Penguin Cake

Today we are celebrating the September and October birthdays at work. It was a perfect excuse for me to use the penguin cake pan that my mom gave me a while ago. It is a "cupcake" cake pan. The pan itself is made up of smaller, piece-sized sections. You bake the cake and then put the sections together to make the penguin. After you have decorated it, each section can be easily pulled apart to make a separate piece.

The cake recipe I used was a bit dense but it meant that the cake wasn't crumbly so that it was easier to get the pieces level after baking. For next time, I will probably use less almond flavoring or even try vanilla as the almond taste is pretty strong. Of course it is whole wheat as well since I don't have white flour in the house.

After the cake that one of the students brought for the ICCI shower, I really wanted to try decorating the cake by making little flowerettes using a special tip instead of smearing the frosting on. I experimented on little cupcakes to get the technique down and then set to doing the penguin. I still don't have the hang of getting the flowerettes close enough together the first try so I did have to do some "patching" to fill in spots. I also didn't produce consistently sized flowerettes but I think it looks pretty good for a first try!

There is a God

33Miles has a worship song, "There is a God". As I was baking this afternoon, I had on ITunes and had it on shuffle through all our music, and the ITune shuffler decided to play it.

The words hit me strong today. Here is just the first verse and the chorus.

FIRST VERSE:

There's a beauty to the dawn, a rhythm to the rain
A silence in the soul that I just can't explain
There's a breath of life I breathe, a beating in my heart
A magnificence, a scary sense of what lies past the stars
Beyond what we can see behind the mystery
I know that it could only be

CHORUS:

There is a God; this is the proof
That all around the evidence is speaking the truth
From the center of my soul to the edge of the universe
Creation is crying out believe it or not
There is a God

Through my faith journey over the past few years nothing has struck me so much as evidence of God as this life that wiggles, kicks, and continues to grow inside me. Yes, every finger, toe, eyelash, and hair can be explained through science and the specific cell signatures that grew out of the first merger of cells between Scott and I. Science has mapped out how I now have a 5 pound 10 ounce baby girl squirming inside me that started off as a mere collection of cells but faith gives me the wonder at what is happening. I choose not to divorce science and faith. I choose to see the wonders that can be explained through science as more evidence of a God who has created this world where two cells can combine and know what to do next to create a new human life.

Whenever she decides to join us, this baby girl will be a unique person. She will probably look a little like me, a little like Scott. and a little just like herself. She will probably act in some ways like me, someways like Scott, and someways just like herself. All of these things can be explained through the scientific mapping of her DNA but faith allows me to see the unique combination of everything that will make her HER as specific choices by a God who sees the path for her life.

This baby girl is a combination of the science that conducts the manual labor and the God that orchestrates the whole thing as he watches over her. She is the most powerful evidence in my life that there really is a God.

The problem with crying wolf

So once again the local news is full of coverage and everyone is in a tizzy about the possibility of Tropical Storm Richard forming to our south later tonight or tomorrow.  Whenever that happens invariably we have students asking us about classes being cancelled and generally everyone on edge.  The problem is that this is about the fifth week in a row that we have had some kind of storm warning, flood watch etc. and at some point it just feels not real.  That I suppose is the real danger you stop being so sensitive to the weather channel and all the hurricane websites and stop being completely prepared and then bang the storm really comes.  With Katie just three weeks from her due date tomorrow, we are still paying close attention but really just want the season to be over with and no excitement to come our direction.  Even if we get the storm it will likely only be a tropical storm which means no classes but also means no need to put up all the hurricane shutters etc.  So, we are once again we are on storm watch and hopefully this is just one more time of crying wolf and the real thing passes us by like TS Nicole and TS Paula did with just a slight glancing blow of rain and no more excitement than getting to see the warning flags flying in all the roundabouts. Meanwhile just because I am sick of the rain and to show how pretty the foliage here can get below is a shot of the side of Friends Hall our main classroom building and what we get to see every July and August when the trees here are in full bloom.

Thursday Morning Update

Looks like it has formed but to our south and is eventually headed west so just more rain unless it takes a weird turn.  Right now the center is just to the right of directly south of us.

Buccaneer's Feast

Tonight to celebrate Katie's 27th birthday we went to the Buccaneer's Feast at the Marriott Beach Resort. The dinner was on Seven Mile Beach at the Solana restaurant. It was a buffet style feast with Alaskan King Crab, BBQ ribs, a pasta station, sushi, tons of other hot dishes, and a lot of desserts.

After the meal, there was a pirate show with a DJ, fire dancing, and pirate sword fights. Katie made some new friends and we both enjoyed a great meal and a good time.

Happy Birthday Katie

The big birthday party is tomorrow at the Buccaneer feast over at the Marriott but today of course is the Big Two Seven for Katie.  Will post pictures of the feast and show this weekend.

Watching Paula

Late season storms are always a headache because they form to our south and give us little lead time.  TS Paula is now forming to our south and west and will be in our neighborhood all week.  No idea yet which way it may move so we are watching it closely.  As you can see Grand Cayman (which is directly to the right of the Saturday projected location) is in the outer loop but outside the watch cone.

Rum Point Harry Potter Morning

As today is a Longhorn-football-free day we went this morning up to Rum Point. We did bring our swimsuits but it was pretty windy so the normally glass smooth water was choppy. We decided just to enjoy the sun and read Harry Potter instead of getting in the water.

As we are working on recapturing the wonder that is Cayman, Scott took a bunch of pictures that normally the tourists take but we normally ignore when we go. It really is a pretty place and captures the typical Caribbean view.

Of course there is also the silly picture of Baby C now that she has grown so much! 4.5 weeks to go! When it is calm, we think that Rum Point will be a great place to bring her so that she can get used to the water.

Losing the Wonder

When we first arrived on Cayman, so many things that captured our attention. We were fascinated by the cow in the Ivan damaged building, enthralled by the chickens that crowd around your car at the grocery store, and interested in the crabs that would play "chicken" with the car as we were driving.

Now that we have been here three years, we have lost some of that wonder over the little things that make Cayman unique.

A few days ago, as we were heading home from the college, we saw a car with a white license plate (a tourist) parked in the middle of a field right in front of a bull covered in white birds. The tourists were taking pictures while the bull politely allowed them to. We'd passed that bull many times and the birds were just a part of the scene but we'd never thought of it as anything special. We'd lost that wonder at the little things that make Cayman, Cayman!

After dropping Scott off at work this morning, a white license plate car about 200 yards in front of me suddenly pulled to the side. I was going to stop to see if I could help but then I noticed the camera. Yet again a tourist had pointed out to me what we miss on our day to day trips through Cayman. She had stopped to take a picture of the newly erected, quite funny looking, goat farm that sits right along the bypass. Although we'd noticed it, we never thought anything of it. We've lost the wonder!

We need to work harder to notice the things that make this place special, the things that stand out to visitors as uniquely Cayman!

The Ritz Carlton

Although we have been on Cayman well over 3 years, we had yet to visit the only five star resort on the island, The Ritz Carlton.  We have students who work there and have driven past it literally hundreds of times as it sits right on Seven Mile Beach road, but had never gone in or been to an event there.  Last night we finally got to see what all the fuss is about as we attended a gala dinner put on by the Cayman Islands Society of Professional Accountants which honored graduates of the two local colleges who got degrees in accounting. 

As we pulled up the long driveway into the Ritz our first question was parking but that was quickly answered by the valet who met us on the road and indicated that valet parking was a part of our tickets to the event.  Feeling very special, we pulled right up to the main entrance, handed our keys to the valet and headed in.  Employees of the resort pointed us in the right direction as we headed to where the dinner was being held.  The Ritz is a huge complex of several buildings on both sides of Seven Mile Beach road.  Our event was in the main resort on the land side of SMB road.  The dinner was in a huge ballroom and as the reception was going on we spent some time "exploring" the resort.  It was dark so we couldn't see the outside amenities but did get a chance to wander around inside and see the gallery.  The inside was very nice but not so much that it  blew us away.  The dinner was good and it was great to see several of our students recognized who had graduated last year with degrees in accounting.  Ironically, the keynote speaker was Don Seymour a local businessman who is a graduate of the University of Texas (yes I watched the game yesterday afternoon and we shall speak no more of it!).  We were both tired after the excitement of yesterday morning (about which you can read on the baby blog) and the adrenaline rush was wearing off so by 10 p.m. we were ready to skip the dancing part of the evening and just head home.  It was nice to see what at least part of the Ritz was all about.  A huge part of the Ritz's reputation is their service and we could definitely see that was deserved.  I am just not sure we could ever stomach paying 500 or more a night for a room no matter how good the service might be.  It was a fun evening though and certainly helped take our minds off the worry of earlier (and of course what turned out to be the real tragedy of the day, the Texas-OU game).

Cayman "Snow" Day

In Texas we used to get a lot of grief from our neighbors to the north when we would have a snow day at the first sign of some snow flurries or a little bit of ice. Today we learned just how different living 1300 miles south of DFW can be. Today we had a "snow" day.

All the public and private schools were closed. The government college stopped classes for the day. Govenrment programs such as NEPP were cancelled. ICCI closed down for the beginning part of the day. People didn't show up for their dentist's appointments (we were able to get in quickly!).

Yet the temperature was 86 degrees with a heat index of 99 degrees.There were no snow flurries, no ice. There was lots of rain and wind and we were on a tropical storm warning (complete with red flags with black squares) but nothing that would normally cause an entire country to shut down. Yes, there was some flooding. Yes, some roads were impassable. Yes, there were some wind gusts. No thunder. No lightning. No trees knocked down.

Some may ask, "what?!? A little rain shut everything down?!?" Yes, here in Cayman the rain and wind with the red nautical flags with the black squares threatening the possibility of another hurricane developing caused the country to go into "snow" day mode!

Lots of Rain and Wind Today

Lots of wind and rain today as the storm has seen its center move north of us but it is so large we are still in its rotation.  As you can see from the radar at left the storm completely covers the western caribbean.  We had to cancel classes last night because of flooding and today is 50/50.  The public schools have already announced they are closed today.  We are nice and dry inside and the winds are just a nuisance so far and not any real issue.  Our home is high enough that we don't have any problems unless there is a really high surge and this storm is not bringing that problem.

Tropical Storm Warning

All night long we have been getting rain from the system that is about to form Tropical Storm Nicole.  This morning we were officially put on tropical storm warning though the NHC site tracking map which I copied below shows the storm to our north.  We are the Island outlined in blue just below the center of the storm and to the right.  You can also see that the sister islands Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are under the same warning.  Right now it has stopped raining and we are hopeful that the flooding which usually comes with these storms will be limited.  The college again has Lake ICCI and too much more could flood our parking lot and lead to cancellation of classes.

40th Anniversary Dinner

Last night was the Fortieth Anniversary dinner for the college.  It wasn't lost on me that I am the same age as the college.  The dinner was held in the Governor's Ballroom at the Westin Causarina Resort on Seven Mile Beach.  There were 320 seats sold for the event and the room was packed by the time the event started.  There was a rain storm outside which drove the reception that had been planned for the lawn overlooking the beach inside but no one really noticed. 

There were graduates present from every decade and the Master of Ceremonies was the Hon. Anthony Eden who was actually a member of the very first class at ICCI in 1970.  He is the past Minister of Health and is currently a Member of the Legislative Assembly.  The music for the evening was a jazz artist named Devon Edie who was incredible on the saxophone.  Our featured speaker was another early graduate of the institution Carlyle McLaughlin who after attending ICCI in the 70's and getting his Bachelor degree, went on to get his Masters in Accounting and CPA and became a Senior Partner with Ernst & Young as well as founding his own computer company.  In his speech he talked about all the roles he has had with ICCI suggesting that everyone in the room consider their roles at ICCI.  He came up with ten including scholarship recipient, student, graduate, ambassador (he was one of first ICCI students to go abroad for Masters), alumni, spouse of ICCI graduate, faculty member, Board of Trustees member, Donor, and Parent of ICCI graduate.  A Power Point of forty years of photographs was shown as were two videos, one made in the Seventies and one recently which really helped show how far and how wide and impact the college has had.

Today is a Family Fun Day out at the college with an open house and lots of kid related activities.  Tomorrow a couple of the local churches are doing services in honor of the college.  It really was a fantastic start to the weekend of events and we look forward to a great day today.  Before we head over to the college today we are going to an event out at Camana Bay called "Yeah Baby" which is an expo of merchants and schools of all things related to kids.

Cayman dog "walking"

On the return trip from Cafe del Sol (our local "Starbucks") where I was working on my Capstone Proposal, I saw Cayman's version of dog "walking" just as I was pulling into the Butterfield roundabout near the industrial district. I wish there had been a camera in the car as it would have made the most hilarious picture.

Riding into one of the busiest intersections on the island was a man on a bike, not an odd occurrence at all. Sitting right behind him on a piece of plywood about 2 ft by 3 ft was large yellow lab (or mutt with strong lab tendencies)! I couldn't see how the wood was attached to the bike but the lab was balanced on all fours on the wood happily being carried along. It had to be fairly secure because the dog didn't once teeter and did not seem at all concerned at his method of transportation.

Only in the Caribbean....

The Big 4-0!

Yesterday was Scott's 40th birthday. We had planned an evening of sunset and sushi and were pleasantly surprised when we also received a hotel stay at Sunshine Suites right behind our favorite sushi place.

ICCI has a visiting consultant this week as they prepare for accreditation. There was some confusing with getting a place for her to stay and the college ended up with a prepaid night at Sunshine Suites that wasn't being used. Kira, the Business Manager, graciously let Scott and I use it for his birthday!

After an afternoon of giving Gypsy lots of lovins in the other room while one person packed so that she couldn't tell we were leaving (she has been very needy lately), we set off to pretend we were in a far away land!

We've been to the little grill here (see Sunshine Grill Dinner) at the hotel but have never stayed in any of the rooms. Each room has a kitchen area with a big fridge, stovetop, sink, and a little dining table. It is set up nicely to allow visitors to do a bit of cooking for themselves to keep their costs down. Scott really liked the flat screen TV and watched some football while I got ready since it always takes me much longer!

After getting all dolled up we walked over to Yoshi's.

We get sushi ("fake" sushi lately) about twice a month but it is Scott's favorite on the island so he wanted to do it for his birthday. To make it more special than the normal takeout we get, he decided to go for the Love Boat. When we first arrived on the island, we used to go to Yoshi's all the time and each visit we would get the Love Boat. It is a "boat" (they used to use this really cool wooden boat for the sushi but we haven't seen it in a while) filled with sushi that comes with multiple courses. You get to enjoy miso soup, tempura, rice, teriyaki chicken, and, afterwards, mango or green tea icecream (we both always get the mango). It is A LOT of food (hence the reason we stopped getting it) but since we were in "vacation" mode we scarfed it all down! We did some substitutions for the sushi rolls so that they were all "fake" sushi and I could eat them but Scott really enjoyed getting to have nigiri and sashimi sushi (one is just cuts of the raw fish and the other is raw fish over rice). After packing up some of the leftovers so that Scott could eat his customary "midnight sushi" (usually eaten around 8 p.m. because we aren't night owls...), we headed back to the hotel.

With me 8 months pregnant and Scott exhausted from many weeks of running like crazy with work, we ended up crashing! We'd planned to change back into shorts and go walk on the beach right at sunset but when we got back to the room we were just too tired to go back out. We'd brought "Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban" to watch (I'm rereading the books and we are watching the movies as I finish each one). Only about an hour into the movie (which is the most inconsistent from the book of them all so far!) Scott just couldn't keep his eyes open. We had the "midnight sushi", tried to make it a bit further in the movie, and then decided to call it a night. Scott zonked out around 8:30! Aren't we just the happenin' couple!?! We are turning into my parents! :) It will just get worse when Baby C joins our family!

He needs to get a lot of sleep because this next week is going to be NUTS! He has visits from Ministers, meetings with the Education Council, a mock accreditation visit, and ICCI's 40th anniversary celebration on top of his regular responsibilities! After everything calms down, I'm sure that he will update everyone on all the events of this week.

The Right Place to Be

There are no less than three major hurricanes active today and fortunately not a one of them is in any way affecting us or appears as if it will.  Karl was nice enough to wait to form to the west of us while Igor and Julia didn't even knock on the door of the Caribbean the way Earl did before turning north.  The season is still barely over 1/2 way done but so far at least it has been another quiet one for us.  Knock on wood, lets hope that continues.  Fortieth Anniversary week is next week and we are finishing the first week of the fall term today.  With 225 students this is our biggest term since we got here.

Zachary Alexander's Baptism

Yesterday up in Naperville our nephew Zachary Alexander was baptised.  I am the Godfather and my cousin Chuck Hughes graciously stood in for me since I couldn't get up there for the ceremony.  It was good practice for Chuck as he will be Godfather to my daughter when she comes in a couple of months.  We really wish we could have been there.  Zach along with his parents Jo and Brent and his brother Nicholas were in our thoughts yesterday.  We send all our best wishes up north.  There was also a surprise 60th birthday party for my Mom who was there for the baptism.  Anyone who has pictures from either the baptism or the birthday party please email them down to us we would love to see them.  Thanks.

40th Anniversary of College

This month is the Fortieth Anniversary of the college.  We have a huge weekend of events the weekend of the 24th and the media blitz about it is on going.  This morning I was on TV talking about the anniversary and the upcoming events.

40th Anniversary TV Appearance

Football Season

As many of you already know, the first day of the college football season is celebrated as a holiday in the Cummings household a tradition begun by my beautiful wife some five years ago when she gave me a first day of football present the morning of the Texas-UNT opener in 2006.  This year I was presented with a small book that had the words to the Eyes of Texas and the sonogram photos of our little girl with various Longhorn and football related stickers strategically placed on the photos.  I got to watch the Texas game from the comfort of my own living room since it was on the main ESPN channel that we get.  The Horns were solid if unspectacular and it was good to see them win though they aren't nearly the team of the last two years that challenged for a national title.  With the youngster due in early November football this year really is taking a backseat to real life. 

We finished our summer term last week and have a week of administrative duties before we start the fall term on the 13th.  Late last week it looked like we might get our first storm of the season next week in Gaston but right now it is up in the air whether he will reform and if he does whether he will track our way.  If he had you know that Katie who is a huge Beauty and Beast fan would have been humming Gaston's song from the movie and play all the time.  Next week is our nephew Zachary Bernard's baptism and we want to send our love and thoughts up to Naperville to him and the whole Bernard family.

New Government Position

So I know I will get some grief from my brother and sister about the appellation before my name but here is the link to my appointment to the CINICO Board of Directors on the government web site.

CINICO Board