Summer Break PART 2 (Saba Hikes)

Break on Saba!

When we came back from St. Maarten we still had a week before Hannah started school and 2 weeks before Matthew started school, so we decided to make the most of it, and enjoy our family time together. 

The first hike we did was just the hill up from our house. It was a gorgeous view and the kids loved being “adventurers”.

The next hike was called the Ladder…. As you can see why:

(This is a google image... seeing as we HIKED it... we didn't boat around it.)

It was a challenge but fun and worth it. Getting down to the water at the end was so rewarding! To bad there wasn’t water at the top for when we had finished our climb! Over 800 stairs!

This used to be were the boats would come in, and everything was carried up these stairs by hand and foot! It's known that even a grand piano was carried up, as well as the pontiffs. The building you see in the first picture, and that we are sitting down in front of (3 pictures up) is the old customs office!

The next hike we did was a loop. We went up Mt. Scenery Trail, then over Buds Mountain, and finally back through Crispin and the Rendezvous. It was by far the longest hike we have done. The difficulty of it wasn’t too bad. Though I was feeling under the weather and struggled emotionally on the hike. But again, it was worth it (aren’t all hikes!?).

(See Hannah?)

And then, it was time for school to start. (To bad I don’t have a picture of Matthew’s 1^st day 😉) But here is Hannah's first day! Can't believe she is growing up so fast! 

(This last picture is the second day, in her daily school uniform. The other pictures are her wearing her gym uniform as they have gym first thing Mondays)

Summer Break PART 1 (St. Maarten Swimming)

[FYI: Matthew has been needing the laptop for school this semester, so time to blog has been limited, I have a couple I’ve written up now, and will post over the next few days.]

                                                                                                                                        

Oh what fun we had! I live for these breaks!

The last 2 weeks of August Matthew had break! He finished his semester with a bang and we are really proud of his hard work, diligence, great grades, and commitment. To celebrate AND to take some time to BREATH we traveled to the nearby island our branch is on and  spent 4 days there!

The main purpose of going was to be able to attend church and partake of the Sacrament (like communion, it is a very important ordinance we participate in. Bread and water is blessed by those who have the priesthood authority from God and passed to the members of the congregation).

(Sadie with other babes her age at church)

We opted to stay some extra days to have a family vacation as Sunday we like to keep it sacred and not participate in the same leisurely activities, work or school that we would the rest of the week. So I am going to share about those fun extra days!! What did we do!? We had fun together!

From out hotel room:

Our hotel also had breakfast provided at a Mexican restaurant on site every morning. It was delicious.

Hannah LOVES horses! She was able to ride them a few times before we moved out here, so when we found out St. Maarten had a ranch, and even offered short rides for kids, we knew we had to go! When we got there we were disappointed to learn they weren’t doing riding that day. But Hannah was just as happy to go face to face with those giant beasts and hug them and pet them all she could. A few times Mommy and Daddy got nervous with how friendly, care free, and unaware of risk she was.

Our hotel was on a beach, with beautiful soft sand, and aqua waters. The kids thoroughly enjoyed it! Sandy sandwiches and all!

One day we walked down the road to an ice cream shop called Carousel Gelato. I’m not sure whether the kids liked the ice cream of the carousel more! I really enjoyed looking at the Mosaics on the wall. They were quite impressive!

On our walk back we found a small playground on the beach the kids enjoyed for a while.

It was such a wonderful trip! Car free, explorative, sunny, and enjoyable! Our next break we plan to take a few days to travel to a near by temple. I’m not sure whether I’m more excited to attend the temple, have a break from “school life”, be able to go swimming, have convenience stores, and cheap food. But either way, the 4 months of med school life is all worth it when break finally comes!