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| On New Years Eve, we stayed in and played all kinds of games. Jared tried to win Mae's love by tickling her. It only worked for like 3 seconds. |
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| I, however, didn't need to do anything to win Mae's love. We're just soul sisters. (The cute little sheep dog lost her hair clip.) |
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| After some memorable games involving cash prizes, we ventured outside to light some fireworks. (In case you hadn't noticed, I left my nice camera in Grenada over the break for fear of being heavily taxed on it if I tried to bring it back. Hence the somewhat diminished photo quality in these Christmas Break posts.) |
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| Back inside, we snacked and snacked and snacked some more and gamed and gamed and gamed some more. When all was done we turned on Ant Man and then busted open some poppers at midnight. They had cute little whistles in them that we tried to play a song on. "Tried" being the key word. I'm really excited about 2016! It just feels like a good year to me, and it's the year that Jared takes the biggest test of his life and the year that we move back to the States. It's bound to be a good one. |
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| ^^Jared in his Christmas Eve pajamas. The boys got superhero fleece onesies and it was HILARIOUS. The best was when Jared zoomed around the house in his like he was an actual superhero/4-year-old. |
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| ^^Had to include this picture because Steven in his Batman onesie. Haha. |
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| ^^The girls all got adorable pink pjs with tiny reindeer on them, plus a matching eye-mask that was a lifesaver for me on our redeye flight back to Grenada. Also, isn't that just the cutest little baby stance going on there?? And please take note of all the trees outside of those windows. Washington is stunning.
Christmas was so fun this year. Jared's whole family was there, and it was especially fun to have our niece Mae around. Marie, Steven, and Mae moved from Arizona up to Washington while we were there, and they and their parents are thrilled to now be living within half an hour of each other. They had a little housewarming party in their new apartment, and Jared and I got sooo giddy about it! It wasn't an especially fancy apartment, but it had carpet and their nice comfy couch and a fireplace and a good kitchen and bathtubs and all of their own furniture and belongings in it. All things you wouldn't see in a Grenada apartment. And all things we'll likely have in our apartment when we move back to the States later this year! Don't get me wrong, I really love our Grenada apartment, but I'm excited to live somewhere that feels cozy again.
That was a big tangent. This post is supposed to be all things Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had a delicious dinner in the dining room and Roy and Imogene came over. Jingle the elf brought us each a present, and we played the bells. We had a little Christmas program with songs and scriptures, and then we opened and put on our Christmas pjs. We broke to play some intense games (including Christmas Bingo--something my family does as well) with prizes of candy, toys, and gift cards. Everyone was way into it, and we all got some sweet loot. As a side note, Jared and I were in charge of buying the Jingle gifts, and Jared got himself and all the boys this "digging for gold" kit. Basically it's a bag filled with dirt and some tiny gold flakes you can pan for. He got them on the off chance that he'd find a gold nugget in one of them. That's my little gambler. He did have fun panning for his gold that night though...in his Captain America onesie.
On Christmas morning, Jared's 11-year-old brother Will woke us up and we filed into the family room to a heap of presents (really, a heap--Jared was in charge of arranging them and he placed them all in front of and on top of the huge ottoman so it looked like a ridiculously massive pile. our future kids are going to be constantly entertained by that guy). We each looked through our stockings and opened our big "Santa gift." I got a queen-sized sleeping bag that I'm SO excited to use this summer, and Jared got some Bose noise-canceling headphones that he is thrilled about for studying. He pretty much only asked for school-related gifts, and he was genuinely thrilled when he opened each of them. He's on the perfect life path for himself. Med school may be a variety of crazy that I don't fully understand, but he truly does love it. We then opened the rest of our presents and spent the rest of the day playing. Jared got a mini drone that he is obsessed with, and much of the day was spent flying it around in the backyard. I was able to Skype my parents when they received a phone call from my brother Peter, who's serving an LDS mission in California. We couldn't have dreamed up a better Christmas.
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| ^^This is how we travel to and from Grenada. We have a tiny little airport over here, and there's only ever one flight coming or going at a time, so we get to walk onto the tarmac and use stairs to board our flights. It's actually really magical. |
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| ^^Jared helping to put up lights for Roy and Imogene, our adopted Washington Grandparents (they're a cute couple who live in Jared's family's ward) |
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| ^^For Jared's birthday I arranged a Segway tour of the cute town of Edmonds, WA. We were the only two on the tour, and we were guided by this hipster high school student named Chaz who was like, "Uh, here's am abstract statue that a town in Japan traded us for a bunch of smoked salmon. We haven't heard from them since...." Best tour ever. It was actually really hard to get the hang of riding the Segways for the firs ten minutes, but after that it was so much freezing cold fun! We rode up and down a little section of Puget Sound coastline. After the tour, our guide let us zoom around an empty parking lot until we couldn't feel our fingers anymore. We felt like mall cops. |
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| ^^On our way home from our Segway tour we stopped at the nearest grocery store...and it was an IGA. IGA is the little grocery store we go to on our island. We're so glad we have it, but it's never fully stocked, the prices give me ulcers, and there's alway plenty of rotten produce to be found there. So I almost started crying when an IGA was the first grocery store we visited in the States. Except this one was really fancy and fully stocked with lots of quality American foods. |
(I'd like to apologize for the ugliness that is Blogger in this post. Any long-time Blogger user out there can attest to the site's occasional formatting difficulties. I'm hoping it's just a fluke, because I have lots more posts to publish this weekend.)
We spent Christmas in Washington with Jared's family this year. And by "Christmas" I mean Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years festivities, the 16 days leading up to Christmas, and the 13 days following Christmas. We essentially showed up on their doorstep begging, "Feed and clothe and entertain us for the next month?" And they happily obliged. Being med-school nomads isn't so bad when you have Lamberts and Haineses taking you in.
More posts to come soon with more details about our break. But not too many details. Those are recorded in journals. Sometimes I don't know how to balance the information I put into blog posts, my personal journal entries, and the weekly family newsletter I email out to family members and close friends. Do I repeat the same info and stories in all of them, or no? Still working on that balance, but for the sake of playing catch up I think these next few posts will be picture heavy and story light.
So...I've already posted this picture before. And we didn't actually send cards out. And Jared's head is fading away. But I think it'll be fun to look back on a Christmas card photo for each year of our marriage. This fulfills that purpose well enough for me.
Oh, and here's version 2, in case I decide I hate the first option when I finally print these out 20 years down the road:
We are looooving our Christmas break over here with Jared's family. Last night we hung ornaments on the tree, this morning Jared and I went for a gorgeous hour-long walk through a quiet preserve filled with hundreds of moss-covered trees, and tonight we'll all be decorating gingerbread houses together. Throw in our adorable 19-month-old niece, and we're in heaven.
These pictures are from the middle of Jared's most stressful finals week yet. We took a break one day to drive to Egmont (a really nice neighborhood in Grenada that's kind of a long drive from our house, but is fun to explore). We walked along the beach and ate peanut butter sandwiches and picked out the cutest conch shells from a giant pile of 'em. Those study breaks are life in med school. You can only do so much of this before your eyeballs fall out of their sockets and your brain 'splodes:
This year Jared's birthday was on Thanksgiving! It was a finals prep day, so Jared was able to stay home from school (and study all day). We did Jared's favorite little hike in the morning and ate his favorite breakfast, and in the evening 50 of our branch friends threw a big feast for him, complete with turkey, stuffing, pie, and the most out-of-this-world sweet potatoes I have ever tasted. I made him a truly hideous (but truly delicious) German chocolate cake, and everyone sang to him. What a lucky guy, that Jared! We then went home and he opened a nice little haul of presents and we Skyped our families.
My birthday gift to Jared was to not take any pictures of him all day (actually I just forgot, but he really does hate having his picture taken) (and actually my real gift to him was a Segway tour of a small town in Washington). But I did get a couple dark snaps from my spot on the couch at our big Thanksgiving dinner...after everyone had finished eating...and after half the people had left. At least it's something to remember the day by! We're so grateful for the wonderful support system we have in Grenada. For a family away from family, we're pretty happy about these people.
p.s. Blogger's really bugging with me with this whole only-option-is-center-alignment thing lately. No matter how I align my text in the draft, it always reverts to center alignment after I hit publish. Is anyone else having this problem, or have any ideas on how to fix it?
(Written yesterday, December 7)
Edited Papers
Did a happy dance when Jared returned from taking his last final
Watched an episode of "Fixer Upper"
Went on a man hunt (a sweet woman who lives around the corner form us was hit by a car and then kidnapped on Sunday...please pray for Linnea and her family)
Explored the island while hanging up missing person fliers
Drove down a sketchy, bouldery dirt road, on which we spotted the most adorable tiny puppies and baby lambs
Saw two stingrays and a blue octopus on our evening walk
Got pizza with good friends
Looked up at the stars in an infinite pool as giant bats swooped over the water
Felt bittersweet about having only five more months of this place
Did a happy dance when Jared returned from taking his last final
Watched an episode of "Fixer Upper"
Went on a man hunt (a sweet woman who lives around the corner form us was hit by a car and then kidnapped on Sunday...please pray for Linnea and her family)
Explored the island while hanging up missing person fliers
Drove down a sketchy, bouldery dirt road, on which we spotted the most adorable tiny puppies and baby lambs
Saw two stingrays and a blue octopus on our evening walk
Got pizza with good friends
Looked up at the stars in an infinite pool as giant bats swooped over the water
Felt bittersweet about having only five more months of this place
p.s. More posts to come...eventually. I have tons of pictures to put into posts, but haven't had the time. We're excited to be flying to Washington tomorrow. I promise to fill my down time there over the next few weeks with at least a post or two.
I mean, we're definitely not the least social people on the island, and we do enjoy talking to others, but you know. The only way I can think to describe it is that we're introverted, but not shy. As much as we enjoy the occasional social interaction, too much of it leaves us feeling a bit tired.
Something we've learned since being here is that we tend to make friends with similar couples: introverted, but not shy. When we have dinner with our loud friends, we appreciate that they're all funny and we don't have to talk much, but we always go home feeling slightly stressed out. When we have dinner with our introverted-but-not-shy friends, we find ourselves more at ease, talking and laughing about our shared love for developing our hobbies and experiencing wide open spaces. So maybe it's not that we're unsocial. Maybe we're just picky.
Just about every time I go to an activity here, someone will comment to me, "How are you? I haven't seen you in ages!" I smile and say something like, "Yup--been real busy with work lately! I've kind of had to lock myself away." And that's not untrue, but it would be more honest of me to say, "Yup--hung out with people twice in one day three weeks ago, so I just finished regenerating and now here I am." It's not that extreme--I try to get out with others at least once a week (which is a minor amount compared to what the other wives do)--but you get the picture.
Jared and I both enjoy going to the SO socials. There's always food and something fun to do (swimming, tubing in the ocean...). Most of our friends show up, and oftentimes we meet new couples and enjoy chatting with them. I love the casual vibe of being able to eat and catch up with friends, and then go home whenever we've had our fill of it all. Saturday was the end-of-term social at the University Club pool. The SO board splurged for us (because the midterm social was canceled due to all sorts of drama--it amazes me how quickly adults turn into middle schoolers when too many of them are together for too long with too much free time), so the food was really fantastic. I wasn't big on the tofu skewers, but the fish and chicken were to die for.
As much as I value my alone time, I'm really glad that there's such a great support system here of hundreds of ladies who are in exactly the life position I'm in and know exactly what I'm going through. That situation is incredibly unique and would make a fantastic reality tv show (Lives of Caribbean Med Students' Wives). And with that, I'm going to drag myself over to pool day. Jared's home all week studying for his upcoming finals, so I don't have to stay here with the cleaning lady this morning. Party time.
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