Walking With My Mace and My Mace

My inside joke is, I walk with my Mace and my Mace. The first Mace meaning Macy, my sweet little dog, and the second Mace meaning pepperspray just to be safe. I always have both of them close at my side. I took Macy on one of our daily walks this morning and decided to take my camera along to show how beautiful and peaceful our walks are. Let me remind everyone that we live on top of a mountain..ok, maybe exaggerating just a bit, but it's at least considered a huge hill. So our walks are not exactly "a walk in the park" so to speak. The environment around us is absolutely breathtaking. It is so beautiful, and the breeze is amazing because we are so high up. You can see absolutely everything from the top of the "mountain". You can see Prickley Bay Marina off to the side, which is where all of the sailboats dock, and we go there and listen to the steel drum band and eat pizza on Friday nights. You can also see the campus, which is amazing. Then the city of St. George's is all around us, and you can watch all of the cars go by and see all of the businesses. Of course since we are at the top, then we have to get down to ground level some how, which means we have to walk down super steep hills. I have to think back to my snow skiing days and do the zig zag walk as I go down the hills. Macy on the other hand is pulling me the whole way as I am trying my hardest not to fall and scrap my legs to pieces. We finally get down to the bottom and get to greet some of our "little friends" that we see everyday. I am referring to the goats that are along the road chewing the weeds and grass. There are three goats in particular that we see..a momma goat and her two babies. The momma is white, and she has two beautiful little cream babies with dark accents. At first Macy would bark at them, but now that she realizes that we're not having lamb chops for supper, she is fine around them. I still pick her up when we get close enough to them for her to charge, and we pass by them with a friendly smile. I wanted to get a picture of these little beauties, but of course the day that I have my camera with me, I didn't see them. I'll have to take a picture of them another day. We did see a daddy goat laying in the brush, and I got a picture of him. We do have to be cautious on these little adventures since there are stray dogs that we encounter on some days. It doesn't help that the people of Grenada feel that having a whole in the fence is going to keep a huge dog in. It also doesn't help having an overly confident little white dog who growls and encourages them to fight. After I settle Macy back down and explore everything that there is for her to smell, then we head back up to the top. This is no easy task by any means. Macy takes it like a champ of course and full force goes up the hill. Again she is pulling me, but this time, pulling me up the hill. I have to say that I must be in pretty good shape to get up the hills around here. Macy and I are definitely building some serious calf muscles going on these walks. After we get back up to the top, we arrive back at our house, and go down a slight hill that is one of our driveways and get some much needed water.


Little Miss Priss taking off from the house


Prickley Bay Marina


Campus


Going down one of the hills


Exploring everything


Macy has to go up these steps everytime we go on our walks..not sure why, but I thought I'd take a picture of her on them.


The daddy goat laying in the brush


One of the huge hills that we have to climb..If you think this is steep, then you ought to see our driveway!


Walking back to the house (this is our easy driveway..not the steep one)


My girl as happy as can be after our walk :)

Beach Day

Cody and I love to take Macy to the Lance Aux Epine beach to let her walk around and swim. This is the most appropriate beach for dogs to go to, because there is not as many people around. So Sunday we decided to take Macy to go swim since she hasn't been to the ocean since we got back to the island. When we got there, unfortunately people were having some sort of BBQ..just our luck, so there was more people there than we hoped for. Macy didn't seem to mind..She just ran around and had a blast. She let her feet and legs get wet, but didn't seem to want to get her whole body in the water..must have been too cold. We love watching Macy just be a dog and run around at her favorite place in the world..the beach!!! She wasn't quite as happy when we got her home and had to bathe her to get all of the sand off. We are truly loving life in Grenada!


Cody walking Macy on the beach


Macy exploring on the rocks


Macy's sweet little pawprints on the beach

Getting Back to Island Life

I had a very restless night due to a nagging headache. I think it is probably due to reading most of the day yesterday. I finally bit the bullet and got up at 6:30am (I know..too early for Grenada), and took some Excedrin. For those of you that don't know, medicine has the tendency to wire me completely. Almost all of it does..even sleeping pills, which I found out the hard way on an extremely long flight to the UK. So after I popped 2 Excedrin, I had to eat something..which I also found out the hard way that if I don't eat after taking medicine, then I puke. So by 6:35am, I had already taken medicine, ate some pop-tarts, and drank some juice. I tried to go back to bed, but knew that I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. So I just layed there thinking of the things that I needed to get accomplished today. I finally got up when Cody's alarm went off and decided to take Macy for an early morning walk, which she's been getting almost every day (walks..not early morning walks). Then I had to run some errands, so I've actually had a pretty busy day. Now my headache is trying to come back, so I guess I better go take some more medicine, so that it has time to wear off before bedtime, so that I can actually sleep tonight.

On a side note, we had a pretty busy weekend. Friday night we went out to eat with some friends at the famous Charcoals (aka..one of our favorite places to eat), which takes us about a minute to get to from our new place..it's great! Saturday was the SO Opening Social, so we went to that, and then Cody and me went to see Avatar. Then Sunday we decided to go to La Sagesse beach. It's about a 30 minute drive, but well worth it. We ate lunch there at the restaurant and hung out at the beach. We both got lots of rays..maybe a little too much, but we're finally starting to look like we belong on this island again after turning pale over the break. The good news is there were no sand fleas! Our friends warned us that we would get eaten alive at La Sagesse, but we never had a minutes trouble out of them.


La Sagesse Beach


Our beach chairs


At lunch


Cody at lunch

Our First Weekend Back in Grenada

We had a busy first weekend back on the island. Saturday we went with some of Cody's classmates on a Shadowfax cruise. It was pretty fun. They took us snorkeling, which usually I refuse to do because I don't want to be floating at the top of the water and become shark bait, but it was better than I thought it would be. We got to see these underwater sculptures that had been sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Cody and I would like to come back to that spot and go scuba diving, so that we can actually see them a little better. Then they took us to this little island hut in the middle of nowhere and cooked for us..which was delicious. It really was a neat experience, and I finally got to put on my bathing suit for the first time since getting back.


The view of the campus from the boat..just breathtaking!


Cody and me on the boat after snorkeling

Sunday was also an important day, because it was Macy's 5th birthday! I can't believe she is 5 years old. If she were human, she would be off to her first day of kindergarten..thank God she's not, because I wouldn't want her to leave me. We took her on a long birthday walk so she could explore our new neighborhood. She came back totally exhausted..Then we all took a much needed nap. We ordered pizza for supper, and then had a birthday party for Macy with cake and candles! We had a great weekend and are enjoying our breezy new place!


The birthday girl with her cake!


Cody helping Macy blow out her candles

Bye Bye Sweaters...Hello Bikinis!!!

We finally made it back to the island late Wednesday night. Everything went okay except for the airline losing one of our bags (what's new?)..luckily we got it the next day. We had a great time visiting with all of our family and friends over the break, but I have to say that I am so happy to be away from the cold weather. It was nice to put on my tank top and shorts for the first time in a month. I haven't been able to make it to the beach yet, but I'm sure it won't be much longer until I am in a bikini. Cody probably isn't as thrilled as I am to be back in tropical temperatures, but I think he'll manage. We are all settled into our new place. Besides it being disguistingly dirty when we got here, it's seems to be pretty homey. We finally unpacked and organized everything, and I have spent lots of hours today cleaning dirt and dust from every nook and cranny in this place. I think that we are really going to like it in this apartment. The breeze is absolutely amazing! I actually had chill bumps last night, so I curled up in my blanket for the first time ever since I've been in Grenada! It is such a huge difference from our last place. The island also seems to be much breezier than last term, so that helps a lot. I have to say that our two driveways are quite an experience to go up and down. The house sits on a mountain top way up high. There are two different roads and entrances to it. Both entrances are extremely steep, so I have to admit that I was a little nervous the first time that we went up them. Luckily the whole yard is fenced in, and both of the entrances have automatic gates on them which make it extremely safe. I think that the next four months here should be pretty enjoyable!

Last week in LA

I know that I haven't posted a blog in quite a while, but I've been trying to savor every moment of being home. We had a great Christmas and new year. We are down to our last week here (we fly out on the 13th), and I'm already starting to get homesick. I am looking forward to returning to Grenada to our new apartment where we can be a little family again. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy visiting with everyone, but it will be nice to have our own place again with no going back and forth to each of our parents' houses (no offense to our parents). I have already taken Macy to get her paperwork for the flight back, so she is all set to go. This last week here will be spent trying to fit everything in that we want to do before we are gone for 4 more months. I do miss my Grenada girls and am looking forward to seeing everyone soon!

Back in the USA

(Picture: Compliments of Google)

Cody, Macy, and I started our journey at 5:00am Saturday morning in Grenada. After standing in line for approximately 3 hours, we finally made it on the plane. Our flights went well until we landed in the Dallas airport. All of the flights going to Shreveport had been canceled due to rain and fog. So the airport provided us with a bus that would take us to Shreveport. It was bad enough that they took a 45 minute flight and turned it into a 3 1/2 hour drive, but then our bus driver got lost on the way which made it even longer. We finally arrived in Shreveport at around 11:00pm and were exhausted. We are having a great time so far. We got up and went to church with my family on Sunday for the first time in almost 6 months. We had lunch with my Mom on Monday, then I let the doctor take a look at a spot on my leg..Luckily it wasn't anything but a sunspot. Yesterday was a busy day..I took Macy to the groomer, which she desperately needed. Then I went shopping. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I loved being able to just drive around and go in any store that I wanted. Then last night, Ms. Tanya and I went and did the annual Christmas Run downtown. I had never done it before, but it was pretty neat because all of downtown was decorated for Christmas, so everything was all lit up. I almost froze my buns off since it was in the 30s, and I just came from a 90 degree climate, but I had a good time. Today we are going to pick up our niece and nephew from school to spend time with them and then head back to my parents' house for a couple of days. Cody has been hunting everyday since he has been home. He has tried to get me to go with him, but I just can't bring myself to sit in a deerstand for hours when it is 30 degrees outside. We are so glad to be home!