Honey, how are the kids?

My little boy turned 2!  No more babies for the Llewellyn Family.  

Elias celebrated 2 with a cupcake and a tantrum!  

He's still as cute as can be; so, we'll keep him :).

 

Our oldest son, Joseph turned 9!  I wish the picture would've turned out better, but here he is blowing out his candles on his "brownie cake".

He asked for it, I swear.

 

  

Elias was determined to help him open his presents...he had just had some practice from his birthday.

Jesse, won a limbo contest.  He is the competitor in the family....if you don't count me, of course.

 Julianne, our oldest and only daughter, graduated 9th grade.  Here she is receiving her certificate.  She is now ready to move to the island full-time!

And....we moved again.  All the way to the tip of the island, with a beautiful view and an amazing breeze!  Isn't life great?  It is.

 

Festival...our Last?

In April, another one of our favorite events happens, Festival Internationale de Louisiana!  

Who can miss this 4 day/night free festival that takes place in our hometown of Lafayette, LA.  There are 5 stages of music from around the world; not to mention, food!  Lots of wonderful, mouth-watering, delicious food!  

There are hundreds of booths with local and international artists selling their handcrafted items from jewelry to beautiful artwork.  It is jam-packed with so much fun!  The music is amazing:  artists from Russia, France, Spain, Canada, you name it.  We enjoyed every minute of it.  There are tons of street artists, some that are local and some that are not, that come to entertain.

 

We look forward to the event every year.  If you have never experienced this festival, I highly recommend that you make it down to Lafayette, LA during the last week of April...absolutely can not be missed!  This is me posing near one of my favorite performers this year.  They were street performers that dressed all in red that had an absolutely wonderful performance with just drums and percussion instruments.  I think we found them 3 times so that we could experience it over and over!

It wouldn't be fair to our area to mention one festival and not another.  Southern Louisiana is famous for celebrating EVERYTHING with a festival.  If it crawls or grows in LA then it has a festival.  From frogs to strawberries, we have a given weekend out of every year to celebrate our favorite things!  Another festival that hits closer to home is the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, LA.  This occurs the first weekend in May.  So, if you aren't in New Orleans enjoying the very expensive Jazz Fest, then you can scoot over to Cajun Country and enjoy some less expensive crawfish and zydeco music.

This is an example of the amount of food that they have set up at this festival (above).  There is so much to do with crawfish as a culinary delight and you bet you can find it here.  Crawfish Fettuccine, crawfish stuffed balls, boiled crawfish, fried crawfish, crawfish etoufee', crawfish in a poboy, and on and on.  Don't come without an appetite.

As you eat the night away, there is local and famous musicians playing to entertain you.  Chubby Carrier, Horace Trahan, Jamie Bergeron.  Chris and I brushed up on our zydeco skills and our two-step.  Here is a picture of Jamie and his band below.

Of course while in Lafayette we must continue our eating frenzy...so I'll leave you with this one stop.  Oh, it's a good one!  Deano's of Lafayette!  This place puts seafood and other rarities on pizza, not to mention other wonderful dishes.  Our favorite pizza is the Marie Leveaux, which has something like mushrooms, crab meat, and mozzarella cheese.  Chris' favorite is Barbecue Chicken, which has yes you named it...barbecue chicken with red onions and cheddar cheese (I believe).  Deano's Pizzeria on Bertrand...definitely one of our favorites.

Until next time...

Aboard the Norwegian

On Easter Sunday, the boys and I boarded the Norwegian Spirit for a 5 day cruise home.  What an adventure!  We wanted to try something new to get back to Honduras.  Honestly, I was just tired of throwing money at United Airlines; I figured I'd share the wealth, right?  Not so much. 

The children had a wonderful time.  Ice cream for dessert with breakfast, lunch and dinner; who could ask for anything more? 

The older boys went to the playplace all day and Eli and I would cruise the pools. 

All in all in was a relaxing way to get home, not to mention, I was able to bring much stuff with us without having to pay extra baggage fees (take that United!)  We were able to see Cozumel, Belize and the sunrise over our beautiful island of Roatan!

I forgot to mention...we are a golfing family.  Our children really have no choice but to become professional golfers, or at least that's what we're drilling into them.  We golf anywhere, everywhere, and at any time that we can.  Joseph, our oldest son (in the green below), is almost better (bien, mucho mejor) than I am.

Christmas at our house is a no brainer...golf clubs!  Anyway, we were able to play golf when we were in Louisiana and this trip I finally brought back my golf clubs so that I could enjoy the beautiful Black Pearl Golf Course at Pristine Bay!

Adventures in April...

So, when I last left you we were touring Lafayette via restaurants.  Any southern Louisianan will be happy to tell you that the food is just downright good!  So moving to the Caribbean does have one drawback...I know, I can feel your sympathy....still feeling the sympathy, wait, that's not sympathy! 

Crawfish, Chick-Fil-A, and Pizzavillage are only some of the stops we like to make.  As we continue on, we like to frequent this certain place called Bonefish Grill.  Oh, Bonefish Grill is so good that that is the only food I'm going to talk about today.  MMMM so good.  We miss Bonefish so much that we have tried to duplicate two of their recipes here on the island:  Bang Bang Shrimp and the Saucy Shrimp.  Both were very good but not the same.  What do you think?

I have to admit, we really only go to this restaurant for the appetizers and the occasional special Chocolate Crème Brulee.  I can say that their salads and martinis are excellent as well!  So stop #4 is always Bonefish Grill and I know you really miss seeing the crawfish and by now I’m sure I had eaten more of it so here it is:

After being in Lafayette for a couple of weeks, I returned to Roatan alone to prepare the way for my family and trying to find something for us to do here permanently.  Basically, I had a much needed alone vacation for two weeks.  This occurred at the very end of March and the beginning of April.  If you have ever been to this area at this time you would know what event was soon to happen!  Yes…Easter, as we Americans call it, or Semana Santa, which is Holy Week.  This is a really big deal here.  Imagine New Orleans and the preparations they make for Mardi Gras…same idea.  I tried to find a good picture of what the beach looked like…this is what I could find.

I’m sure at some point it was twenty times worse.  I managed to escape just in time (spoken like someone that has experienced one too many Mardi Gras) and spent Semana Santa in Louisiana with my family doing the average Easter things like Easter egg hunting, hanging out with family, getting a scuba lesson (doesn’t everyone…) and eating…you guessed it, crawfish!

 

 

Until tomorrow...

Dear 9 followers....

Dear 9 followers,

I know I have let you down.  Life got so crazy and eventful here that I have neglected to blog.  I am now realizing that blogging was probably the one thing keeping me sane.  So I vow to try to not let you down again. 

When I last left you, my car had decided to lose a wheel and I believe it was around Mardi Gras in Louisiana.  So, I will attempt to bring you up to speed with the next couple of posts.  So, they won't be current, but enjoyable none the less.

First of all, our 3 month, which turned into 4 month, "vacation" came to an end and we had to return to the United States to make a huge decision.  Did we want to sell off our entire life and move to Roatan or call it all a great vacation and go back to normalcy called American life?  Well, of course, we wanted to remain in the Carribean.  This came with a small price; we had to sell everything.  Selling everything sounds exciting, but I reassure you it is exhausting. 

So began our garage sales...I believe we had four?  When selling everything you have to decide what constitutes as everything?  Do you sell (or more likely) give away pots and pans, clothes, furniture, those DVDs that you've been collecting for years.  Oh no, not my CD collection from the 90s!  Seriously, the hardest thing I had to do was give away the books from my library that I've collected now for over 20 years....all in the name of moving.  Our close friends are now some of the proudest owners of some really awesome stuff. 

One last thing and I'll move on, people that came to our garage sale thought we were nuts...they literally passed the news on to other garage sale shoppers.  Everything at our garage sale was $1 or less!  How much is this set of cast iron pots?  $1, Seriously?  How much is this computer monitor?  $1, What?  It got to the point that we just started giving things away to people that bought one item....felt so good to do; however, we were labeled as crazy!  "We hear you are the crazy people practically giving stuff away"....Yep, that's us! 

From November to March, I returned home once for the dog incident that I previously blogged about, so when I returned in mid-March there was only one thing to do...eat Louisiana Southern food and lots of it!  I can't tell you how much crawfish this little person consumed, but it was more than the daily allowable by law rate (there is no such law so don't send anyone after me...I have enough trouble). 

Here's a picture of me and one of my bestees, Julie...it is a little blurry, the trusted waitress took our picture...I think she mumbled, "Stupid tourists."  Little did she know, I only had a couple of weeks to devour as much crawfish as possible! 

I just realized that I may have to explain what crawfish are to some people and why we would eat them.  The best way to describe a crawfish:  a little lobster that is much more juicier and Cajuns consume a lot of them!  Crawfish are usually boiled (how I prefer mine) with potatoes, corn, mushrooms, and onions...oh and lots of cajun seasoning!  They are delicious and sort of like sushi; you can eat, and eat, and eat them and it takes forever to be full.  Now, I continue...

Not only did we eat crawfish, but all the foods that we loved and missed for example, and spare me the time to plug a few local favorite vendors...Our very first stop was always Chick-Fil-A for their Spicy Chicken Sandwich.  This sandwich is so spicy hot and I consume it so fast that it always gives me hiccups...what the hell, have two! 

The next stop, usually the next day...give a girl a break, is usually Pizzavillage, U.S.A.  Oh man, one cannot do without their Italian dressing and their thin crust.  As a teenager, I worked in this restaurant briefly and I kick myself in the arm (that one was for you Johnny) for not remembering the recipe for that darn dressing!  Here's Chris enjoying a plate!

There are so many more restaurants in our tour de Lafayette but I'll leave some for tomorrow's blog.  So, for now, 9 followers spread the word and let's get one more follower! 

Until tomorrow,

Melissa

Never Boring....here in Roatan!

Lots of fun and adventurous things to add....


First....I had the wonderful experience of driving a truck with only three wheels instead of four; doesn't really work very well.  The wear and tear on a vehicle here is tremendous...salt water, mountainous terrain, etc. adds so much stress on an already stressed vehicle.  Needless to say, my front left ball joint pin sheered off and I went sliding down the hill.  Thank God, the car did not go out of control and I stayed on the road and not down the extremely steep hill on either side...thank God, thank God.  So anyway, thought you would all enjoy that and it was worth mentioning.  The most exciting thing of it all was the two hour reunion on the West Bay Road with EVERYONE that we knew that drove by.  We decided to tow the truck, but the mechanic was determined to fix it right there....this place is so crazy different!


Second....night before last we had a bat that decided to spend the night in our bedroom!  The weather is so beautiful here that we sleep with the sliding glass doors open and somehow he managed to fly into the room.  Chris and I both sat up in bed when we heard a loud thud and knew something out of the ordinary had happened.  Sure enough, he turned on the light and the bat was lying on the floor next to the bathroom door.  Apparently, it had flew straight into the door and knocked itself out.  Thank goodness Chris was here for two reasons:  first of all, knowing me, I would've just ignored it and crossed it off as my imagination and not investigate...which would have ended with a bat flying/spinning around the room on a ceiling fan; and second, Chris picked up the bat in a towel and ran him outside...not something I would prefer to do!  Anyway, crazy freak incident...another thing worth mentioning.

Third...and this one is for you Bonnie...in keeping the tradition of Mardi Gras, Chris brought back two King Cakes so that our wonderful family here could experience the decadence of this wonderful treat.  We were dissappointed to discover that neither one, despite the warning signs on the box, included a baby in it.  So, I'm wondering is this oversight a result of economic crisis? I mean, are the bakers trying to cut back...no baby for you!  Is it a gender thing....could they not decide if the baby should be a boy or girl?  Or perhaps the NAACP decided that babies of minority were misrepresented.  Okay, just kidding...no one get their panties in a knot!  But seriously, where were the babies?  

Lastly, and this is a difficult one, what is up with the snorkel test?  This would have to be the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered.  Dive Masters do this as a right of passage once completing their certification.  Lord help me if I ever look forward to taking this test!  Saw it performed on four people on the night this picture was taken and each time I came near vomiting.  So gross!  But hey, Welcome to Roatan!

A Day in the Life...

Oh, the things I have gotten accustomed to here on the island.  Sugar ants in my coffee...no problem, they make it sweeter, right?  Wake up at 5 in the morning because hey, the sun's up and so is the neighbor's bird...no big deal.  Pass up a truck full of people hanging over the sides, in a curve; I'm a pro...even Dolly, our nanny who is from here, holds on and breathes deeply!  I can't even explain to you what is at the bottom of the egg cartons...very scary; but yet, I still cook and eat the eggs.

Someone mentioned to me the other day that even this place has certain drawbacks, things that you have to accept and take for what it is; because in the end, its still paradise.  So, I started thinking about it this morning, as I picked a fly out of my coffee, and of course its true.  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...  I suppose that I am so in love with warm weather and blue water that I don't even notice the negative; but eventually I suppose I will.  I guess most people would get fed up with sand on the floor, on the couch, in their bed.  Little bugs that you don't see that leave an annoying little dot on your skin that itches incessantly, probably don't appeal to many. No shopping malls, McDonalds, or true convenience stores does make life different; but unpleasant..not so much.  I personally am completely satisfied to never walk into another Wal-mart as long as I live; but I know the first stop after deplaning in the States will be to that dreaded place...or maybe not.

Our "vacation" here is about to come to an end and then we must go back to the States and continue on with our decision to move here permanently.  Sell stuff, sell stuff, sell stuff.  There is so much stuff that we collected over the years and now that we look upon it all, we realize that it took us to be here to know that it's just stuff and we truly don't need any of it...well maybe we'll keep the Henckels.  I spend nearly every day at the beach, so sad that I have to leave it for several months.  I truly love it here; quality has such a different meaning now.  Did I mention Chris does karaoke here...so embarrassing, but yet funny.

K, enough of that...got to get to bed; remember, 5 a.m.