"Life is lived forward, but understood backward. It is not until we are down the road and we stand on the mountain looking back through the valley that we can appreciate the terrain God has allowed us to scale.” Jill Savage

Monday, June 09, 2008

"Periods of wholesome laziness, after days of energetic effort, will wonderfully tone up the mind and body." ~ Greenville Kleiser

And what happens after the period of wholesome laziness?

Summer's here and school's out. Graduation time and the flowers are blooming. It's hot... It's sunny. Life is full of endless possibilities. We just got back from a week in Aruba. Can you believe it was cooler there than here! Of course the 20 to 30 mile per hour winds helped.

Well, this week is going to be devoted to my trip. I learned so much there - it was a working vacation - not in the literal sense, but so much went on, besides seeing and leaning about Aruba, the relationships of life and love.

I'll start by telling about the trip. We stayed at the Occidental Grand Aruba Hotel - the whole thing was totally inclusive. We paid for nothing except when we left the hotel to shop. We rented a jeep one day and drove the whole island - which is small, but we still got lost twice. There are not many roadsides or directions. This was the hotel.




Once you leave the High Rise Hotels and go south past downtown, the island becomes desolate and rural. Of course there are tons of beaches everywhere - very clean - and not too busy at all.

The guys went kayaking - free. Not my grandson. We all went snorkeling free. Towels free. Drinks free. Our pool was huge right next to the beach. It had a bar you swam up to and sat on rocks. My grandson had his share of Shirley Temples and not only red ones, green ones too. He'd swim up and get his own. They had cabanas to sit on by the pool and the beach.



There were MANY iguanas - I mean MANY. The first day my grandson was scared to death. By the last day he was feeding them lettuce at noon with the other kids. They even had a place for kids to go to camp but we didn't use it.

Food was 24/7. The hotel had different fine restaurants for dinner - Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Caribbean, and Thursday was the beach party. The food was awesome and unfortunately I did gain 2 pounds back. Room service was free.



This was the Italian Restaurant - we ate at out on that patio at night.

We went to all the places Natalie Holloway went - so sad. It would be so hard to leave not knowing about your daughter.

Anyway I have to say I wasn't totally thrilled about going in the beginning - knowing I'd end up being the main sitter (which was easy), the hot weather (had wind), and the group (??) - my husband, daughter, her boyfriend, my grandson and myself. I have to say once I got my head straight - it turned out to be wonderful. (Again I learned you can't change anyone, but yourself.)

I didn't want to come home!
Love,
Chatty

1 comment:

Changes in the wind said...

What a wonderful trip and the pictures were awesome!