Weekend Reprise II

This weekend I got to participate in the "reef" aspects of the "Ridge to Reef" program. Much thanks and love goes out to my sister Wendy, her boyfriend Mark, and her awesome roommate Pam who took me out with the St. Croix Dive Association. It was a treat to get to head out early morning, catch some incredible wrecks in Butler Bay (down to almost 110 feet!), BBQ on the beach incluing lobsters we just caught, then a long, shallow dive under the Frederiksted Pier. Wow. This is the life.

We saw turtles galore, two sting rays, parrot fish, scorpion fish, sea horses, moray eels, a HUGE barracuda, and plenty of other things that I can't identify. I realized that I need a good hand signal for "cool" or "awesome" or "I don't know what the hell that is but I think it's really neat." I need to work on that. It was really refreshing to get down and explore some of what this island has to offer in terms of marine habitat.

Sunday, the blessings continued as Ryan's parents invited us over for a superbowl sleepover. It is such a beautiful thing to get to know the families of people you care about, they teach you so much about how they came to be who they are. Also, having even more of a support network/family here is such a great comfort.

My mom got her tickets to come down for Bush Skills at the farm! We are going to have such a fun time. A lot of what I'm doing here is farm-centric activities, but being here is not all work and no play. We have a lot of fun on and off the grounds. It's been wonderful getting to know this group of people I would have not had the opportunity to meet otherwise. I do not take for granted how lucky I am.