Sandals Day Three

Today started with a very filling and satisfying breakfast at Eleanor’s. Eleanor’s is the fancy Caribbean restaurant here. We recognized on our walk over there this morning that it is a very warm day in Jamaica! The local weather station was saying it was going to hit close to 90 today and being the Oregonians we are at this time of year – it is a little warmer then our liking. We tried to decide if we wanted to be adventurous for our breakfast and try a Jamaican dish or play it safe with something familiar. I have to admit that I do not know all about proper meal etiquette but I am learning from these people. They push your chair in for you and place your napkin on you lap. They pour from your right side, place plates from the left. Peter is trying to teach me which forks to use and it seems pretty easy after he explained it. Breakfast was amazing today – we are definitely getting fed very well – I don’t think we have ever eaten this good in our lives.

Every meal we have had so far they have brought out a sampler bowl with several different types of breads in it. This morning we tried fresh croissants and a cinnamon roll with jelly in it. I ordered a fresh fruit tray with lots of yummy pineapple and watermelon! We both decided to be adventurous for breakfast – knowing we could always get more food someplace else if it was awful. It was most definitely not awful. This was the first time here that I have seen food put a big smile on Peter’s face! He ordered Custard Stuffed French Toast and I imagine that he will be ordering that again. I ordered Caribbean Toast. It was a very large, soft piece of toast with a banana and chocolate sauce on top that they caramelized. It was very interesting, but definitely not bad.

It has been such a warm day today that we decided not to lounge on the beach but instead to hit the swimming pool. There was an interesting little game of volleyball going on in the pool and it was very entertaining to watch while relaxing in the pool. The pool was definitely the right decision for the weather today. Everyday at 11:00 the watersport guys organize a game of volleyball in the French Pool. It was an intermixed group with men and women and the men were way to competitive. They would argue about if the ball was in bounds or out and complain about the other team cheating and such – not necessarily a friendly game of volleyball. We didn’t want to spend to much time in the sun with how hot it was today so we headed back to the room to change for some lunch.

We decided to try Bayside’s Buffet for lunch today. There were many things to choose from but we were not all that impressed with their lunch menu. We did not, however, leave hungry. Even with how full we were we still had to head over to the Café and get some dessert. I had an ice cream cone while they were serving Meringue’s again much to Peter’s delight! We sat outside and I tried to beat my ice cream from melting in the heat and watched the watersport people try to teach a group of men how to dance Jamaican style I can tell you that today we should have skipped dessert. We were both very full and could hardly move after our visit to the café. So instead of going straight back to the room, we stopped at the Sale’s office and booked our private beach dinner. We picked our location – Peter found a spot on the beach that he thought would be perfect and we picked our date and time – Monday at 6:30 – hopefully right at sunset! Then we picked our menu, not the ideal thing to do after stuffing ourselves, but we were able to pick our four course dinner.

There is only one thing to do after stuffing your face to the point you cannot move – take a nap! The challenge of this activity was the fact that where we ate and scheduled our dinner was on the complete opposite side of the resort as our room. Our room is pretty much as far away from everything as any room could get, not that it has been a complaint up until now. Peter laughed at me the whole way back as I was miserable and complaining about my gluttony. So we came back to the room and slept – which is quickly becoming a daily habit for us! We woke up around three and since we still had several hours before dinner time we went for a walk on the beach. It didn’t rain today, but the clouds did roll in this afternoon which made walking on the beach very comfortable.

We eventually headed back to our room and headed out for dinner. We discovered tonight that if you don't want to wait at a restaurant then you need to go right when the restaurants open at 6. We wanted to eat at the steak restaurant that had an 1 1/2 wait yesterday so we left for the restaurant around 5:30. We did not have to wait for a table and we literally got the white glove treatment at this place. This place put our new found dinner etiquette to the test. In between courses they bring you a lemon sorbet to clean your pallet. We both had filet mignon and twice baked sweet potatoes for dinner - very yummy. I suggested at dinner that we walk down the beach and watch the sunset so after we ate we headed down to the beach. As we were walking down the beach, about 40 feet out into the ocean we saw a school of fish jumping through the water - it was such an amazing and cool thing to watch! We found ourselves a hammock in the sand and watched all the bright colors fade across the sky- it was very beautiful and romantic, but the second the sun was gone we were attacked by lots of bugs which killed the mood :) We came back to the room and changed out of our nice clothes and went back down to the piazza for some table tennis time and dessert. Now we are unwinding from another amazing day!!!

Today's Pictures for your viewing pleasure:

These two pictures really do need an explanation. Since the minute we arrived at Sandal's these two men have been working on this shuffle board court. We find it very humerous that after three days they are not even half done with this board. The Jamaican's definitely have a slower, more relaxed, no worry attitude about everything - even work! The picture below is of them relaxing and taking a nice..... long................ break!

These pictures are from our sunset walk on the beach:

Jamaica day Two

Today has been a very calm and relaxing day. Just the type of day you would imagine having as a tourist in Jamaica. We slept in a bit later due to pure exhaustion from the last two days. After forcing ourselves to get up and out of bed we headed out for breakfast. There are three places here open for breakfast The Pastry Shop, a sit-down restaurant, and a buffet. We decided to try out the buffet this morning. This buffet seemed to have anything and everything a person could possibly want for breakfast. They had meats and cheeses, bagels, fresh tropical fruit, and cereals in kind of a continental breakfast section. They had a waffle area with like 15 different topping options (I did strawberries and powdered sugar) There were several different types of pancakes (Peter tried pancakes with chopped up bacon in it). They had your typical breakfast meats and potatoes. They also had several different types of eggs. Hard boiled, poached, scrambled, and they had an omelet station where they were making seafood omelets. We definitely did not go hungry.

After breakfast we did a little bit of exploring. We are trying to figure out what location we would like to book our romantic beach dinner at – no such luck yet, but hopefully we will be able to pick soon. We have several options such as, in our room (not interested in that one though) or in a gazebo or even on a dock. Otherwise, there are several different beach locations for us to choose from.

We also checked out the spa. The treatments are very expensive and so we are still debating whether or not to splurge now or maybe relax with one when we get home and only pay 1/3 of the price.


After our little exploration, we went back to our room and changed and got ready for some beach time. We found ourselves some chairs in the sun and relaxed for awhile. The water is amazingly calm – much more like a lake then an ocean. The water is so blue and it is amazing how far people can wade out and only be waist deep in the water. The sand is so white and so much softer then anything in Oregon. We relaxed in our chairs and slept for awhile. It was mostly overcast while we were out there and that kept the temperature comfortable. The sun eventually came out and it got just plain HOT. We decided to come back up to the room and take a nap. I woke up a little bit later and Peter told me to go back to sleep because it was pouring out. As is usual in a tropical destination, it rains in the early afternoon for an hour or two.

I finally got out of bed and the weather was very comfortable once again. It has been overcast most of the day, but that really doesn’t affect the temperature too much. Whether it is midnight or two in the afternoon, if it is pouring or the sun is shining the temperature is pretty much 85 degrees.

We went and had some lunch at a restaurant called Arizona’s. It is a tex-mex restaurant. We had chips and salsa, and pulled pork sandwiches. It was very good. The birds were highly entertaining at this place. It was an open air restaurant and the birds would fly up on unattended plates and grab meats and bones off of people’s plates and fly off with them. It definitely reminded me of white vultures. We had to satisfy our sweet tooth so we headed over to the café and had some yummy desserts.

We were so stuffed after lunch we went back to our room and vegetated for awhile. We considered playing tennis, but relaxing won out for today. We were going to a formal dinner tonight so we had to shower and get dressed up anyway. We were going to go to a steak restaurant for dinner but the wait was 1 1/2 so we decided to try a different restaurant. I had Chicken Cordon Blue and Peter had a steak - we both really enjoyed our dinners. After dinner we went and played table tennis for awhile before watching Jamaica's Elvis.

Some Pictures to make everyone jealous ;)

The View from our beach chairs
Overlooking the resort:
Peter had a blueberry cheesecake for his lunch dessert.

This was my lunch Dessert - Not sure what it is

The front office:

Waiting for Elvis:

We went and watched Jamaican Elvis perform tonight. He does sound a lot like Elvis and he was somewhat entertaining.

There may be a slight miscommunication or our travel agent is being sneaky but when we came back from Elvis our room had been transformed. Our bed was turned down and a note telling us congratulations on our honeymoon. They gave us certificates for breakfast in bed sometime this week. This place is crazy. They clean the room three different times a day. We left at 7:30 tonight and came back to clean towels and our bed looking like this:

This is my dessert plate I brought back from Cafe De Paris. It has blueberry Cheesecake, Apple Strudel and Chocolate Chocolate Cake. Yummy!!! It doesn't get any better then this :)

I hope everyone has as great of a weekend as we are bound to continue having!!!

Arriving in Jamaica!!!

We are in Sandal's Whitehouse - after a long day of travel we have arrived in paradise!



We left town late last night for an 11 PM flight to Atlanta. We were not thrilled to have to fly red eye, but it was the most convenient thing to do. The flight to Atlanta was pretty uneventful, I spent most of my time trying to get comfortable and was able to spend a couple of hours sleeping. Peter spent most of the night watching television shows and playing a trivia game with others from the plane. (You can play against others on the flight using the screen on the back of the seats). He did dose off a little bit by the end of the flight. We were in the very back of the plane and almost everyone on board was trying to sleep, but the flight attendants stood in the back and talked all night. It was a little bit irritating.

We arrived in Atlanta at 5:30 AM 2:30 AM West Coast time and had to travel clear across Atlanta's airport to the international wing. That killed sometime. Then we got some food and I found a place on the floor to curl up and catch some z's!!! I slept for about a half hour bringing my grand total of sleep to about 3 1/2 hours.

Our flight to Jamaica left Atlanta at 9:30 in the morning and seemed to go pretty quickly. By the time we got our refreshments and filled out our immigration forms we began to descend on the little Island of Jamaica. There were several planes all landing at the one time in Jamaica and that really backed up immigrations and customs. We finally made our way through the hot and humid airport and turned a corner to the Sandal's lounge of the airport. At that time all the stress and worry was gone - they would take care of from here on out. We seated ourselves in the very nice lounge and waited for the car to Whitehouse. We finally started on our journey to Whitehouse. Our driver was highly entertaining and one of the first things he told us was that we could ask him any questions we liked and that he was not a policeman so nothing was to bad to ask for. (I am pretty sure he was referring to weed at this point in time). He was telling us how he had been sitting at the airport since 2:30 in the morning waiting to transport people to their resorts and that you usually do about one transfer a day and that is all. He thanked us for coming to Jamaica because tourists are where Jamaicans make all of their money. He was very informative about the resort and was preparing us for the way Jamaicans drive and also how bumpy and terrible the roads were going to be. He explained how if he went around the island which would be the most comfortable way to the resort - the ride would take over three hours, but if they go up and over the mountains it only takes half that time. So off for the mountains we headed:

We definitely recognized that we were in a third world country. Most of the homes were in terrible condition and even the very nice home's wouldn't be suitable for us Americans. The roads were very bumpy and tight spaces and they would pass like 5 cars at one time and honk and fly by each other on tight corners - it was the scariest driving experience ever, but the driver assured us that he would not kill us! He kept saying "don't worry man, be happy" The drive was almost like a roller coaster combined with the bumpiness of the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland.

The driver explained to us how the school children go to school on different shifts and that was why kids were already out so early in the day. The schools are full and that is the only way they can get all the children through school. All the children wear uniforms and he explained how it is a real sense of pride for them.

This is a huge church in the mountains of Jamaica. Our driver explained how the only thing that outnumbers churches are bars and I wish I could have gotten a good picture of the bars along the road. About every 5 minutes on the drive you would pass a little plywood shack on the side of the road that was a bar. He said the only religion in Jamaica is Christianity.

The views from up in the mountains were amazing and while the roads were terrible it was a view that most do not get to see.

This was a picture taken in Montego Bay right after leaving the airport. Montego Bay seems to be the big tourist part of Jamaica and was bumper to bumper and honking horns and people standing in the middle of the road trying to sell things. It was chaos!!

We finally after an exhausting journey pulled up onto the campus of Sandal's Whitehouse - we made it!!! We were immediately greeted with cold wash clothes to wipe our faces and hands and a glass of champagne (yucky). Check in was a long and drawn out process, but hey mon, we are on Jamaica time now! We found out that our travel agent was able to get us an upgrade and we were sent on our way. They escort you to your room and make sure it is to your liking then follow with your luggage later on.

This is the view from our room! We took a short nap then went and had dinner - we tried authentic Jamaican beef patties - they were a little hot for our liking, but that was alright. We went to the pastry shop adn splurged way more then we should have. We walked on the nice warm, white sand beach and came back to our room to relax.

This is our room. I am now off to have a relaxing bubble bath and then get some much needed sleep!!! More to come tomorrow - I am sure!

Graduation!

The day finally came and here is the proof! Graduation was a day full of lots of excitement and emotions on the accomplishment of the last four years! Words cannot even express how thrilled and proud I am of my husband :)

The Proud Grandparents

The Happy Parents

The ecstatic Couple :)

One Grown Up College Graduate

Always to remain my nerdy accountant :)

It's all over!!!

The day we've been waiting for has finally arrived.....................

In 50 minutes Peter will have officially completed his college education!!!

The past couple of days have shown a resemblance to so many semesters before - the last few days when you have to cram to get it all done! It is done though :) Peter has been spending several nights this week cramming all of his final projects in - he only had two classes left for this week and both finished today and both had HUGE final projects due today. He wrote his last paper yesterday, did his last presentation this afternoon and is now taking his last test of his college life :) He has turned in his campus keys and now just has to wait to get his diploma (which strangely comes in the mail. You go through all the tradition and wearing the stupid gowns and stupid hats and all the pictures for them to hand you a blank case!?!?!?)

Anyway, tonight we had our own little celebration (between classes). Peter bought me beautiful orange roses and surprised me with them when I got home :) I made a nice steak dinner tonight and we enjoyed our first real conversation with each other in days. Seriously, finals are not good for a marriage and I think you should not have to take them after getting married - it is not good for your health.

I guess Peter's work is throwing him a party tomorrow to celebrate - I think that is very nice of them to do.

This chapter of our lives is finally closing. This chapter has been our entire relationship. Ever since we started dating and talking about marriage we have worried and planned for school. We have spent the first two years of marriage stressing about school and planning our lives around school and it is weird to be here at the end and realize that there is no school tomorrow, or next week, or next month! We don't have to stress about if we have enough money saved up to make it through another semester or base our weekend schedule around which meeting Peter has with which group from school. This is a very new feeling :)

So one chapter down and we are on to the next chapter. Want to know what the next chapter is about???? Here's a glimpse - paying down debt, and Peter transitioning into career man :)

1 week and Peter is a bachelor

Okay so he won't really be a bachelor. Things are finally getting interesting around here and there is no way that I am going to miss it - but he will have a bachelor degree in a week :) Things will be busy for the next few weeks, but very exciting for us. We are going to spend this weekend getting a lot of the stuff done around here we need to do for graduation and our trip.

Peter completed a very big project this past weekend in his business capstone class. He had to start a business this past year and this Tuesday night they did presentations for spouses and parents about how the business did and what they learned from it. Peter's group was the second to last group and we didn't get home until pretty late, but it was still very worth it and I am sure that class will be one of the big milestones of his college education.

This week he has one in class final, two papers and one presentation to complete! Come Wednesday evening at 8:00 PM he will be "almost" free from the education system. I don't really think we'll feel "free" until all of the money we owe is paid back - technically we are still in bondage to them until that point.

Stat tuned in the next couple of weeks for lots of updates on graduation and Jamaica!!! I don't know how much updating we will do in Jamaica, but there is only so much relaxing and eating and swimming we can do right?!?!

I'm Tired

It is great to be almost done with the week. I know that this is considered "hump day" for most people in the work force (including Peter) but for me this means that tomorrow is my Friday!!! I guess that is not entirely true, but it can be if I wish :) We have voluntary overtime on our day off and I try to go in for a few hours. I get to be lazy if I go in on my day off and I get to do some work on the computers - the only drawback is making myself get up early on Friday's when I know that I don't HAVE to get up!!!

Three more weeks until Jamaica - sorry, couldn't resist, I had to throw that one out there :)

We are still hashing out all of the details for graduation and the parties to follow. We are working with Champoeg Park to try to reserve a picnic site but I guess they don't take reservations until the end of May for picnics. We may just have to make a full day out of it then and get out there early to make sure we get the spot we want :)

We had a very nice weekend - Friday night we went to the Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift concert. We had a very good time there and then we turned around on Saturday and went to the beach for the night after Peter finished up his VITA program. The beach was stormy - just how Peter likes the beach to be. I guess crashing waves in the background as you are trying to sleep is not enough for him - he needs howling wind, pounding rain and crashing waves. Sunday the weather was somewhat better - cold, but not raining (what more can you ask for on the Oregon Coast ...right???) We went to the Outlet Mall where we usually do not find much of any interest to us - but I was fortunate this trip and was able to pick up the last of the things I wanted/needed for Jamiaca. I have rampaged through numerous stores and malls trying to find some nice clothes and I hadn't had any luck until the beach!!!

Now we just need to finish the week. I have been without my wedding ring this week - that is the norm when I go in for my six month inspections - I always have loose diamonds (who would have guessed that Upholstery work is bad for rings?!?!?!) I finally get to go pick it up tomorrow. That will allow me one last trip to the mall to see if there are any last things that I can't live without for Jamaica. We don't have any extravagant plans for the weekend yet - but we always seem to find ways to kill the time!!!