Jamaica Mon!

The past three weeks have been busy but fun. Here's the low down.

3 weeks ago, Brett was suffering from end-of-semester crunch stress to which we added a major landscaping project. While yard work and gardening can be de-stressing for us, this wasn't so much. :) Pictures will be added soon, but for those who remember, we had 4 large bushes on one side of our front porch (and none on the other side). This winter a black rot finally took one of the bushes leaving 3 bushes in a questionable hedge formation - all of them were different bushes. It was more than I could take and Brett hates mowing around them anyway, so out they came. We chopped down the 4 bushes and uncovered 2 more stumps of other bushes that had been covered over by the bushes. Long story short - after a week of work digging up stumps, we now have 3 matching bushes on either side of the front porch and some nice ground cover flowers planted in front of them. (Again, pics will be added shortly).

After this, we headed to Richmond to meet up with my family and we all headed down to NC for my sister, Erin's graduation from Mt. Olive College. After graduation, we went back to Richmond and continued the weekend long celebration: Mirthergraduversary. That Sunday was Mother's Day and Monday was my dad's b-day and my parent's 35th anniversary, not to mention Wednesday that week being my birthday and Saturday our anniversary. So we started celebrating with dinner out on Friday night in NC with Erin and didn't stop until Tuesday when we drove up to Dulles to go to Jamaica - oh wait! we didn't stop then either! :D

Tuesday we headed for a week of fun in the sun and relaxation in Jamaica. We got an unbelievable deal on a resort that we had wanted to try since our first visit to the country, Grand Lido Negril. It's an all-inclusive with food, drinks and activities included. The food was ok, but the service was great. They had several different restaurants to choose from - for my birthday we ate at a tepanyaki bar - one of those places where the chefs do knife tricks and toss the food in the air. The restaurant had been told that it was my birthday and they brought out a cake for everyone at the table and sang - it was really cool. For our anniversary we ate a fancy French restaurant - white gloved waiters saying "what would madam like for an appetizer?" I mean seriously rocking! :) The food there was amazing and the evening was perfect. When we were finished eating, there was a local folk dance troupe preforming traditional dances with a drum circle. It was great. Pics are here.

We both managed to have a cold for alternating days on the vacation. If one of us was sick, the other was well, go figure. So mostly we didn't use the provided activities. Somehow the idea of free scuba lessons was appealing until I thought about scuba and snot ... hmm. Instead, we could just lay on floating pads in the swimming area and look down at all the amazing fish - bright colors, huge starfish, and sea urchins that earned a few people (not us) trips to the nurse. It was awesome. By the end of the trip we were feeling much better and went on a glass-bottom-boat trip one morning. That was great (again, more pics) and the next day we went out for the most perfect day of snorkeling ever. The weather was calm and wonderful. We had been warned not to get too close to the island we were near and Brett and I both managed to accidentally do just that - the reef gets very shallow and very covered in sea urchins the size of your head very quickly. Luckily we both made it out ok and after getting back to the 5' deep section, we stopped swimming around following every flash of color and started just floating and looking - once we stopped moving we could see even more. It was amazing. I didn't even know starfish came in so many colors - or that some of them are 6 legged! The pics from the underwater camera were developed and most look good but the scans are less than attractive. Sorry for the low quality.

The weather held out for us the entire trip. Every day except the last had a small shower in the afternoon, which was great for getting us in out of the sun for a little while, and a great excuse to order a middday room service snack of fruit, cheese, and crackers. The days never got really hot, and there was a nice breeze on the beach. The only unfortunate part was that the shade on the beach was provided by several large trees - which were just in season for dropping their seeds during the breezy bits. We had to be careful to cover our drinks lest they become too gritty! But really, other than that the beach was wonderful and the water was warm and calm, so all was perfect. I have to say, if you're going to have a cold, on a warm beach is a great place to recover! :)

The trip was great and now we're back and trying to catch up on weeding the garden and laundry. It's kind of sad how after a vacation, real life gets to smack you in the face. :)