Icy Valentines at the Sandbar Hostel

I often feel like “The dog ate my homework” or in my case San Pedro Red Cross once again bounced me away from tacogirl. The blog that was going to be finished before noon yesterday will be lucky to get done today. It is all for a good cause though 🙂 and a tie-in to red, the color of Valentine. We are in process of handling a planned surgery blood request that came as a result of Love FM mainland Belize news coverage on our last blood drive. Every time this happens we learn greatly from the experience and become more efficient as a team. Another good result of this last request, Shirlee, Sue and I are in process of starting our procedure pdf making it easy for designated Red Cross volunteers to follow the steps when getting blood from our Ambergris Caye Reserve signed off on by the designated board members. Today it was our Chairman Eiden Salazar that came through with a fast yes.

Back to the important part Sex, Love and Rock and Roll, I mean Valentines and the Ice/Phillips wedding 🙂

For some myself included, Valentines 2015 will go down as the longest Valentines’ day celebration in San Pedro history. It was a 3-day affair and the gold medal endurance winner goes to best man Joe Chung. He planned and attended the bachelor crawl Thursday night, crashed the bachelorette Friday evening, showed up reasonably fresh-faced, all partying considered and still faintly marketed for the Saturday afternoon wedding.

After we arrived I asked Kendall if he would not mind taking a few pics for me on his awesome 41-megapixel camera phone and as the day went on, I decided to increase the picture selection through more of the many cell phone photographers attending the event. I wanted to just enjoy my time and not lose the moment behind a camera which happens all too often as a blogger.

First off wardrobe – Thanks to 3 of Rose Alacante’s Pilates classes at Zen Arcade (yes she is that good) I decided to wear my one-of-a-kind Lily Guilder design mermaid dress and I was glad I did, as I discovered it has magic powers. First power: I got more whistles that night than I have had in 47 years. The fact that they all came from about to be Happily Married to Linda Linda Linda’s David still counts 🙂 Second power: I was also able to perform a fun party trick captured by Kendall  – Disco Mermaid and last but not a magic party trick, a full dress shot taken by Melody for our good friend Designer Caitlin Stolley. For me, Melody’s picture is a good reminder of where I am at as I close in on 48 – working on healthy and feeling great 🙂

Note to Melody, I forgot to ask you at the party if you have Caitlin’s hula hoops or can help me get them, she told me to check with you. Can you please FB message me and let me know when you get a min. Thanks.

I had to include the picture below when I saw it, that was one shot I definitely would have snapped if I was taking pictures – them pulling up to the party. Thankfully David took one as they were leaving their apartment. It was a ROFL moment watching David & Linda arrive on their scooter looking happy fabulous as always and ride-sharing with the inflatable stripper.

This next one comes from Jane, so many happy people enjoying the beachside Valentines’ wedding party. I have seen many people getting married in Belize but was my first Valentine’s wedding and I really enjoyed celebrating ‘Love’ with friends and the about-to-be happily married couple.

Smiling is a good match to celebrating ‘Love’ cause it is all about living happy and igniting the fire within as much as you can. You can definitely tell everyone in the picture below is loving life right now. (I know if Joe was on day 3 of partying his smile would have been as big as the others)

Sandbar Hostel was a great pick for a wedding venue, with lots of room to party and a great setup for DJ Hoy. Plus the best part the wedding was early enough for me to get one of my favorite treats, chocolate banana blended iced coffee at Ice and Beans coffee shop – beachside coffee bar right-hand side in pic. It was yummy.

Before long it was time for the wedding ceremony and we all headed for the beach. Thankfully the big pile of Sargasso was not too smelly. It somehow seemed to suit the vampire wedding colors Rizpah picked out for their wedding.

In my mind movie, I saw thriller-style zombies rising from the seaweed and doing a dance to celebrate Grant and Ripah. Then the crowd suddenly tipped their chairs and start doing the Thriller dance like the well-known scene in 13 Going on 30, only our version would be down the beach on a brilliantly sunny day 🙂

In the real-life version of the movie, we got to pelt them with fruit loops as they walked down the aisle after their big kiss – just as fun 🙂

You will notice a good portion of the pics above came from Kendall Beymer. If you want to see more of his work, check out his blog Reset and Restore. He has an interesting point of view and like it or not he will definitely make you think. He is a part-time blogger and doing it for himself, anyone who blogs knows it is great therapy 🙂 His posts usually contain a few topics and some pretty funny stuff about living on the island of misfit toys aka Ambergris Caye.

Remember at the start of my story when I mentioned Joe got the Gold for attendance on the 3-day affair. I caught up with him at the first of 4 bars on Rizpah’s shower crawl. He was on day 2 of partying and celebrating with, ruby red lips, a handlebar mustache and other assorted body tattoo’s – girls gone wild with sharpie 🙂

Linda Albrektsson, Tamara Phillips did a great job of decking the halls poolside at the Tides Hotel. Carla Escalante also helped with leaving a note in Rizpah’s room and surprising her. Big Shout out goes to Linda for saving the day when she found out the inflatable stripper had a hole in him after being blown up at Ecologic Divers, she managed to get her cab driver to take her to someone who was able to patch him up and save our evening entertainment.

I did not catch any of the bachelor party pics but got tacoboy’s SMS report: “It was fun, went to Wayo’s, Compadres (dodgy) Lola’s Pub, Take a Look (dodgy) and Captain Iguanas”.

Though I am not a match for Joe Chung (still on virgin drinks) I decided to extend my Valentines’ partying the 3rd day and stay away from work. It was heavenly, and fit the spirit of ‘Love’ as I revelled in a deep sleep with dark curtains and sleep mask, then immensely enjoyed lounging in bed with a long slow wake-up 🙂 Finally, I took my blissful self to the beach for cashew shrimp pesto sliders with a side of bacon mac and cheese – see food porn pic on tacogirl.com Facebook page.

Remember boys and girls before you can truly love someone else you have to love yourself first and I would be willing to bet many of you reading this do not do that as much as you should. If you fall into that category ….. What is stopping you?

Grant and Rizpah, thanks for sharing your special day with a great group of people. Wishing you sunshine and rainbows as you walk forward together, hand in hand with each other, daughter Avni and baby ice when he or she arrives 🙂