Our little girl is growing up. She acts like she owns the place wherever we are. All of a sudden, she looks like a little person instead of a baby. It must be the pig-tails. And isn't she cute in that dress?
But seriously, she waves to everyone and goes wherever she pleases. Walking is so fun. We hit a new milestone today: Eden went to Nursery for the first time!
Austin has had a wonderful break since finishing finals. It's been fun to have family time and enjoy the island together. Our friends arranged for a few of us families to go hiking together. We ended up going with the Hickmans, our friends with 5 month old twins and a 6 year old, and Nick and Carrie, who have a 2 year old and a baby also. We were quite the gang to be trekking. I was the only one not wearing a child. Everyone else looked like kangaroos.
This is us before we started the hike. Ready to go!
Lucky for Eden and me, she has a strong daddy that carried her through the Riverbeds. The hike was pretty flat, but technical at times because of the large rocks we had to climb over. Shortly into the hike, we ran into a 20 foot "ladder" that led to the rest of the trail. As Lyle said, it was very much a third world ladder. All the kids were flying monkeys and all made it to the top. Down was a little trickier.
For the majority of the hike, we walked between two large walls, carved away by water at one time. The vines and everywhere were so cool!
Eden loves hiking. LOVES it- the sights, the adventure, and being with daddy. Even so, a nap won her company for a time.
These are tree roots. Pretty neat, right? The tree... it's 30 feet above us, at least.
Almost there!
Our final destination was a bat cave. That's right, you heard me. A bat cave. Not many people get to see a sight like this in real life. Check this out:
We didn't get too close, especially because Austin just finished taking Microbiology and learned all about diseases you can contract from bat guano. Still, from a short distance, you could see the bats flying everywhere in this open cavern. It smelled horrible! We thought the smell of donkey poop was bad at the beginning of the hike, but that was much better than bat crap. Haha.. Truly though, we had a great time and are so glad we went.
We have now been on the island for an entire year. We have seen all the seasons of St. Kitts. The seasons here may not include winter and fall and actually feel like summer all year round; however, we have seen the seasons of bugs, seasons of fruit, seasons of hurricanes, and seasons where rain should have been. The whole time we have been here, we have had 4 banana trees growing in the back yard. That's probably never going to happen again in our lives. We have been so excited to reap the rewards of fresh bananas, but time after time, bananas keep disappearing! Monkeys... locals... thieves! We just wanted yellow bananas. Lesson 1: bananas don't get yellow here. (They are ripe when they are light green, soft, and full). Lesson 2: if you want a banana, you have to beat the monkeys to it. Lesson 3: if you beat the monkeys, you have to then beat the locals. That's exactly what we did.
Before anything could rob us of our bananas, we cut them down. Cut them with a paring knife, actually. You'd never know it, but that bunch of bananas is HEAVY! I bet it weighed 40 pounds. Oy!
Just in case you are wondering, yes, they are delicious!
Thanks to our good friends, the Hickmans, we had another fun day at the beach. We spent a day at Carambola playing in the water and on the sand. It couldn't have been more perfect. We had a tent bed to ourselves, the water was perfect, the sand wasn't too hot, it was pretty empty, and we even got to play a little catch with the football. What a good time!
Does Eden look like a beach girl, or what?
Hat... sun glasses... life-jacket... Daddy ... Check.
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