Visitors!!!!!

We are very excited to post about the visit from Matt's Parents!!!! It was an awesome week and we were so thankful to have them out here.  We had so much fun and were so happy for the time we had with them.  We got to do quite a bit of fun stuff while they were here.  We took a sailboat up to a secluded island up the atoll, we swam with sharks and turtles, we got a little sunburned laying on the beach and played some golf!  It was a great time with them.  We celebrated Christmas together and visited Ebeye.  We truly could not have had a better time than we did and it was very sad to see them go.  The day after they left we were both pretty sad and down.  

This was our view for the first meal with ate with Mom and Dad.  We were able to yell at them as they walked off the plane and into the strong winds and that was fun.  We rented a golf cart and took them on a tour of the island.  This is the view from the deck at the golf course, where we took subway.  

Our tour led us to the highest point on the island, a man-made hill about 40 feet tall.  The view from up here gives you a look at the entire island.  A guy gave us a quick tour of the facility here and we snapped some pictures of the island and the ocean!

Dad loved it when we made him pose for pictures!  haha!  Here is mom and dad from the top of the hill looking west up the atoll and over the Pacific.  

We were able to take a sailboat up the atoll to Bigi.  Bigi is about the most picturesque place on Earth, I think, so it was very fun to sail up there and snorkel around.  Sailing was very fun as it is relaxing and enjoyable...unless you have to go under and fall asleep to avoid getting sick.  Guess that is where Matt inherited it from!  Once we got to bigi the motion sickness passed and we enjoyed a really fun time snorkeling and taking in the views.  We tried to take Mom and Dad out snorkeling the day before, but we took them to a place with really big waves and the snorkeling was very difficult.  Here we were in the leeward side of the island and it was very calm!  

We checked out a sunset one night and enjoyed the view as the sun set over the lagoon.  The sailboat we took up to Bigi is pictured on the right and we enjoyed the view this evening! 

There are lots of benches scattered around the island and we took a minute to enjoy the views!  Mom and Dad don't get a view like this everyday in Nebraska!  The waves were very, very big while they were out here since the winds were the strongest they have been.  The waves were in between 10 and 15 feet tall!  It was cool to watch them crash.

This spot is called Shark pit.  We came out here on the last day and were so lucky because as we were leaving Mindi spotted a dolphin jumping into the air and we were able to see 5 or 6 dolphins leap out of the water and spin around!  It was pretty awesome to be able to see this!

Here is Mom putting in for par at the golf course.  A couple of nice shots and a long put and she pared it!  golfing was fun, but as you can see from the flag the wind was blowing hard, which didn't help my slice much!  

Here we are by the green from the previous picture.  We thought this was a neat little spot and wanted to get a picture of the waves crashing.  

Mom and Dad gave us sunglasses for Christmas and here we are showing them off.  We were so glad to be able to open gifts with them and celebrate Christmas.  It definitely made everything very special and we were so thankful to have them here for this.  It was just awesome to celebrate with them!

Here is mom and dad on Emon beach.  This is where we did a lot of snorkeling and "beach lounging"  we ate lunch here a couple of times and really enjoyed the water and the beach.

Here is a picture of Dad out snorkeling above the reef.  We had some fun out there snorkeling.  The first time we went, I swam up from behind and pinched his foot and watched him jump thinking it was a shark or eel biting him!  haha i still laugh thinking about that!  

Here is mom out in the water counting all of the different colored fish she could find!  She even saw an octopus, a turtle, and a big shark!!!! it was pretty fun out there in the water and we spend some good time out enjoying it!

All in all it was such a great time with Mom and Dad that it is hard to convey on a blog.  We were so thankful they came out and that we just got to spend time with them.  There is so much more i could talk about, including the time we spent on Ebeye and the great times we had together, but hopefully this gives everyone a little picture into the week we had.  We are so thankful for the families we have and couldn't feel more blessed.  

We are flying up to Roi-Namure for a few days, so we will be gone for a bit, but will post another blog soon about The Christmas Dancers on Ebeye and going to Roi.  Hope everyone is doing great and had a wonderful Christmas back home! 

Welcome to Our Home!

We thought that some of our family and friends might want to see what we call our home! We are still in need of making it more homey, but we will continue to add as the year goes on. Our hope would be that all of you could come see it with your own eyes, but since that might not be possible we will utilize this blog :)

This is what you see when you walk into our bedroom. We just got new furniture from the warehouse...Lets just say it is a huge improvement from the light bamboo furniture and army bedding that we had when we first got here. We love the dark wood and it actually reminds us of what our bedroom looked like back in Nebraska!!!

This is from the other corner of our bedroom. Just to give you an idea of where the bathroom, closets, and kitchenette are located. 

Since we were not able to get a house on island we have two BQ rooms. So this is our second room that we have made into our living room, dinning room, and kitchen. 

These are the two love-seats that furniture warehouse provided. You can see the bamboo that I was talking about, but what you don't see is the hideous palm printed fabric! I decided to cover the love-seats with brown sheets which I feel like has worked out pretty well.  Also, note our nice dinning room table (haha card table) in the back....it is actually really nice to have a place to sit down and have dinner or even have a few people over. Hosting is not what it use to be which really makes Mindi sad sometimes. But she cheers up when she opens the blinds and sees palm trees and the ocean. 

Here is our KITCHEN!!! Yes, it is very small but we make do. Mindi actually has to use the floor as counter space sometimes :) The doors led to two walk in closets, which has made it very easy to store everything that we brought out with us. 

 We just put up our tree and other Christmas decorations. It is really nice to have the lit tree...all that we are missing now is the snow!

Winter is here!

Hello!  Hard to believe it is December already.  Wow how fast time goes.  It is strange how time feels out here since there aren't any seasons.  Back home it would be getting nice and cool right about now, which would let us know when it is.  Matt misses the colder weather sometimes...Mindi does too, she just won't admit it!  She misses it being cold outside, as long as she is nice and warm inside with a fire and hot chocolate!  However it just doesn't feel like December sometimes and we talked today about how that is a weird thing to get used to.

We had a great Thanksgiving break!  We watched football and ate all day on Thanksgiving, which is celebrated out here on Friday to correlate with Thanksgiving back home.  And we hosted a glow in the dark golf outing and dinner for a group we are a part of, which was fun!  We have been playing and coaching a lot of volleyball and Matt is finding that his joints don't warm up or cool down as fast as they did when he was in college!!!

Matt's parents will be here in barely over 2 weeks!!!!!!!  We get excited about that every time we think about it! We are just so pumped to share everything with them and enjoy some time with them!

We got a driver's licence for the island golf carts, so we rented a cart and took a little spin around the island.  We stopped at different places and took some pictures.  Here is us standing on the highest point on the island, which is on a man-made hill 40 feet high.  Driving the golf cart was the first driving we had done since we left the states, so it was fun.  Mindi told Matt that he isn't any more careful of a driver here than he was when we left!

Here is a panoramic shot from the top of the tallest hill.  Kind of hard to get much perspective, but it gives you some idea of the views!

We have entered the windy season!  the rainy season is over.  It still rains, though, but the rain showers last a short amount of time because the wind is blowing so hard it blows the storms through quickly.  Everyday the wind has been averaging 20-30 mph for the last 2 weeks or so.  It makes it feel cooler, which is nice, but it is awefully hard to bike into the wind!  We need sails on our bikes sometimes!

Here is a picture ocean side.  The picture above of the palm tree is pointing into the lagoon.  You can see how different the water looks.  It is pretty interesting in that where the waves are crashing (about 100 feet offshore) is the drop off.  Where the waves crash it is about 5 foot deep at high tide.  Go another 100 feet and it is literally 1000 feet deep.  The drop off is pretty steep down to the depths!  You can see the different colors before and after the waves showing the drop off.