Laundry day

The worst thing you can ever do is go grocery shopping when you are hungry right? If you happen to fall in to this trap of being hungry and then going to the store, you know that the first thing you want to do when you get home is eat EVERYTHING!! Especially since you probably caved in and bought all the treats that you normally refrain from buying and you might have even bought a few of the really quick high in sodium microwave meals. You are so hungry and so you see anything that looks good and can be eaten really quickly. The whole point is that when you get home you want it all right now.
Well that is kind of like laundry day at our house. First of all if you haven't heard yet, we don't do our own laundry. There are a lot of ladies that do laundry for a living, and there are not self serve laundry mats here. So if you don't have a washer in your apartment (we don't) then you set up a schedule with one of these ladies and they come get your laundry and drop it off all clean and folded. So our lady is Hermina. Right when we got to the island everyone gave us her name. They said she was the best. Here are the reasons they all use her...
1. Your clothes come back smelling clean(they said nothing about actually being clean, but smell means a lot here)
2. They have never had anything missing after using her services
3. They have gotten a few extra things before, but Hermina will just come back and pick it up! ( This makes me wonder then, who is missing something to allow for someone else to have extra)
4. She is the cheapest, so we keep her name to ourselves and only give it to a few people.

After hearing all this and not knowing anything else we of course called Hermina and schedule a laundry day.
She usually picks up one day (for us Wednesday) and then drops off two days later (Friday for us). This is working out great so far, except for when she drops off.
Drop off day has become like the day you have gone to the store hungry. You get home and want to eat all the food. I get the laundry and unload it all on my bed so the kids can put theirs away, and the first thing Kyler wants to do it put it ALL on! He wants to wear everything right now. So lets remember that I am paying a lot of money to have the laundry done and he is usually already dressed when the laundry gets here, so to have him take off his clothes and put more on is a big deal to me. Especially when he is convinced that once he takes it off it is dirty. And believe it or not, he remembers what he has worn and is "dirty", so when I tried to take it out of the dirty clothes and put back in his room, the next day I found it back in the dirty clothes!!
I try to get him to plan his outfits for the week saying he can wear that tomarrow, and something else the next day and so on. However he has a problem with this idea, he wants to wear it all right now.
We are still coming to an agreement on the situation. I let you know who finally wins, right now he's ahead!:)

Boyfriends + Kindergarten = a worried mom!

Okay- so Bryn is so cute and everywhere we go people are always telling us just how cute she is. And I love that she still so into the whole "I am going to marry my dad, or Kyler" the other day she told me she was going to Marry Trent, but the whole point is she is not into the whole boyfriend thing. I know there are a lot of girls and boys for that matter that are her age and are completely consumed by this whole boyfriend/girlfriend idea.

The other day when I went to have lunch with Bryn, there was a little boy who came running up to Bryn and grabbed her hand. I didn't know his name or anything about it, we had only been here a few days. So the next few days I asked around and found out his name and who his parents were, since I had never seen him with anyone. His name is Ethan, and his mom is the physican who works in the clinic on campus. I am not sure about his dad, but his mom is really nice and he is a nice kid from what I have seen. I have tried at ask Bryn about him, without asking why he keeps holding her hand. I don't want her to feel like she can't be friends with him.

Then today after school, the after care teacher who is in our branch and is a spouse here on the island with her husband, came up to me and told me that Ethan has a crush on Bryn. She told me that all the kids tease him at school saying that he likes bryn and he says, "yea, so what, she is so cute!" And I guess he has been telling everyone well at lease all the teachers that Bryn is his girlfriend. She also told me that last semester he had gotten in trouble for trying to kiss the girls. Bryn hasn't said anything about it, so I am guessing she doesn't know she has a boyfriend!:) Really I am not worried about it, but it was just so funny when she told us about it, because when Bryn came out of class that day both Erick and I asked her is she wanted to start wearing long pants and sweaters to school! Erick even asked her about the possibilities of a scarf!!

whale watching-or better said... nice boat ride

Our boat for the day!
The Captain

We signed up to go whale watching today. Everyone we talked to said there was a 90% chance you would see whales, and they all told us they had been many times and always see something! Well not us. We went on a really nice boat ride today.

It was actually really nice, we had a good time and it was really cool to see the island from out to sea! We were actually a little dissapointed that we didn't see anything, but I guess we still have 16 months to see something!

To get on the boat, we had to take a smaller boat from the dock out to the bigger boat. I guess the waves were too high for the bigger boat to get in. So the first two groups went(they could only take 10 people in the smaller boats at a time), and all of a sudden there were two people in the water. The dock is a little scary looking, but they were helping everyone into the boat so we couldn't figure out what had happened from where we were waiting. But it turned out, that the girl sat on the dock and then was trying to get it, but kept a hold of the dock and a huge wave came in and pulled her out of the boat and off the dock! It reminded me of a time we had been out boating at Yuba. I was on the dock trying to help hold the boat and it started to drift. I was not going to let go of that boat for nothing, that was my job. So I kept a hold of the boat and tried to keep my feet on the dock, The boat kept dirfting and eventually I was out of body length and in I went!!! I remember a bunch of other people being at the dock at the same time and just being so embarassed about it. I am sure that is how this girl felt. They made a huge deal out of it and I am sure she just wanted to swim back and disapear! So they came back and gave us a huge lecture about not holding onto the dock, just get in and keep your hands in they said!!!

The rest of us made it in dry, and had a great day:)!

The White Coat

Friday May 16th 2008

This was an awesome day. It is amazing the feelings you have to see your husband go through the line and put his white coat on and know that he is one step closer to reaching his goal. This has been a long road for all of us and is the beginning of another long road, but it is a huge accomplishment and I am so proud of Erick and all that he had done! He is am amazing person and is going to be a great physician.

The Program was really nice, they told the history of the white coat, and they had a keynote speaker who did a wonderful job. Of course the part we were really waiting for was at the end and was the shortest part, but it was a great experience!

Before we left for the ceremony, we had lunch with the kids, and the principle is always out talking to everyone. She is a very nice woman. Right before we left she told Erick he was cute and that he would make a good doctor. I am not sure if she ment that only the cute ones make good doctors or what, but it was kind of funny that she said it all in one breath!

A snorkelers Heaven

So they say Dominica is one of the best places on the earth to snorkel, in fact scuba diving magazine is constantly rateing it the top snorkeling place! And I had the chance to go today! It was amazing. I borrowed some friends gear since I don't have my own (YET) and me and 4 friends hit the reef! We went to a beach just north of our house, and north of Purple Turtle. We saw a ton of fish, the water was very clear today. After a while we all got a little brave and headed further out to sea than any of the others had ever been. All of a sudden one of the girls game up and started yelling, "I see a HUGE fish" so of course we all swam over to see. I was fairly close to her, and the other three were further out, so it ended up that the HUGE fish was between our group. McKayla, the girl who saw the fish had an underwater camera, and she went back down to get a picture, and the fish was swimming right for her. Since I was right next to her it was coming at both of us with it's mouth wide open and TONZ of teeth. It was a huge Barracuda. We both started frieking out and trying to get away as fast as we could. It kept coming at us for a good minute and then finally turned. That was when the rest of our group could actually see just how big this thing was.

This is a picture of what one looks like! Pretty scary.

On a lighter note, we also saw some squid, a few eels and collected LOTS of sand dollars! It was a really fun day!

our trip to Roseau

Last week right before Erick started in full swing with school we decided to take a quick trip to Roseau. This is the capital of Dominica, and all we had heard about it was what great shopping they have(I am talking about grocery shopping, that is the only kind of shopping here and yes we all get excited about it, and the deals we find at different places:) ), and that one store called Astaphans, it just like wal-mart. So we were really excited to go, we went and rented a car and drove the 20 miles that takes you 1 hour because of the roads and pulled into Roseau, and to say I was disappointed was an understatement. I think because of all the talk about wal-mart, I was expecting to pull into Salt Lake City. However, Astaphans was the biggest grocery store I have seen here, and on the top floor they do have a few home appliances, and housewares. But it was really nice to go and get a few things that you can only get there, like cheese, pop tarts etc. After we went shopping we went to the bay front and let the kids play there a few minutes and then went to lunch at a coffee shop called Rituals. It was amazing. They had wonderful Panini sandwhiches, they had fruit smoothies that were sooooo good, and all sorts of pastries. We had a great lunch and then headed back home. It was a really nice day, and since we had the car for 24 hours, we were also able to go get 2 cases of water and not have to push them up the hill! It was AWESOME!

Our Car! Notice the steering wheel, we drive on the left side here.

In Rituals!This is a picture we took coming home. Roseau is to the south of us, so on our way back into town we could see our house from the road. It is the top house you can barely see. In the middle of the top of the picture.

Erick's books

So this may seem like a silly thing to post, however, after you have all been here and experienced our "hill", you will know how amazing it is that Erick carried all of these up the hill by himself. He called me when he was almost here and I took the stoller to him, but by the time I got there he was about at the front door. And in the picture is only the books, it doesn't show the anatomy lab kits, or all the other "tools" he needed!
The sad thing is, he had actually found someone who was willing to drive him home, but at the bottom of the hill, they were working on the road and wasn't letting cars past! What luck!