nine- ten- eleven

Adrian celebrated the big 4-0 this last weekend. He told us during the birthday breakfast that he has been waiting for 30 years to be able to have his birthday on nine- ten- eleven. Sept. 10, 2011. We had lots of activities planned for the day, which luckily happened to fall on a Saturday, BUT, it also happened to fall on the day that projections for tropical storm/hurricane Maria was scheduled to go right over the top of us. The whole island was shut down, and on Friday afternoon after seeing all the boats brought in and the businesses closing in preparation, I reluctantly came to the realization that we would have to cancel all the surprises- breakfast and golf on Sat. morning, swimming later on, and a sunset catamaran cruise/dinner that night.

The funny thing is that the storm basically fell apart in the middle of the night, and although it was cloudy and dark on Saturday and everyone waited inside for it to hit us, we hardly had a drop of rain. So instead, we sat around all morning in our PJ's, then Adrian and I went into town and found a Taiwanese restaurant open for lunch (thank you to those hard-working Taiwanese people!) and our friends, Brandon and Tamsin, babysat our kids AND cleaned the church for us since it was our scheduled week. Now THAT's a birthday present right there!

In the evening, I prepared a traditional English meal (nostalgic for Adrian since he served his mission in England) of leg of lamb with gravy and mint sauce, yorkshire pudding, roasties, veggies, and trifle. I know that I bought a "40" candle 6 months ago in preparation of this day, but now it is lost, so we went with the "39" candle instead.

This is the homemade birthday card that I made and had about 100 people from the hotel/church sign. They all laughed and laughed and were impressed with what you can make someone look like with technology and photoshop. I know most of you except our fellow Kittitian's won't even be able to understand what this "language" is. I'll just say that if you have traveled much, even within the U.S., you will know that just because a country or group of people speak the same language, it doesn't mean you will understand their local dialects and phrases. I would actually say that about 50% of the time, unless I am trying to communicate with someone, I go about my business as if they are speaking another language, because I really can't understand what many locals are saying. In fact, sometimes tourists approach us at the hotel and ask what language the locals on this island are speaking. They are surprised when we tell them that it is English- or a version of it.