Easter

This blog is long overdue, as is the next one about Ryan and Anna's trip out here.  This post is about Easter and our fun time having Easter dinner with friends.  Mindi put together a great Easter dinner for a group of 12 people and had the table set up really nice with dyed eggs with our names on them!  Here are a few pictures from our Easter dinner!

Ryan and Anna Visiting

Over our spring break we had visitors!  Ryan and Anna Gerber came out to Kwajalein and we spent the week snorkeling, sun tanning, boating and flying all over the atoll!  It was a great time and the following pictures offer many of the highlights from the trip!

Here are Anna and Ryan snorkeling over the drop off Oceanside.  You can sort of see the way the atoll drops from 40 feet to thousands of feet in an instant beneath them.  It was really neat to swim over the drop off as there is nothing but empty blue beneath you.  

Here is Ryan with a brittle star we found on Bigi.  They are weird little creatures and cool to find.

We were able to go out deep sea fishing one day and we had perfect weather and a great time!  No one got sea sick and we even caught a couple of fish.  The waves were pretty big at different times, but we sure enjoyed it!  This had to be one of the highlights of our time!

Here are the 2 fish that we caught.  The one on the left is an Ono and it provided a lot of fish steaks, which we definitely enjoyed!  It was awesome to catch the fish ourselves and then cook it up and eat it just a few hour later!  The fish on the right is a Mahi Mahi and it made for some excellent fish tacos.  We were just thankful to catch something and it sure was fun!

Here is a picture of us from sunrise service on Easter morning.  It was a really neat service and fun to see people get baptized in the lagoon.  Ryan and Anna were up every morning before the sunset anyways, with the time change, so this was great!

Here are Mindi and Anna on the front of the boat up at Bigi!  This was one of the most fun things as well as we had a fun time snorkeling, sun bathing and trying not to get burned, or burned worse in case one of us forgot sunscreen on their feet!

This was during the tour the first day and is the highest point in all of the Marshall Islands, even though it is a manmade hill.  It gave us a good view of the island and the atoll.

Here we are relaxing at the snake pit during the first evening.  It was awesome catching up and relaxing as 20 feet in front of us was the ocean!

We were able to fly up to Roi for the day one day and here is us on the beach.  No one in sight!!  We ate at the only restaurant and enjoyed some great time in the sun before flying back to Kwaj.  

Here is Ryan and Anna on Roi looking down one of the cool roads lined by palm trees

We had dinner on the beach several evenings, and the sunset on this particular night was really awesome, so we got pictures in front of it.

Here is Ryan and Anna in front of the sunset.

We had a truly awesome time with them!

Summer isn't to far away and we are very excited to see everyone when we return to Lincoln soon!

Irish Coffee Shop

This week we had our big event for National Honor Society, which is a fundraiser called Coffee Shop.  We set up the Multipurpose room and had several hundred people come through the door as we served them various coffee drinks and had live entertainment.  The event took a lot of planning and work to pull off, but it was a huge success.  The kids did a great job and we enjoyed the evening.  

Here are some pictures from the event below.

The coffee shop was on St. Patrick's day, so that provided us with the theme for our evening.  We all sported our green NHS shirts throughout the night!

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day Mindi made some green clover pancakes and green omelettes.  Here are a few pictures below of her amazing creations!  They were very delicious.  The pictures of the omelettes didn't turn out, but they were great!

We look forward with a ton of anticipation to Spring Break when Ryan and Anna will be out visiting!  We can't wait and hope that everyone is doing well who is reading this!

YF

Hello!  Here are few updates from the last several weeks.

For Mindi's birthday many of her students decided to decorate her marker board with birthday wishes!  This was really neat and a lot of fun

 

 Here are a few picture from Youth Fellowship.  On Monday evenings we lead the youth group here on Kwajalein and are currently enjoying going through the book of Luke.  We start out with a fun game, like charades or pictionary or karaoke, and then we watch a video talk and break into groups for discussion.

Here is another picture from Youth Group.

Right now life is pretty hectic as we get ready for our large fundraiser for National Honor Society!  Hope everything is going well for everyone reading this.

Mindi's Birthday

Last week was Mindi's Birthday and so to celebrate we went on a sunset sailboat cruise!  It was a lot fun for sure!  Mindi was actually sick on Valentines Day and her birthday, but we made the best of it.  Matt had a philipino meal catered on valentine's day and we watched a few great movies. On Mindi's actual birthday we had Kwaj's finest dining and had some friends over in the evening. Overall it was a really good week! Here are some pictures showing the sunset sail.

Here we are getting ready to head out

The sunset was really nice that evening and here is another picture of us just after the sun has set!

Here is Mindi on the boat out on the lagoon!  The wind was really blowing that evening and it was a very, very pleasant sail.

Here is a picture looking down the boat right after we started out.

One other thing of note from the last few weeks was this friendly sea creature stinging Matt's leg!  It was pretty uncomfortable for several hours, but not to bad.

In other news, we have purchased our plane tickets home for the summer and will be getting back to the states on June 10th! 

Greek Food!

We are housesitting and enjoying the use of a kitchen right now, so here is a blog showing some of the Greek food that Mindi made!  She got several ideas from the blog www.theshiksa.com and put them to use as she made hummus, tzatziki sauce, greek roll-ups, greek pizza, and a greek dill dip.  It was fabulous.  Matt got the best end of the deal...getting to eat it all!

Mindi made all of this for the sunset sail we did for her birthday!

Here is a picture of the greek pizza she made!

Greek pizza, greek chicken salad, rollups, and 2 types of hummus!  It was delicious!!!

Here are some more pictures of some of the things she made!

We have missed having a real oven and kitchen in the BQ's so this was a lot of fun!

Here is the peach sangria that she made, which was awesome!

Matt got in on the fun...he sprinkled seasoning on the fries!

Here is our finished meal and we sure enjoyed it a lot!

January

 We wish we had updates from vacations and trips all the time, but sadly we don't!  Life has been settling back into normal the last few weeks as we have finished up the semester, welcomed the Huwes and started dog/house sitting.  Here are some pictures to pass along!

One of the first things we made sure to do with the Huwes was dinner on the beach.  We grilled out and watched the sunset!  Here is a picture of us enjoying a nice evening beneath the stars!  

Here is Mindi walking Gidget.  Dog sitting has gotten us up and out for a walk in the mornings which has been fun.

The sunrises in the mornings are great and here is a picture of us during our morning walk of the dog.  It is worth noting that we hadn't intended on matching that day and we always end up getting a hard time when that happens!