Our 1st Visitors!

Whew! The last 2 weeks have just flown by. Brandon's mom and sister came all the way to the Azores to say hello!! We had a fantastic time. We did one event after the other. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful for them (a majority of the time). We wined and dined them, went dolphin watching, golfing, shopping, and saw so many amazing sites. There was also an annual festival "downtown" that they so happened to come right in the beginning of. :) So we got to see a our 1st ever Azores parade!

I will let the pictures show you the rest of the fun...

Coffee break from our walk with Mas on the "boardwalk".

View from the Statue of Mary, above Praia beach.

Look! Sunny enough to be in actual swimsuits!!!!

Angra Gardens.

Saturday morning was our dolphin watching boat trip. It was almost a 4 hour boat ride, and thankfully we didn't sail in vain. :) The cold, rain, and being sprayed by the ocean was all worth it for the views and the dolphins we actually did see!!! (video below)

Golfing. There is an actual nice clubhouse and everything here.

After dinner at Porto Martins.

At the beautiful wine museum.

Visiting B at his office, his fellow co-workers were kind enough to oblige us and take pictures. :)

At the top of Sierra de Cume.

There was plenty more fun-having, but I picked the best photos to hopefully give you the idea. We were very sad to see them go. Thank you for visiting us!! Miss y'all already.

Well, it is a gloomy Saturday today, the reason I am blogging this morning, so we will see what we come up with to entertain ourselves today. Maybe, it will be blog-worthy for a Monday post!

Video that I can not seem to move any higher, to its correct location.

Ole!

We attended our 1st Azorean bullfight last weekend. Bullfights, here, are very different then what you are probably thinking. Only very rarely they are held in an arena, they do not have matadors, or red flags and they never kill the bull. They began in May and I am assuming will continue through August.

Bullfights, here, are the locals version of cheap weekend entertainment during the summer. The owner of the bulls, pays the cost to "rent" the street to have the bullfight. Everyone just stands where they please, and they have white lines marked on the street, where the bull cannot go past, or the owner will be fined. This is the so-called "safe zone". A group of about 10 people hold the bull with a rope within the boundaries, yet we came to find if the bull comes near them they drop the rope and run, so don't count on them for protection. :) Anyone can join in and tease the bull. They have 4 bulls and each round is about 30 minutes.

It was pretty entertaining for the most part. We were standing on the sidelines on ground a good 5 feet above where the bull was, and I was still a little scared that the bull was going t0 charge us. From what we have heard, and seen on videos, it is only really fun and interesting when the bull gets someone!! Unfortunately, we didn't get to witness that. Maybe, next time.

On Call.

Brandon has the "special" work phone this week. Its a blackberry, we almost forgot what those looked like. :)

He has it just for one week, in case any server incidents occur. It is mainly for when problems occur in Germany at Ramstein AFB. They run 24 hour shifts, so someone has to be on call, here at Lajes, just in case something goes wrong. So far he has been fortunate, and no calls have come in yet.

Lets hope for such luck over the weekend!

Brown Thumb.

I have always aspired to be one of those people that has the capability to keep things alive. Plant life I mean. I long for a little garden of peppers, tomatoes, herbs, etc. all hand-grown with a field of beautifully planted flowers around them.

This weekend's confirmed my assessment that after 24 years of life I still do not possess that talent, and will have to work really hard (recruit friends and family) to make my garden dream come true.

The "Self-Help" store on base got a shipment in this past weekend, with tons of flowers and plants. They have these for military members and family to come get what they want for free! So I took on the challenge...

We got a small batch, knowing this experiment might take a turn for the worse.

The finished product, and now 4 days later...

This tragic scene unfolded after day 1 1/2 I believe. Brandon keeps trying to save them by watering them. I think we can safely say it is a lost cause.