A Month of Guests!

I can't believe it's been so long since I've last posted here, but we've had a busy, fun month since that last post.

We made a quick trip home to take care of a couple of things and to attend a special birthday party for Jim Dean. While we were at his party, Jim told us he had a meeting in Puerto Rico on March 2 and wondered if he & Carol could fly on over after his meeting to spend the following weekend with us. We said "Yes!" of course.

But, we already had 2 rounds of guests coming down before that - plus a different kind of visitor.

Early in February, our great-nephew, Ethan, had mailed his Flat Stanley to us. For those not familiar with Flat Stanley, he is a character in a series of books and was flattened when a bulletin board fell on him. He is perfectly healthy, tho flat, and can travel to visit people folded up in an envelope. According to Ethan's project instructions, we were asked to take Flat Stanley around during our regular activities and to some of our favorite places, take pictures, and mail him back with the pictures and a letter detailing our outings. We were even asked to make appropriate outfits for him. I loved the idea and wholly embraced the project! Here are some of the activities we included Flat Stanley in:

Enjoying a glass of iced tea on the balcony

Our morning run

Linquist Beach

Ogling the yachts at Yacht Haven Grande

Dinner at one of our favorite restaurants

The last picture shows the first round of our "human" guests. Parker and her boyfriend, Andrew Nelson, flew in for a long weekend to thaw out during their Chicago-area winter. We had a great time visiting Trunk Bay Beach & the Annaberg Sugar Mill Ruins on St. John, Megan's Beach, and Linquist Beach, in addition to general sight-seeing and yummy meals out.

Parker & Andrew posed for a lot of pictures, and there were some really cute ones. But these were some of her mom's favorites:

The waves were pretty high at Trunk Bay!

The water is cool in the winter, even in the tropics

Love the snorkel look!

They snorkled in the bay below our condo and saw all different sorts of fish. They also saw a sting ray burrowed into the sand, which meant the end of the outing for Parker. I hadn't known that she is very scared of them!

About 24 hours after I took Parker and Andrew to the airport, I was back there to pick up our nephew, John McMahon. John was here to do some fact-finding for a business concept, so we offered him the use of our guest room. Since he was working, we didn't do the normal beach/sight-seeing outings, but we did manage to enjoy a great dinner out one night!

After two more trips to the airport, this time almost 48 hours apart, John was back in Texas, and Carol Dean arrived to spend a couple of "girls' days" before Jim joined her here. 

Carol & me at Megan's

Carol & I took the passenger ferry to St. John and wandered through the shopping areas in Cruz Bay. There is a wide variety of shops, in all price ranges and carrying everything from souvenirs to fine fashion to ... well, we didn't quite make it to all the shops, so we'll just have to go back again!

We had a great weekend with the Deans, even though things didn't always go like we might have preferred :) On Saturday, it rained all morning - finally. Winter is the dry season on St. Thomas, but this year it's been unusually dry. Everything is looking rather brown, so we were grateful for some rain. And the day improved when we decided to go ahead & go to Megan's Beach and found that the rain had already moved away from that area.

Sunday morning, our condo complex had some sort of problem with the water pump system. That meant that we had very little water for face washing and tooth brushing - and that eventually we had no running water at all. We did have bottled water, so we were able to have our morning coffee and tea. And, we were happy to discover that we had water for the toilets. We knew that our toilets used "grey water," but not that they use a different pumping system. There's a blessing for you!

Carol & Jim had to fly out Sunday afternoon. And we had no idea when we'd have water for showers, etc. They just didn't think they wanted to fly home (approx. 8 hours travel time) covered in sunscreen, salt and sand, so a beach outing was cancelled. Instead, we all relaxed & read for most of the morning, then went out for brunch before taking them to the airport. I'm glad the Dean's are so easy-going!

We have a little while before our next guests arrive, so I'll get back to recording some of the things that make St. Thomas different from living on the mainland in the next post. And I'll try not to wait so long again!