Visitors and Matt's Birthday

We were incredibly excited to have Sandy and Cal come out and visit during Spring break.  We had an awesome time with them and did so many fun things!  We took them all over the entire atoll, had them swimming with sharks, manta rays, an octopus and more, as well well as sailing the lagoon at sunset!  They got here Saturday, March 31st and were given a tour of the island that included our finest dining (Subway), some sunbathing, and snorkeling.  Here are some pictures from our week as well as a few from Matt's Birthday.

This picture was from shark pit overlooking the ocean.  This was taken on their last day here, so we were all sad to see them go. 

We reserved a boat and went up to Biji with our friends Mark and Tarah Yurovchak.  Here you can see everyone tied on to the boat floating in the lagoon.  This was Matt's first time driving the boat, but we made it there and back just fine.  We really enjoyed the blue water and the sun, as well as some snorkeling and relaxing!

The next day we went out in the evening on a sunset sailboat cruise.  The boat above passed us, we weren't on that one but it was similar to give you an idea of what we were riding on and what it looked like on the water.  The sunset cruise was new for us as well and we really had an amazing time.  We started out about 2 hours before sunset and got in about an hour after the stars came out.  Mindi had made dinner so we ate out under the stars on the boat.

Here is Mindi and Sandy on the sailboat right before we took off into the lagoon.

We also had the opportunity to fly up to Roi-Namur, even though we thought we might not be able to at one point.  We had an awesome time laying out and enjoying the sunshine.  We also really enjoyed the missile burgers, onion rings and pizza at the outrigger on Roi.  Here is Sandy and Cal posing on the scuba dock.

We went over to Ebeye one afternoon as well and here we are getting onto the ferry to take us over to Ebeye.  When we got there a couple of our students were waiting to meet us to give us a tour of the island.  This was really fun to have a tour from someone who lives there. 

Here is a picture of Ebeye right after we got off the dock and were walking onto the island.

Sandy and Cal got up real early most mornings because of the time change, and we got up with them one morning and went out and saw the sunrise.  Here is a picture of that sunrise.  

 For Matt's Birthday on Monday he wanted to go scuba diving, so here is a picture from out on the boat as we are about to go and do a dive on the Prinz Eugen sunken ship.  Mindi made Matt breakfast, gave him gifts and made it an awesome day!  It was an awesome birthday!  We had a great time diving with our friends and they surpised Matt with an ice cream cake right before we went out diving.

The picture above is from our dive on the Prinz Eugen.  We were down the side of it and Mindi pointed out what the view toward the surface was like!  A huge school of fish was swimming overhead at just the right time.

We also did a dive on Troy's Coral head, which is famous for having sharks on it!  This whitetip swam about 10-20 feet away from us and they told us later that it had a fish in its mouth, but we didn't see it!  Matt loves seeing sharks, so he was super excited about this dive.  Mindi doesn't get quite as excited about sharks, but she enjoyed the dive, too!

The top of Troy's Coral head is in about 15 feet of water and it is just covered in colorful fish!  Here are a few of them.  The coral head it out in the middle of the lagoon all by itself and definitely attracts a lot of neat fish to it.

Great birthday, Thanks hun.

Quick Update

Hello!  Here is a really quick update!  Matt speared a fish a bit ago and here is the proof!  He was very proud!

We also were able to stay up and watch one of the vehicles streaming in and Matt snapped this picture of it.  It looks like a giant shooter star! 

Some Scuba Diving Pictures

We were able to go out diving a few times last weekend and here ae some pictures and a video from those dives. 

Nemo fish above a bright pink anemone.  The clownfish are always one of the coolest things to see and anemone is also really neat.

Here is a different kind of clownfish living in some anemone.  Looks like Nemo to me, but if you put your finger to close he will bite it!  one of the divers with us pointed at it and it bit the end of his finger!

We dove down to a place called "the nursery".  This is where a bunch of fish lay their eggs and there are just tons of baby fish living on a small coral head.  The fish are so thick you can't see through them. 

Here is another picture from the nursery.  Mindi is in the background on the other side of the coral head and you can see how thick the fish are down around the coral.  The trigger fish in the top left corner was pretty neat to see swimming around.

This video is of a stonefish.  Several of them were pointed out to me, but i didn't even see them until the end because i just thought it was a rock.  These things just sit there at the bottom and wait for something to forget they are there and swim close enough for it to eat them.  It buries itself in the sand and doesn't move at all.  It was pretty cool watching this clumsy fish walk/swim around!  These are fish are very poisonous and one bite can kill a person!

Valentine's Day on Kwaj and Mindi's Birthday

Here are a few pictures from Valentine's Day and Mindi's birthday! 

We set up tiki torches and grilled out on the beach for valentine's day and had a great time!  It was tough to keep the tiki torches lit in the wind, but we certainly enjoyed our time on valentine's day. 

This is a picture from Mindi's birthday party.  Matt forgot to take pictures until it was almost dark, but everyone had a good time!  We made burgers and brats and brought down some veggies and chips and manty of our friends came to the party!  We had a really good time and enjoyed celebrating with our friends!

Roi over Valentine's Day

We went up to Roi with some friends the weekend before Valentine's Day for a little getaway and because they put on a dinner.  Here are a few pictures from our time on Roi! 

A look at the local wildlife!  There are wild chickens on Roi that run around and wait for you to feed them.  Not sure how wild they are, but pretty fun when they start chasing you on your golf cart, hoping you will throw some food at them!

Here is a picture of us at the Velentine's dinner.  It was at the scuba shack on Roi, which was very nice.

This is the scuba shack all decorated out for the dinner.  There were waiters and everything!  We certainly enjoyed the "eating out" experience and had steak and crab legs which were delicious.  We were very glad to have gone to the dinner.

Table settings at the dinner.

This picture is of 8th Island, which is where we took a boat to to snorkel while we were on Roi.  Not that many people visit it, so it was very interesting to watch the fish respond to people in the water.  It was very beautiful, to say the least!  This picture was from our anchoring spot and we snorkeled all around the island and the reef connecting it.

Long Time, No Updates

It has certainly been far to long since we updated the blog, so we will attempt to start adding things more regularly again!  The next several days should see some updates from the last month or so, starting with Today's update about a trip we took to Roi-Namur the weekend before Valentine's Day.  The pictures in this blog show the views during the flight up to Roi.  We will be updating with our time on Roi, Mindi's Birthday, as well as some other stuff that has been going on the last several weeks.

Here we are waiting in the terminal for the flight to Roi. 

This picture was taken right after take off and shows the North side of the island looking up the East Reef.  The island sure looks small from the air and we always like getting a view of it from the flight.  The part you are looking at is the residential area of the island

This shot looks back over the whole island from the air.  You can see the soccer field and track beside the school on the right side of the picture, just below the tip of the wing.  We live just a little left of center in this picture. 

Here is a shot of one of the outer islands from the plane trip to Roi.  It is about a 30 minute ride and gives you some cool views of the rest of the Atoll.  The color of the water shows the depth and how quickly the reef wall drops off to the depths of the Pacific!  This little island is about halfway up the West reef and looks pretty nice for camping or snorkeling!

Here is another shot out the window of the plane on our way to roi.  You can see the reef pretty clearly running North to South with islands popping up every so often.

This picture didn't turn out the best through the plane window, but it does at least show a pretty good view of some of the islands of the atoll.  Most of them are completely uninhabited.  Snorkeling or diving on this island would be interested, because the fish and sharks would have no idea what a human is and would probably come pretty close out of curiousity!

More updates will be coming soon!  Hope everyone is doing well and we miss and love you all!  You are all in our thoughts and prayers!

A few sunsets over the weekend

There were some pretty awesome sunsets over the weekend we were able to see, so here are some pictures!