Honeymoon

Michael and I went to St. Thomas for our honeymoon. We left two days after the wedding, which was the greatest thing in the world. I cannot imagine leaving the day after the wedding.

We got to St. Thomas late the first night and it was dark, so we really had no idea where we were or even where our taxi was taking us. I think it made Michael nervous, he had his iPhone out with the map and route. When we got to our hotel and got checked into our room or should I say

large apartment. It was a two bedroom, two bathroom villa with a kitchen and living room. Even though it was dark we could tell we had an ocean view and a view of the town.

First Night

View from our room

The first full day on the island all we did was lay on the beach. Anyone who knows Michael and me knows that our vacations are not the typical relaxing vacation. We go, go, go. Well not this vacation, we relaxed and tried to enjoy the down time. So, we spent many days on the beach, but that was perfect. We had a reef on our beach which attracted lots of creatures and even several blacktip reef sharks. The sharks were cool to see from a distance and the hotel staff did inform us that they are harmless babies and their mouths are too small to bit anyone. After that he did tell us they tagged the mother and an alarm would sound if she got within 1000ft of the shore. I am sorry but 1000ft is not that much considering how fast a shark can swim. Michael has always wanted to swim with sharks and he definitely did, it took a lot to get me to stay in the water.

One day Michael and I went into the town of Charlotte Amalie mainly to do some shopping and a couple of site seeing adventures. I am a big nerd and really wanted to go to Blackbeard's Castle. Go ahead and laugh away, but it sounded fun! One super thing about shopping in St. Thomas is that it is all duty free. No Tax! I was not too impressed with the shopping but they have tons of vendors and they sure wanted to sell us stuff. After a little shopping we decided to find the 99 steps (102 actual) to Blackbeard's castle. On the way up the steps we stopped at this cute little bar that had the world's largest amber waterfall inside. It was man made. I found the steps going to the castle really neat, they are the original steps from 1679. When we made it to the castle, we learned it was closed. I was sad. Apparently when St. Thomas does not have 6 cruise ships in they don't even bother to open. BOO! So, I just enjoyed the view from the outside and the view of the harbor.

Amber Waterfall

Blackbeard's Castle Behind us

I thought the flags were a nice touch

About as close as we are going to get

Major J.M. Magen's Home (1820s)

While in St. Thomas, we decided to go and take a tour of St. John. We heard how beautiful it was there and so we found a group that picked us up at the Marriott's dock and takes you over to St. John, then drives you around the island, and takes you snorkeling at one of the many beaches. After going to St. John, I wish we had stayed there instead of St. Thomas. The island's beaches were gorgeous. I have never been to a beach I liked better than the ones on St. John. Don't get me wrong St. Thomas also had wonderful beaches, but nothing could beat St. John. On our tour, they took us to a sugar mill where they made rum. It is no longer making anything but it was very cool to see.

Waiting on our ride to St. John

Brown Boobie

View from the highest point

From the Sugar Mill

Us at the Sugar Mill on St. John

At the Beach where we snorkeled

Our guide stopped to warn us about these trees

Views

One thing St. Thomas was not lacking was the amount of shopping. I think Michael and I went shopping everyday in some way, even when we went to St. John. Yacht Haven was my favorite spot on St. Thomas. The shopping was good, food was good, and we got to see some fun fish.

Yay for Yacht Haven

Some Fish Michael was excited about

We ate at a lot of fun places and got the much needed rest after the wedding in St. Thomas. If I was to go back I would probably do a few things differently. One stay on St. John and take the ferry to St. Thomas. Two, take lots of friends or family. Three, take Michael deep sea fishing! We had a blast and I am glad I can say I have now been there.

Sunset

Dinner at the Marriott

We definitely got some sun!

Where did the weekend go?

The weekend came and the weekend went away. I feel like I did nothing this weekend, but that's not true. Friday night, Michael and I did yard work. Super fun! Michael's mom also came over for a visit Friday evening. She had some leftover wedding presents for us to open.

Saturday, I drove all over Fayetteville looking for the correct size air filters. Really who knew that could be so difficult. I first went to Wal-Mart mainly because I wanted to get some groceries, and they didn't have either size air filter we needed. I went home dropped off my cold items and went to Lowe's expecting that if Wal-Mart doesn't have them, of course Lowe's will. Nope. Okay, I take that back I needed two different sizes and they had one of them. At this point I am getting mad, and thinking I am going to have to special order myself some air filters. I was also upset because we live in a brand new house and they had to make it difficult. As I was driving back to the house I tried calling Home Depot. Not only did Home Depot have the sizes I needed they had choices! I think Home Depot is going to be my new home improvement store to shop.

Saturday evening we went over to the Eikenberry's house for a house warming party. They were grilling out and having people over on a nice summer evening. We had a ton of fun. It was good food, good company, and fun games. We played bag-o and after all the "grown-ups" left the children stayed up and played battle of the sexes (adult version). All I have to say about that game is that a guy made the game up. The girl ask guy questions were SO easy...any guy who remotely pays attention to E! or listens to his wife would have known the answers. The guy ask girl questions were hard. Every question was about cars. I mean come on people...ask about sports, at least I have some knowledge of sports. Well, I shouldn't complain too much, the girls actually did end up winning or at least we were ahead when we decided to stop.

Sunday, Michael and I went and saw the movie Inception. I really, really liked the movie. I would recommend it to all. If you haven't seen the preview watch it on YouTube. It was one of those movies that some extremely creative person must have written. I am still thinking about the ending!

Wedding Over = Back to Blogging

The wedding is over and it was wonderful. I was the happiest person on June 5th. Lots have been going on since the wedding...

Michael and I went to St. Thomas for our honeymoon. It was a blast, and I will post pictures and do the whole describing of activities. Sorry to disappoint but we didn't do near as much as we normally do on vacation.

We found out Michael's youngest brother, Steven, got married in March. Congrats to him and Katie. We also recently found out we are going to be an Aunt and Uncle. I am very excited to get the opportunity to spoil another little boy or girl. Michael will hate me for it, but that's okay. This will be the first "real" niece or nephew for both of us. I basically already have a niece from my best friend in Hawaii, and I love to send things to Miss Schuylia.

We have been playing softball all summer, co-ed team, and it has been fun. We aren't the best team in the world, but it is summer and it is for fun! We also have been going to the lake a lot and I love the lake. I would love it more if Michael and my parents would let me wakeboard...I don't know why they won't let me (two knee surgeries later and I am ready to do it again). My cousin and her family have come with us a few times and I love that. Aden is at the perfect age, 3, where everything is SUPER cool.

I have been traveling for work a little. Went to a very exciting place last week, Des Moines. Most frustrating travel day I have ever had. Lets see, supposed to travel through Chicago and get home at 11:00 those were the initial plans, but I was delayed coming out of Des Moines which meant missing connection in Chicago. Then it was travel through Dallas, leave earlier and get home at 8:30 (YAY earlier), then the earlier flight was delayed and I missed the connection and got on the 9:00 flight home which still was going to get me home earlier, nope because of my day that flight was also delayed and I ended up getting home at the exact same time I originally was scheduled. Got to love those kind of days. Next week I am going to Chicago, and I will get to see my brother!!! Should be a fun weekend. Hopefully getting there and getting home won't be as weird.

One more update and then I am going to retire. Now that I feel like I have a ton of free time in my life again, I have decided to take up a new hobby. This new hobby is fun for me, but probably won't be to anyone under the age of 65. I have picked up where my grandparents left off, 10 + years ago, doing family genealogy stuff. Yup, I am a nerd! So far, it has been very very fun. I think for me it is a way to connect all over again to my grandparents, even though I don't have any living, I know they enjoyed learning about our family's history. It is nice, I have already gotten to talk to some of my Great Aunts and get information from them. It is always good to see how the Southern Arkansas family is doing. I think I need to make a trip down there soon.

Back to Hawaiian Vacation

After a couple of days in Honolulu, Michael and I took a short plane ride to Maui. We wanted to experience more than one island, while in Hawaii. I wish we could have spent a month exploring all the islands but we could not. We arrived on September 1st and got checked into our hotel room which had a beautiful view of the ocean. We spent most of the day relaxing on the beach and driving around the island looking for good food. We had a gorgeous sunset on the beach the first evening, but we had to go to bed very early. The plan was to rise at 2:00AM to drive to a bike shop at the bottom of Haleakala National Park.

The Hotel beach

The Sunset

Morning came very quickly. Surprisingly Michael and I were both up and ready to go. The excitement of watching the sunrise from the top of a volcano was too much. We arrived at the bike shop by 3:00AM and they were getting everyone ready to come back down the volcano. The drive to the top was winding and long, it took about 45 minutes to get to the top. We got out of the van to freezing cold weather. We were dressed for the part, but it was still very cold. The sun came up right on time and it was the most amazing experience ever.

Here comes the sun...

There it is!!! Bad photo but only one of us on top Silversword in bloom (only happens ever 50 years)

After the sun came up, we jumped back in the van and drove from 10,000ft to 6500ft to begin our 28 mile bike ride down the volcano.

View from the top

I expected the ride down the volcano to be a little more on the warmer side, but we did not start removing layers until we were almost to the car. The views were awesome. We stopped about halfway down at this little breakfast place. It reminded me of a home cooked breakfast, but with the views of the Hawaiian mountains.

Biking down

Cool trees
Safety first!

After we were all done, we decided to drive back to the hotel for a little nap. If I was to do the entire over, I would skip the nap and do the drive to Hana.

Drive back to hotel

After our naps, we decided to go to dinner in the town of Lahaina. We ate the best seafood and did some fun shopping in Lahaina. Good food, good scenery, and great company.

Us at dinner
Sunset from restaurant

Being in Arkansas

I have had the pleasure of spending several weekends lately in Arkansas. It has been a long time since I wrote on here and I will eventually finish writing about my trip to Hawaii, which I am still missing a great deal.

Things have been very exciting in the Mallard Sperry home over the last few months. Lots of wedding planning! I feel like it is just around the corner.

At the end of September I finally got to go home and see my parents new house and their new boat. It was an added bonus that I got to see my cousin's little ones as well. I will start with my parent's new house...it is not my home but it is very nice and much bigger than the last house. They are still located in Fort Smith, but are now living in Riley Farms. The neighborhood is super nice and they even knew some of the neighbors prior to moving in. (Our preacher is only a few houses down)
The beginning of the summer was fun for my parents. They moved into their new house in June and also bought a new boat. While I was home in September I went out on the boat at Lake Ouachita. They got a pontoon boat, but I think it looks more like a deck boat. Arkansas has had a lot of rain and right before my trip they had a week of rain which caused the lake to be up. Where my parents keep their boat is located right by the River and it had some fun obstacles for us when I was home, but it made for some interesting pictures.

Boating through this was fun

No Pirate Flag for my Dad
Captain Ronnie
Me and Dad
My Mom is enjoying the day

The weekend I spent in Arkansas was filled with lots to do and lots of people to see. I really wanted to find time to see my little buddy, Aden, and his little sister, Ava. I haven't seen either of them since Ava was about a week old. They both have grown so much. Someone taught Aden that I am Cousin Jennifer, that's what he calls me now, I wonder who...James. Ava is the happiest smiley-est baby ever. I believe she must be on drugs. I had a lot of fun playing with Aden. I brought him a bunch of stuff to play with from the tradeshows I had been to lately, and he threw them all over the place.

Aden is cheesing and Ava is a deer in the headlights
Aden showing off
Happy Baby

My only disappoint while home was that Arkansas played away the weekend I was there and so I didn't get to go to the game. Two games left in Fayetteville, so maybe I will make it to one.

08/31/2009 Hawaiian Vacation

The day after we went to Pearl Harbor, we decided it was time to relax and enjoy the sun. So, we went to the beach.

Before we made it to the beach, Veronica gave a tour of Oahu. The tour was really unintentional,we were not lost. She wanted to take us to a nice beach on the West side of the island called Waimanalo. From Honolulu to the west side of the island requires a short drive through the beautiful lush mountains of Oahu. Trust me when I say they were big mountains. As we drove through the mountain it began to rain on us, but only for a short time. When you come out the other side of the mountain you see fantastic beaches and sunny skies. During our drive we took a few pictures of the scenery.
When we got to the beach on the west side of the island, we noticed the warning flag was purple. We asked the lifeguard, who told us that there were Man o' War jellyfish in the water. That's all he had to say to me, and I knew I was not swimming here. He then told us we might get stung but that the jellyfish were on the surface of the water, so we would be able to see them. I think he thought by telling us that we could see them, we would stay and swim. From the beach we could see the jellyfish, and therefore we asked where he thought would be a better place to swim. He sent us to the calm waters of the North Shore. He added that they were having sick swells that day. I was excited...surfers!!

We jumped in the car and proceeded to drive from the Southwest side of the island to the North shore. The lifeguard was nice enough to suggest Waimea Bay, which is a very nice and semi calm beach. To get to the North Shore we drove by the Dole Plantation, tons of fields of pineapples...yum, Coffee bean fields, and rows and rows of cars watching the surfers. Waimea Bay is the perfect spot to relax and the waters were nice and cool. We stayed on the beach for several hours working on a good tan.

The North Shore
Waves
More Waves wishing I had my nice camera
Michael and Veronica swimming

After awhile we decided it was time to go get some lunch. We went into the village of Waimea to grab some lunch at a local place. We ate in this little shopping center that also had tons of stores. Once our bellies were full, we walked around to all the little stores. Veronica bought her first baby outfit here and was so excited. While walking around we found the best little coffee shop and Michael ordered a Cappuccino Freeze with two shots of espresso. I loved this place because they had a Mocha Freeze, which was exactly like a Mocha Shake at Sweet Bay in Fort Smith. Needless to say Michael was a little wired for our drive back to Honolulu.

Me and Veronica-meant for little kids

As evening came we decided to go down to Waikiki for some dinner. We ate at this great place on the beach called Duke's. The sunset, the dinner, and the conversation was the best. We definitely did not want our evening to end. Here are some of the sunset pictures from our dinner spot.

Diamond Head behind us
Diamond Head
Tons of people watching the sunset