They Notice...

This picture was taken at our hotel in Miami on the way here...Grenada furniture is not that nice.  :)

I so totally love this kid.  He rocks!!  Some of the other SO's here (significant others) want one of him because he's so helpful and responsible.  He really is mature for his age...sometimes that makes me have to rethink things.  For instance, we've been really clear with our kids that we don't have extra money to buy toys and other "fun" things whenever we want because we're using the money we have to buy what we need.  I still get the, "Mom, can we PLEASE buy this?" a lot, but the other day, Cayden and I were looking at an email I got about Lego sets that were on sale.  Cayden asked if we could get one because it was on sale.  He said, "don't you have $39.99 (ya, that's the SALE price!)" and I said yes, but we are saving it for the things we need like food and to pay for our house.  I offered the idea that he could ask for it for his birthday coming up.  He sat back for a minute, clearly disappointed but not angry.  After a minute of thinking Cayden then said, "Mom, it's okay, you don't have to get this for me for my birthday.  I will just ask Santa for it.  I don't want you to have to waste your money."  (Insert heartbreaking sound here).  Oh My Gosh.  I quickly told him that it's okay for me to spend money on him for his birthday and he doesn't have to worry about that, but he was insistent.  I guess it's good that he sees the value of money now, but that's a hard lesson for me as a parent to have to teach when he's paying such attention to us not actually having extra money.  

He really does great things for me everyday.  Cayden is a wonderful big brother and really looks out for his brother and sister.  If they are ever crying (and he didn't have anything to do with it!) he's at their side rubbing their back, holding their hand, consoling them and it works!  He does that with his friends, too. Cayden has a very sensitive spirit.  He keeps us all in line, too.  He says its "weird" that we tell him not to say words like "stupid" and "idiot" but then we're yelling them at the drivers around us (we've got some things to work on...).  He also saw a painted picture on a little shop here with a woman wearing a thong bikini.  "MOM!  I saw something inappropriate!  Why do people like inappropriate things!?  We shouldn't look at that stuff."  Lol, I love it! YES Cayden!!  You're TOTALLY right!!   

He's smart, compassionate, loving, happy, and a super duper son.  I love you, Cayden!!

Snow in Grenada!

Who says there's no snow here!  Haha, the source matters?  Fine, this is from our fridge :)  I had to clear out the back of the fridge b/c we were running out of depth room in there (and we need every inch in that tiny fridge).  I realized it was about 3 or 4 inches deep!  And its already started back up.  I guess I'll be doing this more often!  

More Family Activities

We went to a beach called Magazine beach, but commonly referred to as Aquarium beach b/c of a restaurant right off the beach.  But from what I've been able to tell, that's probably the more fitting name! It's a great place to snorkel and see cool stuff.  When we went this day the people we were with saw a 6 foot manta ray!  D just missed it, but saw where it had been hanging out in the sand.  They have cool big shells and sand dollars.  We saw tons of fish and a little eel like thing that would stick it's neck out of it's hiding place and grab a nearby swimming meal.  D and Cayden had a blast looking all around, I guess we need to invest in some snorkeling gear!

 Me and Hudson (and Addie for a while) like to hang out on the beach.  He only has interest to stay for about 30 minutes then he tells me he wants to go.  He does like to dig and make and destroy sand castles when I can keep his attention away from the car.  Addie spends most of her time at the edge of the water.  She's gotten braver now, though, and will go out and swim a little bit.  Both the older 2 like it when they can use the life jackets and float around.  Not a bad life, I know. :)

 We were trying to get a good picture of the beautiful blue ocean, but all you can see in this picture is a beautiful cheesy grin :)  See that tiny thin line of blue?  Ya, that's the water.

 This is the back of our little car.  Nice and cozy.  I think we'll have to up the space when baby 4 is here, not sure if it's legal to put your other kids in the trunk... (just kidding!)

 Showing off their yummy Ting drinks.  We were are the opening bazaar for the school and they gave away free drinks.  They had other things there, like info booths, places to get your internet/cable set up, food from nearby restaurants and local vendors, things like that.  A good place to go to learn about what's available around the island.

 Theses guys were really cool.  They were the show we all sat and watched.  It was basically this drumline and a couple dancers.  It was pretty fun to watch.  One guy was using a conch shell to add to the music.  It plays just one note, but cool to listen to!  They also did a Limbo game with whoever wanted to play.  Fun and Festive!

The Things We See Around Town

...well, downtown anyway.  These were taken a couple weeks ago.  We went to go see what it was like.  We live in a little "township" thing called Lance Aux Epines (Lance-ah-Peens) (lol, that looks funny to me...).  St George's is the capital of Grenada and Providence we live in.  Downtown is about 4 miles or so from us, but it takes a good 20 minutes at least to get there.  We've only gone up there a handful of times, but it's pretty cool there.  There's a port of call for cruise ships there and a huge marina.  Cruise season isn't until January I'm told, so we won't see any ships until then--probably b/c it's rainy season now and it's not too safe to go up to rain forest to hike and explore around, plus...it's rainy.  Anyway, back to the point of this entry.

 We went to the open air market and walked around the city a little bit.  It's very compact and up lots of hills.  The city looks to me like a city built UP from the shore that you'd see on a pirate movie or something.  It's cool.  Very colorful, old, run down, full of life, extremely busy, loud and a bit smelly!  Most of the streets have gutters that just drop down, so you really have to be careful when you drive to not fall off the road!

 Below is a really cool, old bell tower.  Not sure if it still works or not, I don't remember hearing it go off.  We didn't have the stroller with us and all the kids were tired of walking about 5 minutes after we got there.  It was hot, but seriously.  We have got to work on our stamina here!

 This is a picture of the airport here.  I think this is most of it in this little picture.  It's very very small.  There are no ramps to the terminals from the airplanes, I don't think there's even any stairs in the entire airport (well, the parts the passengers are in).

 Below is driving away from the airport.  See those buildings out there?  That's SGU, or a part of it anyway.  Everything is so much closer than it seems, it just takes a while to get around!  Partly because of drivers, partly because of the terrible condition of the roads, and partly because the roads are like switchbacks that can't decide which direction they're taking.  I kind of sound like I'm complaining, I've noticed.  I'm not.  It's really great here, I'm just trying to get my experience all down!  It's quite entertaining, some days, to drive around here...

 ...because you see a lot of this!  That's no deer, it's a goat.  Tied up to a tree.  And they're EVERYWHERE!  I guess they're just natural lawn mowers.  The other day I was taking D to school and I saw a guy with a TON (like 20) of what I at first thought were big dogs.  On closer examination, I saw they were goats.  Some were on leashes and some were not.  The big male goat was on a short leash and some other adult size were too, but the babies and smaller goats were just following.  It looked SO funny b/c at first I was thinking, wow, they actually have dog walkers here?...like, they actually care enough about the dogs around here to even do that? and then I saw long hair and funny looking bodies and realized he was a Goat Walker!  lol, just kidding.  He's just transporting the goats to better parts of the area for feeding--aka free lawn mowing.  Those poor goats, I hope they have workers comp. if they're hit by a car while working. ;) just kidding.  What else are they good for?!  We also have a bull (with no horns, but you KNOW he's a bull, kind of thing) that's planted and tethered to the side of the main road on the way into Lance Aux Epines.  We see him a lot.  It's totally random, and fun for the kids to look at.  :)

 This is a picture of the main highway.  It's technically one lane, but you stay to the left so people can pass you on the right.  But watch out for suddenly stopping taxi buses, or parked cars when you are over there.  It can get a little tricky if it's busy! :)  To me, it looks smaller than it really is in this picture, but you get the idea.  And look!  There's electric poles, and cars, and bus stops and normal things.  It's not so third world country-ish that life is completely different.  It's different, but more culturally different.  Obviously we're missing conveniences that we had in the States, and it's not cheep to live, but if you're expecting those things, I've found it to be a fairly smooth transition.  We like it here.  We're glad we don't have to stay here forever, but we can handle the time we will have and be happy. :)

Happy 8th Anniversary and 30th Birthday!!

This is Addie and our friend Eliza.  They were pooped after decorating for D's birthday!  :)

 So, it's the big 3-0 birthday this year! Not that it's all that much older than 29, but I guess switching decades is enough to be considered "big," right?  I was able to find balloons at the store, but no streamers or anything.  I made a construction paper birthday banner, and all the kids drew pictures for him.  It was nice and festive feeling even though he was gone pretty much the whole day.  We just celebrated his birthday without him!  lol  (Here's a nice accidental belly shot of me.  This baby's growing quickly!)

 We celebrated alone until he came home for dinner.  :)  Not sure what Hudson's face is doing.  Is that a scowl?  Does he do that?  I didn't know he had those facial muscles, I've rarely seen them!

I made him a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, his favorite, but that stuff is really expensive here!  It was like $4 US for the cake mix and another $4 US for the frosting.  It was really yummy though, and totally worth making for him. We also didn't have any candles, so we used matches.  We need the matches to light the stove, though, so we decided that each one was worth a whole decade.  These kind of candles light really well, and no wax on the cake!

 Earlier in the week was our 8th anniversary, as well.  We hadn't been out on an official date and figured this was a good time to go.  Our neighbor offered to come watch the kids.  Since he's a student, we put the kids to bed and he just came over and studied while we were gone.  Worked out quite nice, actually, since our kids can go to bed at 7pm b/c it's dark here by about 6:45.  We went to a local place called Charcoals, just down the road.  They serve casual bbq food in a roof-only nice atmosphere.  I had grilled chicken and D got a really yummy burger.  We haven't had a hamburger since we've been gone, so it was really good (of course I had to have a bite or two).  We also got our favorite drinks here called Ting.  It's like sparkling grapefruit juice, but more of a soda type drink.  It's locally made and we're totally addicted.

 This is one of the nicer looking buildings in the area, it looks like people are trying to take care of it.  It actually has a nice logo and everything! lol.  Apparently here, people and stores will just not do work because they don't want to.  They close early or turn down service because it's too big of an order and they don't want to do it.  Even the major banks here close at like 2pm.

Can you tell it was a long day by the way I look?  Hope so...but I can't really say I look much better every other day.  Something about this place screams, "HEY, DON'T GET READY TODAY!"  Maybe it's this slow Caribbean lifestyle.  I think I could get used to this.

New Stuff: Our house

I'm trying to get down our daily life right now, so I figured the house is a good place to start.  We live upstairs, all the way to the left.  It's an end apartment which is nice because there's just a little more space and we don't have to worry about a 3rd neighbor, especially with kids.  :)  When I say "little" I mean just that, though.  Maybe an extra foot wider or something. lol, the small things don't go unlooked these days!  It's a 2 bed/1 bath apt, probably like 500 sq feet or something.  It's pretty small.  We have a microwave, gas oven/stove (no pilot light, though, so we have a nice supply of matches to turn it on!), and refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen.  We have no dishwasher a FANTASTIC dishwasher, brand "Doit Yerself."  It really gets the job done.  

 Below is the street to get to our house.  It's off the main road, right by the bus for D to take to school.  It's bumpy. Very very.  And also not much space for 2 cars to get through, but if you squeeze enough you just may avoid hitting each other's side mirrors.  So far we still have all parts of our car in tact.  We have a little 1990something Suzuki Escudo SUV.  There's technically only 2 seats in the back, no middle seat, so with Hudson's carseat in there, Cayden and Addie usually have to get cozy.  Seat belt laws here are different, you don't have to wear them if your in the back seat, and I don't believe carseats are even required at all.

 This is our dryer.  There is one down in the laundry room, but it's $3 US a load.  The wind is free.  I'll take the inconvenience since I do at least 5 loads a week.  I took a picture of our laundry this day in particular because of the sky behind it.  I don't think it was the best time to put up wet clothes to get dry when the sky was this dark (hard to see well in the pictures, though).  And whoever came up with "Fresh Linen" scent or the smells-like-fresh-ocean-breeze-when-you-line-dry had some serious sinus sensory issues.  Our laundry does NOT smell good after it's dry.  Even if I use fabric softener.  The air is just not THAT fresh!  People here have small fires to burn stuff all the time, so the laundry will sometimes smell like smoke.  But, it's free.  I'm not complaining. :)

 Here's Hudson playing out front.  We usually go out each night after dinner and all the kids in the complex play together.  5 of the 8 apartments in this complex are LDS families, so we all know each other from church aside from school.  3 of the apartments have kids about the same age as mine.  It's nice to have friends so close!  The parking lot (or Car Park as they call them here) is sloped down, so we have lots of running-down-the-hill crashes by the kids.  Hudson's so tough, he falls all the time, lays there for a second, then says, "Hop up!" and gets up to keep playing.  He's had a few good falls with stairs, blood, and big bruises, but I'm really impressed with his toughness!  He loves playing outside, but will tell me when he's done and will want to go inside...maybe because he's dripping sweat.  No, not even dripping, he's just plain slimy.  Sweat slimy.  I wonder how he'd have done in Arizona with less humidity...

 Here's two of our friends from the complex.  Kody and Allie.  I don't think the other kids came out that night when I had my camera.  I'm sure we'll get them all in eventually, though.  These 2 are pro's at living in Grenada.  They've been here almost 2 years now and they go back to the states next May.  We're learning a lot from our friends here!

 We knew how to do this already, though. :)

The LDS Church in Grenada

I grabbed this from a friend's blog, bu this is a picture of the church here.  And a picture of the view from the nursery.  Not too bad, eh?  Basically, everything happens in the upstairs part of the building, I haven't been downstairs, and not sure if it's even used down there.  Doesn't look like it.  The set up is a Branch, not a Ward, but I guess there's about 18 LDS families/singles going to school at SGU and this is twice as many as have been here before.  Lucky us, we come when there's lots of friends!!  Everyone is in the same boat, so it's fun to relate to so many people.  We start with Primary, then do Sunday School and have Sacrament Meeting last.  Mostly because there's people who come from far away on a bus (or on their own) and sometimes they're a little late getting there.  This way, everyone can be in Sacrament Meeting for sure if they miss anything.  I have to admit, it makes it hard with kids, but we've been twice so far and it will really be manageable.  The only room in the building with A/C is the chapel (probably smaller than the size of half a cultural hall).  The men meet in there, while the women have Relief Society in the kitchen--probably because there's more men.  There are windows, but they're hardly windows.  They've always been open and the bars on the windows are the only thing protecting you from the rain storm that's happening right outside.  :)  It's pretty hot, but there's a really nice ocean breeze that helps a lot.  Since there's not much of a Primary Board, the parents take turns teaching in nursery.  I'm still trying to understand how Primary works here.  Cayden likes it enough, but Addie won't have anything to do with it and is happy as a lark in nursery.  I guess we'll just have to keep trying, but she may be the "extended student" in nursery for a bit.  There are no pianos or keyboards anywhere except the chapel (and it's a keyboard in there), so all the music is a capella.  But the people sing their hearts out and sometimes it seems louder than a whole ward singing!  Even the primary kids sing so loud and confidently, it's pretty amazing to feel their testimonies through music.  They're no Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but they sing with that much heart, it's really been a touching experience for me.

The local people in the Branch are all very nice and usually have a pretty incredible story.  The Relief Society President (at least I think that's her calling) is originally from Africa.  She was telling us about her experience of sacrifice as she was preparing to serve a mission.  She gave up her work that she wouldn't be able to get back and support to go.  Another lady (originally from another country) also told us she gave up her entire opportunity of a teaching career because she went on a mission and didn't take the final test to become an official teacher, and now never will be able to teach.  She went to Oakland, CA on her mission and said she was spit on, had water and urine thrown on her, and yelled at because a black woman was trying to talk to them and teach them something.  She said now she just tutors her children who are all getting good grades and doing well in school, and that is all she really wanted.  I'm interested to see what other stories I learn from the people here.  They only make up about half the branch, if that, but the Spirit is really strong there.  In Relief Society, we recited the R.S. Theme and I was getting choked up and had to stop because the Spirit was so strong.  Just knowing that I'm a part of these incredible women in sisterhood was overwhelming.  We literally come from around the world, yet we were all there for the same reason, and it's like that everywhere else in the world.  We were all the same right then in the Lord's eyes and I really felt how special the women of the world are to Him.  No matter what your story is, you are a daughter of God.  You have the same worth as someone who has every worldly thing and the someone who has nothing.  It made me so happy to be a woman and mother, and especially those roles in His church.  I was reminded of the goodness of people, charity that happens everywhere you look, and the hope we can have even in a world that is screaming despair.  I know this Branch is going to help me build my testimony, as well as my family's.  I have seen the blessings first hand of us following our prayerful decision to come to Grenada.  As Elder Holland said, we truly have been able to see the beauty of life unfold before us as we've trusted our Heavenly Father and didn't cave to the temptation of not doing this.  We are truly blessed.