Turks and Caicos 10 year Anniversary Trip Part 1

On December 21st, Taber and I will have been married for 10 years! We decided to celebrate a little early though since we didn't want to leave the kids during the holiday season, so a few weeks ago we said goodbye to our responsibilities and flew off to the lovely island of Turks and Caicos.

When we were planning our Anniversary trip we thought of a lot different options, a cruise, New York, Europe since it's so close. Then last year our friends went to Turks and Caicos (an island in the Caribbean I had never even heard of before) and when they came back and showed us the pictures I was like, "Duuuude...That's where I wanna go!"

We had a direct flight from Boston so everyone on board was leaving the cold and heading for blue skies. As a result they were all very excited and chatty. When the island finally came into view we looked out the window and were greeted with a rainbow spanning across the turquoise water. (You can kind of see the rainbow in the picture.) When the captain said we had arrived at Turks and Caicos everyone started cheering. It was awesome.

 We flew through customs, took a cab to our hotel, swapped our winter clothes for swimsuits and less than an hour after landing we were sitting on the beach and pinching ourselves to see if this was really real!

The island turned out to be just what I was hoping for, warm turquoise water and white sandy beaches, + hot guy to share it with ; )

We spent the week just enjoying each others undivided attention. It was so nice to actually have full conversations without being interrupted by "the fruits of our romance" : )

 We spent a lot of low key time reading on the beach. I finished 2 books, probably the first 2 books I've read since becoming a mother of 3. : )

When we weren't on the beach we would check out bikes from our hotel and cruise around the island. 

 One day they didn't have the beach cruisers so we had to take the tandem. Tandem biking is harder than it looks! I'm glad we tried this after we'd been married for 10 years and not on our honeymoon. Definitely requires lots of patience and communication!

We also did lots of snorkeling since there was a reef directly in front of our hotel. Taber was smart and bought some snorkel masks and flippers before we left so we didn't have to pay ridiculous fees to rent them. There were lots of awesome fish and one day we even saw a pretty big barracuda.

 The beach is such a difference experience without the kiddos.  Don't get me wrong, I love taking our kids to the beach, but it was just a nice change to be able to play too : )

In fact, the kidless beach freedom made us a little hyper : )

Woopee!

I guess we took a lot of jump pictures. 

We were excited ; )

 Usually we'd wrap up our beach time when the sun started setting.

Then we'd shower and get all dolled up to go out to dinner. 

This is another thing that's really exciting about a vacation without kids. You can go to fancy restaurants, at any hour of the night and take as long as you want to eat your amazing food : )

 It's usually such a huge deal for us to get a babysitter and go out to dinner alone. In fact, I think we've only done it once since having Cam! So yeah, going out to eat every night was the coolest!

This collage is an ode to all the yummy food we ate on our vacation. 

Just thinking about it brings a tear of happiness to my eye. :)  

(p.s. all the cool people take pictures of their food, trust me. )

 And speaking of food, everything was ridiculously expensive on the island so we hit up the local grocery store to get stuff for lunches so we wouldn't spend our entire life savings on meals.  Even the grocery store was crazy expensive though! Can you guess how much the few items in our cart cost? I will seriously send a goodie care package to whoever guesses the closest! 

Okay, well this post is already getting ridiculously long so I will pause here and save the rest for another day: )

The Ultimate Granny Nanny (and Grandpa ; )

Earlier this month Taber and I left the kids for a week to celebrate our 10 year Annivesary. You might think, "Oh those poor kids! Left behind for a whole week!" but don't feel too bad for them, I'm sure they had more fun than we did thanks to my parents, (a.k.a. the ultimate babysitters. : )

Grandma and Grandpa got in late at night, so when the kids woke up and saw they were there it was like Christmas morning.

Even our dog was excited to see them.

 We took them out to dinner the night before we left as a pre-THANK YOU! for being brave enough to watch our kids for a week. (we figured it might be good to butter them up before we threw them back into a such a demanding stage of parenting : )

We really had nothing to worry about though. My parents are seasoned pros when it comes to kids (and grandkids.) They're kind of like the Olympic gold medalists of child rearing. (Seriously.) Here are some of the things they did to earn their gold medal status.

Chuck E Cheese, with 3 small children, on a Saturday night. 

That takes guts! No pictures but the kids mentioned it several times so I know they had a blast. : )

Making and decorating sugar cookies. (the secret to a 5 and 3 year old's heart)

Crafts, crafts, and more crafts! Including coloring and putting together this playhouse that Brinley's preschool teacher brought over. A week after they left Teya was still talking about how much fun she had doing crafts with Grandma. 

McDonalds' playland. Another brave adventure when it comes to keeping track of the girls and keeping wild man Cam off the floor when all he wants to do is crawl around.

A visit to the doctor's office for poor little Cam who was struggling all week with a terrible chest cough and wouldn't sleep through the night.  My mom thought he might have an ear infection but the doc said it was just a very bad cold.  I really appreciate my mom for taking him in to be sure, and I really appreciate my dad for getting up with him in the middle of the night every night! That's love : ) 

Another act of love was my Dad's personal mission to take care of every fix it project in our house. He fixed our mailbox (which had rusted off the metal and completely broken off after the snowstorm) he fixed all my curtain fixtures that the kids had pulled down or out of the wall, he tightened all my loose cupboards, mounted toilet paper holders and towel holders in our bathrooms, cleaned out, vacuumed, and scrubbed our cars and shampooed all the carpets and stairs. It was so amazing to come home to a clean and organized house. My dad is the coolest : )

Of course my mom did her fair share of cleaning too, including mopping my floors, cleaning out our garage, washing all the laundry, washing all the bed sheets, the comforters, and even my curtains! 

 She also helped the girls make me a birthday cake, decorate the house with balloons and birthday signs and wrap little presents so I could celebrate my b-day with them when I got home.  

I was already just so happy that they were watching our kids, I couldn't believe they did so much on top of that. I really feel blessed and lucky to have such amazing and thoughtful parents.

 Even though we had a snowstorm the week before they came, the weather warmed up and they were able to spend a lot of time outside and at the park.

I found these pictures of them playing with the kids at the park and they just about melted my heart.  Seeing my Dad so relaxed and in his element as a grandpa is the best.

And I LOVE this picture of my mom and Cam. You can tell they're both just so happy.

Little man didn't miss me at all with such a wonderful grammy to snuggle.

The smiles on the kids faces say it all. 

Grandma and Grandpa can babysit any time!!

Halloween with the Rigg Kids

When our city postponed Halloween for a week I was majorly bummed since Taber and I would be out of town on the rescheduled date.  I really didn't want to miss it so we dressed them up anyway  and decided to check out trick or treating at the mall.

The girls were a lady bug and a bumblebee and Cam was the cutest little elephant to ever walk army crawl this earth. ; )

I had some face paint so I did some fun little designs around the girls eyes and on their cheeks. I thought they looked pretty cute.

We met up with Teya's bff Mia and headed into the mall.

When we got inside it was chaos! I guess since the city wasn't doing trick or treat everyone and their dog was at the mall. We waited in line at the first store for 20 minutes just to get a pathetic tootsie roll. We got in line for another store but 10 minutes into the wait we decided to ditch the mall and take our friends up on their offer to trick-or-treat with them in Massachusetts. We said goodbye everyone at the mall and headed down to Mass.

We got to our friend's house just as it was getting dark and the kids were not happy that we subjected them to picture taking before they could go knocking on doors for candy. This was the best shot of all 3 we could get. : )

The girls had a blast when we finally let them loose outside. They ran from door to door and got quite a nice collection of candy. It was pretty cold though and Brinley tapped out after about 20 minutes and sat in the car with me and Cam to get warm. It was a fun night and I'm glad we got to see the kids trick or treat.

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A week later they had trick or treating in Nashua. Taber and I were on our Anniversary trip but I told my parents about it and showed them where the costumes and the face paint were.  

 I figured my Dad would probably just do a few little designs on their eyes like I did but he found a book with face paint designs and let the girls pick the most elaborate ones they could find. 

 Teya picked butterfly eyes...

and despite Teya and my mom's best efforts to dissuade her, Brinley insisted on having an ocean face. Teya was very upset that Brinley's ocean face did not coordinate with her bee costume but you can't really argue with a 3 year old once they've set their mind on something.

The girls and their make up artist, Papa Uda.

My mom stayed home with Cam and passed out candy while my Dad took the girls trick or treating. It sounded like my dad had a blast and I'm so glad he got to enjoy some fun bonding time with his granddaughters.  : )

The Snowstorm that Crippled New England

On October 29th we were getting the kids ready for the Trunk or Treat at our church when snow starting coming down hard. The Trunk or Treat was cancelled and by 9pm we had lost power. Our power went out during Hurricane Irene but only for a few hours so I wasn't that worried. The kids thought it was awesome getting ready for bed with flashlights and we went to sleep thinking we'd be up and running in the morning.

 When we woke up the next day there was still no power. Our house was a chilly 60 degrees and there was a 10 inch blanket of snow covering our yard.

 Church was cancelled so we bundled up the kids and got to work shoveling the driveway.

The girls were so excited about the snow and we didn't realize at that point how much damage it had done so we just let them play and enjoy it for awhile.

Then Taber went to go check on some of the families from church and that's when we realized how bad it was. Since the snow had come early, all the trees still had their leaves and the heavy snow made them come crashing down. Hundreds of trees and power lines were down, taking out the power for over 80% of Nashua.

Here's a video Taber took driving around our neighborhood of some of the damage. It's pretty crazy to see all the broken trees everywhere.

No power in the winter means no heat, and the forecast for the next few nights called for temps in the low 20's. Fortunately in our church we have an emergency plan that includes a list of all the people with generators in case of a power outage. The "generator families" were kind enough to open their homes for people to take hot showers, get a warm meal and in many cases, have a warm place to sleep since the temperature inside of the homes without power was dropping into the 40's.

Some of our friends with power let us bring our frozen food over to their freezer so it wouldn't go bad. Then they kindly sent me home with a pot of hot chili and homemade bread. Despite the huge inconvenience of not having electricity, it was actually kind of fun to be in campout mode at our house. We bundled up, broke out the candles and headlamps and tried to make an adventure out of it.

That night we moved all the beds down into the family room by our fireplace so we could stay warm. The fire kept us nice and toasty but the rest of the house was dipping into the 50's so we stayed contained to the family room where we played, slept, and ate.

The next day was Halloween but the city postponed trick or treating for a week and school was cancelled. I felt really bad that the girls had been jipped out of trunk or treat, Teya's class party, and now trick or treating. Luckily our friends who live 40 minutes south in Massachusetts had power and invited us to trick or treat with them since their city was still doing it. The girls had a blast (pictures to come later) and when we came home we were overjoyed to find that our power was back on!

The next few days we hosted families who still didn't have power. People came to shower, do laundry and sleepover. School was cancelled all week until Friday and our internet and phones didn't come back until then either. Luckily by Friday most of our city was up and running again but our poor neighbors in Connecticut were still without power for another week! 

In the end we spent 40 hours without power.  It was a crazy adventure that taught us a lot about emergency preparedness in the winter and gave us a new sense of gratitude for things like central  heating, our dishwasher and Cam's white noise machine : )