Potatoes to Papayas: Jessi's Birthday--is on Monday

Just in case you didn't know. But we did a little celebrating on Saturday. I had this July 28th surprise party planned for, like, three weeks or so, but Jessi kept setting get-togethers and parties all around the 28th with her friends (all of whom would later come to my surprise party). Like she says, I guess it's not a birth"day", it's her birth"month". And who deserves a month-long birthday celebration more than my wife? (Absolutely no sarcasm in that statement, by the way.)

We started out Saturday by walking out to the Blue Hole. We took the "walk-o'-trash," and it actually looked like someone had come and cleaned it up . . . sort of.

We stopped at the corner of the airport runway for a while to look for shells.

Some Samoan fishermen were catching octopus.

The Blue Hole (which is right around the corner from the shell-collecting death-trap beach) was magnificent on Saturday. Low tide don't mean nuttin' when you come out here! It was beautiful.

This is one of my favorite snorkeling spots on the island. There's just so much to see here. I swam out quite a distance into a sandy spot. I noticed a big fish swim past, and then realized I probably better swim back. As I turned around, I noticed two rays (manta, sting, whatever) sitting motionless on the sea bed. They were laying under the sand, so a thin layer of sand was covering them. I could see their teeny eyes looking around, the unmistakeable shape of their bodies, and their unavoidably long tails that just stuck out like sticks. It was like we were playing "hide-and-seek," I was finding, and they were just really bad hiders because of their tails (darn tails!!). The other thing I couldn't help but noticing was that they were MUCH bigger than the one I saw in Blue Hole 2 several months ago. They had to have been about three feet wide, and their tails were closer to 4 feet long. To me, they were huge (and I'm sure I'm just exaggerating about their size).

I swam back quickly to get Jaydn, because these things were not budging (or so I thought). Coming back, I got totally lost. There are no street signs under water. You can't say, "it's the third road on your left." I guess you could say, "go to the sandy area that's just over the third coral hill..." OK, nevermind. I just got lost, and I was frustrated because I swam all the way back out to show Jaydn and now I couldn't find those stupid rays!

I explained my frustration to Jaydn and then tucked my head down under the water to see one of the rays darting off in front of me. I had no time to get Jaydn to look before the ray was out of sight.

Oh well. I started to have flashbacks of my attempt to catch a dolphin in the frigid waters of the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. There's no way I was ever going to catch up to that ray. We saw some slow sea turtles anyway, so Jaydn was content.

Later that day I took Jaydn to a friends' house so Jessi and I could get ready for our "date." A little later Jessi and I left, Jessi still not knowing where we were "going to dinner." Once we left, Agents Castro (our neighbors) called Agent Weaver (my co-clerk) who was strategically stationed at KFC with the party-attendees and reported that the "Colettis have left the building." It was time for the party goers to crash the Coletti whatever-the-heck-you-call-the-box-we-live-in.

About half-way to our so-called "destination" I exclaimed, "aahh, I forgot my wallet!!" and we turned around to come back. Everything was working so smoothly, I couldn't believe it. Jessi was buying it!! Jessi told me, "aw, it's fine. We'll make it on time, right?" Sure.

As we pulled up into our driveway, our friends were supposed to be hiding in the bushes. But I guess we didn't give them enough time, and everyone was inside while a few were standing outside. All Jessi could see was a few guys standing outside our open door, so she thought we were being robbed. She jumped out of the car quickly, and then noticed that we had about 40 people in our house! Since no one was expecting us quite yet, the few that saw us pull up gave a somewhat belated, "surprise?"

Anyway, Jessi loved it. There were so many people there! And there was a lot of good food.