The big 1-0

Jenny and Jeff hit their big 1-0 wedding anniversary and we felt a mock anniversary was in order. We surprised them with their lovely outfits and our friend Don was the perfect minister complete with 'mad-lib' vows. A good time was had by all and there was much laughter throughout the night...when in doubt call Don and he can come up with the craziest stuff in a very short amount of time.

Almost...almost...almost....POP!

Hannah was blowing bubbles in the sink and giggling as they popped. The sun was coming in just right and I figured I needed to bust out the camera. We took a zillion pictures trying to get the moment of break and blammo...this is as close as we could get.

The Detroit crowd...

I made a trip down to visit some my peeps in Detroit and wow I can't believe how fast these kids grow up! Meredith is so sweet and those eyes so irresistible I've already told her father he's going to have whollop the first boyfriend so the others figure it out early on. I'm thinking she may need the convent.

Bailey Irene

Ol' Kim and Don finally got that kid out so we could all put the love on her. She is cuuuuuute and perfect in every way. (and she smells like warm, lotiony baby but not any more because I stole it all)


You know me and baby feet. This one was shot the day she was born...it's kind of crazy how she has just the same feet as her father. Genes are cool. Congratulations again mom and dad!

Honduras: The Final Day

Side note: this is the last day of the series of blog posts. To see day one, you'll need to start at the bottom - day one is under the link of 'older posts' or you can turn the September 'key' and read "Utila Day Uno"

Our Saturday started at 5 a.m. in order to be to the airport by 6 a.m. for our 6:30 flight. So there we sat in the "terminal". At 6:15 a nice man showed up to 'check us in' - which consisted of him, us, the tarmac and clipboard. We had heard lots of horror stories about the lack of air travel schedule on the island so we were really hoping ours would be different. As 6:30 came and went with no plane we had started to be very concerned. This check-in guy received a phone call saying that the plane was still on the ground on the mainland with a "problem but they weren't sure what." I was already nervous about taking a "chicken flight" in this country and this is not what I needed to quell my fears. As compensation the airline told them to take the five of us on this flight out to breakfast until they could get it fixed. They claimed we would take off at 8:30. Most importantly we were concerned about our flight on the mainland to catch to get back to Atlanta. Our only other option to make that flight would be to catch the ferry to the mainland at 9 a.m. and drive like hell to the next airport. At 9:05 still on the tarmac Tony and I had the conversation of "Um yeah, so there goes the ferry and we're still here at the faux airport". This could get interesting.


Finally about 9:45 our plane arrived...and suddenly I wished teleportation was an option. I don't necessarily like flying and that's magnified in regard to small planes.


Where's the nitro pills because there was a heart attack in my future. Tony's great idea was to sit in the front seat for the better view. Ha! This was my position in relation to the pilot. Gulp. The window was OPEN as we taxied down the runway to take off. People who don't necessarily like to fly in small planes really shouldn't sit in the front seat.


I will admit that the view was pretty cool and this was the part of the island where we stayed. It was great to see the island and the dive sites from the air. I was ok until we hit open ocean - then the smallness of the plane nearly killed me. I'm going to stick to 747's from here on out.



We made it back in one piece and have a hell of an adventure under our belts. I love to travel and am thrilled that I found a great guy who likes adventure as much as I do. I will always recommend stepping outside of your comfort zone and experiencing another culture whenever you can. It was kind of crazy but I wouldn't trade it for anything... except next time, I'll take a bigger can of bug spray. :)

Give me a shout if you're headed to Utila, we've got lots of recommendations!

Honduras: Part Five

On our last full day in Utila, we could not dive so we spent the day wandering around the island looking for adventure. We packed up our snorkel gear and our very empty can of bug spray, fired up the golf cart and set out to get lost...on another really freakin' hot day. Along the way we stopped for some supply at the local "7-11" - well it says so on Samantha's sign! No slurpees...which is probably a good thing because I would have been tempted to get in it. We toyed with the idea of buying another can of bug spray...but after all we were leaving in less than 24 hours so why bother. That's a "here's your sign" moment. This would be the day I captured most of my 101 mosquito bites. Luuuucky me.


We found a whole grove of these goofy trees that I couldn't resist belloring "stop! stop! i need to take a picture". Most of the island is covered in untouched jungle and while our adventure was fun, I was glad to not run into any monstrous spiders that usually live in untouched jungle. :)


OK. So, I need to digress a couple days. In the middle of the week, our golf cart died on the side of the road as we were racing to our morning dive. We had well over a mile to go and all of our scuba gear was with us...there was no way were going to make it. Thankfully our neighbors (the Americans from the boat over) came wizzing by on their golf cart and we thumbed a ride. Once we got to the dock we called Anuk (the dive master that also worked with our groundskeeper, Angel...i told you it's a small island) and she worked her Espaniol magic and told Angel where to find our dead ride. By the time we got back that day it was fixed and waiting for us...but in need of fuel. Our neighbors informed us where to find the petrol guy. Fast forward back to Friday. We went in search of said petrol guy. Now. There are no gas stations on the island so you just have to find this guy (hopefully he's home) and barter up some fuel. Gas there is held in any kind of container that will hold it. It's common to see kids riding their bikes with Coke two liters full of gas to take home, etc.. When we figured out we had only enough to buy 1/2 gallon out came our order...in a really big rum bottle. He whipped out a funnel and glug, glug, glug - viola petrol. Turns out the golf cart was leaking gas so our golf cart took us all over the island and finally died here...reeeeally far from town. With snorkel gear. And no bug spray. Let the walking commence...


We saw the developing side of the island at a nice leisurely pace (our house was at the extreme opposite end of the island at this point). We came across some American residents out front of their mansions and I tried to work my charm and charisma in order to thumb another ride but it only got us about 1/2 mile closer to town because that's as far as their house was. When it's 100 degrees outside, a 1/2 mile ride is a God send. So a couple miles later we were nearly there...at least we were able to dump our gear at the dive shop in town. Welcome to hotville.


Just one of the sites as we neared home base...it's not uncommon to find piles of rejected stuff in random places.


Some of the interesting shoreline we found on the east side of the island...shortly before getting stuck.


This is the public beach on the way back to our place. It was rather sparsely populated all week which was surprising because it's a really great beach far enough outside of town to be nice and private. There was a small straw hut bar across the way only open at night and that was about it. I think we saw at most 10 people there all week.


After finally getting the cart back and all settled back at the beach house the napping commenced. We were too pooped to even go out to dinner that night so we had leftovers and breakfast bars for dinner and got some last good snorkeling in. As per usual the sun set on our final day as a spectacular storm rolled in...

Honduras: Part Four

Every morning we came out to Pigeon Cay to pick up the students at Captain Morgan's. It was nice to hang out in the hammocks on the dock and while we waited for the boat to head back to Utila we did some snorkeling out around the hotel in this area. It was a toss up as to whether it was to get out of the heat or away from the bugs.


More of Pigeon Cay.


As we pulled up to Pigeon Cay this small dot of an island was just off the coast of Pigeon Cay. You can't see it very well but that rundown shack is a family home. It has all of two windows and two doors. I think the family laid claim the whole island which was about an acre. I'm pretty sure if a stiff wind came by it would be a shackless island. Gives a whole new meaning to the word rustic. We saw some of the kids that lived there paddle over to the Cay, pick up some more kids, and proceed to sink the boat - bail it out - then re-sink it. Now that's better than kids parked in front of the TV any day. :)


Some days the boat was more full than others. This was one of our last dives of the week and we had quite the crowd with us. Australia, Canada, France, Uruguay, Honduras - it was quite the collection of people - but it turned out to be one of our best dive days there.


Fishes, fishes and more fishes. We saw some amazing coral formations and giant towers that started near the surface and continued out of sight below us - just walls and corals and fishes quite literally as far as the eye can see. We saw eels, a frog fish, gads of parrot fish, a couple of lobsters, an octopus and a zillion other swimming, crawling and crazy things. It was fabulous. This particular school of fish reminded me so much of Findin g Nemo I figured they deserved a spot on the blog.


Oh yeah, and did I mention shark? This was the second one we saw that day and it was awesome. We were a lot closer to this shark that it seems in the photo. I think he thought he was out of sight because he hid his head under the coral outcropping. I would say it was the coolest thing that day but oh boy it wasn't...


One big draw to Utila is that there is a great chance to see and swim with a whale shark. (Get your google on if you haven't seen one before.) The best chance is in the late winter/early spring, but occasionally you'll get lucky in September. As we were racing out to our next dive location, our captain spied a dive boat about a mile north of the island (that would be waaaaay out in the middle of the ocean, read: really freakin' deep.). All week we had been watching for whale shark signs (birds flocking and diving at the ocean far from land - feeding on the sharks "boil" of fish and such that he kicks up) and came close once but it turned out to be a big sailfish (looks like a Marlin)...still cool. It was September 25th and the last sighting had been in early September so there wasn't much hope. The dive boat was hanging out there for quite awhile and we decided to investigate. They won't talk about whale sharks on the radio because then all the dive shops will come out and scare the shark off. So your only choice is to potentially miss your afternoon dive and chance it. The yellow boat in the photo is the original boat that found the shark and that splash off to the right would be indeed a whale shark. You cannot wear your dive gear in the water with one of these so you have to snorkel it and slide into the water because a lot of splash will scare it away. Oh how I wish this had been a day with only four of us on the boat. We waited around to get the best position near the shark and then blammo...


Said whale shark. It was not a full grown one but still it was amazing to be in the water with something so large and graceful. This one even had a remora (cleaner) fish stuck to the bottom of it. Then after it swims away, it takes only a moment to realize that you're in really deep, vast water and talk about feeling very small in relation to the world. Yeoow. Talk about perspective. Awesome is definitely a word I would use.


There is something sad about a boat full of empty tanks, but dang, what a day. We only had one more dive left because you're not supposed to dive and fly in the same 24 hours. That night we went on a night dive to a place called moon hole. The only thing that makes me more nervous than really deep water with no bottom...is dark water. As a thunderstorm approached around us we leaped into the dark water and descended to the bottom. Now descending and ascending in pitch black water was scary stuff but I was glad I did it. We had big dive lights and set off exploring the bottom of this giant coral 'hole'. We saw an active octopus loping around (the one we had found earlier was hiding in a coral tree) and wow was all I could say. We cornered a squid that freaked out, inked and then shot off to get away from us...directly hitting our guide in the head. You can't laugh with a regulator but that is one time it was hard to hold it in. My favorite was the little shrimp that look like hundreds of little pink lights on the fringe of your dive light ring. It was a great ending to a great week of diving.