juliegoodwin

How gorgeous is it here?  I want to move in today.  The horses were so beautiful and well cared for, and it was spotless!  So green and pretty.

We went to look at puppies and they had an 8 week old foal.  He was so adorable!  He was playful and once he got comfortable with us, he got kind of sassy!  We loved him.
I fell in loooooove with a little doggie named Boss.  He's like a miniature Rockie, only 5 pounds.  A little boy with a pink boy in his hair.  Seriously the cutest dog EVER!!!  I want a Boss, but if only he was free! 

The newest Justice models (or so they think).

Zachary begged to use my video camera.  I finally let him, and he got some crazy shots! 
One of my favorite things to do is to make movies of my kids.  After editing, adding music, and doctoring them up in fun ways, they turn out really fun.  I think Zachary wants to take over my job!

A fun little shot of where the boats line up at the dock.

Hailey, Elyse, and their friends at our "photoshoot".

Dan and Hailey navigating through the tents in Charlotte Amelie.   This is set up and taken down every day.  There are literally hundreds of purses, t-shirts, dresses, fabric, jewelry, and anything else you can think of.   It is exactly as we remembered it from when we came here 6 years ago, including the same blue tents.  It is quite the shopping experience!     

Now that I am home I am editing my pictures.  I'm trying to bring out the colors and make them really vivid.  They were gorgeous, and my past St. Thomas pictures don't show that at all!  I'm figuring that it's because I used the low quality jpeg pics to upload from the laptop.  Well, now it's the Real Deal!   I might even post some repeats now that I have control over the pictures.

This was our ferry to and from town in St. Thomas.

Nikon D300
I'm finally editing my St. Thomas pictures one by one. 
This is the timeshare adjacent to our hotel.  It is GORGEOUS and we wanted to buy it.  But we figure we can always trade our week in Kauai for 2 weeks here.  We just don't want to give up Kauai! 

Nikon D300
f2.8
ISO 400
50mm
A 1/600

How cute is he?   I love the Spongebob bandaid! 
I had a baseball team photoshoot the other day.  Everything was shot in RAW and overexposed a little bit to bring out the shadows, then devoloped in LightRoom.  I love how they turned out.

I am sorry to report that my sighting of the "Mankini" was brief and fleeting.  The Mankini did not return after the Multi Mankini romp at the swimming pool volleyball court.  There was a Colony of them there that day, playing a rousing game of water volleyball, and I thought that for sure they would be roaming the hotel grounds, and I would get my perfect picture.  But my wish was not granted.   Nothing but board shorts!   I kept my camera handy, my zoom lens ready, and waiting for the perfect shot.   Maybe next year....

This is our last day here on the island.  I am going to count the days until we can return.  Of course that means I need to bug Dan endlessly about it since he is the best Travel Coordinator there is.
Think of us tomorrow...we leave our hotel at 2:30am tomorrow morning (California Time, which my kids are still on) for Miami.  The good news is that we have an entire day in Orlando, then fly home on Saturday. 

Dan, Zachary and Hailey finding sea shells.

Here is a really bad picture, but I have to post it anyway because even though it's bad I love it.  I thought that if I put a frame around it, it might be less ugly, but no....it's still bad.  I had accidentally smeared sunscreen on my UV filter, so that's why it's so blurry on the smaller iguana.  So here they are fighting over that piece of cantelope.  I mean they really FOUGHT!  There were tons of fruit on the ground for them to choose from....strawberries, watermelon, and more cantelope, but they would fight over one piece.  It kind of reminds me of my kids fighting over the room key and who gets to unlock the darn door when we get to the room.  Who's turn is it this time?  I really don't care, just open the door!  Back to the picture...the one on the other's back is biting one of his spikes...he's really going for it!    They were right at our feet on the sidewalk.  These guys are huge, too.  Some are bigger than my little dog!  Most of the time they don't even move, they just sit on the rocks, so it was kind of fun to see them moving around. 
This fiesty little guy scored 3 pieces!

Nikon D300
34mm
ISO200
1/400
F10

Today we went sailing toward St. John to an island called Buck's Island for a day of snorkeling and swimming with sea turtles.  This is our hotel from our sailboat.  One of those rooms on the top floor, probably about right in the middle is our room.  Look at that sky...how gorgeous is that?  Yesterday was so rainy and cloudy, so we are loving today.



A little way down the water is our hotel's beach.

What a beautiful day! 

Sea Turtles were swimming all around our boat.  We got out and snorkeled with them. 
You can't really see here, but the water off these islands is so unbelievably clear.  You can see straight down to the bottom. 

My favorite picture of the day.....Zachary with the Captain.  The Captain and 1st Mate just loved Zachary and gave him the worst time.  Zach came in a little early from snorkeling because he had a loose tooth and didn't want to lose it in the ocean. So the Captain got his rusty old wrench he used to tighten the steering wheel and told Zachary he could pull it for him.  Then he got out his toy sword and told Zachary to protect us from the Pirates (we were sailing by a "Pirate Ship").  He ended up poking Zach with it instead.  He even tried to get Zachary to steer the boat, but there was no way Zach would do it.  I just know that he was dying to, but everyone was watching him.  So Zachary was the little celebrity on the boat.   It was great day.
Dan is dying to go sailing again tomorrow to St. John and to just spend the day on that island.  We know that poor Hailey, who was such a trooper today, just cannot take another day of sailing.  She did so well, but she is not a sailor!  I guess that means we will have to come back.  
I think I said in one of my first posts that Kauai beats St. Thomas......well, now I'm not so sure!  We are loving, loving, loving it here.  I think it might be a close tie. 

Nikon D300
ISO 200
200mm
F 11
1/500

I am glad I'm not on that little sailboat! 
*From our balcony....we've moved after the first night.  We had looked over the bay into the town, but now we look right out into the open ocean.  Beautiful!

This good lookin' guy hung out with us by the pool. 
Yes, we are really this close to him!  I swear he was posing for me! 

This is a terrible shot....taken from our taxi on our way from the airport.
Anyway, this is an elementary school.  The kids at all of the schools wear uniforms.  Each school has it's own colors, so that they can identify which schools the kids go to.  You can see a couple of kids out front in white shirts playing basketball.





Another terrible picture!  I was trying to get a picture without looking like an obvious tourist.  I'm pretty sure I looked like an obvious tourist.
But this is how a lot of the kids seem to get to and from school, in these taxis.

The difference between wealthy and not so wealthy is huge here.  Mega Multi Million Dollar Yachts dock right next to the massive cruise ships by luxury shopping. 
Then across the street are the local St. Thomas vendors who set up and take down their shops every day.
We love to shop under these blue tents!  There are piles and piles of  "Designer" purses, T-shirts, wallets, dresses, and tons of misc. souveniers.  The people are so fun, and there was one lady selling necklaces who did nothing but sing.  She didn't talk but she sang everything.  She would point out what we could buy that might match with what we were wearing, but singing it all.  It's fun to have my kids see a whole new culture. I like that my kids can see that not everyone lives in Brentwood and goes to a school like theirs.  I will post a picture of a school later.   Then there were the ladies who tried their hardest to braid Hailey's hair.  You know the braids I'm talking about.....the Bo Derek, teeny tiny, rows of braids!  Imagine trying to get those out of her hair once we get home!  Every time we'd pass the braiding tent, they would say, "Braids for the Princess?"  But Hailey left the blue tent shopping without braids...phew! 

First of all, Happy  Birthday to Cole!  He is dedicated to Tennis, and decided to give up a trip to St. Thomas to stay home and play in the  Tennis Tournaments at school.  This is also why he is not in any of my pictures, since he is in California.


Here is an overview of our day today in St. Thomas:

We took the ferry here, to Charlotte Amelie...........then

we walked about a mile and a half, shamelessly bribing the kids with Ben & Jerry's ice cream as soon as we got there. We saw a sign that there was a Ben & Jerry's and our mouths were watering from that moment on.  Then it started pourring rain.  All I was thinking was how good a Chocolate Fudge Brownie sundae would be.  We finally made it to Ben & Jerry's when we saw this sign:

Notice the name of the coffee shop where we can get Ben & Jerry's.  Zachary kept repeating this over and over, not knowing that it might be a bad word! 

So instead of a lunch of Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, we ate at this place and had a
super rude waitress!  But we got to look out over the multi-million dollar yachts, so that was fun.  All in all it was a great day, rain and all.  It would have been better with B&J's Chocolate Fudge Brownie, though!