Electricity Woes

Maybe you can blame it on me being pregnant, but I haven't been able to sleep the last few nights because of anxiety. Anxiety over our recent electricity bill. Yeah, I know it's something really stupid to have anxiety over, but I am really peeved at having to pay a crap load for nothing. This latest bill is the most expensive one yet, which doesn't make sense since it has been a lot cooler over the last few months. We haven't used the A/C unit at all and I am using less fans during the day. We haven't changed anything else for it to be more expensive. It's not like I have every light, fan, TV, A/C on running 24/7. So why is our bill $464.58 for absolutely nothing!!!!

The fuel charge alone was $367! They also just approved an increase in the rates effective Jan 1st. So, instead of paying $.43/per KWH (which is already the highest in the nation) we will be paying $.59/per KWH! This is just another reason for Clarke and I to get outta here as soon as possible!

Thanks for letting me vent a little. Hopefully this will ease my anxiety a bit and I'll be able to sleep a little better tonight!

12-12-2012

I am 16 weeks today! I wanted to post a little pic of the growing belly on this awesome day 12-12-12!

The next few weeks are going to be great. My sis Nicole is coming out to visit and then we are both flying back to Utah next week to spend Christmas with the family. I love the Holidays!

Feeling Good

I am finally feeling normal now. I was pretty lucky and never threw up at all, but I felt nauseous from about 7 -14 weeks. It was the worst for me at night. I never really lost my appetite and actually have been really hungry this whole time. At first I thought it would be awesome to eat all the time, but it sucks! It's so exhausting plus I want to eat as healthy as I can and that takes work! Clarke is a lucky guy and hasn't had to run to the store yet to get me ice cream or pickles or anything. I'm not really craving anything, just have a few things that I want to eat more than others.

Food I love right now:
1 - hard tacos
2 - grapes
3 - honey crisp apples (can't be any other kind)
4 - cottage cheese
5 - meat (steak, ground beef, bacon)
6 - apple juice

Food I can't stand right now:
1 - chicken (weird, but it makes me gag)
2 - Crystal Light (made it easy to break my addiction!)
3 - anything overly sweet

Time has flow by and the weeks go by so quickly. We will be finding out if we are having a girl or boy in about 4 weeks. I really hope the rest of the pregnancy will go just as fast as these first four months have! I'm starting to get a tummy that I know now is baby and not food!

My mom was so sweet and sent me some crochet supplies a few weeks ago since I told her I wanted to learn and possibly make our baby a blanket. This is my first project after teaching myself in just a day. They turned out pretty cute except one is bigger than the other. Maybe we'll be lucky and our baby will be a girl and have one foot larger than the other.

They Can Swim!

Yay I'm back! I knew I would be bad about keeping this blog up to date! Well I do have some big news: we survived 6 months here on the island! Yippee! I gave myself about 6 months to a year to get settled in here and I must say that it is not getting any easier out here and in fact, the things that slightly bothered me before are really driving me crazy now! Come on, just give this girl a break from the heat and humidity already! It's crazy to think that right now most people are getting snow and I'm sitting here complaining about our 85 degree sunny weather. I guess you always want what you can't have huh? Good thing I'll be making a trip out to Utah for Christmas to get my fill of the cold and snow.

Well in other news, I have been working on a little something for the last few months that I am pretty excited about:

Finished product is estimated to be due May 28th, 2013!!!!

Catch Up From Last Month

Sorry everyone for the lack of posts this last month. I haven't had anything "post worthy" lately. We still are adjusting to living out here. Some days I am good and other days I am not so good. Clarke is desperately trying to find ways to get transferred out of here and it's not looking so good. They keep telling him that there is no way he will get to leave and we may be out here for 5 or 6 years. Oh my, I can't imagine living here that long! However, you never know what may happen, so Clarke is working his butt off and trying to do the best he can. I am so glad that Clarke is an amazing worker and has so much motivation to be successful in everything he does! I know that things will work out for us the way they are supposed to! Ok, enough with that, this post was meant to highlight my parents finally coming out to St Thomas to visit! You have no idea how nice it was to have familiar faces here and for them to see where we live. My goal was to convince them how bad it really is to live here just so that when I complain about things here, they agree and are on my side! I tried to take them to all the ghetto places (not hard since they are everywhere and have to be driven through to get anywhere on this island) and showed them where I am forced to go grocery shopping and the outrageous prices of everything. Not sure if it worked, but at least they have a good idea of our lives out here. Here are a few pictures of my parents and their time out here:

Magens Bay, St Thomas

On the ferry to St John

Trunk Bay, St John

Trunk Bay, St John

Snorkeling in St John

My mom lounging on the beach while we snorkel

Cute little crab

These iguanas are everywhere and they are mean!

Secret Harbour, St Thomas (some of the best snorkeling on the island)

In front of the largest cruise ship in the world, Oasis of the Seas.

View of the ship leaving as we were eating dinner.

My mom also got to celebrate her birthday with us while she was here. Sorry, mom for not singing you happy birthday (I just realized we never did that)! It was such a fun time with them here and I wish they could come more often.

I am really excited for our upcoming trip to Austin in just about a week! I'm afraid that I'm not going to want to leave Texas once I get there. Clarke may have to drag me on the plane!

5 Years For Us

I was so so so glad that tropical storm Ernesto decided to stay south of the Virgin Islands so that Clarke and I could spend the weekend over on St John for our 5 year Anniversary. We stayed at the Westin which was so much fun!

The Westin was also so nice to upgrade us to a beach front room (I purposely mentioned we were celebrating our anniversary) and it did not disappoint! Even though the storm didn't hit us it did bring some wind and clouds so our first day there wasn't as picturesque as I would have liked, but it's still pretty.

We enjoyed an exceptionally delicious dinner at the Prime restaurant at the resort. The food and the scenery were awesome!

View from our table at dinner

Good ole tap water but this some how makes it much fancier by putting it in this bottle!

Tuna tartar for appetizer

This steak was to die for!

We sat around and talked back and forth with this parrot and his other parrot friends.

Even though we've been to St John numerous times now, this felt like we were on vacation. It was so much fun and hopefully we'll be able to do this again!

Of course the weather was much nicer the day we leave! Doesn't that always seem to happen??

Oh and thanks so much Mom for our care package! I think I'm all set on Crystal Light for a while! :-)

It's Beginning!

We have our first tropical storm/possible hurricane headed our way:

We are not in the direct projected path of this thing, but it will still cause lots of rain and wind. Of course this happens on the weekend Clarke and I are celebrating our 5 year anniversary. We splurged on a very expensive non refundable hotel on St John. If the winds are too strong we won't be able to take the ferry over. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this doesn't dampen (pun definitely intended) our anniversary weekend!

On a side note: we have finally conquered the mosquitoes! We've been mosquito free inside our house for the last 5 days! Oh hallelujah! We realized there was a large gap at the top of one of our sliding glass doors and a little paper towel jammed in it did the trick!