It's a new week!

And it's my Birthday Week - YAY ME!!!!
My sweet Douglas keeps asking me what I want and honestly I really can't think of much that I want. He spoils me all the time and just recently bought me the watch I wanted, a beautiful handbag, as well as giving me "scrappy bucks" all the time. I would like a new sewing machine but I haven't had time to go and investigate to see what I want. If anyone has any ideas I welcome the input!
On the day of my birthday we are both going to have side by side facials - doesn't that sound fun!?! I love facials, sometimes even more than massages and we have been talking about doing this for a long time. I'll let you know how it goes.
So, I'm looking forward to a great week.

I'm glad last week is behind me.

What a week I had last week! I made two trips to Oklahoma City, one on Monday and one on Tuesday. It takes about an hour and forty minutes each way on the turnpike so you can imagine how much time was spent just driving! I had two doctors appointments (all is well!), several meetings, two luncheons, and of course work. Then, on Friday I was so looking forward to my book club but the week ended not so great.
I went to look at a piece of property with Sherry. As we were just back in Tulsa I came over the hill and surrounded by traffic and unable to go anywhere I had to run over two piles of debris in the road. Before running it over I knew it didn't look good but I couldn't go around it and I couldn't slam on my brakes to avoid it. Almost immediately my tire pressure gauge came on and let me know my back right tire was going flat. Ugh. I'm usually calm in situations but for some reason whenever something goes wrong with my car I start to panic. I think it's because my poor mom always drove the *worst* cars and we were always either breaking down somewhere or we were stuck at home and I associate car trouble with doom.
Anyway, I get my car to a service station to see if they can put on the spare. It's 4:50, Friday afternoon and these two doofuses are looking at me and looking at each other and scratching their heads like I've just asked them to change the transmission or something. It becomes painfully obvious to me that they just want to get out of there at 5:00 and I'm not going to get my tire changed out. One offers to over-inflate my tire so that I might make it to Sears which is two miles down the road - but remember it is Friday, it is rush hour, and there are about 15 lights between where I am and where I need to go.
The tire is hissing and the tire gauge lets me know I'm losing air fast. One of the men suggest I buy fix-a-flat and I really don't think that is going to matter but I buy it and ask him if he will put it in the tire for me. Because I'm convinced the tire is going to blow at any minute, I stand back about 15 feet with my sunglasses over my eyes while he not only puts in the fix-a-flat but also over-inflates my tire. Off I go to Sears, praying the whole way, watching the air quickly leak out of my tire. The fix-a-flat did nothing, but at least I make it and limp into the parking lot at Sears.
The sweet young man at Sears puts the spare on my car, charges me *nothing* for the service despite the fact that it is 107 degrees with the heat index and the garage is facing the sun. After I tip him and set off on my way, I'm a mile down the road when the tire sensor comes back on and now, another tire is going flat. Not good!
Long story but yesterday, I got four brand new tires on my car.
Last week was a long stressful week not only for me but for quite a few of my friends too. I'm sure we are all happy to leave that one behind and I'm really looking forward to a much sunnier, happier week. :)

Last of the vacation pictures - Tortola.

Goodbye for now Tortola~

Sandy Cay beach on Jost Van Dyke was another beautiful beach we got to visit. We hiked around the island and saw lush plant life and about a million hermit crabs. The floor of the vegetation was just crawling with crabs of all different sizes. The island also was home to turtle doves that cooed for us the entire time we were hiking. We saw a few geckos or salamanders - I'm not really sure what the difference is - and the views from the top of the island were amazing - 360 degree view of beautiful blue water.
There wasn't anything to see snorkeling at this location but the gentle waves made for great relaxation in the water.

One of the days we took a long boat ride out to this little flat island called Anegada where only 250 people live on the entire island.

All 16 of us climbed aboard an old clunker of an open air taxi truck and took a 10 minute ride to the other side of the island where there is an amazing beach.

Imagine our surprise when we ran into TWO separate groups that were visiting from Oklahoma! What is the likelihood of that? Another night when we docked both boats at Sidney's restaurant we ran into yet *another* set of people from Oklahoma! Just weird~

You see both teams represented on the back of our sister boat (OU and OSU). We all signed the OSU t-shirt and left it behind tacked to the wall at Sidney's.
One day we went to the baths - an amazing location with these huge rocks on the beach. It was kind of scary walking through them thinking that if they were to shift we would be forever flattened underneath them.

Look at this crab we found hiding on a rock. It was kind of dark and we could barely see him hiding but my flash did end up capturing him.

We snorkeled all around these rocks some of which went waaaayyyyy down into the ocean. We saw some pretty amazing fish here.

Just after we took this picture below and just before we took off from this beach to snorkel, a baby sting-ray came right up to us in the shallow water. We just observed it and it finally swam away but how cool!

I'm going to do one last post about our trip and just wait until you see the pictures we took in Tortola at Long Bay Beach!

Boarding our catamarans

We took the Ferry over to Tortola and had a little dinner on the beach while the crews finished getting our catamarans ready for us to board. You can't even believe the excitement!

We had planned this trip for approximately 16 months and we couldn't believe the time was here.

Once we boarded our boats we set sail for our first destination and where we would anchor for the night.

Our chef, Fiona, prepared us a nice dinner and we spent some time getting to know the other couples on our boat. There were four couples per boat plus a Captain and a Chef. Fiona is also a Captain and is launching her own reality series called SeaAngels in which her and several of her female friends captain boats all over the world raising money for charity. Both Hal and Fiona took excellent care of us all week and I would highly recommend them for not only a fun but also a safe vacation.

We snorkeled and swam at Oceans Seven Beach and saw some amazing coral and fish. The weather was warm but overcast and we did get a bit of rain. Towards the middle of the trip when the sun started coming out in full force we could see that the earlier in the week overcast days were actually a blessing to keep us from getting burnt to a crisp.

Our week just got better and better and better! Next post I'll share some pictures of the baths - these incredible giant rock formations that we got to walk through and snorkel around.
I'm just now coming out of my fog from the trip and I've had sealegs all week. It's totally worth it though and if you *ever* have the opportunity to go on one of these trips, I would HIGHLY recommend it!

British Virgin Islands

We are back from absolute paradise and had such a fun time! We took ten days and went to the British Virgin Islands with seven other couples to sail on chartered catamarans. Our first stop was St. Thomas since it is the easiest place to fly to from Tulsa. We all arrived late on Thursday night, checked into our rooms, met for a drink and then, since we were pretty exhausted, called it a night.
Friday morning we all met for breakfast and decided to head out for a day of shopping, sightseeing and just having fun! Here we are gathering the troops for our first full day of adventure.

We shopped for a while then jumped on an open air bus and headed up to Bluebeard's Castle.

The views were amazing!


That evening we had dinner at a restaurant called "Hook, Line & Sinker". The food was very good and our trip was off to a great start!
Here we are the next day waiting for the ferry to take us to Tortola where we would board our boats.

To be continued...

The calm before the storm...

For the past year I've taken some time to slow down a bit, reflect on my life and what I want out of it and what is really important to me. For the past decade I have been through so many stressful things - some very exciting things but stressful nonetheless and some very sad things. Last spring it really started to catch up with me. So, I took some time and it was just what I needed to recharge my batteries. Now, I'm preparing to get ready to go full steam ahead once again and I'm extremely excited and hopeful for the future. I'm working on my plan and I promise to share with you very soon.
In the meanwhile, we are taking a few days and headed to paradise. When we get back I can't wait to share with you what I'm going to be up to!