Sunset House Snorkeling

This is Katie's last week on the job as Director of Admissions for ICCI so this morning we did the end of the month placement exams out at the college. The morning at the college used up a good part of our Saturday and Katie still needed to finish her last assignment for one of her Masters classes for the quarter. We didnt want to just hang around the house so this afternoon we decided to get out and while Katie worked on her homework sitting under a palm tree pagoda I did some snorkeling off Sunset House south of the George Town Harbor. I swam out to the mermaid to see if clearer skies would enable some better photographs of her. I was able to see her better though I had a number of issues with fogging of my goggles. The camera seemed to be getting some good shots and when I got home and put them on the computer I was very pleased to see that the shots had turned out much nicer than any others I had gotten of her previously. There was a lot of material in the water so the below shot has some particles that were like little clumps of sea dust in the water and showed up in the shot.

Yesterday was potentially the day we might have learned the gender of little Baby C. Unfortunately for us someone went into labor and the Doctor was called away causing our appointment to be reset for next Tuesday afternoon. Keep an eye on the baby blog for any updates and even if we dont learn the gender on Tuesday we should have some more ultrasound shots of the little one at 17 weeks.

A huge congratulations to our neice Kelsey who graduated from high school today. We are very proud of her and cant wait to see how she does up at Smith College in Massachusetts this fall. We also got to see some picture of our new nephew Zachary and he looks incredible. We have been keeping Jo, Brent, Nicholas and Zachary in our thoughts all week and send our love up to Naperville.

Crabbing

Last night as we drove home from the college on the bypass we constantly had to slow down or move to the right as the pickup trucks and crab hunters were out in force looking for catches. If it is late May and early June in Cayman that means one thing crab season. The crabs are everywhere and in the evening come out of their holes to find food. As you drive around at night you have to watch out for them to make sure you don't run one over and mess up a tire. It is also not at all uncommon for a car to suddenly stop in front of you, someone to jump out and grab a big one off the side of the road. Katie and I aren't in to the whole catch your food and take it home to cook thought that goes into the crabbing so we have yet to engage in this nighttime activity. With hurricane season starting in less than a week the crabbing is a reminder that the seasons down here have changed (even if the weather hasn't).

Welcome Zachary Alexander

Scott's sister Johanna gave birth last night to our newest nephew, Zachary Alexander. We are very happy for Jo, Brent and Nicholas and pass on our love and best wishes to our newest relative Zach.

Everyone back on Cayman

We are both back on Cayman after two weeks of various travels to Atlanta and the Bahamas. Katie enjoyed her sister vacation and is home now rested and relaxed. Ironically, we have three weeks of work to finish the spring term and then we head to Jamaica for our "baby moon". We have this flurry of travelling culminating in both of us going to the States in July (Scott to Miami and Katie to Duncanville) and then we are both on Island for the duration of the pregnancy.

Georgia on my mind

I am heading to Atlanta tomorrow for the spring seminar and on Monday Katie heads to Miami to get on the boat to the Bahamas with her sisters. Katie's appetite has returned somewhat and although she still faces a lot of bouts of dizziness she seems to be getting her footing back as we head into the second trimester. Between me being gone and her leaving before I return we were surprised to realize that this is the longest we will have been apart since we first started dating. thank goodness for email and skype.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to both our Mom's we love you very much. God willing this time next year will have a special meaning for us too.

Busy May and early June

In non-baby related updates, the past few weeks have been very busy at the college as we get deeper into the spring term. Scott is teaching 2 classes and Katie 1. In addition Katie is working part time as the Director of Admissions so she is back on campus in an office 20 hours a week. The arrangement is temporary and hopefully we have a new full time admissions person by the end of May but it has meant some strange work hours for us as Monday through Thursday we go in at 2 in the afternoon and work until 10:30 p.m.

The month of May is going to be a very busy one for us as we start this weekend with the annual board of trustee's meeting for the year. As this is the most important meeting of the year many of the board members from off Island fly in so we have extra work getting ready for it. Then next week Scott is in Atlanta for the spring seminar. He is flying up next Wednesday and will see his brother Kevin in the trip as Kevin is helping with the field trips. The following week Katie is in the Bahamas for her sister vacation with Mel and Stephanie and then we have the final two weeks of the spring term and getting ready for the summer quarter. We also have our "Baby moon" set for June 11-14 in Jamaica. Katie is calling it our baby moon since it is our last holiday together alone until the baby comes and that means last holiday together for a good long while (we hope). It has gotten really hot and humid down here and last week a massive infestation of mosquito's bloomed making it miserable to be outside. Most everyone is walking around with mosquito bites on their faces and arms. The news says that the rain we got a few weeks back enabled the mosquito's to lay their eggs and this is the result.

Dr. Visit today

We had our week 11 visit today and have updated the baby blog. Check it out!

Avoiding the Tax Man while ducking the rain

Sorry about the lack of updates, have been extremely busy and not much time to do them. The rainy season has come a little early this year as this week we have had rain three of the last four days and really heavy rain is scheduled for this weekend. As I write this we have had almost four hours of steady rain and these Saturday downpours have put a crimp in our plans to go baby shopping today and price various items at the two big baby stores on the Island. Thursday was tax day and as we continue to have combined income below the amount which qualifies for the foreign earned income exclusion we are avoiding the tax man altogether. The government down here is getting a lot of pressure from the UK to implement some kind of tax to pay for the budget deficit they have but the political will is strong here against direct taxes. Of course they still get their money from the bank and import duties as well as work permit fees

Katie keeps updating the baby blog so check there for updates on the pregnancy. Our next visit is this coming Friday the 23rd.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone. Unlike the secular United States, down here Easter is a two days off from work long weekend with tomorrow and Monday being National Holidays. We intend to spend some quality snorkeling time so long as Katie's nausea allows. Scott's Dad is on Island for some work at the college so it wont be all fun and games. Meanwhile, in non pregnancy related news, last Saturday/early Sunday the college got broken into and the kitchen canteen robbed. Our security alarm sounded and the police responded within a few minutes as did Scott when he got the call from the security centre. by the time everyone arrived the robbers had run off taking with them a small amount of cash and some corn nuts. It cost us more to repair the smashed window then they got so the loss was small compared to the psychological effect. There has been a string of robberies and shootings on the Island and the crime issue has gotten so big the Governor is stepping in with a special task force from the United Kingdom. Sadly ICCI is now another on the list of schools that have been broken into in the past year, fortunately for us the losses were minimal.

Katie has been struggling with all day morning sickness and has actually lost weight because she isn't eating as much with the nausea. We asked the doctor about it and he didn't seem concerned telling us it is OK so long as she continues to get the calories the baby needs first. He told us that many women lose weight the first trimester and easily gain it and more back in the second and third. It did mean the first late night run for Ginger Ale and saltines of the pregnancy.

First Ultrasound Picture

Here are the pictures from our first ultrasound.

We'll be doing updates on "Baby C" on the baby blog from here on out. You can find the link for that blog to the right of this page. It is "Baby Cummings' Journey".

Seven Weeks and One Day

Today we got confirmation of what we have suspected for two weeks, Katie is pregnant. The Doctor tells us that the baby is seven weeks and one day old based on the size etc. as calculated by the ultrasound machine. We got to listen to the heartbeat which was a strong 144 beats per minute and the baby is 10.7 mm in size. The due date is November 11. We have some ultrasound pictures but need to scan them in later and will post them later today or tomorrow. Will be a fun next seven and a half months.

Random bits and peices

The winter quarter finished yesterday and we are trying to close out all the paperwork for it while also getting all the registrations processed for the spring term that begins on March 29. We are doing well with our walking in the Grand Harbour area and are watching a bunch of houses go up in that neighborhood. The most populated part of the Island is the area know as West Bay and lately they have been having really bad gang problems with several shootings and a couple of murders. The island is not used to that kind of crime and it has everyone talking. It is also having the effect of getting people who have the ability to do so, moving to other parts of the Island and the Red Bay/Grand Harbour area that we live in is seeing that movement. This weekend Scott worked the career fair put on by the Chamber of Commerce and had a brief cameo on TV talking to people at the fair on the evening news.

As some of you already know, we are hoping that this week will bring some big news and will share that once we get confirmation from the doctor. Watch for an update next Friday.

Juvenile Hawksbill Turtle

Here is a video we took last summer of a juvenile hawksbill turtle. He was very playful and seemed to enjoy the attention.

Mastic Trail Parrot

Here is a video of one of the parrots we saw yesterday on our hike of the Mastic Trail. The load time is slow depending on your internet speed.

Mastic Trail

This morning we decided to hike the Mastic Trail which is in the center part of eastern end of Grand Cayman. The trail runs parallel to Frank Sound Road which connects the southern and northern sides of the island once you get past Breakers heading east on the main road. Last year we took Katie's sisters on a hike of the trail and started on the north end. On that occasion we had started around 9 a.m. and went about 2/3 of the way in before doubling back because it was too hot to go on. This year we decided to start on the southern end of the trail and begin early enough that we would have cool weather for the time needed to complete the 4 mile round trip hike. We took our camel backs full of water so we didn't have to carry water bottles and after applying bug spray were ready to go. We got to the southern trail head about quarter after 8 a.m. and started our journey north. While there hasn't been a lot of rain the past week, the trail was still muddy early on as the overgrowth prevented sunlight from getting to the ground and drying up the puddles that were days and possibly even weeks old. The trail itself is a combination of dirt, rocks, tree roots and limestone outcroppings. It is not an easy walk and you have to watch every step so you don't break an ankle. This causes a fairly short hike in terms of distance to be quite long in terms of time. One of the highlights of the Mastic Trail are the Cayman Parrots that are very prevalent especially in the southern part of the trail. They have a very distinctive call and you can hear them communicating with each other in very vocal tones. We also saw some ground doves and several other smaller species of birds. Katie got a heck of a shock when a snake that was sunning itself on the path got surprised by her stepping near it and slithered away angrily. We actually saw several snakes after that all of whom seemed to be out enjoying the sun. The walk north took us about an hour and a half and as we got to that end of the trail we both felt in pretty good shape. We then started our return hike at a surprisingly quick pace and though we expected to take longer going back then we did heading up, we actually got back to our car just an hour and 13 minutes after leaving the northern trail head. By about 2/3 of the way back though we both started to feel it in our legs and as we got into the car it definitely hit us. We were both very proud of ourselves though for doing the complete hike and have attached a few pictures of the parrots we took. We also have a couple of video's that we will try and post later today.

Attack of the Noreasters

Cayman has been unusually cold these past few weeks and it has led both of us to be under the weather and home sick for several days. We have been hit by several Noreasters that have brought chilly winds and colder temperatures. Of course that doesnt mean the ice and freezing weather they have been getting up in Miami but it has meant temperatures into the low 60's which is downright cold for us. Feeling better today we decided to try swimming even with the lower temperatures but the water was very cold and with all the wind way too choppy to get a good swim in. We are in the last two weeks of our Winter quarter and the big news on campus is the new accreditation cycle which has started in advance of a visit next year. That means doing a college self study, reviewing and possibly revising our mission statement and a slew of other activities that will get us prepared to have a good visit and hopefully a smooth process of getting the new grant of accreditation. It is keeping us very busy in addition to our normal duties. We have decided to go back to Jamaica in June for a couple of days and are getting excited about the prospects of seeing a different part of that Island. We are staying in Negril on the western coast and plan to explore along the south coast. Last time we were in Ocho Rios on the north Coast and did activities along the north and eastern part of the island so this will be new experiences entirely.

Scott in Miami

Scott is in Miami this week teaching the seminar that happens each quarter. In May the seminar is going to be in Atlanta and Scott's brother Kevin is going to be helping. It is the first time we will do the seminar somewhere other than Miami and we are excited about the change and possibilities for future seminars in other seminars. Not a lot has been happening in Cayman this past few weeks which explains the lack of posting. We are not experiencing the weather that everyone else is going through and while many of you will laugh at us for it, we kind of wish we could. We are really getting into the exercise and both are feeling a lot better about ourselves though last week Scott had a setback (he always does when his father is on Island and he has the chance to cheat by getting Wendy's when John does). Katie is hard at work on her Master degree and now that she isn't working full time is focusing on doing more classes quicker. She is on pace now to finish the degree early next year.

Flying Gurnard Fish

This morning we went swimming again to help Scott exercise his back in a low impact workout. We went back to Eden Rock-Devil's Grotto because it is a great place to swim laps. While swimming her first lap Katie came across a very unfamiliar species. At first we weren't sure if it was a fish or a reef creature. It appeared to be walking on the bottom but also had fins. We watched it for a while taking a bunch of pictures and a video. When we got home we pulled out our Reef Fish Identification book and were able to identify the species as a Flying Gurnard. Flying Gurnards "walk" on their ventral fins and use the spines of their pectoral fins almost like hands to turn over rocks, which you can see happening in the video below. Their pectoral fins look like wings and in the video you can see this one spread its fin out at one point though not to its full extent. The edge of those fins is rimmed in bright blue lines and dots. The book identifies them as shy but this one wasn't at all. The species is uncommon in the Caribbean and it was a rare treat to find one.

Final Table

This evening Scott stayed home from work because he foolishly decided he would try and move some fireproof filing cabinets at the college yesterday and strained his back. Since he was bored, he logged into an online poker site and played in a RAZZ tournament with 1,012 other players. RAZZ is a game where the object is to get the lowest hand instead of the highest like in regular poker. In the past the highest he's finished in any tournament has been in the teens. He had never made a final table. Tonight things broke his way and after four hours of playing, Scott made his first final table for an online card tournament.

There were 8 players who made the final table and Scott made it all the way through the final table to heads up with a player from Spain. When they began heads up play, the player from Spain had about 1.1 million chips and Scott had about 800,000 chips. They played heads up for almost 45 minutes. Scott won a big hand early and took the chip lead then slowly ground his way to about a 500,000 chip lead. Then another big hand seemed to cripple the Spaniard taking him down to under 200,000 chips. What followed was an amazing 30 minutes. Scott got the Spaniard all in no less than 11 times and for each of the first ten times the Spaniard survived, twice drawing out on seventh street to win the hand and double up. At one point Scott was only up about 400,000 chips having lost most of his 1.6M chip lead. After a lot of small hands, a couple of big hands for Scott got him in position to finally win. As they approached the five hour mark of play Scott finally got a monster hand against a very good hand for the other player and when the hand was finished the Spaniard had only 30,000 chips left. Two hands later it was all over and Scott had won. For his victory he got the satisfaction of ruling the online Razz world for a night on pokerstars.net, a big kiss from his wife and 17,000 play chips with which he can play in other tournaments.