A Fantasy Wedding

St. Lucia has delivered up the most wonderful time for Caitlin & Jamie's wedding with so many of our family in attendance.

We spent five wonderful nights on the boat with the 'kids' - I can't comfortably call them that now, but Caitlin will always be my girl.  Then we checked into Windjammer Landing and Jim arrived from Belgium - not often the four of us are together.  Peter and Beth (my brother and sister-in-law) and Minna, the most amazing maid of honour, arrived from Ottawa to complete our side.

But... we weren't alone, we were joined by our new family with Jamie's Mom Sheila, his Dad Wayne & his wife Genny, Jamie's brother Tim and his wife Melissa, son Cameron and two adorable daughters Leila and Leanna.  The gathering was complete and ready for the celebration.

It was such a wonderfully emotional time and my words can't capture the beautiful moments, but finally here are the wedding pictures, mostly captured by Peter since I decided not to spend my time with a camera in my hand.

We prepared for the big event, getting Caitlin all settled in her finery.

Meanwhile, the men arrived in the garden with Jim as an escort.

Finally, the bride appeared on Henry's arm as he tried to calm her nerves.

The pastor talked of listening and appreciation - I think these two have that in spades!

Tim kept a close eye as vows were made.

And now the kiss.

Tim, Mr. & Mrs. Simmons, and Minna

Bougainvillea blooms fluttered through the air

Family pictures in the garden as the sun set over the sea behind us.

The wedding party

And the sun put in a beautiful appearance too

A little sprinkle of a shower had Jamie checking on Caitlin

Beautiful rings

Melanie did an awesome job as the wedding planner, and showed a little sass for fun

Minna taking a little breather

The Moms!  We made a good team.

Lovely flowers everywhere

Even on the wedding cake

The evening progressed with a delicious buffet dinner and then time to cut the cake - it was delicious too!

I won't post the embarrassing "eating cake" photos

Although Peter did capture a few and shared them with Jamie & Caitlin

We had our own private restaurant for dinner and dancing afterward.

Final dance of the evening...

And then even the girls got in the act.

What a day and what wonderful memories - may they last you a lifetime full of joy Caitlin & Jamie.

A Whirlwind Couple of Weeks

Been a bit quiet here recently so I thought I'd do a little catch-up.

Following a day of sight-seeing on Antigua, we switched into boat-prep mode to get ready for our trip back to Canada.  Before we went to the dock however, we had a couple of nights in Jolly Harbour where we caught up with Nahani River, Izzy R and new friends on Horizons and Imagine.  We enjoyed some great sundowners and a dinner out with this international group of Canadians, Americans, Brits and an Italian; I know - not that international since we all pretty much speak some form of English but fun nonetheless.

Thursday arrived and time to put Mowzer on the dock.  The place is a bit like a ghost town now that the winter season has wrapped up, so it was super easy to navigate into our spot but the marina staff were so helpful with lines as we reversed in to the dock that it was one of the easiest dockings yet.  To be honest, we avoid going to the dock as much as possible because it's those hard crunchy bits that cause the most grief around the boat.  What ensued was a couple days of cleaning and sorting, and then digging into all the storage lockers, nooks and crannies to go through everything on the boat and decide if we had used it or would need it in the ensuing months.  Given that our original plan had been to travel north through the Bahamas and then up the eastern seaboard but has now changed to hot steamy Grenada this summer, we managed to unload a certain amount of cooler weather clothing that we see no need of in the near future.  Into the bag it went to return to Canada with the hopes of filling the empty suitcase space with boat goodies on the return trip.

Our time in Canada has been a whirlwind of visiting with family and friends and I am certain that we are going to have to do some serious hiking down-island to work off that multitude of lunches and dinners, but how wonderful to see and hug everyone again.

We started off with Caitlin and Jamie in Toronto where Canada greeted us with a chilly, wet Sunday at 10 degrees C.

My new favourite picture of these two!

We moved on to Ottawa for a week's stay with Peter and Beth and visits with Jim and many old friends.

I even managed to do some sight-seeing around my old home-town with Jim on the annual Doors Open event.

Jim took me on a little tour around the O-Train yards.

Aberdeen Pavilion in the new Lansdowne Park development

This space used to be a parking lot - so much better in this new pedestrian-friendly design

Women's FIFA is being hosted in Ottawa this year and the stadium is all ready

We moved on to Ottawa U. where Jim checked out the decay charts and the Acceleration Mass Spectrometer 

East Block of Parliament from Wellington & Elgin - always loved this part of downtown

The Old Mill (now a brew-pub) on the Ottawa River at Victoria Island.  We were visiting the oldest hydro generating station in Canada, still in operation for the city of Ottawa

We wrapped up with lunch in Little Italy.  Pizza, fresh-squeezed lemonade, an outdoor cafe table with a Ferrari parked on the road to enhance the atmosphere. 

We even managed to play a bit of golf as the weather continued to co-operate beautifully for the first week after the chilly greeting.

The course was looking absolutely beautiful

Ladies' fun with Laurie & Diane - thanks for being such a good sport Bob!

Bob contemplates the local wildlife - a snapping turtle laying eggs in a sand trap.

Evening winding down as we finished up the game.

Meanwhile, Henry got out with the guys at the annual Richmond Curling Club tournament (thanks to Ron for sharing the picture).

Jeff, Henry, Greg & Ron tore up the links to take second place!

Our second week is now underway and we've been having a grand time with family and more friends in Ottawa.  Today we drive down to Waterloo this evening with Jim all ready for his university convocation tomorrow.  Can't believe the years have gone so fast!  Wasn't it just last year that we drove you down to residence Jim?

A couple more days are planned with Caitlin and Jamie in Toronto and then we're back on the flight to Antigua and Mowzer on Sunday.  Hard to believe that two weeks is almost done; we've packed in so much and had such a great time but like any vacation, it is also nice to get home again.

Christmas Catch-Up

We had a fabulous second day on Saba that I will post about shortly, but in the meantime as I was going through all the photos accumulated on the camera and phone, here's a short review looking back to our Christmas in Marigot with Jim.

We baked yummy cookies

Jim figured out the favourite pastime in the anchorage

We had a bit of turbulent weather pass through around mid-day

Jim tried out the inflatable paddle-board

... And found it easier in huge wind sitting down

And we finished off the day with a golden sunset.

Around SXM

Car rental day! We decided it was pretty easy just to walk up to the airport at Grand Case and get a car so that is what we proceeded to do at the quite civilized hour of 9am.

We had a couple of errands that we wanted to run and then the rest of the day was dedicated to sight seeing. First stop we tried to pay for the remainder of our mattress bill but Geraldine was still out of the office so we headed off to our next stop at WinAir to get tickets to go over to Saba next week (yay, we're going, but more on that later.)

The traffic on St. Martin is insane, barely moving across the top of Marigot at mid-morning, stalled on the new causeway bridge as it opened to let boats through and then crawling around from the airport to Philipsburg all afternoon. There was way too many cars on the island, and of course we rented one of them, but I wouldn't want to try to operate a business or get around on a regular basis with the level of congestion.

Nothing daunted though, we made it to Maho Bay to watch the planes land over the beach (and our heads) and then after a tour around the luxury gated areas of Terres-Basse with a stop at Long Bay Beach, we pulled up a set of bar stools at Bucaneer's Beach Bar on Simpson Bay for a delicious lunch.

Enjoying the beach at Maho.

Get ready, here it comes.

Love the stop-motion on the props.

The unabashed selfie with friends.

Heading to the bar?

By the afternoon we made it across Philipsburg and to the eastern windswept side of the island where we took a little hike above Oyster Pond with fabulous views out over Orient Bay. Jim had fun with the camera capturing the late afternoon light as it swept across the hills.

Getting ready for a little walk.

With St. Barth's in the background.

The east coast of St. Martin.

Capturing the light.

Through fields of grass.

Not sure what this is, but very pretty none-the-less.

Interesting mix of local farming with resort roofs in the background.

I sits and sits...

Surf school, time to come in!

The (in)famous Orient Bay.

Are we in the Caribbean or Wyoming?

Time to head home.