Our 3rd Anniversary

For our anniversary, we thought about heading to a nice cabin up at Mount Rainier, but since we have just come back from a trip and things are pretty busy around here, we're going to stay close to home for now.

It's always fun to look at wedding pictures, especially when they're you're own and you get to relive that day in your memory. This year, the weather has already turned cold and the leaves have begun to change colors. Our wedding day was a warm, sunny 70 degrees that felt like the summer was lingering on. We are forever grateful to God for the weather that day!

The Salt Ceremony--Red salt (mine) and white salt (his) blending into one. They cannot be separated. The salt ceremony in the bible was the highest covenant you could make with God apart from a blood sacrifice.

Married! I remember just feeling numb that day...or maybe it just felt right. I wasn't necessarily excited or nervous; it seemed like what we were supposed to do. It was probably God's mercy since I was so scared about getting married. It's nothing to enter lightly, that's for sure!


I am so very thankful for God bringing us together across two different continents by a string of events that only gave further proof of His divine plan. Ryan is a wonderful husband who seeks to become more like Christ, to learn about me, and I am secure in his faithfulness to me.

Thank you Lord for the gift of my husband, my best friend. Thank you for these three years of marriage, and I pray for many more together.

Part III--The Gili Islands

Here's the third of probably two more parts! If you're still checking out our pictures, I hope you're getting a good overview of this part of the world. If you read the captions, which I'm not including in the slideshow since they're long, then you'll better understand the culture of Bali and Lombok. Of course, we only got a short view of the culture there and other tidbits, but hopefully you're enjoying learning some of the things that we learned on our trip.

This group of pictures is not of Bali. It's of two very small islands off of Lombok, which is an island just east of Bali. This was our relaxing get-away that we had been looking for. It was a bit crazy getting there, but well worth it once we arrived. A few of these pictures were in an earlier post, but I added them again here where they could be "in context".

Here's the link to see the pics larger and read the captions.

Bali Part 2

Here's our second set of Bali pics. There will still be more to come! Again you'll see the pictures best and be able to read the captions to understand the pics better if you click this link and scan at your own pace. Otherwise, here's a quick slideshow below.

Back From Bali

We made it home late Wednesday night. It's now around 3:15 am on Friday morning and I'm not tired since I took long naps during the day (which was the night in Bali). So, I thought I'd do a little blogging. : ) Of course, there is too much to write about all that we saw and did on our trip. You probably don't want all of the details anyway, but I hope to give you a good picture of Bali and some of Lombok from our vacation. Though the beginning of our trip was frustrating and laden with culture shock, the middle and end of it were great. I took about 1,500 pictures, so I'm trying to narrow those down. : P I'll be posting them in parts. Part one I'm linking below. You can click on this link http://picasaweb.google.com/estutzman2005/BaliPartI# to best view the pictures and read the captions at your leisure. Otherwise, I'm embedding a small slideshow version below.

Destination: Gili Meno

I'm finally over the Bali Belly, thank God!! Lots has happened, but I'll just comment on the last two days in this post.

Yesterday morning at 7 am, we left southcentral Bali (Ubud) on a bus to the eastern Bali coast. We then boarded a large ferry at 9am like the one in the picture below. We then sat in port for another hour. Around 10am, we finally set sail. About 4 and 1/2 hours later, we made it to the Lombok (next main island east of Bali) harbor. We then proceeded to hang out in the bay for the next 3 and half hours supposedly waiting for the tide rise. Of course, there are no announcements, you just have to ask around and see if anyone knows anything.

The boat was packed. There was no more room on the second floor where there were bench seats and a blasting TV. We, along with many other tourists, proceeded to the 3rd level where we'd sit on a newspapers on a metal floor for nearly 9 hours.

We had another bus waiting for us (thankfully it was still there) that was supposed to take us to another harbor about two hours north of this harbor to catch yet another (much smaller) boat. After driving about an hour, the driver informed us that it was too late and we'd have to stay the night in this other town and leave out in the morning. Ugh!!

We spent the night and left again on the bus at 8am. We had too many other problems at the next harbor to write them all here. After much frustration, we finally boarded a little boat to our destination, Gili Meno. Gili Meno is one of three islands known as "The Gilis". Finally, we arrived at our island paradise!

I don't have time to adjust the pictures, but below is "the harbor" and a picture of the kind of boat that we took over. You have to wade to shore a little ways. It's kind of difficult with 4 backpacks and a heavy suitcase, but we made it!

Here is the bungalow that we'll be staying in for a couple of nights. It's cold water and fan only. It's very mellow here with much less hassles and touts than the other places that we've been. It's a nice break!

Here is the view from our balcony.This was our lunch spot today.

Ryan looking at baby turtles that they raise and then release in the ocean.

Lombok (and of course most of Indonesia besides Bali) is Muslim. Ramadan is just around the corner. Here is a picture of the mosque on this island and some of the local houses. They aren't all huts like this, but many are. This is a very small island that you can walk around in a few hours. There are no doctors or even police here.

For now, I'm off to bed to get ready for my first dive tomorrow. I'm a little nervous. If I like it, I may continue on for another few days and get my certification.

I don't have time to check my spelling or grammar. Hopefully it's not too crazy! Until next time...