Sisters in St. Kitts! :)

Isaiah and Josh at the horse races at Beaumont Park, St. Kitts

I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged and I apologize! Things have been a bit crazy around here. I have been doing some occupational therapy consulting work for the university, doing presentations on proper positioning and ways to prevent injuries, and also conducting some workstation evaluations and making recommendations to faculty, staff, and administrators on changes to make to keep employees more protected from injury. It's been fun, but has been taking up most of the free time I did have on Mondays and Wednesday mornings while Isaiah is at school. We also had a great time last week when my Mom and Aunt Karen came to St. Kitts for a visit. They are, sadly, our last set of visitors to St. Kitts and we were so thankful and excited they came! We had a great time while they were here and also managed to squeeze in some work too! We packed up 3 suitcases of our belongings and they so graciously took them home for us!

Probably the only picture I have of BOTH Isaiah and Beau looking and smiling at me!

The gates were moved into place for each race by the tractors...the boys loved watching the tractors as much as the horses!

Jessie, Beau, Josh, and Isaiah watching the horses get set for the race

Josh, Isaiah, Jessie, and Beau

If I was a bettin' woman, I would've bet on the horse with the orange socks for Uncle Lee!

It was a beautiful horse

Beaumont Park sign

Chelsea & Josh

Isaiah, Beau, and Josh checking out the horses before the race

Isaiah supporting the USA on the 4th of July in St. Kitts!

Things have been going well here, even if they have been busy. I'm starting to get anxious about getting everything sorted and packed. I know what I need to pack and what's going where (i.e.- coming home with us for good, going to school sales, or going with Josh to his new place) but the problem is that we're still using most of it in our day to day lives and so I'm getting nervous that it's going to be a lot of last minute packing!!! Oh well....as long as we get most of it home and we all make it in one piece, that will be the important thing!

Mimi and Isaiah in front of the fountain at Caribelle Batik

Mom and Karen soaking up some sun at Reggae beach on Saturday

Worn OUT!

Isaiah with Wilbert, the island pig!

There are some fun pictures for this blog post, starting with the ones from the Kittitian horse races at Beaumont Park a few weeks ago. We decided to go since it was the weekend after mid-terms and Josh didn't have to spend the entire weekend studying AND it was FREE admission, which is always great for a family on a tight budget! The skies looked pretty gray, but it hadn't been raining, so we headed out following Autum who supposedly knew the way! We only got lost a few times on the way there and managed to drive the entire way around the island which we hadn't done since we first arrived which was fun. It rained on us a few times on the drive, but we figured we were already on our way, so we might as well try it. We did get to see a few races and Isaiah LOVED seeing all the horses and being outside, so the day was well worth it, even if it poured almost the entire time we were there. We were soaked by the end, but so happy to have had the day together and to watch our son having a wonderful time!

Sunset from SpratNet where we had dinner Saturday night

Isaiah wanted his picture with the boats in the water...he loved the green one!

My sweet boy

Isaiah at Piranha Joe's at Port Zante

Mimi and her 'favorite grandson'

View down the peninsula from the Marriott beach

Isaiah doing some digging in the sand

Most of the other pictures are from Mom and Karen's visit. We didn't do too much touristy stuff and mostly stuck to hitting the beach and pool. We did visit Caribelle Batik for a few souvenirs and I even purchased a watercolor painting of a part of St. Kitts we have seen many times just over the hill from where we live to have as a reminder of the past 2 years and all the growing we've all done in St. Kitts! We also did a little shopping at Port Zante and made sure everyone got something to take home. We even found Isaiah a couple of adorable St. Kitts shirts to wear when we're home in August. We had a great time visiting and relaxing with Mom and Karen and were so blessed to have them with us for the week!

Isaiah standing on the excavator we found parked near Buddie's where we had dinner on Mom and Karen's last night in St. Kitts

The excavator was HUGE!

Isaiah and his Mimi

Sunset at Timothy Beach

Mimi and Zay checking out the boats in the ocean

I can't believe Isaiah and I will be leaving St. Kitts in 24 days. It is definitely bittersweet. We will of course be so happy to be back home with our families and the United States where Wal-mart and Target are never too far away! But we will definitely miss some of the parts of our Kittitian life. It is sad for me to be leaving a place where my baby boy did so much growing and changing and taking him from the only home he really knows. I know he will adjust and will be fine, but it's a little bit daunting to turn your child's world upside-down! We will also miss our wonderful friends and our church family here. They have been a huge blessing to our lives (and probably the only thing that's kept me sane for the past 2 years!). I know it is time for us to leave and I'm ready for whatever God has in store for us next, but that still doesn't make it easy to drastically change your life and the lives of your family. It feels a lot like it did when we left the U.S. 2 years ago. I wondered how everything would be, how we would live so far away from everything we always knew, but we trusted God and he provided for us beyond our greatest hope, so I am trusting in Him once more to get us through this transition. So--family/friends back home, know that we are excited to spend time with you that will last longer than a few weeks and can't wait for all the fun we'll have this fall! And to our St. Kitts family/friends, know that it has been an amazing 2 years that I would never trade for anything and will always hold close to my heart. We will never forget you.

After getting some ice cream at the Marriott's Pizza Shak, Isaiah found a golf cart to drive!

Karen, Mom, and Isaiah

The Henry's!

Mom and Aunt Karen in the Calypso Bay Pool before heading home...a great way to end their trip!

Cat trip and movie night with friends! :)

Being goofy before bed with his Bink and my sunglasses!

Proud that he made Dr. Elmo (the vet) with his blocks by himself!

Playing with the doggie that Mommy made.

Cutie pie

Isaiah and Josh relaxing on the couch watching a video together

Sorry that I missed blogging this past Friday, but I had a great excuse! The prep school puts out a calendar each year to sell that benefits the Sea Turtle Monitoring Network here in St. Kitts that is based out of Ross and the pictures on the calendar are chosen from students at the prep school who submit pictures of the island. We submitted a picture for Isaiah of a sunset when we were out to eat at Spratnet and any kids that submitted photos got to go on a Catamaran trip on Friday and I was able to go along with him. Jessie and Beau also went and Missy went along with her boys, Eli and Gabe. We ended up having a gorgeous day with a tiny 5 minute rain storm in the middle, but the boys were very well behaved, enjoyed swimming in the ocean, some beach time on the shores of our sister island, Nevis, and they all fell asleep for at least part of the 1+ hour trip back home.

Excited to be heading out on the catamaran! Isaiah loves boat rides just as much as his Momma apparently....he had a great day!

Missy and Gabe

Beau and Jessie

Isaiah, Beau, and Gabe

Isaiah and Beau

With his vest on and ready to swim!

Isaiah, Beau, and Gabe enjoying some fruit punch!

So tired from his day of boat rides and swimming!

This weekend was mid-semester break, which means that the students didn't have school on Monday and they are supposed to have some time to relax and hit the beach with their friends and family, but Josh has two mid-terms left (one tomorrow, one Friday) so he spent the entire weekend and his extra day busy studying. Of course, Isaiah and I are always bummed when Josh has to study, but we're hoping that maybe we can get in some good quality, family time this weekend to make up for it! Josh also starts his procedures on his animals he has been SOAPing all semester this week. After his exam on Friday, he has his sheep anesthesia and will be anesthetizing the sheep while 2 of his other classmates practice laceration repairs. Next week, he will get to have his turn doing his laceration repair and I think he's actually excited for that!

Brayden, Isaiah, Damon, and Gabe ready to walk up to campus for a BBQ last week

Isaiah requested a snack the other day and he said he wanted cheese, crackers and beans. When I asked what kind of beans, he said, "Umm...red beans. Yeah, I like the red beans!" Only our son would put cheese and beans together for a snack!

On Sunday evening, Isaiah and I went to the Heller's house where they hosted a Movie night for the kids! Everyone brought something for a potluck dinner and the kids watched Despicable Me, well....sort of. There were a lot of kids and I think that made them a little more distractible, so I think that Eli (who is 5) was the only one who watched the whole movie while the other kids played with toys and made a mess of Jessie and Andrew's apartment! Luckily, there were lots of kids to help clean up the mess too and we had all the toys put away within about 5 minutes!

Ava, Isaiah, Damon, & Beau (on couch)

Eli & Gabe (on floor)

for Movie night!

Monday, Isaiah 'helped' me run some errands. Once a year we have to pay a 'wheel tax' on our car and June is the month we have to do ours, so Monday morning Isaiah and I took the car to get inspected (which is apparently a relative term since the 'inspection' took all of 5 minutes!) and then we had to go downtown to the Inland Revenue Service office to pay our wheel tax and get a new sticker to put in our window. Isaiah was really well behaved and waited through everything, so I promised him a gift. He got to go to the store and we got him a little hand-made drum that will also double as a good St. Kitts keepsake for him!

Happy boy

He loves these big chairs at Rituals!

Enjoying his donut!

We took Josh to school early one Saturday morning, so after we dropped him off, we went to Rituals to get a donut and he was so happy!

Yesterday, we went to the pool at Silver Reef and met up with Kori & her daughter, Blaine, Diane & Mason, and Katie & Kaelyn. Isaiah really enjoyed the pool at Silver Reef....it is shallow enough that he can touch and walk on his tip toes, so he spent most of the day walking around and 'practicing' his swimming going from me to the steps and back several times, all without his swim vest on! I'm hoping we will start of build some confidence, so that he can start to practice some real swimming on his own soon! We've got 7 more weeks on this island and we're going to see how close we can get!

Being silly and wearing Daddy's glasses!

I've also been working with Isaiah the past few weeks with some pre-writing skills. He has trouble making shapes and letters on his own, but is doing great tracing letters and shapes when Josh and I make them for him. Last week and this week, we've been working on tracing on paper and mostly out on the sidewalk with the chalk (which Isaiah calls Chalk Walk instead of Sidewalk chalk!) and he's doing really great. He can tell you the letter in his name and yesterday was the 3rd time we had practiced tracing the letters and he did an amazing job and has improved so much just since last week. He is also getting to the point where he gets really proud when he knows he's done a good job, so I think that's helping provide some motivation for him to do his best. I know we're a ways off from him being able to write his own name, but I'm really proud of how well he is doing with the tracing so far!

Tracing his name

He traced my sun (mine is yellow, he did the green) and gave it some more rays!

He did a really good job tracing his A!

I can't believe that we're only 7 weeks away from leaving St. Kitts and for Isaiah and I it's for good this time. I'm definitely sad that we won't be here with Josh for his last semester and we will miss our friends, but I am also really looking forward to having so much time to spend with our family at home. Isaiah asked yesterday how we get to Ella's house and I told him we had to go on a plane. He said, "Okay. Let's go get on the plane now, so I can go to Ella's house and see her." He also has requested a sleepover with Ella when we get home. So....when I worry about Isaiah missing his Daddy too much, I remind myself that hopefully Ella and Lydia will help make up the difference a bit!!! Love you all...and see you soon! :)