here!  After lunch I got busy again preparing things for the SECOND feast of the day!  Ralna and Craig had a Thanksgiving at their home and it was awesome.  There were at least 100 people.  And so much food you could not believe it.  It started at 6:30 and by the time I helped finish up the cleaning and putting away it was well after midnight!  It was a wonderful day.  We missed our families a lot, but it helped to be able to spend the day with our "family" here.  

At the day school!

Ralna's House

Table #1

Table #2

Table #3

The dessert table

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

"I wanna be like you dad..."

Kyler is always wanting to be just like Erick.  On Sunday Erick was getting him dressed.  Erick already had his tie on and was helping Kyler put his pants on and Kyler grabbed his tie and said, "I want one of these like you." of course we didn't bring any of his ties down.  In fact it is like pulling teeth to get him to wear a polo shirt with a collar let alone a tie.  He kept telling Erick he wanted one and we all knew it was going to be a fight the whole day if he didn't have one.  So Erick took one of his ties and cut the end off and make a tie for Kyler.  The best part is we were in a hurry to get on our way so Erick stapled the ends of the tie to keep it from fraying!!  

Snorkeling

I have been snorkeling almost every Thursday since we got to Dominica.  There is a group of us that go every week.  There have been times that I was not able to go, but just about every week I have been.  If we are not able to go on Thursday, we will try for another day that week.  While we have been snorkeling, we have made friends with a sea turtle.  He is the coolest thing ever. We have swam with him for hours before.  He is really hard to find because he blends in with the coral, but once we find him, we can swim right along with him for a while.  It has been amazing. Something to really look forward to.  Well I have some bad news.....  This week Ralna and I decided to go snorkeling on Tuesday.  We hadn't been last week because Kyler had Hand Foot and Mouth, so we decided to try for a couple times this week to make up for last week. We had a great time, we found lots of sand dollars, a few really neat shells, and tons of fish, we saw two sting rays and the biggest puffer fish we have ever seen.  As we were getting out of the water to go pick up the kids, I saw something floating in the water that looked like a broken plastic chair, so I swam over to it and still wasn't sure what it was.  As soon as I got close enough to get a good look, I looked up to find Ralna and she was already on her way over, we both started screaming, I think mostly because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.  Our friend who we had named Crush was gone.  

  

We took the shell back to the school and asked Mr. Theo who is a teacher at the school, what could have happened to him, and he said that the clean cut on the spine, the knife marks in the flesh and the clean cuts on the edges means that someone killed him to eat.  If a shark had gotten him, there would have been teeth marks on the shell.  I didn't even know people ate turtles.  Especially not Crush!!  So apparently, it is illegal to kill the turtles and so to have a shell would mean that we had killed the turtle ourselves, so we took some pics and then put it back in the ocean.

eeney meeney miney moe!

eeney meeney miney moe catch a tiger by the toe if he hollers let him go, my mommy says that you are not it.....

This is what I heard Bryn saying over and over and over a couple of nights ago, so I went out to investigate what she was deciding between.  She had the movies open and was picking between Parent Trap and Nancy Drew!  TOUGH CHOICE!  The funny thing was, it was very obvious that she wanted Parent Trap, because she kept landing on Nancy Drew, so she would start over.  I watcher her for about 5 minutes with out her knowing and it just kept going.  She was determined to have the chant pick the movie and it just wasn't working.  After about 5 minutes, she decided to add in a ...my mommy says that you are not EVER it.... and with the added word it worked!  She immediately turned and yelled MOM, can I watch a movie?  She was very surprised to see me standing there watching her!

It brought back so many memories to hear her saying it, but also to see her trying to MAKE it land on the RIGHT one.  I remember doing this as a kid, but had forgotten.  I love that about having kids, they help you remember the simple things in life!

Crazy kids....

A couple of days ago we were walking to school, just me and the kids.  When we got across the main road and was walking on the sidewalk we met up with some friends.  Kyler immediately began holding hands with the little boy his age who is in his class.  Bryn caught up with a couple other kids closer to her age.  I was in the back with Kyler and his friend, the other two moms were in the front and Bryn and the other two kids were in the middle.  When we got a little closer to school Kyler's friend's mom turned back, and said, "Oh, are you holding your friends hand?" to her son.  He shook his head and said yes, and Kyler said, "Yea, mine's white and his is black!"  He said it so matter of fact and innocent, but I held my breath hoping to have not offending anyone.  Luckily both moms just laughed and said, "your right."

On Sunday at church, our sweet little Bryn decided to show us a different side!!!

Church was over and we were waiting for Erick to take care of his stuff.  While we were waiting Bryn's teacher told me that they were in class and it was almost the end and she had something for them to color, but they were being a little noisy and wild, so she said to them, "Come on guys, we just have to be quite for 5 more minutes and then you can color."  Bryn took the opportunity at that point to say, "so we have to sit here and listen to you talk and read that SILLY OLD BIBLE for 5 more minutes?"  Her teacher said the whole class started laughing and then try to kids a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds to be quiet!  Not sure where that came from. 

Halloween celebration!

Halloween on the island is not celebrated by the locals.  However, we still had a great halloween.  On thursday the 30th all the kids were able to get dressed up after lunch and go trick or treating to the different classrooms and offices of campus.  The kids had so much fun and got tonz of candy!  Ethan who LOVES Bryn, told her that he wished he was the boy on high school musical [thank goodness he was a pirate!! :)].  Then on Friday night the spouses organization had a great carnival with the whole cake walk, fishing pond, face painting, and relay races.  The kids had a great halloween and we now have way too much candy!

Best Buddies

Kyler Loves John Walker, and they are constantly together.  One day Erick saw the class walk by and Kyler was holding hands with John Walker and we has talking constantly to him as they walked by!  Wouldn't it be interesting to hear that conversation?  We are going to be sad in December we they head off to 5th semester.  We hope we see them again at some point along the way, and if not- when we are all done maybe!:)

Creole Dress

For the month of October, every Friday the locals dress up in their Creole attire.  As they prepare for their independence day which is November 3rd.  The first Friday in October, Bryn came out at lunch and told me Miss Fredrick said we had to make a creole dress.  I about died, not only have I NEVER seen a material store here, I don't have a sewing machine, a pattern, or my mom!  So I asked her for more details and she didn't know any.  Well she forgot about it as did I until the next Friday, when she came out again at lunch telling me I needed to make her a creole dress.  After some investigating, I figured out what the tradition of wearing the clothing on Friday was, and that you can buy the dresses at the local shops.  So we finally got the dress, and she was able to wear it for 2 of the 5 Fridays in October.  She was very excited about the dress.  After I told her we can just buy them, everywhere we went she would be saying behind my back, "ask them where to buy a dress."  Here she is in all her Creole Glory!

WE LOVE PLAYDATES

My kids love play-dates, I guess all kids do, but I don't think a day goes by that Bryn doesn't ask is someone can come over to play.  It really doesn't matter to her who it is as long as someone comes over.  The other night we had William, Sophia, and John Walker come over.  They played so well together and had a great time.  This is all of then playing My Little Pony!  Thanks guys for coming over!

Happy Halloween!