The Pollan Post

Byron and I snorkeling in St. Criox
These conch shells, some empty, some with conch's in them were everywhere. It was fun to swim down to the ocean floor and check to see if anyone was home. Often little fish would be hiding inside one if the conch had already been harvested. We took a guided boat out to Buck Island and they required everyone to wear these yellow vests. I kind of liked it until it rubbed my arm raw. We had a blast swimming through a grotto and around enormous coral beds.

We had a great time swimming around holding hands and pointing out what we thought was cool or unusual. A few of our favorites were puffer fish, the sea turtle or course, and sting rays. We saw tons of other stuff as well they had very large barrel sponges that would have been perfect to use as a flower pot on the front porch. The brain coral was also spectacular and gargantuate. I don't know how some of their creatures had grown so large.

This little sea turtle was so fun! We saw him at Cane Bay and followed him around for a bit. Byron chased him down with the camera and got a few really great shots. He was much faster than us, even with the flippers on.

Diving down for a conch. Byron was addicted to snorkeling. He spend hours a day out swimming around exploring the different beaches we were at. I was through after an hour or two but he would sometimes go for three or four hours in a day. Impressive! His dedication paid off though as he found an octipuss and a pair of very large black and white stingray. Lucky guy. I was happy with our turtle sighting. Maybe next trip we can find some dolphins.

Life is a Beach!

Byron and I just got home from our yearly get-away. I know I have given this lecture before but I will say it again....if you are married and want to stay married you should first go on a date once a week and second go away with just your spouse, no kids, at least once a year.

We had so much fun visiting my aunt Judy and uncle Don in St. Croix. They graciously invited us to stay with them in their beachside condo. By the time you are done reading this blog entry I know you will be planning your next vacation so I will give you the info now. The condo group is Colony Cove and you want to ask for unit 102-D. Then you will get the cutest, most well furnished and beach themed decorated beach front condo on the island. (My aunt is an interior designer and the place is amazing!) We even added to it a bit with a few of our beach finds.

St. Croix is in the Carribean near St. Thomas and St. Martin. It has amazing beaches of sandy white soft sand. The water is beautiful and clear, tons of amazing snorkeling sites!!! The best part about the island though is that it is undercrowded. I know, hard to believe but we took many a beach walk where we were the only people on the beach. I am not even kidding you!!! We walked at least a mile down North Shore Beach and ran into three other people. We had the place to ourselves. If you want a Carribean vacation without the touristy atmosphere St. Croix is the place to go. We will be back again and again and again and eventually will be buying our own little condo near the sand. I am not even kidding....it is now in the 15 year plan. We loved it there!

This is the back yard of Judy's condo. Palm trees swaying in the wind, hammock to relax in and a pool for rinsing off after a nice snorkel in their natural bay. A coral reef surrounds their stretch of beach so the water is calm and perfect for snorkeling.

This marina is a few miles down the road at Christiansted. They have a few nice restaurants to eat at there. But the best thing is you can take a stroll up the beach about a mile to the Palms restaurant and eat breakfast with your toes in the sand if you so desire. Or order pizza from Smugglers a two minute walk up the beach for dinner. We also drove into town and had some amazing Greek food from a little restaurant. The funnest meal though was Byron's lobster lunch.

The many shutters of St. Croix. I found these shutters to be enchanting. Everyone has to have shutters to block against the hurricanes and in the evening they close them to lock up their stores. I could hardly keep myself from taking a photo of every storefront we walked by because the building were all so different and adorable because of their shutters. So below you can quickly scan through and see the cute shutters.

Can you say conch? They have conch shells everywhere on the island. This pile is just down the beach from my aunts condo. They line every patio and garden walk with these babies and brain coral. I guess they harvest the conchs at this time of year and just throw the shells onto the beach. We glass bottom kayaked over a graveyard of conch shells....they had turned into a natural fish dwelling that was super cool. We also kayaked over a ship wreck that the fish have made their home. The glass bottom kayaks were really very exciting. We rowed around an island and saw fish everywhere we went right through the bottom of our kayak. We went over some discarded drainage pipes that the fish use as a hide out and we rowed under a bridge into a lagoon. There we saw big iguanas hanging out in the trees and on the sand. We also noticed slug looking creatures under us in the lagoon. Our guide pulled one out of the water and it was disgusting. Byron and I held it and it was a big baseball sized slug which inked purple on you when it was mad, which it was. When you put it back into the water it looks so cool because all these leaf and spikey looking appendages fluff out so it looks ominous and unapproachable. But it is really just a big mass of jelly slug.

Don and Byron went out snorkeling one evening and saw a barricuda. It took both of their arms to show us how long their fish was.....is this a fish tale or do barricuda really get that long? I am just glad the barricuda's I saw were more in the 3-4 foot range.

Byron and my room for the week. It was so cute with lots of beach art all over the condo. (Yes, some of it mine!) I left the two paintings I did plein air with Judy and Don as a thank you gift. We had such a great time and were really quite sad when we had to head back home to our grey, dreary 30 degree Utah.
This was the fire dancer. He was quick a talented guy. His favorite move was to rub his fire stick over his belly and all around his feet. Yikes! He was also good at blowing fire like a dragon.

Not as easy as it might look! The view behind us was really cool but the flash ruined the background of the photo. Just imagine a marina with beautiful sailing ships and the full moon shining down on them.

Byron and I having fun!

Judy had always wanted her photo taken with the mocko-jumbie. You go up and pay him a few bucks and then he will pose with you for a quick snap shot. The rest of the time he is dancing around and hopping through the sand on his stilts. The mocko-jumbies ward off evil spirits on the islands. Good thing we had them around.

Steel pan band, dinner entertainment. These guys know how to set the mood for a night on the town!
Don and Judy treated us to a buffet dinner at a hotel/restaurant on an adjoining little island to St. Croix. You have to take a little water taxi to get over to the hotel. Then they had dinner and entertainment. The fire dancer was really cool and I finally got to see a mocko jumbie. I painted 3 mocko jumbie paintings for the beach house last year for Judy and Don. It was fun to see one up close and personal. They are tall on those stilts!

St. Croix has two towns, Christiansted and Fredericksburg. This is downtown Christiansted. It was a darling area with pastel painted shops. A few cute touristy shops to walk through and galleries to peruse. Unfortunately our timing was always off and we didn't get much shopping time. Too busy checking out new beaches to spend much time in town.

On our way home from a great day snorkeling!

Beautiful Buck Island! Buck Island is another turtle refuge around St. Croix. They have a little biologist shack and you can come out to the island and help track the turtles laying their nests and assist the babies in finding their way to the sea. Next time....

Buck Island was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The turqoise water against the sofr white sand was an amazing contrast in color. We thoroughly enjoyed snorkeling around and even snorkeling through a grotto. I know, for real. There was a natural coral garden formed out by the barrier reef here and it created a sort of gateway that you swam through to get into the middle of the coral circle. Incredible. The corral here was so large and swarming with fish. Big fish! We even saw a barricuda out here....eeek. It left us alone though as I guess they feed at night. We would be a pretty large meal, even for him. We had both figured out how to dive down with our snorkels on and get a good view up close of stuff. We found large, very large lobsters out hiding in the coral. Really cool!

Ourside our condo trying to crack open our coconut after we drank all the milk out of it. I did eventually pry it open with my hammer and screw driver. The flesh inside was not very good though. It must have been a different species of coconut than we get from our Utah grocer.

Colony Cove 102-D!!! This is the condo we stayed at with my Aunt Judy and Uncle Don. They purchased it a few years back and stay here for a few months when it is winter back home. It was so nice of them to let us join them and wear them our for a week. They were such great hosts touring us all over the island and even putting up with my childish whims. The last night there they drove me down to the Lagoon where the bioilluminescent pools are. The moon was in the wrong cycle so we couldn't take the night kayak tour to see the bioluminescent organisms in action but they humored me and let me go see if we could see them from the shore anyway. We couldn't....frown on my face....but we know now we need to visit when the moon is not full as it was while we were there. The flip side of that is though the turtles hatch more frequently with the full moon so....catch 22, turtles or the cool bioilluminescent pools? I guess we will just have to stay for a whole month next time we go so we can catch both events.

So here's the story behind Tilly the turtle. We are walking along the beach heading back to our car and I see this ghost crab holding some strange black thing. So I run over there to see what it has got. It was a baby sea turtle. I could not believe it. The sea turtle looked alright, a little poke on it's neck from a crab pinch but otherwise looking good. So we snapped this photo and I rinsed him off. We were going to take a few more pictures but this guy, he was around 25 came over and started talking with us. Apparently, he had just been hanging out on the beach when a turtle nest broke loose and all these turtles started heading for the sea. Well, he had spent the last hour helping them along and trying to keep the crabs, mongoose and birds away from the babies. We found the last little sea turtle trying to get to the sea. Can you believe that? I have always and I mean ALWAYS wanted to rescue a sea turtle. I was so thrilled and you can see by my face in the photo just enamered with saving this little fella from being the crabs next meal. This few moments of joy were the highlight of my trip. We have since learned you can sign up with biologists and go help at night with the turtle hatches around St. Croix. We will definitely be going back and doing that with our kids. Can you imagine how exciting that would be? If seeing one turtle got me all worked up like it did I can't even imagine how thrilling it would be to see the whole nest hatch out. Bucket list item #4 ...rescue sea turtle from sure and imminent death by ghost crab....check!!!

This was a walk along the beach at Carambola. Beautiful little resort with their own beach enclosed by the craggy cliffs that surround it.

Painting at Cane Bay. There was a wedding setting up right next to us. We got to enjoy the steel pan band playing from the bar directly across the street. It was so relaxing to snorkel for a bit, paint for an hour and end the day watching a couple get married on the beach. Fun afternoon. The band came over for the ceremony and played here comes the bride on the steel drums. Very Carribian.

This was Sandy Beach. It is a turtle preserve and is only open on Saturday and Sunday from 10-4. We headed out and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon. I painted a bit and Byron enjoyed a little snorkeling. They had the beach marked off with numbered posts and tagged the areas where the turtle nests were. The whole turtle stuff was very exciting to me. I really enjoyed learning more about the sea turtles.

Cane bay snorkeling day....you can still see the snorkel mask outlines on our foreheads. Nice. At Cane Bay they have a drop off of 5,000 feet. We snorkeled out to it and peered over the dark looming edge and quickly backed up again. Seriously, anything could be down there. The Wall, as they call it is a real popular place for scuba diving. No thank you! It looked very ominous and intimidating to me. We had fun with Diane, Judy's friend who took us out and toured us around the bay. We saw a sea turtle out trolling along. Byron followed it for a while and had a little turtle time. The coral was amazing. Teeming with life and a variety of fish. I found it interesting at each place we snorkeled there were different fish and a very different ecology going on. Different plants, sponges, anemonies, etc. They changed everywhere we jumped in.

At the farmers market we bought a coconut, they graciously hacked off the top with a machetee and gave us a straw. The milk was tastey. Byron picked out a nice lobster....delicious grilled up a few hours later. We also bought a big green thing called breadfruit. We cooked that to the directions specified and decided there was a good reason it had not made it to the states yet. It tasted like a cross between a squash and a potato. Interesting...

Beachside Cafe...lunch with a view. So, we were seated at the front table and the view was spectacular. I wonder if you live in St. Croix if you ever forget how beautiful the ocean is? We dined on fish tacos and quesadillas.

The botanical gardens on St. Croix were beautiful. The flowers were amazing and the ruins were spectacular. They build the gardens around an old plantation and it made it so interesting to walk around and learn the history of the island while seeing the beautiful tropical flowers and trees. They even had a rain forest walk through the woods that was pretty cool. We saw lots of geckos and no snakes (they don't have snakes on St. Croix.)

The plantation owners home. I was joking we would tell everyone this was our beach house. I actually love how this building looks and would move in if it wasn't infested with bats. There was probably a hundred of them hanging from the ceiling.

Judy and I enjoying the breeze.

Drove out to Point Udall. It is the further point East and looks off to Africa. You can't see Africa but you know it is the next thing you would come to if you started rowing.

Morning walk on the beach outside Judy's condo. We found this fun rope swing and had a good time swinging and getting out hands ripped up on the rope. We did eventually figure out sitting on the swing would have been the smarter option. Before ending this post I need to say a quick thank you to Byron's mom who was an awesome babysitter for the week we were gone. The kids couldn't have been happier if we had been home ourselves. Thank you Laura!!! We had a blast.

After grandmas party we came home and had to wake up Ali so she could help us sprinkle magic reindeer dust on the lawn, since we were fresh out of snow. We sprinkled our glitter so Rudolph could locate our house better and know we had been good this year. I just love how magical Christmas is! We then came inside and read a few Christmas books....ending with Luke 2. This put the kids right in the mood for sweet dreams and they were all asleep shortly thereafter. Lucky for them because Santa came!

This is our family on Christmas Eve. I couldn't convince Ali to wear her green Christmas dress because she wanted to wear purple. What is a Mom to do? The boys were good for me though and wore their Christmas sweaters. Tyler of course forgot to put on his khaki pants and wore his blue sweats her had been wearing already for two days.

Nothing says Christmas better than a Chandler under the tree checking out the presents.

Ali got a hold of the camera and once again we got a lot of fun shots that we wouldn't have otherwise taken. The one above is the best of them though. Does she just look happy smashed between her two cousins or what?

Carter performing on the cello at my mom's Christmas Eve recital. He was very excited to be able to play two songs on his cello this year. Mozart's theme and Jingle Bells, a duet with me. He did a great job!

Christmas Eve at my parents house. My Mom hosts a yearly talent show/recital. Ali and Tyler performed our annual puppet show. It was a smash as always.

The Hogle Zoo does Zoo Lights at Christmas time every year. This was the first time we decided to go and were happy we did. It was darling. I have never seen the entrance of the zoo so crowded but it was worth the wait. We had a great time sneaking a peek at the animals at night.

String Party!!! We set up a string party, and by we I really mean, I set up a string party for 13 of the grandkids. Kathryn Zetta Jones has nothing on me. I would totally make it through a laser maze safely. After an hour and a half I was happy to be finished with my workout for the day. The kids had fun finding their prizes once we got the beginning untangled. It may have been the largest string party ever.

We had a boy vs girl Gingerbread decorating contest. The girls house was so cute. The boys house was eaten very quickly. We chased those little round balls all over the house trying to get them cleaned up. They sure would not get swept in with the broom.

We took the cousins who were in town and went to see the Ogden Christmas Village. It is a collection of around 50 little elf houses filled with decorations and lit up on the outside with lights. I was the head of the choo choo train and we all connected and chugga chugged from one house to another. We somehow managed not to loose any children and had a fun time looking at the awesome houses. This was a new thing for all of us and we quite enjoyed it. My name was actually on the naughty list in Santa's workshop. Can you believe it? My kids said they would still give me presents. Phew!

This is the Livsey Family Traditional holiday treat. My Mom made somewhere around 80 Cris Cringle Rolls this year. We all took a few to give to our neighbors and to eat ourselves. Then she hands a bunch out to her friends and neighbors. It was a big production getting them ready but they really are yummy. Christmas morning just isn't the same without them.

Fun trip to Temple Square to walk around and see the lights. We walked up and saw the Christus statue, the kids were very impressed and though the crowd wasn't exactly reverent my kids were very reverent and respectful of where we were. I was proud of them.

Ali and Mom on the lift ride at Alta. She had that big of a smile on the whole day. When we woke up Byron and I were thinking he could take the boys up and I would bring Ali up later. Oh no, she wanted to go with the boys right now. No hanging out behind with Mom any longer. She is getting to be such a big girl and held her own with the boys.

Ski day at Alta. This is the entire families first trip up for 2010. Ali was a trooper and by her fourth trip down the hill she had it all figured out. Pizza Pie and French Fries. She could stop and turn and go fast. She was a trooper. We even had a seriously good laugh at a face plant she performed gracefully.

Ali was Mary in her preschool Christmas Program. She did a great job holding the baby and passing him over to Joseph while she pretended to take a nap. It was so sweet. She has grown a lot since she started preschool at two and a half. It was a great way to start off the Christmas season.