If You Can't Beat 'em, Eat 'em

We've been having maaaajor ant problems. I whine about it endlessly when I send out family e-mails to all the extended family each week, but I don't remember if I've ever discussed it here. Probably? Anyway, yes, ants are a problem. I've been through all the stages of, well, something when it comes to ants. The first time I noticed a line of them trailing into the house, I went through the stage of denial. I knew they were there, but hey, they'd probably go away on their own so whatever. A few incidents later, they completely invaded every nook and cranny in our bedroom and I went through the stage of uncontrollable anger. That stage only lasted for about half an hour before a collapsed into the "despair" stage where I just cried and waited for Jared to come home and fix it.

Now I'm in the stage of acceptance. Clearly. Tonight when I was making cookies, I went to add half a cup of sugar, and I realized that our only bag of sugar had ants swimming in it. Normally when this happens, I admit my defeat and just throw out whatever food item has been compromised, but a lot of the ingredients were already in the bowl and I reeeeally wanted to make cookies before Jared could find and finish eating all the chocolate chips. So . . . judge me for being a disgusting person, but I poured the sugar out extremely slowly in a fine line into the measuring cup, and every time an ant appeared I just plucked it out and threw it into the trash. And I'll be darned if those cookies didn't somehow taste better than any other batch of chocolate chip cookies I've ever made.**

And without further adieu, here are a bunch of pictures from our around-the-island road trip that have nothing to do with ants (are you really surprised?)

^^Mt. Carmel Falls (and my cooool DI shorts). Downstream from this waterfall is a really huge natural rock water slide. We're going to return one day in swimming suits to try it out.

 ^^We're on a runway! Have any of you ever driven on a runway? I think not. This is at the old, abandoned airport.

 ^^We drove through probably a dozen towns on our trip. They were all full of tiny houses and rough roads, but man, the old churches in them were super cool.

 ^^Hey look, the Atlantic Ocean! This is Levera Beach, where the leatherback sea turtles come to lay eggs from April until June.

^^And this last blurry picture is from a catamaran trip this afternoon with all our friends to do some jolly good snorkeling and check out the underwater sculpture park. It was a good day, and I have a good tan line.


**Dear in-laws, I promise nothing like this will happen when you come visit next week. If there are ants in the oatmeal, I solemnly swear that I will throw it out instead of serving it to you for breakfast.