Spring in Ohio and our Vacation in St. John!!

Okay, ya'll, I am so sorry that I haven't been posting lately. Here are my wonderful excuses. The kids and I attempted aux. pioneering in April and then we all got sick. There went that month. And then we left for St. John on the 30th of April for 8 days. Anyway, we are all better even though Alexis and Aidan both got sick on the first few days of our vacation and Alexis was just recovering from the worst case of poison ivy,.....all over her beautiful face and neck. It was terrible. All four of us had an assembly part in April at our special day and Alexis fulfilled her part even with her condition. I felt so bad for her, but I tried to be strong because we wanted her to go ahead with her part....we knew she would be glad she did it in the long run. Needless to say, it went well and she is glad that she did it. Okay, our vacation.......one word.....okay a few words.......For this world we live in , it is absolute Paradise........except for the no-see-ums that ate me alive. Thankfully only me, I must have the perfect blood type for insects. And miraculousy none of us got sunburn badly. We were vigilant about sunscreen. 50 spf on the kids and 35 spf on Sean and I only because we had been tanning artificially a few weeks beforehand,...(please don't mention that to our mothers! ) St. John is a very low key island with most of it being a National Park. Completely unspoiled and natural. We snorkeled every day except Sunday when we went to both the english and spanish meetings in Cruz Bay. It was really nice to meet all the friends that live on the island. Sean gave the talk in Spanish. The kingdom hall has the best view of Cruz Bay, and banana and mango trees right outside the door! We shared some of the bananas with the friends after the meeting. There are 12 publishers in the Spanish congregation and there were 28 there on Sunday! The spanish there is of a Dominican/Puerto Rican origin, so it is very fast, but we followed along pretty well.

The island is rich in the history of Danish occupation in the 1700's and the sugar mills that are in ruins on the island, but that there for us to tour. Slavery was what kept those operations going and so that is part of the island history too. This was a good educating factor for our homeschooling options. We really tried to put ourselves back into history at those ruins. Ask me sometime and I will tell you of some of the stories we heard about the slavery. I don't really want to type it out. Because the by product of sugar can production is rum, .....rum is very cheap in the Virgin Islands. We tried a few, and brought home a few.

We packed our food for the week in one suitcase except for meat and produce etc. We packed our lunches every day for our hiking to various beaches and other areas. We only ate out twice during the week. Please check out the www.maho.org website for information on the resort where we stayed . They are completely eco-friendly and green. They recycle everything. Definitely made us conscious of our use of water etc. Water is a luxury on the island. To give you an example: In Dayton, Ohio a 24 bottle case of Aquafina water is at the most $4.99, in St. John it is $18.99 We didn't buy the water, but retrieved it from the drinking water spigots in the resort. The cost of living there is very high and there is no industry except for tourism. If you can fix brakes, engines, and transmissions you could have a good business. Or if you wanted to have a car rental agency,... that would be good also. And restaurants, they do well there. And of course, they have several water treatments plants,....DE-SALINIZATION taking the salt out of the ocean water. Sean would love this, but there are too many problems with moving there. Well, I am out of space, please call me or email for more info. if you want it. By the way, gasoline there was $4.25 on average. That is where we are headed for sure. Take care all.

Love you,
Danita