a beautiful day

michael completed his second block exams for the semester yesterday. he prepares for these exams by studying daily and well into the night. i have posted before about how he is either in school or studying about 70 hours a week. it is a lot of work to be a medical student and i am always in awe of the amount of information he is learning. leading up to blocks can be stressful in our home as he is trying to learn as much as he can in what some days feels like not enough time. factor in a wife and child who are there and especially the child who needs some attention from you and you can imagine how hard it is to be a 40 year old medical student. when block day comes around, we get to have michael hang out with us all day and night afterward and it always makes for a great day of celebrating our life together. yesterday we had a wonderful time with our friends erica, who is also a medical student, and her boyfriend jon, who recently joined her on the island. we went to baie longue, one of our favorite beaches on sint maarten. it is one of the longest stretches of beach on the island and there usually aren't many people there.

the puffy clouds floating by, gentle breeze, and warm salt water are the perfect antidote to the stress accumulated from blocks.

an interesting storm was brewing over anguilla

erica back on shore mid-snorkel to retrieve her underwater camera

ezra loves going in the water with daddy

here they are returning to the big building site michael dug for ezra before going in the ocean

i bring my camera everywhere so i can capture happy moments like these

and it's a perfect day when i can tote along a little knitting and actually get to work on it some

erica and jon are sweet friends to us three

ezra's sandbox for the day

we live just over this ridge past the yellow crane

this cat passes our balcony everyday and ezra loved running after it waving goodbye