Settling In Paradise

My first day on the little desert island starts out beautiful, sunny with a steady breeze and 79 degree temperatures and a beautiful view. It didn't really matter that the beautiful view was a in a dirty apartment after a 36-hour travel day. How exciting to actually be here in the Caribbean. At 36 years old I've waited a long time to get here. I enjoy a cup of hot tea on the balcony and slowly everyone else except Jon start to stir.

Ever the caretaker, Grandma gets us all up an moving toward the small grocery on the resort and breakfast. Everyone except Jon; we let him sleep.  Papa, Little Bear, along with myself and Grandma make our way down to the resort restaurant for breakfast. We enjoyed a delightfully overpriced European breakfast buffet of meats, cheeses, fresh bread, fruit, scrambled and hard boiled eggs, pancakes, french toast and hash browns. Oh, and I cannot leave out the best part - Cafe Lattes as they were meant to be. Little did I know at the time it would the first of many great lattes.

Little Bear picked his way through some fruit, lots of scrambled eggs and some meat then decided it was time to go chase the birds. Grandma too enjoys birds so off they go while Papa and I sit back and finish our lattes. It is warm but the breeze is lovely and the view from the beach side restaurant was almost worth the ridiculous price.

Having paid the bill large enough to be a week of groceries, Papa and I went in search of Grandma and Little Bear. We found them at the beach. Little Bear is squealing with delight as the waves were, in his words "chasing me Mommy!"

One of the things I love about Grandma is that like me, she values and encourages experiences and truly loves watching Little Bear learn and do new things. This is Little Bear's first real encounter with the ocean. How lovely that she and Papa are here to help Little Bear form great memories.

After some more play time we all make our way back to the little grocery and picked up some items for lunch. We were all hoping we could move from the small, dirty apartment into the newly cleaned house that we actually rented. By the time we returned, Jon was up and we all packed up and ate lunch and sure enough we got the call that the house was ready.

If I thought the view from the apartment was grand... this was amazing!

We spent the afternoon unpacking and playing in the pool. We finished off the day at a nice restaurant where I had an amazing lamb burger and a watered down mojito. Little did I know, the mojitos would only get better from here on out.