Only the Best of Etsy Sample Packages GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Only the Best of Etsy Sample Packages GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Dancing In Heaven

When we were little, my sisters and I had certain videos with movies taped from HBO that we would watch over and over again. One of our favorites was Girls Just Want To Have Fun. A classic, right? Still contains some of my favorite dance moves. Well, the movie was on t.v. the other day, so I got a little nostalgic and decided to find the soundtrack. Maybe I don't have the best search skills, but I couldn't find it available to buy anywhere. So sad. I did find a different version of this song and listened to it like a hundred times. Doesn't it make you want to dance? Bonus points if you know the scene this plays in. Go Janie and Jeff!

I Love Bermuda

On Wednesday the rain started pouring down and didn't leave for the rest of the week. Joy and I decided it was a good day to go to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute where we could be inside. Titanic artifacts were on display. Crazy to think about all the people on that ship.


We were able to be in a simulated shark cage. The shark coming up and banging the cage actually did give us a fright. That would definitely be a rush to do it for reals.

These heads show the shrinkage factor from going down to different depths in a submarine. Why doesn't that happen to people?

This is the Tucker Cross which Teddy Tucker recovered in 1955, from the Spanish ship San Pedro which sank in 1595. When it was transported to a facility in 1977, Teddy unwrapped it to realize that the original was stolen and replaced by a replica!

It was a very rainy day, so we just headed back to the hotel. That pink pole is the bus stop. Pink poles go away from Hamilton and blue poles go toward Hamilton. They were hard to recognize at first when walking about.

The next three days I spent in the conference for work. After the first day of meetings, our boss treated our Development team and us to the nicest restaurant on the island. Yummy, fancy food. Jeff did have to squeeze into the back of a taxi though. The curse of being tall. ;)

Joy got to spend the day roaming the beaches and taking pictures. Isn't Bermuda beautiful? Too bad I didn't get to spend more time on the beaches. Oh well. It did rain every day while I was working, so the timing couldn't have been better.

Friday night, our company had a Calypso White Party. Requested dress: white with a calypso flare (explained as a splash of bright color). I somehow managed not to take any pictures, but there was an amazing amount of fresh seafood and a live band for dancing. Good times.

The conference ended around lunchtime on Saturday, so I organized a group to go on a Glass Bottom Boat for a shipwreck tour. We were in the Bermuda Triangle afterall. Surprisingly, after a while you can't really tell the difference between a rock and a boat underwater, because all the anemones and ocean life covers them up.

We also spent a little time snorkeling. There weren't very many fish, but plenty of sea cucumbers and different types of anemones. It is actually against the law to remove these. Our captain told us about a guy who tried to hide one in his shorts... yeah, he didn't realize that they sting. Oops!

Another interesting story... the green turtle population was nearly extinct in the 1800's because they were hunted for food. They tried to bring turtles from another country, but didn't realize that turtles go back to the place they were born to lay their eggs, so that didn't work. In the '60s and '70s Bermuda tried again by bringing thousands of turtle eggs from Costa Rica and burying them in the sand. Many of them hatched, however, the sex of turtles is determined by the temperature of the water. Because the water in colder in Bermuda, they were all born males. Ironic, right?

Sunday morning, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before heading home.

I highly recommend visiting Bermuda. I absolutely loved it there. Maybe it's a sign that I need to move to a warmer climate. ;)

Dolphins at the Dockyards

Tuesday was an exciting day. Joy and I got to play with dolphins! We went to the Dockyards to the Bermuda Maritime Museum where the dolphins live.We watched them jump and do tricks.

We got to spend an hour meeting the eight dolphins. They like to play, so we were told to be really excited and have lots of energy. Here I'm feeding one a fishy.

This one blew snot on my hand. Ew!

This one even let me hold her.

Joy started a water fight with these two boys.

Dolphins are such beautiful creatures!

Afterwards we walked around the top of the fort. Great views, but sheep live up there, so we were dodging their little pellets everywhere.

We also spent some time looking at the museum. We had the place almost all to ourselves.

This room boasted amazing floor to ceiling murals depicting Bermudian history.

A cruise ship docked there that day. The other two girls that swam with us came off of it. I need to go on a cruise sometime. Can you believe I've never been on one?

Another amazing day in Bermuda!

St. George & Rugby

Monday we slept in all the way until 8 am before taking the bus to Hamilton and having breakfast at The Spot. We rode the ferry to St. George, which stopped at the Dockyards on the way. It was a high-speed ferry and quite windy. The ride was pretty choppy. Enough so, that water splashed from the front of the boat all the way over the top to hit us in the face in the very back of the boat. Mmm-hmm. Refreshing salt bath.

Once in St. George, we saw the Unfinished Church...

...and Tobacco Bay, where some swimmers were having a lot of fun.

Next we walked and walked and walked in the heat to Fort St. Catherine.
The view from the top is amazing... and we got to play with big guns and cannons. ;)

Underground was a maze of tunnels, with plenty of storage space for their weaponry.

The lights were placed in the walls, sometimes in the middle of the wall so it would light rooms on both sides. Genius!

Good thing I noticed this sign, but Joy certainly didn't need to.

We weren't looking forward to the long walk back to St. George, so we actually had a cab come to get us. The driver was the deputy mayor and sang us a song... "I was born in Bermuda, eat your heart out..." He would stop in the middle every now and then and say, "why you laughing?" At one point he asked if we were "waiting for New Year," apparently we were moving too slowly. It may have been my most entertaining cab ride ever.

Back in the city, we decided to ride the bus to see the other lighthouse on the island. We realized that the bus only ran every hour and we didn't feel like waiting that long... so it was basically a bus tour of the lighthouse. We got a pretty good shot, eh?

The funny thing is, we probably would have had time to get off the bus, but all of the clocks on the buses are completely wrong, neither of us had a watch, and with the time change, we thought it was much later than it actually was. One funny thing about the bus... see this sign?

Joy and I both independently sat and thought it looked like a wise man putting something into a trash can or the like. Only when we started talking about it did we realize it is food. :)

We rode back to Hamilton and tried to go to the Bermuda art gallery, but it was closed. We ended up just having dinner at the Pickled Onion. The name sounded so gross, we had to try it. They definitely have interesting names for restaurants there. The food was actually pretty tasty.

Normal business dress includes Bermuda shorts. Love it!

Next we went to the rugby tournament. We ended up getting there pretty early, but that meant we got our choice of seats right at mid-field. The temperature dropped, and we started freezing, but luckily the rain stayed away. I resorted to buying a fleece jacket, which was luckily half price because it was from the year before. Joy just used the shorts I had brought with my swimsuit. :)

First, we saw Argentina get slaughtered by New Zealand. I was loving that they did the haka before the game! Here they are in a scrum.

The second game we saw was Canada vs. South Africa.

We had some fun people sitting by us. One American guy in front of us had no idea what was going on. I knew the gist of the game (which I learned from Lisa, whose brother played for Utah), so tried to impart my limited knowledge. Luckily, the British lady sitting next to me knew the game upside-down. She told us how she'd been going to games since she was seven years old (she's probably in her sixties now) with her dad, and ended up marrying a rugby player. Now they traveled allover to see matches. We also had some tipsy loud boys sitting by us for a bit. They were quite hilarious. I loved the accents. I seriously loved seeing these games. Rugby is so much more interesting to watch than football. They actually play more than they huddle.

Welcome to Bermie

Can I just say that Bermuda is amazing? Islands always seem to have a laidback feel to them. Every person we met was so friendly, strangers chatted freely with us everywhere we went. Our taxi driver gave us a tour on the way to the hotel. He "may" have two children, four total. This was a far cry short from the eighteen kids in the family he grew up in. Wow! When I was amazed at the beautiful color of the water, he told us they dye the water blue every day. He also told us about how the white roofs on the houses capture rainwater to be reused in the house.
This is the Fairmont Southampton hotel where we stayed.

When we walked out on the balcony of our room, we saw this amazing view of one of the two lighthouses on the island. That day we took it easy with a little ride down to the hotel's private beach. We saw a bunch of athletic looking men walking around the hotel, only to discover that our hotel was hosting the players in the international rugby tournament that week. We met a couple of Argentina's players on the trolley who met up with more of the team down at the beach. The water was C-O-L-D and very salty. We were pretty much the only ones in the water. I loved the perfect white sand. That night we had a little nail painting fiasco and watched Strictly Ballroom on my laptop. I was exhausted after staying up all night to pack, so we were in bed by 8 pm. :)

On Sunday, we were excited to try the Bermudian breakfast buffet at the hotel. Apparently, we went too early to get that part, so our breakfast as pretty non-Bermudian. We took the early ferry across the bay to Hamilton so we could catch a bus to church. Dai, the captain, let us take turns steering the boat.

Bermuda is actually very Christian. The city was pretty dead on Sunday with many businesses closed and the buses don't run very often. Although it made us a little late to church, I thought it was pretty awesome. We did see this parade of sorts with marching band. Not sure what is was for, but fun to see.

When we arrived, we were delighted to find out that the ward was having its Primary program. This little girl showed us, with a little shake, that the hand motions for Book of Mormon Stories are quite similar to the Macarena. Her mom was trying to coach her from the row in front of us, so the girl scowled at her, but angelically grinned when dad turned to look. The only other interesting event was some man came in late and was wandering around the stairs at the front of the chapel in the middle of the meeting. There were rooms back there, but still pretty strange.

After the meeting we went next door to see the caves, Crystal Cave and Fantasy Cave. There are miles of connected caves under Bermuda. Many of the connecting passages are so narrow, though, that you would need to remove your scuba tank to get through them.

Crystal Cave has a floating walkway down the length of it. I haven't been in a cave with so much water before. This cave was the inspiration for Fraggle Rock. Can you just see the Doozers building down here?

Most stalactites/stalagmites grow only one inch every hundred years, but these hollow straws grow six inches every hundred years.

One of our guides told us he drank too much the night before. We had an interesting conversation with the other, though. He is a member of the National Caves Association and went to a cave in New York called Howe's Cave which he quite enjoyed. I had no idea such a group existed.

We got on a bus and asked the driver to tell us when we reached our stop. After a bit, he told us it was the next one and then made us ring the bell before he would stop. Do you think they're monitored or something?

There are wild chickens allover Bermuda. As we walked into the parking lot at Spittal Pond, one of the chickens found a piece of food and twenty chickens were chasing it around and around. We laughed so hard!

The cliffs near Spittal Pond are exactly what I would choose for my Thoughtful Place if I were Pooh. The waves crashed and exploded high against the rocks. Very mesmerizing.

A rainstorm came up so we didn't spend too much time walking around the actual pond... besides it was kind of stinky.
Back in Hamilton, we wandered through this lovely park, searching for somewhere to eat (remember how everything is closed on Sunday?).

We finally found the Penny Hog where we enjoyed steak, eggs, and cajun potatoes with a barbeque hollandaise sauce. Delish!

We were just in time for the beautiful sunset on the ferry ride back to the hotel. Dai saved our seats and invited us to go on his boat on his day off. It slightly reminded us of Darrell. The hot tub was calling to us back at the hotel, which we shared with a mildly drunk and entertaining couple. There is also a cat that must live by the pool which kept an eye on us.

Amazing View

Sunday ended up as a more traditional family day. Stake Conference was held in a hotel near Copley Square. (Our stake hasn't had a stake center, with stake conference in the past being broadcast to the several chapels. There is finally one under construction and nearing completion.) This is the church where the evening session was held Friday. For dinner, Jake grilled some steaks and Joy's cousin Darin, who goes to Harvard, came over to join us. It isn't very often that I get to have a sit-down family dinner, so I really enjoyed and appreciated it. We also had yummy chocolate fondue for dessert... an added bonus. When we took Darin home, he took us to the deck of his building to see the city.
Next, he took us to the roof of the building. We had to climb some scary ladders... ...but the view was worth it.

Sadly, Joy got sick on Monday and Jake had to go home on Tuesday. Jake and I did meet up with some friends for trivia night at a restaurant/bar on Monday. My contributions to the team included identifying a Rainbow Brite Halloween costume. Yes, I am an '80s child.

So glad you were able to come visit Jake!

Boo Day

Though she doesn't really know why, Joy has wanted to go to Maine since she was little. To help her check this off her list, we decided to take a little day trip on Saturday, guided by my kind friend Rachel who is a native of Maine. Our first stop was the Portland Head Light. I seriously love lighthouses.

Jake touched the Atlantic Ocean for the first time! He didn't want to swim though.

We tried and tried to get this picture of us with leaves in the air, with plenty of laughing. This is our best attempt.

After lunch in Old Port, we headed over to the Freeport outlet mall for a little shopping. Do you love this giant boot at LL Bean?

The stores were all doing trick-or-treating so there were adorable kids (and adults) running around in costumes. Way fun! We also went into Wicked Whoopies for some whoopie pies.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed the New England charm of Maine.

That evening we decided to go to a haunted house, you know, with it being Halloween and all. We headed to Gloucester to the Castle of the Damned. The parking is a little ways away, so they shuttled us over in this spooky school bus, complete with creepy music.

Now, I've been to my fair share of haunted houses, but I have to say that this was the scariest ever. In Utah, they usually try to make some old warehouse look like an old castle. Well, this really was in an old castle, complete with a little cemetery.

They had a more realistic approach to scaring us, which was a little freaky, but luckily we didn't get too startled because we were at the back of the group they sent us in with. Jake did manage to get a rise out of all of us as we came out of the house and across a bridge. He was pretty proud of himself for that one.

We ended the night with some delicious fried dough. Happy Halloween!

Visitors

Joy and Jake came to visit!! Joy and Jake came to visit!! :) I had a sign waiting for me at the airport when I picked them up on Wednesday. We immediately went to the Barking Crab for dinner...

...where we devoured a huge platter of crab legs. I always forget how much fun I have with these guys. I think I had a sideache from laughing so much. I unfortunately still had to work during the day, but Joy and Jake went to Salem on Thursday and had quite the adventure. We had fun making dinner that night though.

Friday night, I dragged them to the adult session of Stake Conference because... a) Elder Ballard came to speak to us and b) it was being held in the Trinity Episcopal Church at Copley Square. It was a beautiful building in which to hear an apostle of the Lord. Elder Ballard spoke about developing the ability to live close to the Lord so that you can be spiritually sensitive and in tune with the Spirit. Take the time to talk to the Lord and listen. Learn to hear and respond to promptings. Don't let opportunities pass you by. That is definitely something I needed to hear and remember.

We enjoyed a crowded train ride home that night. Being with good friends can even make being jostled about on a train fun. It was also some good people-watching with a group singing along to a ukelele on the train, and plenty of Halloween costumes.

Changing Colors

Mollie and I enjoyed the beautiful Sunday afternoon weather with a little stroll through Mt. Auburn Cemetery, always a great spot to enjoy the fall colors.
I love climbing the tower and looking out over the whole city. You can see the temple on the hill in the distance.