Family Comes to Visit

Yesterday my Mom, Dad, and niece, Zoe flew down for a visit. They will be here until next Thursday. The first and really only thing Zoe wanted to do when she arrived was go swimming. For me, and for most everyone else it was a little cold to go swimming. But that didn't stop Zoe! She was so excited to see green grass and palm trees! A big difference from snowy Minnesota!
We also stopped for dinner at Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant in South Miami for a nice dinner.
Today, the plan was to go to the beach. The weather started out somewhat warm but it didn't get any warmer. Just cooler and windier. We did spend a little time at the beach. Zoe of course wanted to swim and it was also her first time seeing the ocean. Alex was busy playing in the sand! After the beach Alex, Zoe, and I went to the Science Museum while my parents went to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. They really liked it, although unfortunately they forgot their camera so they didn't take any pictures.
The above picture is of Alex and Zoe playing outside at the Science Museum and the Below picture is of Alex at the Matheson Hammock Park in Coral Gables.

Tonight Keith works his second ER shift-- from 7pm to 7am. It sounds like Jason had a pretty good experience and did get to work with some English speaking patients. So hopefully Keith will have a good experience tonight too!

Roseau, Dominica

We spent the last two days in Roseau, the capital of Dominica. We don't have a car and didn't want to pay the 120EC for the taxi so we took the bus, which is only 9ec. Here is a pic of us waiting for the bus in Picard. We waited for about 40 min. for a bus, then it was about an hours drive. They don't have a specific bus schedule here like they do in the states, you just have to wait by the side of the road.

The bus driver was so nice, he dropped us off right at our hotel, which wasn't necessary, so we paid him 40ec instead of 18ec. We didn't have to, we just wanted to.

Our hotel room was fabulous. We stayed at Fort Young Hotel again, it's the best hotel on the island! We had a beautiful view of the ocean and we didn't want to leave! Which we didn't. We spent a lot of time at the hotel, which is what we wanted to do-relax! We have been to Roseau many times before so we weren't interested in sightseeing.

Here is the view of the sunset from our room the first night. The sky was so clear and beautiful!

The next morning, Tuesday, we watched the Carnival cruise ship stop in to Roseau.


As we watched the cruise ship I thought about the time we had taken a cruise ship to see some different islands in the Caribbean. But now the cruise ships come to us. The cruise ship was only on the island for about eight hours before it took off again. Eight hours is definitely not long enough to get to know this island. There is so much here to explore!

This is the view of our sunset the second night. I loved all the colors in the sky! If you want to view the pictures in a bigger format just click on the picture and you can really see the pics. I will also add more to facebook. Below is a link to our Roseau trip back in 2008. We did more then because we we're new to the island.

2008-11-09 Roseau Weekend

More Lobster

Keith and I went out to eat at a local Chinese restaurant called the Golden Dragon in Glanvillia. Someone told me their lobster was delicious so I decided to try their Lobster in xo sauce. I am not sure what xo sauce is but that is what I ordered. Here are a few pics. It was nice of them to leave the heads of the lobster on my plate for decoration. Alex really enjoyed that!

We have had a lot of rain this past weekend. A tropical wave just passed us and now we have another one coming today. I am supposed to hike Victoria Falls tomorrow and I hope that the weather isn't so bad that it is cancelled. I always check the national hurricane center website since it is hurricane season. The bad thing about all the rain is that our water turns brown. Luckily I went to get more water today!

Our House is Sold

I can finally say that our house is sold!  The closing will be on June 12th.   Although we can pre-sign the closing paperwork so Alex and I can go back to Dominica.  I will be talking to the title office, Rels, today to give them all the information they need to do the paperwork.

Keith arrived home this last Saturday around 7pm (he was supposed to arrive around 12:30, but he had two planes with mechanical issue so his flight was delayed).  On Sunday we took Alex to a children's play at the Stages Theatre called, The Paperbag Princess.  She really enjoyed it and it helped that we had borrowed the book from the library so she knew what was going on.  After the play she got to meet the dragon and even got the dragon's autograph.  Next Saturday Keith and Alex are going to go see Thomas the Train at the Target Center.  She will be so excited and loves Thomas!

Here are a few pics of Alex and Daddy:

Playing at the Park and Daddy comes home to visit

Bud Sole- Dec 30, 1917-Feb 10th, 2009

My Grandpa passed away this morning. He was 91 years old and led a very long and active life. He and my grandma met while they were in high school. After they were married he was drafted into the war and joined the navy. He was aboard the USS st. lo (formerly the USS midway) and his ship was hit by a kamikaze at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It's a great story and I wish I had more time to type it all down, but it's late and I'm tired. I was able to videotape an interview with him and my grandma about it a few years ago. I have been working on putting a couple of the clips on youtube. You can go to my youtube site at: www.youtube.com/hamroo14. Right now I have three videos on there. If they aren't all on there when you check it some of them might be processing.

Our House Still Isn't Sold or Rented!

I wish our house would sell, or at least, get rented!  We did have someone look at our house on Friday, and the only thing they complained about was our oven.  So I went down today and cleaned our glass top stove and got all the residue off so now it looks like new!  I talked to our real estate agent today and the woman is going to look at it again.  I hope she likes it enough to buy it or at least make an offer.

Yesterday, Sunday, I took Alex to the Minneapolis Museum of Art because they had a free day for children with lots of activities.  Well, it was so packed there and parking was hectic.  Alex was a little scared of the big crowd.  She did like coloring and looking at the paintings, but she didn't like the "Musical Instrument Petting Zoo".  It was so crowded.  I tried to get her to try out some of the percussion instruments but all she could tell me was that she wanted to get out of this place.   So needless to say, we didn't stay very long.   She fell asleep as soon as we hit the road.

Keith is enjoying his time in Dominica.  The weather there is really nice this time of year.  So I am anxious to go back!  Alex misses Daddy too!  He has been studying a lot and has his next exam in the beginning of February.  I am sure he will do a good job!

A Link To Old Pics

One of the things I wanted to do during my vacation was get some old pics online. Well, I started putting some online when I realized I probably already had them online. As many people know, we did have our own website: www.heatherandkeith.com. We decided not to continue it when we knew we were leaving the country because it costs money to keep it up and using google's blogspot is easy and free. Plus I can post a blog from any computer. Here is a link to the pictures I had up on our previous website:
http://littleshopofmemories.com/copper/

I will also put the link to the right side of the blog. I have gone through a few pictures and albums and deleted some. If there are any out there that anyone wants me to delete let me know and I will do that.  When you click on the link above you will see different categories of pictures.  One of them is called "Elena's Pictures"  For some of you who don't know, Elena was a German high school student who lived with us for one school year.  These are all the pictures from her camera and Alex and us are in many of them.  For example, we all went to Las Vegas for my sisters wedding and those pictures are under her name.  I will have to figure out how to switch those pictures to another group if I can.

Batibou Beach/Hampstead Bay

Today (tuesday), there was an outing to Batibou Beach, also known as Hampstead Bay. It's a white sand beach on the atlantic side of Dominica. It was so beautiful. Especially when you see it from above. Apparantly a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed at this location. I don't even remember the movie but now I would like to see it again. On our walk down we saw some bay leaves that we picked and as a snack we had a coconut. It is so amazing that we had this whole beach to ourselves. It is so beautiful and so nice that there aren't any big resorts lining the coast of this island. As we were winding down the day it started to rain then it poured! I guess it is inevitable. It rains here everyday! I can't wait until the rainy season ends in November. Here is a link to a website that shows the location of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie in Dominica:

http://www.dominica.dm/site/maps/pirates.cfm

When you move the curser over the blue dots it gives you information what scene in the movie is shot there.

I have found my new favorite website:
http://www.supercook.com/
At supercook.com you can type in the ingredients you have in your kitchen and it will find recipes that use the ingredients. So a few nights ago I made corn soup. Something that Alex now likes is warm tortillas with peanut butter and slices of bananas. She had two of those yesterday. This website is especially nice for living on this island as it is hard to find a lot of ingredients.

Keith has been studying a lot. He has his first exam on Monday. They call it a "mini" and it covers every subject.

Click below for some new pictures:

2008-09-30 Batibou Beach

Sint Eustatius

Keith had a phone interview today with a school in the caribbean. The island is called Sint Eustatius or Statia. It is a small island in the Netherland Antilles. It is real close to St Maarten and St Lucia. Keith says it went good and they told him he should know whether or not he is accepted within a couple weeks. His friend, Kristian, who was a Paramedic with Keith went to school here. Now he is an MD in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Here are some links about the island:
http://www.statiatourism.com/
http://www.statiapark.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint_Eustatius