SPLURGE!

and by splurge I mean.... buying extra groceries :)

today Lee and I went to the grocery and he acted just like my Dad!! he said "its Christmas! get it!"
haha... I think I've told him how much fun we have at the grocery with my Dad enough times that he thinks its a great tradition to carry on :)
unfortunately we live in Grenada and our splurging capabilities are limited.

so we bought:
a 2l of pop, which we haven't bought in months. iga brand of mountain dew of course
chocolate chips for cookies (they're expensive...)
M&Ms to put in cookies
tons and tons of flour for baking
tons of butter (lots of baking going on around here)
parchment paper (b/c the gas oven is not my friend)
the jumbo log of cream cheese
2 packages of chicken and 2 pkgs of beef (!! lol)
2 different kinds of pitas for spinach dip for a party tomorrow night!
and whole gallon of milk!

not much of a splurge, huh?
I need to take better advantage of the "it's Christmas!" thing

we did get a smoothie on the way home though
banana peanut butter
deliciousness in a cup
it's more like a milk shake and less like a smoothie
the best smoothie by far is still watermelon or cantaloupe. 

and when we got home I baked two loaves of pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!!
the sugar cookie dough is made and in the fridge to roll out tomorrow!  I'm so excited to spend tomorrow night decorating cookies!  hopefully my homemade icing turns out :/
still on the docket are chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, and oatmeal cookies. 
and whatever else I think of.

Happy Halloween!!

For the past few years I have had a party to go to on Halloween, either at home at Ellen and Aaron's or the Beaux Arts Ball at MVNU... this year however. no party. unless you count the kids fall fest or the party at the local bar, neither of which excited me.
so I had my own!

mind you I live in a less than 400sq ft apartment. so I could only invite like 5 people.  just enough chairs for everyone. lol

I wanted a party to dress up and decorate and eat!!
so that is what we did :)

welcome to my party!
I'm a watermelon smoothie. duh 

 Lee is thinking Arby's 

Decorations!!

the pop bottles are my favorite! & I came up with it all on my own, no google or blog inspiration. haha
just a little electrical tape, nail polish, and twine. and wa-la!

The food!!

scary pizza.

bones and blood.... aaahhhh

witches brew. with a frozen hand.


I will update on my other blog soon about all the "how to"

Halloween is so fun! 
now onto CHRISTMAS!!!!

Lee4.0

Guess who's husband got a 4.0 his first term of medical school?! MINE!!! :)
I'm soooo proud of him!!!
This was his goal this whole semester, from day 1 he said I'm going to get a 4.0 and he did!
& for those of you thinking... "Oh it's Lee I'm not surprised" 
well be surprised! this was so much hard work... he never really had to work for good grades before, but he seriously worked his butt off for this one, only like 10% of his class got all As!
This is really important if he wants to go back to Canada for residency, they look at your grades more so than the board exams...

in other news, we're leaving the island tomorrow :(
I feel ready to go just because all our stuff is packed up (& moved into our new apartment!) but truthfully I'd never leave if I didn't have to.... I love all the nice conveniences of America, but I love walking outside at night & never thinking about being cold, I love the sunshine, seeing the ocean every single day.... oooooooh Grenada.
Lee is watching a basketball game right now & we just saw a commercial for Taco Bell's $2 meal deal, man o man I miss fast cheap food! A Wendy's crispy chicken sandwich is on the docket for tomorrow!!!

Lee and I have been spending every waking moment together the past few days & it has been wonderful, going to the beach, watching movies, taking walks, going to the pool, getting smoothies..... I'm so sad he's going to be working this summer.... his job controls his life. but we so desperately need the money, so I'll deal.  It is the first summer we're going to spend together after all so it won't be that bad!

here are some pictures from the last few days!

Term 1 Complete!

On Friday Lee took his last final of term 1.... hallelujah!!!
Medical school finals were about to be the end of us both... I've never witnessed such a crazy amount of studying & stress.  I can honestly say I've never really seen Lee too stressed out before... he just doesn't, but this past week was close.  I would have been a lot worse than him. 
and he has to do this 4 more times and then take the USMLE. ugh.
Tomorrow hopefully we'll find out all his final grades!

When he got home from his exam we took a nap because it was raining... and we had both been up since 6 & 6:30am.... and it continued to rain most of the day, which I've heard is really rare in Grenada, usually it rains for a bit & then is sunny again.  But we made it out to get smoothies, took a walk on the beach,  and came home and watched some movies, because we hadn't for months.... and I've got Lee hooked on Dexter too! even though I've already seen them all, I'm re-watching them with him.

usually we can see the ocean and the mountains from this window.... but not during this crazy rain storm!

yesterday it got nice out & we went to the beach for a little bit :)

Birthday in Grenada!

I haven't updated in quite a while... I have been really busy, I've started babysitting a few days a week for a family & there's Limes & pool day & my sweet husband & my friend Chris is having a baby (maybe today!!) & it was my birthday & I've been building a website (not for a purpose really... it's just so much fun & I love doing it so I made a website! someday soon I'll share it.... ) and then there is another obsession that recently entered my life......... Dexter. dun dun dunnnn
I can't say that I suggest the show to others -mainly for violence, nudity, and language reasons....... but other than that, it's amazing! A friend gave me the first 3 seasons to watch and I've been hooked.. every evening I can be found staring into my computer doing 1 of 3 things... covering my eyes because something scary is going on, rolling my eyes are dexter's stupid sister, or laughing b/c it's so clever.

so anyway.......... this past Tuesday I had the pleasure of celebrating my 23rd Birthday in paradise.
The day started out with a surprise on my computer, Lee left a note and a bracelet we had saw in the mall for me :)  We also had a funny moment the day before when I came home from the store with a bag of Sunchips (b/c we don't buy chips often b/c they're expensive) and 2 LLBs and I said "Look what I got us for my birthday!!" and Lee said...... "are you serious" and he goes to his closet and pulls out a bag of Sunchips and Mt Dew! hahaha he knows me so well! :) So we had lots of chips and pop!!
Lee had class & lab all day Tuesday so in the morning I went to Grand Anse Beach with Amber & Sarah (another Sarah.lol) and then we had lunch at the Owl with Michelle, Alfonso, Sonia, and Adriana.... and during lunch there was a 22 degree halo that formed around the sun!! it was incredible! Lunch was so fun and delicious and my friends here are so sweet.. they made me cards and brought a flower and bought me lunch :)

After lunch and a trip to the store I went to Adriana's because she baked me a cake!! It was the first cake she had ever made! It was so sweet of her because otherwise I would not have had cake at all!

Afterward I went home to get ready to spend time with Lee after his classes and I found another surprise on my computer!  When he came home for lunch he left a necklace I pointed out to him a few weeks before at the mall hanging on the corner of  my laptop :)

We went down to Spiceland Mall to get smoothies!!  Unfortunately I decided to try something new and ended up not liking it, Sour Sop -yuck and Lee got grapefruit... so we ended up switching.  We drank our smoothies in the field next to the mall where some local club teams were playing cricket.  I don't know anything about cricket, but it was fun to watch for a while.

We headed over to Grand Anse Beach, which is just across the street with plans to take a walk and watch the sunset... however, so after getting on the beach I realized my camera battery was dead and I really wanted to take pictures.... so we hopped on a bus and came home to get my spare battery and ended up watching the sunset from campus, which was beautiful!  Lee was so sweet even though I knew he was thoroughly frustrated with having to go home to get the battery... but it was my birthday!  We then got BACK on a bus to go to La Boulangerie for dinner.  Luckily it was a Tuesday so buses were running very frequently and we only traveled in about a 2 mile radius.

a flower Lee picked for me

It was very busy, but so fun and so memorable - and my first 'married' birthday! Hopefully Lee and I have many many many more birthdays together... but I only have 1 more in Grenada.

Smoothies!!

For Lent I gave up smoothies.... 

and somehow I made it the entire 40some days.
I didn't even drink them on Sundays
  (some people don't observe Lent on the sabbath)

So the day finally arrived and I got cantaloupe - my favorite!!
and since I've also had a banana peanut
I try to limit myself a little bit because they are full of sugar and cost $8-10EC
but I love them!

mmmmmm fresh fruity goodness

Other flavors include (but are not limited to)

Guava
Banana
Banana chocolate peanut
Watermelon
Pineapple
Fruit Punch - not a fan
Orange -tastes kinda lemonaid-ish
Sour Sop
Starfruit
Cucumber
Golden Apple

Tomorrow we're going to the smoothie place close to campus as a little outing with my friend Sarah before she leaves us.... :( she's leaving Sunday. for good.... I'll do a post about this soon.

I have a busy weekend planned... and I'm pretty excited!
Friday
- Liming (what the locals call relaxing) with Sarah, Amber, and Alfonso & getting smoothies in the morning/afternoon
- then having a bonfire on Magazine Beach.... roasting marshmallows and watching the sunset! & hopefully Lee will be coming too!!!
Saturday
- going to a late Easter Party at Mike & Kim's house for the kids from Queen Elizabeth's and Bel Air Home... 58 kids!
- going to the Indian Student Club's talent/fashion show & I heard last year was amazing! belly dancers & all
- then! going to the Unity Ball! the theme is James Bond... I'm going to hang out with Amber because her husband is on SGA and will have to work it and Lee isn't going because he doesn't enjoy dancing or being around a ton of people drinking.... but I however do enjoy dressing up and dancing and hanging out with Amber, probably taking 1000 pictures :)
Sunday
- church
-and maybe some time at the beach? I haven't been to the beach in almost 2 weeks! ah!

Visitors!!!!

Lee's parents came to visit us!!
They got here Friday night.... we've been so busy I haven't had a chance to blog....

Friday we went to meet them at their hotel around 8 & went to the grocery so they could get some things for breakfast and snack... and then went to find somewhere to eat dinner, but everything was closed! on a Friday night! I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that Lee and I had not been further than the movie theater after dark! ha! and that was only once! We just don't go places at night... he studies and I blog :)
So I didn't really know when places would close, but apparently early.
We ended up at a little restaurant and I introduced Lee's Dad to LLB (Lemon, Lime, and Bitters) it's a non-alcoholic soda.... it's soooo good, it's not bitter, it's sweet.  I had a hamburger and fries (surprised?) Lee and his dad had Club sandwiches, and his mom had pumpkin soup.

Saturday morning we went to their hotel, The Flamboyant, to meet them to take them downtown St. George's shopping and site seeing.  and to my surprise they gave me an early Birthday present.... an UNDERWATER digital camera! yesssssssssssssss :) They had seen on my facebook that I wanted one and bought me one!  How awesome is that!? and Lee had told them that I wanted a blender... so that is what he expected them to bring me for my b-day, but they brought BOTH! :) yippie!
I cannot wait till after Lent to make smoothies every single day!!!!!
and they brought us sliverware! yay! we had really cheap silverware & a knife had just broke & a couple forks were loose..... now we have 8 sets of each! I never knew I'd be so happy over silverware
It was like Christmas.... they also brought clippers to cut Lee's hair, zip lock baggies, peanut butter, Caesar salad dressing, sunscreen, stuff for the orphans and Limes kids.... :) :) :)

So we took a reggae bus downtown and walked around.... I'll post pictures to document the trip.  It was fun and hot..... and so afterward we went down to Grand Anse Beach & cooled of... we had a beach day with the Limes kids scheduled, so I rushed to go to that... and then we relaxed a little and came to campus so we could get them passes for the buses and show them around campus a bit so they would know where to go.  We watched the sunset out on the peninsula and ate dinner... it was a good day!

explaining the spices...

sad fish market... 

 spices, spices, spices 

smoooooothies!

up the hill to Fort George

Carenage

later in the evening we walked out on the peninsula at the end of campus to watch the sunset