Virgin Islands

Last week, we got back from the Virgin Islands! We were gone from Valentine's Day until Feb. 22nd with Rod's grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousin, Dan and DJ. It was an amazing trip...beautiful weather, fun times, great people. We flew into St. Thomas and then chartered a 43' catamaran sailboat around the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.

On the way there, one of our planes was overbooked, so we got put in first class!

Before we left, Rod's Uncle Bruce cleverly designed some cute diagrams of all of us who went, our awesome accommodations and our planned route, which was somewhat altered along the way (click to view larger):

We had a BLAST!!! We went snorkeling a lot and saw some beautiful marine life. The water was gorgeous, the boat we stayed on was just really neat, and Big Dan made some very, very yummy food.

Here are a few more pictures to give you an idea:

At one restaurant we went to at the Bitter End on Virgin Gorda, there were these performers who DANCED on STILTS for a good hour or so. It was incredible. They did all sorts of crazy things and the ground was uneven and I was almost positive they were all going to fall down. It was a lot of fun that night.

In other news... Yesterday I had my 24th birthday! It was arguably one of the best birthdays I have ever had. I received some very, very special gifts from some very, very special people... too special even to mention to be honest, mostly because I'm afraid people will read this and want to break into our house to steal one of them. Seriously. But if you're considering it, don't. Not only do we have a central alarm system and two dogs, but this gift won't be kept at our house, it will be kept in a safe deposit box at our bank.

Anyway, one of the other extremely special gifts I received was an aquarium! It's 56 gallons and Rod got most of the stuff needed to set it up as a marine (salt water) system. Dan gave me two books on starting/keeping fish tanks ("...for Dummies") hehe. Rod - even though he was the one who got me the gift because he's extremely sweet and loving and knew how badly I wanted one - was very worried I wouldn't be able to keep it alive, but now he's just as excited as I am. He actually took one of my books to work with him today so he could start learning. I can't wait! It'll take some time, though, to get everything going so that we do it the right way.

Tomorrow I'm going to NYC with my parents. We're going to a couple of art museums and then hopefully visiting the 9/11 memorial, since I haven't been to the city since 2001 - can you believe it? It's supposed to be somewhat rotten weather, but I plan to wear my Uggs and a crummy weather jacket, so it'll all be good.

I'm excited!