Anguilla, Crabs, Sand Castles and Sharks

I apologize for my blog slacking... this is due to the fact that usually we are outside somewhere and when inside, I am either encompassed with Alexa or using all the indoor spare computer time to work on work… the kind I get paid for.  I just finished a really special freelance project, www.InspiredLifeWorkshops.org  Check it out!  I’m so excited to be a part of such an amazing, loving, spiritual group.

So… to recap the last 10 days… We “worked” in Anguilla at the IGY / Rybovich Crew Golf Scramble, frolicked around at Friar’s Bay, practiced pool swimming in the slightly warmer weather (it changed from 80 degrees to 82 degrees), had another great “date night” Thursday night, gambled at Buccaneer Beach bonfire barefoot kids crab racing night, enjoyed another boat ride to Pinel Island, went scuba diving with a reef shark and pretty much worked in between it all with a little running and yoga thrown into the mix.

Alexa and I created 3 sand castles over the last 10 days!  The reason this is sooo super cool is because before this, she used to destroy sand castles instead of build them.  Now, suddenly, she’s an expert sand castle maker and decorator.  Every day gets more and more fun with this little munchkin.

And speaking of milestones, Alexa is using two words together all the time now and sometimes three words together.  I first noticed three words as we built our very first sand castle together.  We were in Anguilla on the beach, just the two of us, when a storm suddenly started to blow through.  Alexa, being down wind, suddenly threw her arms up and turns to me, “Mommy Dirt Eyes!”  “Mommy Dirt Eyes!”  As I sat in the powder sand impressed by her mounting vocabulary, I poured a bottle of clean water over her eyes fixing the problem just in time to dash under the nearby Cuisin Art Beach Bar for cover.  After, we celebrated our three word breakthrough and 1^st sand castle with two veggie shiskabobs from the resort’s very own organic hydroponic farm.  Later we met up with Daddy and the rest of the golfing gang at the golf course to celebrate his win.  What a great celebratory day!

Alexa made two friends on two separate occasions in the last few days, Bella and Jude.  At Buccaneer Beach Bar on Friday night, Bella, a little 3 year old Aussie girl who lives fulltime with her engineer/stew parents (and the rest of the crew) on a 240’ yacht, helped Alexa pick out crabs for the crab races.  We won!  Our buddy Craig’s crab won 1^st place, Alexa’s crab second place and Bella’s crab 3^rd place out of at least 50 other crabs bet on by 50 other strangers… What are the odds?!?!?  I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty though… the poor crabs.  Hopefully they let them go on the beach at the end of the night.

Saturday, on Pinel Island, a cutie patootie little 2 year old blue-eyed, dark-haired boy from Long Island named Jude provided hours of entertainment as he and Alexa filled containers with sand, chased each other and threw a beach ball around.  Obviously I share Alexa’s tastes in men… her Daddy is a cutie patootie blue-eyed, dark-haired boy from Long Island too.

So all in all, we are really loving the island life.  I think G might be a bit bored as work is quite a bit busier for him in the Med, but he’s not complaining too much.  He’s used to working 24/7 and this is kind of like a break for him to work somewhat normal hours.  I, on the other hand, have so much on my plate I am swamped… never slowing down.  Although I am balancing everything pretty well lately… as always I have to sacrifice something each day, (I can’t do it all every day), and what has been sacrificed most, besides my blog, is my exercise routine.  I am only running maybe 10 miles a week right now if I’m lucky coupled with a few yoga sessions and some abs.  I feel like I’m getting out of shape and I’m pretty irritated about it.  But, I can’t sacrifice work any more than I already am because that’s how I survive and I can’t sacrifice any more of my time with Alexa because my time with her is REALLY HOW I SURVIVE.  So… qué será, sera.  I really can’t complain.  Life is good, really good.  I am so grateful for this life, my family, my friends, for dreams, for love and everything it encompasses.  Thank you.

Sand Castle #1 in Anguilla

Sand Castle #2 at Friar's Bay

Mullet Bay

  

Anguilla Golf Course

The Golf Champions!

Captain Alexa taking us to Pinel Island

Diving with Heather

Cheese!



A Hula Girl at Heart or a Forest Flower

This last week has been seriously windy down here and the last few mornings have been on and off overcast.  The sun wants to only show her clear blue sky face during Alexa’s afternoon nap while I’m trapped inside.  All the windows and sliding doors in our St. Maarten pad are open and inviting right now as I sit typing away at our dining room table.  With the palm trees, a sportfish and sailboat sway in the breeze over a calm Friday Simpson Bay.  Can ya feel it?  I am such an island girl at heart… or in Jimmy’s words, “a hula girl at heart”.

As a child, I remember hiking through the forest following our white tipped beagle, Snoopy.  Sometimes we were “hunting” with guns, although the only thing I ever shot that was alive was a watermelon.  Sometimes we were hiking with our Indian Princess tribe.  Other times we were hiking around our camp ground or in the woods near our home or maybe outside our little log cabin we rented near a ski resort in the snow.  No matter where we were hiking, I was happy in its purest form.  We were “The Bobcat Explorers”, my little side gig hiking group I founded.  And in Indian Princesses, my father’s and my Indian names were “Running Bear” and “Running Rabbit”.  Yes, I picked the names.  Craig was “Cotton Mouth”.  (Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… Craig was young and loved snakes back then… we found another meaning for Craig’s Indian name in later years, the college years).

Yesterday morning brought me back to my childhood hiking times of pure happiness.  With a few random weekday open am hours on our hands, the three of us decided to hike through Lotterie Farms Mountain Forest Sanctuary then enjoy a relaxing organic lunch in the Tree Lounge.  A gay cruise boat group soaring above our heads on zip lines offered a bit of comic relief.  They were so funny.  Try to imagine a bunch of flamers flying through the air in the forest on a pretty tough obstacle course.  Imagine what they might be saying, or screaming.  We all laughed together.  I love gay people.  We also LOVE nature.  We LOVE hikes.  We LOVE eating lunch in a tree.  This is pure happiness and joy for me and I could tell Alexa feels the same energy.  So peaceful, so fun to explore… we wish we had more time.  Guess what!  We do! Or actually, we will soon.  *BIG SMILE*  So, am I a hula girl at heart or a forest flower - is Alexa one or the other?  How about both of us are a whole lot of both.  A nature sanctuary mountain forest on an island in the Caribbean is pretty much the perfect place for this family.  Stay tuned for pictures from the top… and from below.



Superbowl Sunday Weekend

After a productive week of marketing to yachts, creating graphic designs and studying our ABC’s, 123’s and wild animals, we decided to begin our Superbowl weekend on Thursday night with a date night.  An adorable, quaint little French wine bar paired with Mooi, gourmet Spanish restaurant, made for a magnificently Mediterranean evening together.  A little hung over Friday, we took our expert swimmer to practice in the pool then met up with a Captain client and his wife for dinner at Bamboo Bernie’s, our favorite sushi restaurant.  Our after dinner Maho Beach window shopping ended quite abruptly as a rather large poop explosion all over the new strawberry dress found us racing to the car park only to find two dinky diaper wipes and no extra outfit.  After months of no major accidents, a Mom gets a little lax… well, lesson learned.  Also, note to self, NO MORE COW MILK ICE CREAM FOR ALEXA.  We think that’s what did it.  We will stick to the delicious vegan stuff.

5 minute long sporadic Saturday storms didn’t slow us down as we danced, played and fell in love with the turquoise water at Mullet Bay Beach.  Stunning.  Saturday night we all took it easy with a quiet home cooked meal at home from Chef Daddy G.

Superbowl Sunday started at Layla’s for brunch at 11am, only there was no brunch this Sunday… apparently.  We found this out after we withheld breakfast from our little Angel and with hungry stomachs and built up anticipation drove to the French side.  But, that’s okay.  Little A didn’t mind when she saw the pool.  Oh, pool is empty, no water.  Still, okay, the massive play ground and beach took center stage as we waited for noon to arrive so we can enjoy our Layla’s lunch instead.  As a Yachtie Mom, or any kind of Mom, it’s so important to be flexible.

After living in the lap of luxury at Layla’s (and the owner game me a free t-shirt), we went to Mary’s Boon to see Santana live on the beach Superbowl Sunday pre-game show St. Maarten style.  We soon discovered Santana was a Classic Rock cover band, not Carlos Santana, but hey, again, that’s okay.  The show was free, on the beach at sunset and we danced our butts off barefoot in the sand.  A couple hours later, we made it home just in time for the real pre-game show on TV.  Our team won!  Go Greenbay!

About to head over to Bamboo Bernie's

Before the Explosion

Playing in the slides at Layla's

Playing iPhone Apps at Layla's waiting for lunch

We search for iguanas in our neighborhood every day and find at least one every time

We also search for humming birds every day.  Today we got lucky.

laughing, learning, growing… this is the most important part of the whole experience

I tried so hard not to eat the leftover tiramisu from last night’s dinner.  I lasted more than half a day, but fatigue from my super early start this morning coupled with a quick chance mid-afternoon blogging session while Alexa naps broke me.  So here I am blogging while devouring half a tiramisu.  Ya know a glass of vino rosso would help this go down very nicely.  I did get up at 4am to work this morning and then took a 6am yoga class on M/Y Four Aces… so, I deserve it, right?… ummmmmm… maybe I’ll wait a few more hours before I drink that glass of sin vin.  Ok, seriously… onto the blog…

Perfecting our swimming in the picturesque turquoise pool and pool-colored ocean water was a part of our all-embracing day every day over the last 7 days (along with a little yoga, running, boating, play-studying, eating, drinking, potty training, oh… and working).  Alexa is becoming a great swimmer really quickly.  “Sim! Sim! Sim!” is the song coming out of my little baby bird’s mouth every time she sees water.  She absolutely loves it.  All aspects of it.  Even bumpy boat rides put her to sleep.  We really could do this forever.

If you’ve been keeping up with my blogs, you read that we had the time of our lives at Buccaneer Beach Bar bon fire and kids barefoot beach movie night our first Friday in town this season and vowed to repeat.  However, Thursday, after numerous attempts, I finally made contact with the St. Maarten Road Runners group, so I traded the beach towel for my jogging shoes and went on a HELL hill 10K run/race with these guys Friday evening instead.  G was kind enough to watch Alexa while I ran, but not thrilled at all when it took me 2 hours to get home from my run.  The run only took 52 minutes and 14 seconds, but the traffic driving back to our apartment was unreal and I never could figure out why.  My long awaited running buzz was killed instantly when I got home.  Apparently, some Captains from a few yachts in town had asked George to dinner to a nice restaurant with their wives/girlfriends and G was not happy he had to miss it to say the least.  After a heated debate and a few long talks, everything smoothed over and we entered into our Saturday with open arms.

I have been to St. Maarten every season at some point each year for the last 8 years and G has been coming here even longer.  Somehow neither one of us ever visited the perfectly petite island of Pinel.  A semi-short bumpy buddy-filled boat ride and we were there “simming” in the turquoise, drinking matching magnum blue bottle rosé and tasting scrumptious seductions at our secret tiki table.  Heaven. 

Sunset Sunday… evidently we decided to fully-absorb the tourist tag as we watched the planes blast people through the air at Sunset Beach Bar.  We laughed at the idiots, partially understanding on some level why they might be enduring this torture and also feeling quite, well, over-it, if you know what I mean.  Alexa got a kick out of it, so that’s all that really matters.  I seem to recall one drunken day, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, I found myself dangling from the fence behind a 767 pelted with pebbles and jet fumes...  ahhhhh… the memories.

All weekend brag blogging aside, balance is certainly the key when traveling for extended periods like this away from the comforts of home, away from friends, away from family and away from help with the little ones.  George and I both work sometimes 7 days a week.  I do yoga, run and swim as well.  I’m a life long student, always looking to learn throughout my day and always finding the next class to take to supplement my passions.  Of course, Alexa is my priority, my main focus, my life.  Unlike our summer in Monaco, I’ve found some balance here along with a few friends, one who is inspiring my yoga and spiritual practice and one who I am exploring the underworld with scuba diving.  I am busy and loving life right now.  Alexa is happy… truly happy… laughing, learning, growing… this is the most important part of the whole experience.



Captain Alexa Capri





Jumped off the boat for a quick dip on our way back from Pinel island.



Looking for the green flash... too cloudy. Maybe next time.

 

 



It's fun to laugh at idiots blasting through the air by jet fumes at Sunset Beach Bar.