Chocolate Chip Starfish

Our first day at Coco Grove these cute local boys found a Chocolate Chip starfish, also known as a horned sea star. Adelaide was wary of the starfish at first and didn't want to touch it. (Torah on the other hand immediately tried grabbing it out of James' hand) The next day we found what Addy called a "cute family" of starfish and suddenly she loved them.










She was happy to find a little black sea star too.


We went on a glass bottom boat ride and saw many colorful fish and starfish, including beautiful bright blue starfish.










Addy doesn't usually take naps, but the boat rocked her to sleep. Torah was getting sleepy too so we ended the ride a little early.

Coco Grove

Because the Embassy observes both American and local holidays, Easter weekend was a five day weekend for us. Hooray! It was also the weekend of our fifth anniversary so we went on our first trip together outside of Manila. We stayed at a beautiful resort called Coco Grove on the small island Siquijor. I looked at pictures online so I expected the island and beaches to be beautiful, but I was still awed by how lovely it actually was in person. I kept telling James that everything was so gorgeous that being there didn't seem real! Coco Grove is a very spacious resort, so although we were there during their peak season we still felt as though we had the place to ourselves. It seemed the other guests preferred the pools to the beach because most of the time the beach was empty. They have two restaurants at the resort and the food was great and prices were much cheaper than even eating out in Manila. The mango and pineapple smoothies were delicious and the girls loved them. It was a very relaxing weekend and I'm grateful for such a fun and memorable anniversary.