Half way happy times!

So we're exactly half way through Mara's visit and time sure does fly when you're having fun!

Our beach bonfire complete with tasty S'mores (made the European way!) was awesome! We had the beach to ourselves...as per usual! And despite the windy days we've been having recently the evening we had it on was perfectly calm!

By decided it had to be done in style...so Mara and I went conch collecting to make this ring of conch around the hole we dug!

The fire started up pretty well and kept us nice and warm, it wasn't actually cool out - our long sleeves and jeans were to protect from mosquito's as we cycled to and from the beach, they are out in force after dark!

This picture makes me laugh...it looks like we are having some kind of seance!

So you know S'mores are traditionally made with Hershey's choc but you know my dislike for that stuff! So we stuck with mini squares of Milka and these little Caramel Dairy Milk's that Mara brought over!

We even tried some with Mint Aero, much to By's disgust...apparently mint and marshmallow aren't a good combo in his opinion but they tasted great to me!

By crafted us these great little skewers out of sticks to roast our marshmallows with, after a rocky start for Mara and a few marshmallows catching on fire she got the hang of it!

It was actually her first time making S'mores!! I have a feeling it won't be the last...maybe we'll put a little Christmas Eve campfire on the agenda!

Root beer and S'mores = pure happiness for me!

By took this great shot of the sea...even at night you can see the awesome colours!

On Friday morning By went to help on another dive boat excursion, this time he got to go snorkelling on his lunch break and got to snorkel with a 6 ft shark...scary stuff! Mara and I had a much tamer day consisting of a tasty breakfast of chocolate chip and banana and walnut pancakes, accompanied by some delicious smoothies!

                    

After that we went to check out an awesome view point at Harbour View Drive...

and we tried our hardest not to fall in...it was a sheer drop behind us! We then picked up By from his excursion, here is a picture of the boat he's been driving:

Our breakfast was so enormous I literally couldn't eat until dinner! And what a dinner it was, we hit up Chinson's to give Mara the true Jerk Chicken experience!

She wasn't disappointed, they do the yummiest corn bread too to compliment the spicy chicken that we all love.

Saturday consisted of a crazy bakefest where Mara and I made over 150 mini festive cupcakes - you can check out the pics here! They were for our Christmas party at church. We managed to make it to the beach for a few hours in the afternoon and the water was pretty calm so we were glad we did, we even walked out for a while on the sand bar which was super cool.

Look at that water! Mara was trying out her fisheye setting on her new camera...

We topped up our tans for a little while too

and Mara was pleased with the turquoise nail polish she borrowed from me, it is the perfect match for the colour of the sea!

Today was a pretty exciting day...all week we have been planning to bake some root beer pulled pork that I had seen the recipe for on a blog. Today was the day! It had to cook for 8 hours so we put it on before church and when we came home and walked through the door the smell was amazing!!! It was hard to restrain for the next few hours but it was worth the wait for the deliciously tender pork and oh the taste of root beer too...you need to try this recipe! By was excited...and I'm even more excited that I've made a root beer convert out of him since we moved here!

Doesn't he just get more and more tanned every time you see him??? The funny thing is I'm actually getting the best tan I've ever had before, but stick me next to By and I still look like a white Pommie!

I forgot to show you what our festive conch looked like when they were dry! Pretty cool hey!

It's amazing how 'it's beginning to look alot like Christmas' and there's not even a snowflake in sight!