Has it really been six months since we updated the blog? Time passes so fast. We are coming up on our one year anniversary of living in St. Croix.

So, back to February where we left off. We had another round of guests. R's cousin made it down, along with a few of R's old friends, R's parents, and our neighbors from back in TX. We had a great time with everyone, and are always happy to have friends and family down to visit. Unfortunately with all of our guests and our travels to St. Thomas and San Juan, P90X has been put on the back burner. Maybe one of these days we will get that beach body that we have always hoped for!

In May, R's grandmother passed, so we took a trip to South Dakota to say our goodbyes. It is really great that they have such a close knit family, and it was great to see everyone again. We headed to Dallas for R to do some work and H to play before returning home.



Hurricane season began in June. Fortunately, we have not had any bad storms as of yet, although this was predicted to be a very bad year for hurricanes. We are only about halfway through, so our fingers are crossed that we won't get one this year. We have recently had about two weeks of rain and clouds. Enough to almost fully replenish our cistern. For those who don't know, most people on the island have a cistern that collects rain water, which is your water source. When it gets low, you buy a truck load of water which, unfortunately, we had to do right before the big rain! The truck load only raises it about two feet and our cistern is about six feet deep, so we are very happy to have gotten the rain. The rain has also helped keep the temperatures down. We are also happy about the fact that we still have not had to use our air conditioner! This is very surprising to us since we thought for sure we would have had to use it by now. Some days it is really hot, but we only have air in the bedrooms, so we have really enjoyed the pool for keeping us cool during the day. It's going to be hard to move back to a place that doesn't have one!

We had a pretty exciting concert last month. Jessica Andrews and Steve Azar, along with some local country artists did a free concert here right on the beach. It was pretty exciting for St. Croix. H was kept hoping that Kenny Chesney would show up since he has a place on St. John, but he didn't! We also have recently gone to the local theater. There was a production called Government Workers, and it was a comedy about government employees. We think it was pretty funny, but they were talking with such Cruzan dialect, that the local crowd would burst out laughing and we were looking at each other wondering what in the world they had just said! That part was funny in itself! We got the hang of it, and are looking forward to going back to see the next production.

Our boat is fixed....well, it was. We were told when we purchased the boat that the two best days of a boat owners life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. I am starting to believe that! We were also told that BOAT stands for Bring Out Another Thousand, which is pretty much holding true as well. We have replace the gas tank, which fixed our problems that we had been having, and now we are having trouble with the starter. I think after this, we should have just about covered all of the big issues, and hope we will just be able to enjoy the boat. When it works it is so great to have! We did rename the boat to "Per Diem", those of you who know the term understand the meaning to government employees!



R's travel for work has been reduced significantly lately. That means fewer trips that H can tag along. We did take our boat over to St. John and the British Virgin Islands. It is absolutely beautiful over there. There are so many islands, and it was such fun to have our boat to cruise around. It took about 2 1/2 hours in pretty big seas to get from here to there. We set up camp on a really nice campground on St. John. Unfortunately, the camp sites were just off the beach in a very lush, treed area, so there wasn't much of a breeze. That, along with the millions of mosquitoes, made our camping not so great. We did, however, have a great trip otherwise. We visited Jost Van Dyke, BVI, and Virgin Gorda, BVI. There are so many other islands we would like to see, and hope to be able to get back over there at some point.





That just about sums up our last six months. Sophie is still doing pretty well, despite the fact that she is old, but she is still as cute as ever!

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe we are almost six months in to our two years! Not a lot has been going on here in paradise lately. Unfortunately, even though our boat had a brand new engine, we have been experiencing a few problems. Hopefully we will have it back up and running normally soon before our next strand of guests gets here. We have three sets of guests coming within about three weeks of each other starting at the end of February. We are excited to have friends and family back down to visit us!

R has still been traveling frequently to St. Thomas and Puerto Rico for work. Since everyone seems to have keys to our condo (part of island life we just can't get used to), H needed to feel a little more secure while R was gone, so we have installed some extra locks on the doors. R is back in Dallas in April, and H is looking forward to be coming along again.

We are loving our condo. Especially the fact that we can walk right down to the casino. We don't go that often, but have both been pretty lucky lately. They even have a free Bingo game on Sundays! We started the P90X workout program at the end of the year that is for 90 days and we work out right on the patio usually watching the sunrise over the water in the mornings. We just started week five and H is counting down the days until day 90!

The weather has been so great lately. We heard a lot about the Christmas winds, which seem to have arrived a month late this year. It is a nice constant breeze with some really strong gusts. H thought we were going to blow away last night. It has been nice keeping things a little cooler than the hot summer months when we first arrived. We got our first electric bill which was $150. Not bad considering what we have heard about electricity, but if you look at the small amount of power we try to use, along with no air, it's pretty steep compared to the states. So we are still very thankful that we haven't had to run our a/c. We're not looking forward to those bills when we actually have to turn it on!!!

Sophie had a big birthday a week ago turning 12! We are both sad to see her getting older, although she is doing pretty well, and she loves living on the island. H celebrated her birthday a couple of days ago. We headed out to the crab races with a group of friends and then to the condo for cake and drinks. It was lots of fun, and we feel very lucky to have met such great friends. We went on our second search for chaney. Chaney is broken pieces of china that the slaves broke many years ago that you can find on old plantations and some beaches. It is really like searching for a needle in a haystack, but we have been lucky enough to find some pieces. Most of it is the blue and white china, but H has her heart set on finding some brown or pink which is much more rare. It can be made into jewelry, so when H finds the perfect piece, she wants to have a necklace or bracelet made.