I remember how much I love horses now......

Hey all,

Well it has been a great week in Nevis.....we are slowly getting into a routine, Joe at school, the kids at school and me, well.....that is the good part....me.....I am RIDING HORSES!!!! ON THE BEACH!!!! I have been out riding 4 different times this week, all along the Caribbean ocean and I have to say that it is the ultimate ride! It is so beautiful, so peaceful, so serene......I absolutely love it. My whole life I had a love affair with horses, they are without a doubt my favorite animal.....and I have ridden since I was a little girl....but once we had kids, it just got difficult to own/ride/visit horses. So I got away from it for a while......and I forgot that I loved it so much....or perhaps suppressed it because I couldn't have it?? So these last few days have been so amazing.....getting back in the saddle again.....feeling the horse underneath me......enjoying the Caribbean ocean from horseback! Riding the horse into the water and getting soaked by the waves! Well I just wish you were all here to experience how wonderful it really is! Having said that it is also exhausting, time consuming and my butt is objecting a little (can we say bruising?) but I am sure that with time I will toughen up. I convinced Joe today to come with us for a family ride and so the 4 of us went on a beach ride today. It was awesome!! The kids loved it, even Joe looked like he enjoyed himself! So basically I have been taking care of a fellow's 10 horses in exchange for riding privileges......sweet deal in my opinion! All I have to do is pop over to the barn twice a day for about 30 minutes to feed, water and check the horses.....keep the paddock areas tidy.....(and to be honest I spend alot more time than that there, just hanging with the horsies, enjoying their company, bonding!)

Other than that, things are going fairly well....Joe has first round of block exams tomorrow so we are praying that all goes well! The boys are slowly getting settled into their school.....they each have some nice new friends....Monty is very busy with survivor camp, sea stars and he starts tennis lessons on Monday....so lots of stuff on the go!

Anyway, it is a short post tonight....I am really tired....all this fresh air, sunshine, riding and beach stuff makes a girl tired you know! LOL.....so take care and God Bless and talk to you all soon! D

Hey there hi there ho there friends! Well we are entering into week 3 of our Nevis adventure and I have to say that I am really really pleased so far. I really like this island, it has much to offer and we feel that we made a great decision in coming here. I have so much to tell you but to get it all in would require a novel length document....soooo I am going to try to give you the readers digest version.....(and you know how good I am at keeping my stories short and to the point....NOT) but I am gonna give it a go.
So Nevis is beautiful, the beaches are awesome, there is lots to do, we are meeting many new and fantastic people....I feel so blessed to be here......I am not going to lie, that the first week was tough and an adjustment....leaving PEI after getting to spend the summer with family and friends was not easy.....but I am feeling really positive now that we have been here a few weeks!
I will start with Joe since he is the reason that we are here.....he seems to be liking the med school so far, likes his profs, meeting some nice students....there is actually a guy from Montague PEI here in his class and they knew each other a bit as this fellow was a nurse in Montague and Joe was a paramedic there....so that is kind of neat. Joe misses some of his Saba peers obviously, but he is adjusting well and appears to be happy with the decision to move......He has been snorkeling and swimming for stress relief......and loving the water and the beaches here. He is hoping to get out golfing sometime soon and he has a few fellows who are interested in doing this with him.....so overall h e is pretty pleased I think.
The boys are doing well. They have had their first week at their new school and they are both settling in. Monty made a new friend, Lu, who just moved here as well from Cancun, Mexico (his parents run a hotel here in Nevis) and they have really hit it off. They are a very nice family and they live closeby so the boys have had a few playdates already. Monty being Monty isn't completely thrilled by his school but he isn't hating it either...so I will count that as a positive! Christian is enjoying school so far and has made some friends there. He has an awesome teacher, originally from Sweden and recently from England. She is lovely and so kind and he seems to really like her. The school is very tiny and so this has been an adjustment for both of them. Monty is excited though because on Fridays the school offers archery lessons to the older kids...so he thinks that is pretty cool!
Monty is enrolled in a few programs here and he is very excited about them. The first one is called Survivor Camp (based on the reality show) and the leader calls it "Scouts on Steroids!" which I think is hilarious. the leader is a special ops fellow who was in the army in South Africa and he is a real outdoors fellow! Basically he takes the kids up the mountain and they learn how to survive off the land, making shelters out of whatever they have, making fires (without matches), making spears for fishing and catching and cooking the fish, learning what bugs they can eat if they are hungry!! (he ate a centipede on Saturday...the guide, not Monty) Anyway it sounds so great and I think Monty is quite excited about it.....the second program he is in is a marine biology camp, where he will learn about sea life and conservation and will go out on a boat snorkeling and learning about underwater creatures.....it will be a great opportunity for him and the leader, Barbara is a very nice lady.....I am only slighly nervous about Monty going on the boat snorkeling as last week a local was eaten by a tiger shark....so that freaks me out a little....apparently that is extremely rare and not usually something to worry about...but you know me! I love to worry...it is like a sport for me....and I am an Olympic calibre worrier!! Unfortunately, Christian can't attend these camps as he is too young...but that is ok because he is having lots of fun anyway! He is doing so well with snorkeling I can hardly believe it.....he just skims across the top of the water now like a pro......it is so amazing to watch him! Not that long ago he was afraid of the water....now you should see him!!
The beaches here are amazing and we have spent alot of time down the road at Oualie Beach Resort (you can google it) the beach is great there, very safe and calm. We just had a big SOS bbq there yesterday and it was a blast. We have a fantastic SOS group and I am meeting so many wonderful people from all over who are here for the same reasons....to support husbands through med school! (so basically we are all crazy!) I have to tell you a funny story about yesterday......we were all sitting around and chatting and beside me was Hedda, a quite pretty blond woman from Norway.....well Hedda looks pretty good in her bikini and I see Monty eyeing her....finally he looks at me and says " so Mom, look at her, isn't that the body that you have always dreamed of having?" Said so matter of factly that it was as if he was asking me h ow I enjoyed the bbq!!!! I nearly died laughing....and poor Hedda....she thought it was pretty funny...some of the other moms weren't sure how to react! it was just Monty being Monty so i wasn't too put out over it! I mean, really, its not like he was saying something that wasn't true! I would have loved to have Hedda's figure! Anyway he is a funny funny kid.......
So I am having a great time.....I am connecting with my new SOS friends....i am now the Treasurer of SOS......(yeah I know....me with money......) I am exploring the island and learning my way around.....I am learning to drive on the wrong side of the road....it is going much better than I expected;....well except for the part where I continue to turn on the windshield wipers instead of the signal lights and then I get flustered and turn the wrong signal on......LOL.....but overall it really isn't that hard to get used to.....I also have a very cool opportunity that has popped up here.....kind of like my dream job! There is a stable here that has been closed for a while for a number of reasons and I searched the owner out and offered my assistance with the horses in exchange for some occasional riding....Well he was so thrilled to have me to help out (he works full time and drives to the stable to feed the horses 2 times a day) and in exchange i can ride all I want, anytime I want and he may start up some trail rides and have me be the guide.....so that will be taking people from the cruise ships on beach rides with horses....ok really people....does life get any better than that!! So I am excited that I will get to do some riding and so will the kids...and maybe some evenings all 4 of us will go down to the beach on horseback.....so exciting I can hardly believe it....
Anyway I better run....lots more to say but it is very hot out and the boys want to go over to their friend's pool for a swim......so I will talk to you all again soon!!
God Bless and have a great week!
D

Welcome to Nevis...the land where Heelies are cheaper than Rice Krispie Treats!

Hello friends and greetings from Nevis.....I don't officially have internet yet so I feel a bit cut off from all of you fine folk....I am currently sitting on my beautiful deck, with a lovely caribbean breeze blowing (ok so maybe it is the remnant of the tropical depression but whatever) It is about 28 degrees out.....lovely and warm.....I can hear the crickets chirping in the background, and maybe some frogs?? And I am "borrowing " my neighbors internet.....mine should hopefully be hooked up within a week and then I will be able to get back to communicating with the rest of the world! This moving to a new island in the Caribbean and having no internet is tough stuff!! So we arrived on Sunday morning in St Kitts, hopped a cab and a ferry and another cab and arrived without too much incident to our new home for the next year in Nevis (no vomiting, no snow storms, although there was the threat of a hurricane!).....our initial impressions of the island are that is beautiful, and flat, with real roads and beaches, beaches, beaches! Some of the things that we will have to get used to are driving on the wrong side of the road, and paying alot of money for things.....as well as watching out for tarantulas (yikes, shall I remind you that I am an arachnaphobe) and green vervet monkeys! So we are getting ready for this next phase of our journey through medical school. Leaving PEI was pretty tough.....lots of tears....we always hate the going, you know I have addressed my aversion to goodbyes (I will have to follow that up in counseling some day...ha ha) So we were very sad to leave. We had a great summer with my mom, staying in her home, driving her crazy most days! We got to see lots of family, visit with friends and just had a great time. So leaving was tough.....and arriving here to start all over again was hard because the reality of my loss of my Saba network started to hit right about when I was rolling into my new home in Nevis.....Luckily, to cushion the blow, my new neighbor, Stacey was there to greet us! Her husband is a med student too, they are a wonderful family from Houma Louisiana.....and they have 4 beautiful children....so our two families have really hit it off and I feel like I have a great friend already! My downstairs neighbor Afton and her husband and little baby are very nice too....med students as well from Nashville Tennesse.....I also met a few others and we will have our first SOS meeting this Saturday so I am very excited to meet some of the others as well. We have the boys registered to start a very tiny private school on Monday.....this school is interesting, and has a policy of a maximum of 12 students per class....so currently Christian has 10 in his class for Grade 1 and Monty will have 5 others with him! So it could be interesting and very different from what they are used to! We are busy trying to orient ourselves to our new home, figure out where everything is (this island is much bigger than Saba) and of course learn to drive on the "other"' side of the road.....I have yet to try it...it freaks me out a little if I am honest! But hopefully tomorrow I will be brave enough to give it a go! And I will remember to stay on the right (or is it wrong?) side! I keep trying to climb in the drivers seat though so that must mean something??? (yes that I am utterly confused!!) Anyway we have been able to buy a few groceries and I must say that the prices here are pretty steep for food! We found this great store with an upstairs that has everything....from toasters to bikes to heelies and remote control cars etc....well the Heelies were very cheap ($22 ish dollars a pair) and so the boys convinced us to get them each a pair....so we did because they were such a great buy! We bought our groceries and supplies and we were heading out heelies in hand when Christian spotted a big box of Rice Krispie treats.....he was so excited as he loves them....so I said I will run back in and get them so that the boys can have a special treat in their lunch next week! Well I grabbed the box and ran through the cash and when she told me the price I was sure that my hearing was gone and I was hallucinating (heat stroke?) I said pardon me? She repeated the same number.....so then I was standing there with a bunch of people behind me and the girl with her hand out waiting and Christian half way to the car with a big Rice Krispie treat type of smile on his face.....so I took out the money and paid it.....all $40 of it.....yes you read that right......$40!!!! But in my defence it was a jumbo box!! With 40 treats in it.....and they are Christians favorite...and the boys needed an "adjustment" treat...ok you are right, it was a ridiculous decision....but what do you do...so I told the boys that the treats were quite expensive and they were for "school only" and that we would not likely ever get them again so they should enjoy them!! Joe was floored and he stared at me like I grew another head or something.....then he just laughed...we both giggled about how the heelies were cheaper than the treats.....funny stuff I tell ya!
Anyway I think overall we are doing ok....it isn't easy, so we are trying to look at the bright side of t hings.....we are so thankful for our new friends across the road because without them we would be lost! They have been wonderful and perhaps the type of people that we will be friends with for years to come!
I better run, just wanted to say a quick hi and let you know that we are here, we are safe, we are working on the getting settled thing.....once my internet is established I will get back to my regular updates!! I miss all of you and I had such a wonderful summer with you! Take care friends and God Bless.....D