Here Comes the Bride (and Groom)

Most of you know that my only child got married April 24 to a great guy....now what more could a mother want?

The wedding was beautiful, it was a great time, and they are arriving in San Pedro today for their honeymoon. It will be Ray's virgin trip to San Pedro, so if you see these two out and about, stop and say hi.

Did I mention how excited I was that they are coming???

You've Played Cornhole.......

Now, come and play the BLUE HOLE!! Yes, we did!!! Painted up the platforms to look just like the Blue Hole. And now all we need are some bean bag fish.......Going to look around for some, but for now, we have orange and blue sandbags!!!

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tide

"There's not much to see in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it".... Kim Hubbard

This saying is not only true, but here on the island, it CAN be hilarious. Thanks to Collette for letting me swipe the signature from her.......but it's the only way I can describe the following events.

Last Friday, Jeannie, Janie, and I took a trip into the big city (yeah, right) to do some shopping. We loaded up Ruben's van with our 18 boxes and headed for the Riverside Tavern for lunch.

Now, if you are in Belize City, you MUST stop at the Riverside Tavern (except for Mondays, they are closed) Owned and operated by Dustin Bowen, this place has yummy food, a great atmosphere, and an unparalleled drink menu. The burgers are made with Gallon Jug beef and are the best I have had in Belize.

Some of the drink selections include "Sand in My Shorts", (which is preferably ordered prior to the shot called a "Duck Fart", in order to eliminate the sand from your shorts. If those are not to your liking, there are several others..... "Flaming Blue Jesus", "Nasty Bitch", and many others. We have given Dustin our selection for some additional shots to add to the menu, including the "Dirty Bitch", (take any of the existing "bitch" shots and add Kahlua), "Green Christ", (non flaming), and several others. Oh, and don't forget the onion rings.....but, I digress.........

So we shopped and lunched and then headed to the airstrip for our flight back to San Pedro. A few of our boxes did not make the flight we were on but were on a flight which arrived a few minutes later. Ruben is such a dear, he packs all our purchases in boxes and then seals them up with our names on them, so sorting them out once we get to San Pedro is easy....well, usually........

We divvy up our boxes and head to our respective houses to unload. Jeannie didn't quite get her boxes unloaded for a couple days. On Saturday afternoon, I received a call from Catherine, our neighbor across the street and a manager at Tropic Air. She asked me, "Did you go into the city on Friday?". "Yes", I replied. "Did you bring back several boxes?" "Yes". "Well, I have been on the phone all morning, and have gathered alot of information, and I was wondering if you have an extra box of Tide detergent, as another lady on the later plane is missing hers".

I had to call Jeannie. I cannot use the Tide powder because I cannot get it to dissolve. Sure enough, when I called, she told me that she had found a box in her stuff, but set it aside because she thought it belonged to me. I quickly phoned Catherine back and reported that we had solved the mystery. Ken brought the package to our house that evening, and the following day, Catherine sent one of the guys from Tropic Cargo over to pick it up. Mystery solved.


"There's not much to see in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it".... Kim Hubbard Go figure!!! I love this place!!!

Jumping into June

June is the month for graduations.....and brides.....

We'll get to the bride part later....right now we are going to talk about graduations. Now I remember back in ancient times when I was in grade school, we sat in some extremely hot classrooms, with no air conditioning, some worn out textbooks on the shelves, and maybe some wild animal or two that our class had managed to put into a cage or box sometime during the school year.

Walking outside the classroom was not much better. It was hot, and dirt clouds were everywhere, especially during recess. Graduation, or the end of school assembly was held in a gymnasium that smelled like dirty socks, (and probably because someone HAD left their dirty socks, and gym suits in the place all year), was hot and stuffy, had a really really bad PA system, even though the little geeks acted like they knew how to run the equipment, they didn't so there was endless squeaking and squawking in between any sort of plausible announcements that were to be made.

Not in San Pedro.

The kids at the Island Academy have a really cool graduation, set about 50 feet from the Caribbean Sea. A couple of Belikin or Coke tents keeps the blinding sun out of our faces, (and also causes everyone under the tent to look a little orange around the gills), kids are "dressed up" in their sundresses and flip flops with heels.

Our favorite little people were there, along with some of our bigger friends....it was a beautiful day to celebrate their accomplishments!!!

Rebecca came to see both of her kids

Ken snuck into town a couple days early so he could watch his kids

Willie and Sandy's daughter gets an award

Lady Dixie, principal and Mistress of Ceremonies

Mitchell gets an award

I'm not sure if Kellyn is sleeping or being quiet...hard to tell....

Mia

Faith had perfect attendance!!!

Jace

Jackson enters the tent

Jace and Celi come in

See those two girls in the heart???

Mitchell's mom, Dr. Renae

Jeannie took over the last six weeks of Kindergarten, she is passing out awards

Jeannie comes in with the little ones

Maxine

Faith

Michael comes into the tent

Kellyn in her new dress

The Earth Moved

Last night's 7.1 earthquake off the coast of Honduras was pretty darned close to us. Several reports from Dangriga, PG and Placencia show that there was structural damage, power and water outages, and the water tank was knocked to the ground in Independence village.

We felt nothing, (although I did have some weird dreams last night), but people situated further away from the Sea did experience tremors. About four inches of water splashed out of Jeannie's pool, and the BYC pool is very low as well. The worst of it was that there was a tsunami warning out for about a half hour.

Except for some pictures hanging sideways on the walls this morning, we haven't noticed anything else yet.

Thanks to everyone who checked up on us!

For more information, click here, for pictures of the damage in Placencia, click here.

Sky Angel aka "Bindi Jade"

This beauty is for sale. For details and pricing, click here

The Snake Whisperer

Shanley's sister, Erin, has been working on their old boat, Sky Angel the past few weeks. They are going to sell it and Erin's been sanding and replacing all of the wood interior, cleaning it up and cleaning it out.

Yesterday, she came across an uninvited guest. She says it's a small python, which got on the boat somewhere between San Pedro, Rio Dulce, Belize City, and back to San Pedro. She brought it by for us to see, but I merely looked outside, while Renita followed her around and got these pictures.

She reminded us of Huckleberry Finn, with her pole and bucket. You can see the critter peeking over the side of the bucket.

A little closer shot

She took it across the street to La Isla, and all Mahmood could say was "No snakes in here, no snakes in here".....guess we now know how to get him to do what we want him to do!!

She introduces it to it's new home in an almond tree.....

He seems to curl right up on the branch

Wrapping himself around the trunk

Hiding out in the leaves..... run free little snake, run free and have fun!!!