10 day Challenge

My new friend here in Dominica, Katie (the one who designed my blog) put together this 10 day challenge. I haven't felt like I've had much to blog about lately- so I thought I'd do this! It starts tomorrow. Get ready to learn more about our life in Dominica!

Fabulous

A few reasons today was fabulous:

On Sundays we get to spend all day with Ben.

He's been studying until almost midnight every day this week, so we only see him for a few minutes in the morning and sometimes for a few minutes at dinner.

Chase was ecstatic about hanging with his dad today.

It made for one happy baby!

Chase is pulling himself up on stuff, it's darling!

He was pretty excited when he realize he could use the bars on the door as leverage.

"Let me out!!!!!"

We got to go to church.

Chase loves church- so many people to look at and other kids to see.

Chase spent the 3rd hour down in Primary with me.
Apparently he's not a fan of elders quorum, so Ben brings him down to Primary

so he can watch the kids go nuts. It makes Chase so happy.

(I should clarify that by "down" I actually mean physically down-

Primary is downstairs, Elders Quorum is upstairs.

I didn't mean "down" in a condescending way)

Possibly the most fabulous thing about today. . .

REAL MILK!

IGA had real milk yesterday.

The $16 dollars I spent on that one gallon was totally worth it.

We haven't had real milk since July.

I really must be crazy that I think a gallon of milk is worth $16 . . .

And just to keep it real-

not everything in our life is fabulous.

We have these weird flying ant/bees in our apartment today.

All of a sudden they are everywhere.

I think we've already killed 50.

The joys of living on a remote tropical island.

Living here has sure made us appreciate so many things about how good life is back in the US.

I'm just trying to remember how easy it is to run errands when you have a car.

Or how comfortable a house is with air conditioning.

Oh well, maybe tomorrow we'll go to the ocean.

That always makes me feel better about things.

Our morning in pictures

This blog will be switching back to private in a few days. Let me know if you want to keep reading!

I pulled out the camera this morning to try to get some cute shots of Chaser. I ended up with nothing prize worthy, except some pretty accurate depictions of how we spent our morning.

With Chase now crawling all over the place he's definitely a little more work than he was a few months ago when he was stationary. Our little house is pretty hard to baby proof (there isn't one drawer in the entire place, so everything is out in the open and the kitchen shelving is all open) so I try to watch this kid every second. Sometimes I'll say to him, "Chase, are you getting into trouble?" and he'll turn around from whatever he is doing and give me a huge grin, then go right back to whatever he was getting into. I think he's loving his new found mobility!

I just adore these blue eyes!

Chase and I were both a little stir crazy this morning so I decided to take Chase to the park. He has never loved the park. I put him in the baby swing and he just gives me this look like "okay Mom, if this makes you feel better I'll swing" and then we leave ten minutes later. But it does get us out of the house and gives us something to do. This morning was extremely hot (even for Dominica) so we didn't last long...
We took refuge from the heat at the CAC, a building on campus that has an area where families can come hang out in the air conditioning! Chase played around on the floor for a good 20 minutes with some of his toys until we headed home. He was concentrating too hard on figuring out this little blue football to look at me for the picture.
He's also become a fairly consistant thumb sucker in the last few days. I think it's cute.
I asked him to smile. He didn't want to. I guess I'll settle for him just looking at the camera. He's getting harder and harder to photograph, he's just so busy! He sure is fun though.
And just for comparison sake, here is Chase wearing the same outfit about a week after we moved. In the picture above he's 8.5 months and just shy of 17 pounds (I can't believe my 8.5 month old baby still wears his 3-6 month clothes-he's such a little guy!) Below he's 4 months and 11 pounds. I can't believe how much he's changed since we moved to Dominica.

Happy Birthday Will!

Oh Chase...

Here are two more pictures from our family picture session a few weeks ago. Until I decide which one is going on the Christmas card I'm not going to post all of my favorites. These two I really love though. Michelle took these just as we were leaving. Chase was getting really fussy and we were just trying to keep him content, it wasn't really supposed to be photographed, but I love the way this picture turned out. We just really love this baby more than anything in the world!
And this picture shows how chubby his little cheeks are getting. They really improve the pouty look he's giving us here. Chase has never been a chubby baby, he's actually kind of a shrimp (below the 5th percentile in height and weight) but has recently filled out just a little. We love it!

Temporarily Public

I made a new friend down here in Dominica who is wanting to start a business in blog designs and offered to do a blog makeover for me for free! I was super excited about it because I really did not like the way it looked before, and I really love it now. Anyway, this blog will stay public for about a week to display her awesome talent. If you want an invite to keep reading you can email me at court.hugo@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post. If you have been reading our private blog all along I still have your email address and you'll still be able to access it when it goes private again next week.

If you like Katie's work, her button is at the bottom of the sidebar, you can go check it out!

Us Lately

With all the blog posts I've been reading lately of everyone saying good-bye to summer, starting fun fall activities, cooler weather, football games, peaches, I've been seriously a little homesick. I love all seasons, I love the change every couple of months. I really love fall and fall really isn't happening in Dominica. It's still crazy hot outside, the jungle will of course stay green and not turn red, orange and yellow like the beautiful mountains back in Utah, there are no peaches on the island, and life is pretty much exactly the same as it was throughout the spring and summer. This last week I've had to work harder to remind myself to enjoy this journey. We really do live in a beautiful, amazing place, and this isn't forever. By next fall we should be back in the US celebrating this beautiful season change with the rest of the country!

I feel like nothing we've done lately has been very eventful and worthy of its own blog post. Per request from my little sister (who was disappointed I hadn't update the blog in a week) this post will just be a random update of all things happening in the Hugo home as of late.

• Ben is in the full swing of his 2nd semester of medical school. This block is famous for being extremely challenging and time intensive. He's working extremely long hours trying to master all the material. I swear the stress of medical school will never end! Chase was in heaven on Sunday when he got to spend a lot of time hanging with Dad.
• Chase and I went on our once-a-semester shopping trip to Roseau. Roseau is the capitol city of Dominica and is 1 hour away by bus. The spouses organization has a free shopping trip at the first of each semester, which is the only time I go to Roseau. There are a lot of grocery items that can be purchased there that we can't get here in Picard, and a lot of things are much cheaper (although still significantly more than in the US- our grocery bill is so out of control and I swear I buy less and we eat less than we did in the states!) The road to Picard is really windy and it makes for a long day with a baby. It was however a pretty great shopping trip. Our van was full of other ladies from the branch with their cute kids. We got everything we needed. We made it back to Picard 6 hours after leaving. Chase was a little angel and was pretty happy sitting on my lap the whole time and watching the other kids. I was pretty happy with it. The last time I went back in May it was a lot more stressful, so I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was this time. Once we are back in the states I can fully appreciate how awesome and easy it is to drive to the grocery store, get all my groceries that I need in one stop (some of them might even be on sale...) and drive back home.
• In Chase news, I just can't even explain how much we love this baby! I feel like I could (and do) write on and on about all the cute things he does, how amazing he is and how much we love him. He's now 8 months old, he crawls and gets into everything, loves playing with his toys, still loves to be held almost all the time, is babbling more and more, and has slept through the night every single night for the last 4 weeks! Here are few pictures of him playing the last couple of days. He doesn't hold still much and it's getting harder and harder to get a shot of him looking at the camera.

Playing with the keys in the door is his absolute favorite activity. Our door has to be locked to stay closed, so those keys hang there all the time so I don't loose them (then I would be locked inside the house). If we hold Chase in front of them he'll play with them forever and never get bored.

2nd Semester

Semester 2 of medical school has begun! Here is the photo I snapped of Ben with Chase right before he left this morning. I really love the first day of school. I always loved it growing up and I'm already excited for Chase when he goes to school. I know I'm a total nerd, but there is just something so wonderful about a new school year!

Our break was fabulous. I had a whole list of goals to accomplish over break, and we did pretty well at tackling them. We got Chase sleep trained (3 weeks straight of sleeping through the night now- it's been heavenly!) We explored the island and saw new, beautiful places. We had plenty of time to just relax together, watched a couple of movies, made some fun new treats. We went to our little beach and the pool. We exercised a lot. Overall, we did everything I had hoped (our only failure was to go to the market, buy fresh fish and cook it up again. We never did get that done...)

So now we are back to our normal routine. Chase and I are just hanging out together all day. Ben has his nose to the grindstone with his studies. This morning he said, "Bye Chase, I'll see you in 4 months!" Happy 2nd Semester!

Chase's Newest Tricks

I already posted the first part of this movie, but we just finished the rest of it yesterday. The last part is my favorite, it makes Ben and I laugh every time. Enjoy!

Our little BYU Cougar

Here is Chase already to watch his first BYU football game!

He was pretty excited about it. I squeezed him into one of his BYU onesies (last December I was explaining to our good friends Chad and Alyse that I hadn't been able to find a basic BYU onesie for our soon-to-be-born baby. Two days later Alyse shows up at my apartment with two BYU onesies she MADE for him. Awesome friend right?!) He donned his first ever pair of basketball shorts (or Will shorts as we call them) complements of his Grammy, and he was ready for business! We practiced the fight song. Chase thinks it's hilarious.

We went over to some friends house to watch the game. There were a whole group of us there from our branch to cheer on our Cougars. We had some amazing food and had fun watching the game. Chase mostly just crawled around on the ground, enjoyed watching the other kids, and was ecstatic when an older kid would come over and play with him. I think Chase likes football!
Sadly, Chase and I did not see the apparently amazing end to the game. Someone got fussy and needed to go home to bed. And due to Ben's rigorous study schedule (that starts tomorrow), it's pretty unlikely that Chase will be watching any other games this season. Let's face it, I love the Cougars, but I'm not likely to turn on a game to watch if Ben isn't there. I figure Chase has many seasons of football ahead for his dad, Grandpa and uncles to teach him all about football.
*I originally titled this post "Our little Cougar" and Ben wanted me to clarify that we are talking about a BYU Cougar, not an older woman dating a younger man. Obviously.

Our Adventures this week

We are really enjoying Ben's last week of break. He goes back to school Monday. Chase and I will be a little sad to see him go, it's just been too fun to have him around to play with us! We have had many trips to the pool and ocean, and a few other sites as well. On Monday we went to Ft. Shirley. Chase and I have been there before, but it was Ben's first time. This old fort is really cool. It has an amazing view of Prince Rupert Bay and walking around it makes you feel like you are in the pirates of the Caribbean movie. Ben was a fan, I'm glad we got to take him there! Chase has just been loving having dad around and getting out a little bit, so everywhere we've been this week he's just been a happy little camper along for the ride!

Chase was very interested in this brick

I tried and tried and tried to get this picture. Chase was actually happy,

just not happy to have to look at the camera. There was way too much going on around him.

Yesterday we went on a trip to Emerald Pool. It was fantastic! We rented a van with several other families from our ward to get us there. It was a really windy road to get there (like always in Dominica) but the view was well worth it! After a ten minute hike we came to the gorgeous Emerald Pool, my pictures don't do it justice.

One advantage to this remote, non-touristy tropical island is that there are no crowds. Our little group were the only people at the falls


We put Chaser in the hiking backpack for the first time. You can't really see his face in this picture, so you can't tell that he loved it!

It's been so great to see more of our beautiful island!