Our over the water bungalow in Bora Bora

This is my exact reflection that I wrote upon first checking in to our Resort in Bora Bora.

"When I was coming here to the ICH, I felt a bit lavish - thinking seriously, Suz, this is beyond what you should be paying for a place to stay.  But when I walked in the lobby to check in, I was greeted with a cold drink, I was welcomed by name, seated in a place where the hotel concierges brought the paper work to me.  I was unable to take my bags - they did it for me - A shirtless Tahitian with a white lava lava loaded our bags onto the back of the tricycle.  The gentleman who checked us in first took us on a short tour of the resort and then showed us to our room... we kept walking from the hotel to the bungalows far out in the water, the further we went, the more excited Lisa and I got - we kept looking at each other with cheesy smiles and excited eyes.  Finally, we arrived at our bungalow,  well into the lagoon - off into the horizon.

"OH MY GOSH... complimentary t-shirt and sarong - pareo in Tahiti - complimentary coconut on the glass table that saw into the water below, everything was perfect.  The bathroom is incredible.  Lisa and I - as soon as the guy left, screamed like little girls and were so amazed - of course, while he was there we were dignified and acted as if we stayed in establishments like this one all of the time - until Lisa walked into the bathroom and said "this is as big as my bedroom back home" (what?  I closed my eyes and thought... did she really just say that?)  Yep, she did.. anyway.. when he left, we sure did scream like little girls and jump on the bed and get in the tub and open the glass coffee table to see the fish and run out to our own sun deck (which had its own ladder from the ocean and its own shower to shower off the salt water)

Complimentary shirt and pareo

King bed - with a pillow menu - no joke - we could order the kind of pillow we wanted.

Double sinks in the bathroom - we also got warm, fresh towels every night at 6 PM.

Our bathroom - notice the robes and slippers hanging in the closet. 

Our front room.. notice the sliding doors so the bedroom could be separated.

"What an incredible place. So SO so fun, serious.  So we went out onto our deck, our own deck with sunchairs... and I noticed Lisa bowing her head in prayer.  I knew she was thanking Heavenly Father for this opportunity.  I took her example and did the same.  I closed my eyes and thanked Heavenly Father for having the opportunity to feel like princesses - and the daughters of God that we are.  What a neat experience this is - and will be.  We are very blessed to be here... and they just brought a plate of fresh fruit on skewers! OH MY GOODNESS!! We are princesses for our stay here.  So lucky and blessed.  Oh yeah - and we have robes and slippers! Yeay."

View from the bedroom of our deck (notice the sunchairs, the ladder from the water.. and even the place to have  a meal.

Yakutat Bed and Breakfast

Tomorrow will be 2 weeks for Lisa and I being in Yakutat, Alaska managing a bed and breakfast for the owners who went on vacation til the end of March.  We will be here another 5 or 6 weeks and we are quite enjoying it.  We haven't had to shovel snow for a few days, but we honestly don't mind shoveling... even when we have to do it 3 times in one day.  We get pretty tired though, especially when it rains and we have to shovel the heavy snow.

This is what we see from the living room couch and dining room table at low tide.

St Elias mountain... about 30miles away... SO HUGE

A few stories from this week:

So we have these big Suburbans - the early 90s ones that are just gigantic - that we drive around Yakutat - about 10 miles total road, really.. :)  Anyway.. it is slushy, icy, snowy.. you never know - it doesn't just depend on the day, it depends on the hour of the day, it changes so quickly... quite an interesting experience.  ANYWAY... Lisa and I were driving to the grocery store.  Well I was coming down this hill and pulling in to park the burb, well, lisa said something about someone stealing our spot and that we'd have to pull into the parking lot - which is more like a gravel lot about 20x20 (not square)... anyway, So I quickly turn the car toward the parking lot as I am putting the brakes on.. (we are on ice)  And we start to slide RIGHT for the STORE!!! NO KIDDING.  I thought for sure that we were going to  crash the plastic entry way room into smitherines!!  Lisa is on her side trying to press her air brake and I am simply gasping for air thinking, we aren't stopping... 

I am still alive to write this post, so we didn't end up hitting the store, but we couldn't stop laughing - cuz really, we were just so relieved we didn't crash into the store.  It was pretty funny - and scary.

Us on the beach - something wrong with it being that cold on the beach. Snowing  on a beach though.. that was a first.

Today we were walking on the beach with the dog and she started barking, we both look up to see what she would be barking at and about 50 yards off we see a wolf.  It was pretty cool.. looked just like a husky really, but then we walked toward the footprints and were AMAZED at how big they were.  2 of our dogs paws could have fit in 1 of the wolves prints. It was pretty big.  On the way to see the prints, we noticed 2 other sets of prints - Moose, I believe... one set was HUGE prints, the other set was pretty small.  It looked as if this wolf was tracking a moose and her calf.  Alaska loses a lot of their moose population every year to predatory animals.. wolves and bears (black and grizz/brown).  Anyway, it was cool to see that Alaska wild in action.

Sometimes the clouds are so beautiful over the mountains.

Sometimes you can't see the mountains at all - but other beauty awaits!

A Pittsburgh Fast & Testimony meeting

Last Sunday, I went to church in my old ward - Pittsburgh 1st ward.  It is a special ward.  It truly is.  Very eclectic.  It is quite amazing how many different populations of people this ward represents.  Given that information - imagine the testimonies we are blessed to hear on fast Sunday.  If you choose to be open, the Spirit you can feel is almost tangible.  There are a few faithful members of the ward who give their heartfelt, blood bubbling, preaching, amen shouting testimonies that are so full of life and love for Jesus Christ.  These brothers and sisters make my heart smile.. and the investigators who are seated with the missionaries bursting at the seems with an Amen every once in a while.  LOVE IT!  Seriously made me smile and made me thankful for the love they feel for our Savior and the genuine love they have for their brothers and sisters in Jesus.  

That's all for this post. :)

Love my nieces and nephews!

12-12-12 - quite a date ....I am having such a great time hanging out with family that the blog has suffered... but I am going to try to be better.  :)  But just to show ya.. here is why I have been distracted - can you blame me?

Tommy - will turn a year on Friday, he's so smiley!

Jessie on a whale at Hapuna Beach.. she loved this whale. It was like her pet.  LOVED spending time with her and Izzy and Karen.

Jessie, Lisa, Izzy and me at "Honu World"  where unfortunately there were no honus but lots of pools for us to play in! :)  These two little girls have iron feet.

Maddie, me and Lilly - we had a fantastic time skating... I was a little tired
We always do fun stuff at Biz's - highly recommended place to visit, for sure!

SOOOO.. I will give you a sneak peak of our last few hours of Bora Bora...

This is our view as we were having lunch before we left the island

This is our sadness :)

We are back!! :)

WHEW! Can’t believe we are back in Hawaii after being in the Society Islands of French Polynesia for 29 days.  We had an incredible time.  We were so very blessed with the people we came in contact with as well as the places that we stayed.  We had the time of our lives.  We won’t bore you with ALL the details of our day by day, but we will give you lots of pictures and some highlights and fun stories.

Here are our thoughts about our favorites about French Polynesia:

SUZ – for me, overall, my favorite part about being in French Polynesia (aside from spending time with Lisa, by BFF) was the intense beauty of our Heavenly Father’s creation.  I mean, you guys, it was incredible.  Pictures, of course will not do   it justice, the place is even better than you can imagine.  I am serious.  My favorite time was when we stayed in the overwater bungalow in Bora Bora.  I felt like a princess – AND I got to go paddle boarding, snorkeling, and kayaking as often as I wanted.  On our last night in Bora Bora, we sat on our deck over the water, listening to the waves crash out beyond the lagoon and watching a HUGE full moon rise over a motu off in the distance – pics to follow.  Lisa and I kept looking at each other saying – can you believe this is happening?  This is so amazing! ;)  Yep.  We seriously couldn’t believe it.

LISA – Wow my favorite thing about FP…that is hard because there are so many.  To travel with Suzanne was so much fun.  She knows a lot about random things and is a really bad card player so I always won J she is adventurous and really appreciates the beauty around you and can make you appreciate and get excited about looking at something as simple as a rock.  Excluding the beauty the first thing that comes to mind  our Jet skiing experience which you will read about later so I won’t bore you with the story and then the second thing is Bora Bora, I didn’t really want to go there at first because everyone goes there, but Bora Bora ended up being my  second favorite island.  We stayed in an over the water bungalow and seriously Suz and I were giddy, after the manager left from the personal tour he gave us of the bungalow and the resort and we got done acting like “oh yeah we stay at these types of places all the time” we started screaming like little girls (quietly of course because we didn’t want him to hear).  We saw the most amazing full moon rise over a motu from our deck along with having an amazing time paddle boarding, snorkeling and kayaking.  Sometimes it was hard to believe that we were “those people” you would see on tv, magazines, or postcards playing in such a beautiful place.

So, we won’t be able to get everything together today, but throughout the next few days, you will find new pics accompanied by some fun stories of our adventures in Tahiti and her islands.

BORA BORA

Yes, my friends, we are aware that we are very behind in our blog, but would you want to be sitting looking at a computer when you are in French Polynesia?!  :)

Just wanted to write a quick note to tell you that we will not be updating the blog for a while - we have very limited internet access throughout the remainder of our time in Bora Bora/Maupiti.  Check back beginning of December where we will post pics as well as all the journal entries we are writing before we go to bed!

And for any who are wondering - Bora Bora IS EVERYTHING you ever imagined... and maybe more.  It is absolutely breathtaking.

Suz and Lisa

Getting to a coconut 101

November 9, 2012

We love to wake up early here – except for this – when we turn out the lights to fall asleep, the geckos on our screens want to start talking – it kinda sounds like a frog/bird noise.  Then, if that isn’t enough to keep us from falling asleep, the neighbor dog – yappy kine – decides he wants to bark – constantly at the wind.  If that doesn’t keep us up – the chickens who obviously don’t know that they are supposed to WAKE us up – which they do anyway – decide to cackle cackle.  Once we get used to all that, and finally fall asleep – a torrential downpour flows onto our metal roof to awaken us… but if we don’t have that – it is so bloody hot that the sweat dripping down our faces disturbs our slumber.  As we fall back asleep, it is just in time for the roosters to wish us a good morning, which invites the entire rest of the island birds to call out the same lovely morning greeting.  I don’t feel bad anymore about taking a nap!! Anyways.. I am on vacation!  I can take a nap, right? J

When we got up today, we had some breakfast and then headed to the ocean with computer, guide books and a few other matters of business.  We were stopped by Rande, who asked if we wanted to shuck a coconut and make coconut milk.  Obviously, we said of course we would!  He taught us the step by step, including how to pick them off the tree, which ones to pick, which ones are best to drink the water from, which ones are best for milk and which are best for the soft meat as opposed to the hard meat that you press into coconut milk.  WE CAN SURVIVE on a deserted island with coconuts.  J  Below is the step by step portraits of our lessons.

This is Lisa first getting the stuff off the coconut

This is Randy helping her pull the stuff away from the coconut!  It was pretty funny

We skipped a step - the cracking of the coconut to get it in 2 halves.  You just hit it with the machete.  But this is her scraping the meat out of the coconut.

This is Lisa getting so excited to see the milk come from the shreds!!  Yeay.

This is a close up - I am squeezing the shreds through a cheesecloth.  I did all the steps that Lisa did - I just hogged the camera! :)

Yesterday, Natalie – Lisa caught her name today – was telling us that she feeds her Nemo everyday and that we need to go check it out.  I told her yesterday that I would do it with her today.  She pointed to an area on the reef where there is an anemone.  She’s been feeding this area (bread) for 6 years.  So we ventured out with her today.  I had already been snorkeling a bit, but walked out there with her and her husband.  Lisa was tentative as she gets sea sick and is just not used to snorkeling, but she did GREAT!  Natalie stuck the bread in the coral above the anemone and TONS of fish came to feast – like hundreds of different colors, sizes, shapes - SO SO beautiful.  We do not have an underwater camera, unfortunately, to share a picture of the beauty we go to see, but it was so fun!  DJ actually held his hand out and some of the fish came and bumped into it – searching for bread, I’m assuming.  It was pretty neat.

I was pretty excited that Lisa got out there.  I have been asked continuously to be patient with her while she becomes more comfortable.  Of course, I am.  Its just that I want to go see the fish and other sea life cuz its so so cool and want her to see it too – so today was awesome for her.  She got a taste of it and I helped her be more comfortable so I think we will have more excursions swimming with the tropical fish of Tahiti.  I have really enjoyed our little lagoon. 

J  We went into town this evening by bike.  It was much less crowded than when the canoe race was happening – by the way, EDT won the race – Shell has one for the last 7 years, but they implemented drug testing of the winning team this year and all of the sudden, Shell didn’t win!! Interesting, huh?  Anyway, the supermarket has these baguettes that are about as long as a yardstick and about 6 inches round for $0.53.  Lisa loves them so much.  I mean I like them, but Lisa thinks they are the best thing since peanut butter.  Its fun to tease her about her baguettes!  When we get a continental breakfast around here, it consists of an 8 inch baguette, a chocolate croissant and a mini box of American cereal.  It is quite interesting, but the European influence is clear here in French Polynesia.

Another beautiful sunset tonight.

Rande - our host - was getting ready for the big waves coming soon.. when they hit the north shore of hawaii, he said that 4 days later, they hit huahine.  He would paddle for about 20 minutes, do 3 laps around his property, 5-10 pullups and do it twice a day.  He is like 60.