Camp Crop-A-Lot

Last weekend Michelle and I went to the first ever Camp Crop-A-Lot here in Windom. It was held up at the Methodist Church on Friday night 6 to midnight and on Saturday from 9 to 9. They fed us lots of yummy food and there were vendors on Saturday. They had a really good turnout and it was a lot of fun. I got 7 layouts done! Generally I scrap things from lots of different years and jump all over the place, but I only did one layout from 2008 and the rest were within the last month or so. Here they are.

Jennie, Ali, and me dress shopping for Amy's wedding. This one was a lot of fun to make! Love love the TTV frame stamp from Studio Calico. I also whipped out Studio Calico's Garment District for this page.


Chris & I at Craig & Kiri's wedding. Love the colors.

For this layout I wanted to showcase this beautiful sunset from our trip to Grand Cayman. I thought this Sassafras was perfect for this photo!

Michelle & Monica had found these cute EK Success stickers for a honeymoon that they thought would be perfect for our Grand Cayman trip. So I started with them for inspiration for this layout. I used bits and pieces, as the palm trees and sun in the title are pulled apart from other elements of the stickers. I used Studio Calico's Documentary kit for this one.


Since I was obviously in the mood to scrap Grand Cayman, I continued the theme. I've seen this wonderful coffee stain stamp used so many different ways, it seemed only natural to use it as bubble for a dive layout! I love the dotted swiss cardstock - I think it adds just that extra little kick.

This is the only layout I did from a previous year. I had a lot of fun playing with the different elements. I love the maya mists - they add such a punch here!


This was my last layout of the crop. It was fun to use all the flowers. A layout this girly can only be for a bunch of girls.

Grand Cayman - Day 5

This was our last day in Grand Cayman. I was so sad to leave, especially when you have to go back to 40 some degrees.


We woke up and headed into George Town to do some last minute shopping. We decided next time we are not going to buy souviners and are only going into town if we really need to.

The airport on Grand Cayman only has 5 gates and they are all in the same room of this tiny airport. You load and unload onto the ground.

This is the view of Grand Cayman from above as we were leaving. You can see the runway to the very left of the pic. Our hotel was probably about in the middle of this picture, maybe a little to the right, on the far side of the island in this pic.

This is the west bay portion of the island.

Our flight was Miami to Minneapolis was delayed due to bad weather, so we didn't arrive until almost midnight. We both can't wait to go back!

Grand Cayman - Day 4

Even more picture heavy than the previous post!

Our third dive was diving the shipwreak the Oro Verde. But before we did our full decent, we practiced CESA, an emergency ascent technique. Below you see me practicing and Kevin tagging along.

Once at the bottom (60 ft down), we practiced some more of our diving skills. Here I am practicing the fin pivot (floating just above the surface while controling height with your breathe).

We found a bike at the bottom of the ocean. So, of course people had to ride it. Chris riding the bike.

We saw a ton of sea life on this dive. This picture is of a spotted moray eel, a random little fishy I don't know the name of, and an arrow crab you can barely see in the top right hand corner. Kevin had tried to get me to hold an arrow crab on our very first dive and I thought it looked a little too much like a spider to be holding!

We also found a green moray eel hanging out under some of the old wreakage from the ship.


A barracuda followed us around on most of the dive. He keep his distance and didn't justify any real threat to us, but he looked awfully scary! Look at those big teeth! That is Mel & I in the background.

Here is Chris with the barracuda :)

We also saw a nurse shark on this dive. It's quite interesting when you look at your dive master and he is doing the fin sign on the top of his head. But not to worry, even though they are 5-6 feet long, he wasn't really a threat to any of us either.

Our second dive was Eagle's Nest. On this dive we practiced the last few skills and worked on our buoyancy. We also went to the edge of the reef wall to experince the edge of the deep blue. Here are Kevin & Chris diving the wall.

This is a picture of me from above. Below you can kinda see how the wall just drops off.

We also had another sea turtle swim right by us. Below the turtle and a gray angelfish are eating.

And that is the end of our diving adventures on this trip. :(

That afternoon we went to Stingray City Sandbar in the north sound of Grand Cayman. The water is only waist deep and the stingray's swim right up to you. It's pretty neat.

This is Big Chris (our tour/boat guide) showing us a Stingray. He was showing us the mouth. There are no teeth, the just kinda suck their food up. All the dark spots in the water around him are also Stingrays.

Big Chris helped us hold the stingrays. Always hold them stinger-side away. They have a very different texture, it's not really something I can describe.

Chris pretended he was smooching the stingray.

The stingrays decided that Chris' front tie strings on his swimtrunks looked like the calamari they were being fed. They keep swiming right up the him and he kept having to push them away. When he got out of the boat, he realized his strings were completely untied and that's what the stingrays were after. In this picture I caught one of the stingrays trying the eat his shorts :)

We visited the sandbar during one of the very rare moments when we were the only boat on the sandbar. In this pic, we are the only people on the whole sandbar.... it makes me happy! You can see in the background/horizon where the water changes color is where the reef drops off.

After we were done on the sandbar, we drove to a location just 100 yards away to snorkel by some of the shallow reef formations. Both Chris and I decided scuba is 100 million times better than snorkeling. For a moment Chris thought he was still a scuba diver, jumped off the boat into the water and took a deep breathe underwater. He came up spitting out water. Oops! Here his is snorkeling.

And here I am snorkeling. You can see just how shallow it was there.

Here we are after our snorkeling enjoying the warm weather.

We hung out at our hotel for the rest of the night. There was a sushi restaurant on the bottom floor of our hotel we decided to try. I had the Philly rolls and Chris had the California rolls. We both really liked it!

Grand Cayman - Day 3

Warning! Picture Heavy!

This was our first day of doing our Open Water Dives. So, really it was our first day of diving. Period. I woke up very very very nervous. And the closer it got for them to pick us up, the more nervous I got. I thought I was going to throw up.

Jim, Kevin, and Mel were all really suppotive of my nerves, and I knew if I didn't get in the water and give diving a try, I would never let myself forget it.

So, Kevin went over the dive, we suited/geared up and I flopped backwards into the water. We started our decent and I was THRILLED. It was an amazing feeling and the butterflies were gone! Yay!

Our first ever dive was Marty's Wall off the west coast of Grand Cayman.

This is me on the bottom about 40 some feet down (our shallowest dive of the trip). You can see the reef behind me. It was so beautiful down there!

Here is Chris on his first dive ever.

Both of us diving Marty's Wall.

There were also a couple of more experienced divers on this dive with us. They dove further down the wall and took some amazing photos like this one. This is a sea anemone and a brain coral in the background.

Kevin was really good at pointing out things on the reef to us. He had a keen eye for sea life as well. Here he is showing something in this coral to Chris.

We were only able to stay down about 30 minutes on our tank of air. We then began our ascent including 3 minute safety stop. The more experience you have diving, the more efficent you become at using air and the longer you can stay down.

After we had an appropriate surface interval, we drove to another spot on the reef to do our second dive. This time we practiced more of our skills underwater.

This is me diving Governer's Reef.

A sea turtle swam right by us, so we followed him for awhile to take some pictures and observe what he was doing. He was just a little turtle. In this picture you can see the yellow fire coral, which stings kinda like a jelly fish if you touch it. Ouch.



Kevin & Chris with the turtle.

Me swimming along with the turtle.

After our dives, we headed into George Town to get some souviners for people.

Once we got back to our hotel, we were both exhausted. I relaxed by enjoying the view from our balcony. Have I mentioned yet how much I love the warm weather in Grand Cayman? Well I do!



Oh, and I got to enjoy a DELICIOUS Strongbow while soaking up the sun!

For supper we went to Hemmingway's. They are located right on our hotel property and on the beach. I had the catch of the day (mahi mahi) which was delicious!!! Chris enjoyed the rack of lamb and sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

Grand Cayman - Day 2

We woke up on our first full day in Grand Cayman excited to start learning how to Scuba. I went outside to check out how beautiful the day was and saw this Iguana hanging out in a tree off our balcony.

Then, it was off to learn how to SCUBA. Jim, the owner of Seasports, picked us up from our hotel and brought us to a local public beach to do our confined water dives. We then met Kevin, who was our Open Water Diver teacher/Dive Master for the trip. We also met Mel, who was training to be a Dive Master. We went over some basic SCUBA info such as how to set up our gear and the principles of diving before getting geared up and heading out to the shallows.

The first time I was all the way underwater and took a breath, I freaked. I'm not going to lie, I did. So I surfaced, caught my breath, and gave it another try. Let me tell you, it is a different feeling breathing for the first time with SCUBA. But once you get used to it, it's awesome. Kevin taught us a whole bunch of skills that we practiced until we did them right. Luckly, Chris & I must both be fast learners because there were only a few things we had to do more than once.

Once we were done with our confined water dives, we were done with SCUBA for the day, so Jim dropped us back off at our hotel. We relaxed on our balcony for awhile. This is the beautiful view we got to take in everyday. :)


We lunched it at the beachside hotel bar. I had a wonderful tuna salad pita sandwich. Probably the best tuna I've every had. Chris had a bacon cheeseburger. We both of couse indulged in a yummy cocktail.

We both were pretty tired after our morning lesson (which included a 200 yard swim right away) and Chris decided to take a nap in our hotel while I decided to chill/nap on the beach. This is the view looking south towards George Town where the Cruise ships dock.


This is looking north towards West Bay.

That night we decided to head across the street to Deckers for Supper. It is named because of the double decker bus that is used as the bar.

I had the mixed grill, which was steak, chicken and mahi mahi (dolphin fish) on a bed of rosotto with wine sauce. It was delicious. Chris tried the calamari (which is squid). It was actually pretty good. The only wierd thing about it was the texture, it was a little chewy compared to most meats.

As you can tell, we got just a wee bit of sun during our SCUBA lesson that day. :)

Grand Cayman - Day 1

I love Vacations. I love traveling to somewhere new and learning all about that place or revisiting some place and feeling like you are at a home away from home. This year for our vacation, I chose to go somewhere new, the Cayman Islands. People have asked how I picked this particular Caribbean Island. In all honesty, I don't really know. It was dumb luck really. I think I stumbled upon it on one of those vacation deal sites, researched further, and decided it sounded like a fun time.

So, our plane left bright and early at 6:30! Ah! The solution: do a stay, park & fly in the cities. It was so nice to not have to worry about parking that early in the morning. Our flight connected in Miami. We got into Grand Cayman a little after noonish.

This was our hotel: the Grand Cayman Beach Suites. It had a great location smack dab in the middle of seven mile beach. Our room was huge, complete with a kitchenette, huge bathroom, king size bed, wonderful walk out balcony, and a view of the ocean.



It was raining when we landed, so everything was wet yet. We decided to find the grocery store and stock up on some essentials before heading into town to explore. We ended up eating at Breezes by the Bay, right in the George Town harbor. I tired a local favorite, Conch (pronouced Conk) and Chris had coconut shirmp. They were both wonderful. We also enjoyed some wonderful cocktails. Yum!

We got to watch a wonderful sunset from the Breezes balcony.

And that is pretty much the end of our first day/night in Grand Cayman. We were very tired from such an early flight departure and we wanted to be well rested for our first day of SCUBA early the next morning.