We’re back!

St Martin was amazing! We absolutely loved it. The vacation was so relaxing and the French side of the island, where we stayed, has the best restaurants I’ve ever encountered. Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmm.

And I cannot sing the praises of my amazing sunblock highly enough!!! Vanicream is not a chemical sunblock, like most kinds of sunscreen. They’ve actually figured out a way to make zinc oxide usable as a normal sunscreen, not just a thick white paste over your nose.

Having experimented, I can only REALLY recommend the SPF 35 Sunscreen Sport if you are going to be getting either sweaty or in the water. I used the SPF 60 my first two days, and I think it rinsed off almost instantly in the water, leaving parts of my upper chest and belly exposed for those 15 or 20 minutes that I played in the water but wasn’t completely under water.

Lil Smudge has reached the stage in his development where I can feel him kicking FREQUENTLY. Not quite all the time, but it seems that way. So it was extra nice not to have anything in particular to do, other that watch my tummy and see if it was going to start gyrating. Our first or second night there, that was at least half an hour’s entertainment for me and Jill, although sadly, he wouldn’t move visibly when our friends Mikki & Claire were looking.

I also had a fabulous birthday celebration! In addition to a wonderful waterfront dinner, Jill bought me some fabuloso jewelry.

The gang did a shopping trip to the Dutch side of the island, where jewelry and gemstones are apparently much less expensive than they are in the US. I elected to stay home during that trip — my stamina is WAY down. That turned out to be a good call, since it resulted in a beautiful necklace with both pink and blue sapphires and white diamonds AND sapphire and diamond earrings. The jewelry is birthday, Christmas, and welcome home Lil Smudge all wrapped up together and it completely blew my mind!

In addition to eating, napping, and getting presents, I also read a ton. Book reviews will be forthcoming shortly.