Wrapping up Belize . . . We will return again some day!

As this amazing #25thAnniversary vacation comes to a close, I leave this blog with a few extra pictures and my musings and thoughts on 25 years of marriage to Mark.  Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share our fun and adventures with you via this blog.  

We rented a golf cart one day.

We never saw any, but apparently it does really happen.  

Lobster became my new favorite seafood, even in grilled cheese form! 

You can see iguana and lizards everywhere! 

We had a few visitors in our shower! This one was pretty cute.  It was the cockroaches that I found a little creepy in my shower.  

Finally for those friends that requested a little gift, I think we might have you covered.  

What I Learned After 25 Years of Marriage

* All my thoughts are based on a basically healthy relationship I have with Mark.  I don't profess to know anything in particular or even everything.  These are just me thoughts and feelings of what I have learned.  I also do not believe any of these thoughts hold true in an unhealthy abusive type relationship.  

Marriage is more than two people ~ 

     Most people think and believe a marriage is two people coming together to share their lives together and to become one.  I don't believe that is true.  I believe it IS two people coming together, but those people are individuals and still have to survive as an individual or else you lose yourself and then things will start to break down in the marriage.  I believe the marriage itself is a "third" person.  It has a personality all its own that you create with your partner.  If your relationship is only the two of you then the marriage is "three". However, if you have a family the marriage becomes more.  Lots of people think the family is separate.  I don't think so.  Everything about my marriage includes the kids.  Every decision I make regarding my marriage to Mark includes Kaleb, Chelsea and Ksenia and their wellbeing.  I stay a strong individual person for my husband and for my kids.  For the kids, they need to see how to take care of themselves within a relationship.  They need to see how Mark and I work together as a couple and work within the marriage individually.  How else are they going to learn.  They see the mistakes and they see the joys.  

Love waxes and wanes ~

     After 25 years of being married to Mark, I believe love waxes and wanes.  I also believe love and commitment go hand in hand.  I believe you can fall out of love and you can fall back in love.  I believe that can happen periodically throughout the marriage.  However that idea won't work unless you also believe in the commitment and stay with each other when the love is waning.  I believe you can't allow hate into the relationship but you can allow those moments of not necessarily being in love but being content and of course committed.

When I say I Love You~

     Love and like are different.  Feelings are unpredictable and sometimes, most of the time don't make sense.  Marriage is two imperfect people coming together, each bringing baggage you may not want but between the two of you, you choose to make it work.  When people say they love each other, sometimes it is beautiful and heartfelt and ooey gooey sweet.  Sometimes it is fake and forced and unnatural sounding.  I believe sometimes people say "I Love You" for themselves and not for their partner, and that is why it sometimes sounds fake.  Sometimes when the love might be waning or the unpredictable, nonsensical feelings surface, I tell Mark I love him as a reminder to me, not to him, that I love him, I am committed to him, and I will not leave this relationship just because his or my feelings don't make sense or just because I don't feel "in love" at the moment.  I have, over the years, even told my children that I really don't "like" them at that moment, but I love them and nothing will change that commitment I have for them.  

Communication is Everything ~

       I honestly believe communication is a big key to a successful marriage.  However people often think not talking is a lack of communication when really it is a form of communication that can be used incorrectly.  Not talking may be necessary in order to actually listen to the person, or maybe even to help calm and not escalate the situation.  However not talking should never be the case to avoid sharing your own feelings along with the daily ins and outs of living.  Mark and I have high stressed jobs September through June and it calms for a couple months when we don't have direct contact with students.  During the school year, there are times when our communication is strained due to availability and busyness. We have after school activities and evening events, often times coinciding with each other and trying to find the time to connect and communicate can be difficult and those are the times I feel our relationship is at risk for anger and arguments.  Thanks to Mark and his obsession for new technologies and toys, I found one thing that helps with communication in our house is sharing calendars.  That wasn't so easy in the past before smart phones, but now all our calendars are shared, Mark's, mine, and all the kids.    Another thing I find helpful is to touch base with Mark throughout our day via an email, text or phone call.  Sometimes it gets a little frustrating because he doesn't always respond, but again thanks to Mark and his love for new technologies we both have fancy watches that alert us of incoming texts and emails.  I believe no matter how hard it is, you have to talk about everything that goes on in your life with your partner.  It is uncomfortable at times.  It is scary at times, but it is what makes the relationship work in the end. 

So once again these are just my own thoughts and ideas based on my basically normal (whatever normal is) healthy relationship with my husband of 25 years.  We have normal arguments and disagreements,  we have a normal "married" life and we have successfully raised three amazing kids.  

Love you all!  Until our next adventure . . . 

Mayan Culture . . . Chocolate!!!

July 21st

Our last paid excursion of our vacation, but not our last adventure!!! 

We spent our last paid excursion learning about the Mayan culture and specifically Mayan chocolate . . . How can you go wrong with chocolate!!!  We hooked up with our private tour guide in the morning and headed out to a very authentic Mayan family farm.  They grow all their own cocoa trees and even the sugar cane used to sweeten the chocolate.  The fun part, besides being surrounded by chocolate, we made our own chocolate from almost start to finish.  I say almost because we didn't actually roast the cocoa beans.  They were roasted for us and we started from there.  When we arrived we started our morning with a cup of hot chocolate that was literally cocoa powder and hot water.  We could drink it how it was, add spices and/or add sugar, which of course was fresh ground cane sugar from their farm, with a different taste than our regular table sugar at home.  We were treated to a plate full of different flavored chocolates they make before the demonstration began.  So all our teacher friends will appreciate this part . . . As the demonstration began, it was very "I do, We do, You do".  We started with a plate of roasted cocoa beans that we had to shell. After shelling the beans and listening to some history, we widowed out the shells that were difficult to separate, similar to how a person might pan for gold.  Once the beans were completely clean of shells, the beans and nibs (the broken beans) were put on a stone that was passed down for generations.  We were taught the different stages of getting the beans from the solid state to the liquid state and then adding the sugar.  We got to participate in each stage and by the time we were done, we worked up quite a sweat, plus the fact that we were in the jungle.  When we were done, we had chocolate that was simply and deliciously just cocoa and cane sugar.  There were no preservatives or fillers or anything extra.  It was very good.  While the demonstration was underway, in the open kitchen at the back of the open room, Juan's wife was making us lunch.  We partook in a pretty traditional Mayan meal.  We had chocolate chicken that was amazing.  If you're thinking sweet like milk chocolate, not the case.  We had rice and fried plantains, another root veggie similar to a potato although I can't remember the name, and a simple salad of cucumbers and tomatoes.  While lunch was still cooking we did go downstairs to their factory.  This is not like a factory you might imagine.  This a simple family operation where they teach their customers the Mayan history and culture and they make about 100 or so chocolate bars a day, enough to sell and maintain their life and culture and share during the chocolate festival every year in May.  It is a very simple life, but amazing people.  The lunch was so wonderful and the tour was full of information and fun.  If you ever make it to Belize, I would recommend it.  

Hot chocolate! 

Spices including cinnamon and chili . . . 

Fresh ground cane sugar

Our plate of roasted cocoa beans before we shelled them. 

Our plate of cocoa beans after we shelled them. When tasting them roasted just like this, they had a very roasted nut flavor, not unlike a good roasted filbert,  

Our sample platter of chocolates to enjoy while we were shelling our cocoa beans. Didn't take us long to savor those lovely flavors.  

Juan, the owner and farmer along with his grinding stones passed down from generation to generation.  He is teaching us the first of five steps from solid to liquid state chocolate.  

I started the first stage, just getting them crushed up to smaller nibs and trying to get to a somewhat powdery stage.  

I did pretty good.  Mark is doing the next stage getting into the beginning of the liquid stage melting  the butter in the bean a little bit.  

The end of stage two.  The cocoa butter in the bean is starting to melt.  Each stage gets faster and faster to create friction and heat to melt the natural cocoa butter and bring it to a liquid state.  

This is the final state before we add sugar.  For some reason I didn't take a picture of adding the sugar because it was an awesome fractions lesson for school.  In fact, I'm going to try and use it somehow when we do fractions.  I love life applications for math.  

We put our chocolate into molds so we could share them with the other couple that was on the tour.  

This is Juan, the farmer, on the right and Mark, our tour guide on the left.  Mark has the best laugh! He is the same guide who took us snorkeling and cooked our lunch on the private island.  Mark was great.  

Traditionally they would roast the cocoa beans in the sun, but for they sake of a small little business, they roast the beans in a turkey roaster.  

This contraption does the shelling for them now.  They still widow out the shells by hand. 

Now for the sake of production, they use this machine that gets them about 100 bars of chocolate at a time, instead of 1 from the stone.  They still use the stone for their own personal use of cocoa beans and family meals.  

And finally, our meal . . . 

Chocolate chicken, rice, fried plantains, the root veggie, and the salad.

After our tour of the cocoa farm, we headed to some ruins.  Although not the ruins you have seen in pictures, it was still fun.  We saw some pretty big stelas (stone carvings) and their ball court was close to perfectly intact.  The tombs were fascinating and we got to see a sun dial and learned some interesting facts about the Mayan history.  This particular ruin they believe belonged to a specific royal family and was not a major city.  It is named Nim Li Punit.  

Mark in front of one of the huge stelas. 

This is one of the meeting areas. 

The ball court.  They don't know exactly what the game looked like but they figured out it was definitely some sort of game with some sort of ball.  

This is the sun dial.  It was much, much taller in its original form.  

Their tombs.  The bodies are not mummified.  They are entombed and the graves are layered up.  

My favorite guy for the last 25 years!!! 

As we finished our trip of Maya, Present to Past, we headed back to our little cabana.  There is no daylight savings here so our day starts fairly early and it is dark, dark by 6:30.  Even though we have had a few nights here and there "out on the town" so to speak, this particular day along with many others, as the day light disappeared we retreated back to our cabana and this day, we fell asleep around 7:15 and I did not wake the next day until around 7.  I was so tired.

Until next time, we love all! 

Snorkeling on the Caribbean Sea

July 17th

We set out this morning for adventures in snorkeling and lunch on a private island.  We were supposed to go yesterday but the weather wasn't cooperating.  However, today the weather was very nice but the waters were rough.  It was a back wrenching 60 minute ride.  I am very thankful I scheduled a massage a couple days after I get back to Hillsboro.  From my previous blog about our little snorkeling trip right here off the Placencia Caye you would think I was ready for snorkeling on the reef.  Well that was not the highlight of my trip.  Our trip was divided into three parts, morning snorkeling while one of the guides went hunting for our lunch, lunch on the private white sands Caye and then snorkeling after lunch.  

Snorkeling before lunch was, according to Mark, a little rough.  The water was a little rough.  I tolerated it and tried to focus on what the guide (who was very nice by the way) showed us.  Let me just say, I am not afraid of water.  I have been skiing and play on the water regularly every summer for at least the last 25 years or longer.  I had plenty of swimming lessons as a child and grew up close enough to the coast that I have had my share of adventures swimming out in the ocean.  However, even after Mark took my out to learn how to snorkel, I am not sure I'm a snorkeling fan.  The morning session I spent focused on trying not to panic that I'm not sure I really enjoyed the awesome fish and coral.  In the afternoon session I got in the water to try again and within 10 minutes Mark helped me back in the boat after a little panic and hyperventilating attack.  I sent Mark out to enjoy the snorkeling and take lots of pictures so I could see when we get back.  So although snorkeling is not for me at this time, and Mark enjoys it, we had a really great time and let me get to the private island lunch . . . Oh My Goodness!!! 

So the one guide went hunting for lunch during the morning snorkeling session.  He caught a lobster, a crab, and a couple fish.  The following are pictures of our fun around the private island.  

Our lunch for the afternoon, a fish, a crab and a lobster! 

The biggest termite nest we saw.

A cute little hut set up for marriage ceremonies.  

A shark swam right by our feet as we lazily sat on the edge of the ceremonial hut. 

There are hermit crab everywhere and this one decided to climb a tree! They are so cute!!! 

Mark's view from the hammock! 

These are all hermit crab inside a dead tree.  I thought hermit meant solitary living . . . I guess not! 

Our lunch . . . Yummy!!! 

After our adventures in snorkeling and lunch on the private beach, we spent the evening with friends from home, Kristi and Jeff Stoll.  We have done a couple adventures with them including the snorkeling.  They were also celebrating their 25th anniversary and were here for our second week of our vacation.  Their kids went to school with our kids and they live in the same neighborhood as we do.  It was fun getting to know them and spend some time together.  

Until our next adventure . . . We love you all!!!