Turks and Caicos final post: church, birthday cake and other randoms...

Okay, last Turks and Caicos post! Just wanted to throw in a few more random things:

First of all, the city we were in was called Providenciales but everyone called it Provo. We landed at the Provo airport and I was like, "Yeah! I'm a Provo girl!" I had to take a pic in this Provo hat to give a shout out to my hometown. Provo, UT may not be as exotic as Provo Turks and Caicos but I love it just the same :  )

Our second day on the island was Sunday so we needed to find a place to go to church. After a little research we found there was a branch of our church on the island and that they met less than a 10 minute walk from our hotel! We were so excited!

 It was a tiny branch and the meetings were translated into Creole since half the congregation didn't speak English. It was fast and testimony meeting so I got up to bear my testimony and it was funny having a translator because when I told I joke, half of the congregation laughed after the punchline, and the other half laughed a minute later once they got the translation ; ) The members were so warm and welcoming and we ended up staying for all 3 hours.  Then they invited us to a fireside on Wednesday night that a General authority was coming to speak at. We figured why not? We don't have any plans!

So Wednesday night rolled around and I think people were a little surprised that we actually showed up ; ) This is brother Willy, he is a new convert and was just full of excitement for the gospel. When he saw us again he said in a thick Creole accent, "I'm glad you are here! You are my bruddah and my sistah!"

I love that he said that because that's really how we felt. We had read a scripture in Sunday school from Ephesians 2:19 that said, "ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." It applied so perfectly because when we came to the island we were literally foreigners and strangers, but once we walked into the church we were fellow citizens, "brothers and sisters" and it was just amazing to know we have that connection everywhere we go.

After the fireside we swapped emails with a few people and on Friday one of the guys emailed Taber to see if he wanted to come play basketball. We were going out for my birthday dinner but decided we could stop by the court since it was close to our restaurant.  They ended up playing for close to an hour while I chatted with one of the wives who is from Canada, has two small kids and loves to run. We had plenty to talk about : )

When we left to go to the restaurant we bumped into another lady from church who said, "Oh my goodness! We've seen you guys so much if you stay for another week they're going to give you a calling!" I laughed but I totally would've taken one if they offered it. It's crazy how you can feel so connected to a ward after just one week.

 That night we celebrated my birthday and our last night on the island with some good eats and chocolate cake.

The next morning we spent a few more hours on the beach before we had to pack up and head to the airport. We were pretty sad to leave.

But I stopped being sad when I got home and was greeted with more birthday celebrations and the 3 cutest kids in the world.  It's hard to feel blue when you get a homecoming like that : )

Turks and Caicos part 2: Horses and Conch Diving

So I've been taking care of two barfing babies this weekend 

and after cleaning up my 5th pool of puke I decided I needed a little escape.  

Nothing like Turks and Caicos pics to take me to my happy place : )

One of the top 5 things to do on the island, according to Tripadvisor, is horseback riding on the beach and in the ocean. All the reviews made it sound amazing so I said, "Let's do it!"

First they took a few minutes to teach us how to steer our horses, slow them down, stop them from grazing, etc... and then we headed off for the beach.

We followed a dirt road and then wound our way through a sandy jungle trail. After a few minutes the trail opened up to a private beach with a breathtaking view of the ocean.  The horses knew exactly where they were and made a straight line for the ocean to cool off their bellies in the water.

It was amazing to ride right into the ocean and glide through the water on our horses. 

One of the guide's dogs followed us to the beach and when we went into the ocean he swam out after us and jumped on the horse with his master. I thought it was pretty funny to see a dog riding a horse in the ocean. ; )

My horse was in heaven in the water. She was born on the island and has been doing beach rides since she was a baby. She spent most of the ride with her nose in the water blowing bubbles so I nicknamed her "Snorkel" : )

We spent almost on hour riding in the ocean. It was so serene and beautiful and relaxing. 

Our guides were great and even took our cameras so we could all get pictures.

This was definitely a bucket list experience and I'm so glad we got to do it.

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The other excursion we did was a Conch Diving cruise that Taber booked for my birthday.

It was awesome to be able to get on a boat and get some different views of the island.

We saw this crazy shipwreck and a huge ghost town resort that went belly up when the economy tanked.

Our tour guides jumped in the ocean and dove for conch and starfish. They pulled some up to show us what they looked like and then they let us loose to get our own conch shells.

It was tricky to find the conch but we did see a lot of star fish

I found this 7 point beauty and pulled her up for a picture.

It was pretty hard to spot the conch shells on the bottom of the ocean because they camouflaged so well, but after about 30 minutes Taber was able to pull up two gorgeous ones and brought them back to the boat. 

In our tour group of about 20 people, Taber was the only one who found his own shells! Everyone else got the ones the tour guide had pulled up. I think he felt pretty proud of his manly conch hunting skills after that ; )

Once we all had our shells they took us to Iguana island where we gutted them and chopped them up for a salad. The animal thingy inside looked pretty nasty but hunter boy was totally into it and ate part of it after he pulled it out. Blech.

Once the animal thingy was out we had to scrape the seawood off.  Meanwhile our tour guides were using the meat to make a salad.

The salad was tasty, but I kept picturing the slimy conch in my mind and couldn't finish it. Taber was glad. More for him!

We got to explore Iguana island which is literally inhabited by thousands of iguanas. We saw a ton of them and I kept begging Taber to give me his shirt so I could catch one, but he didn't like the idea so this is as close as I got. ; )

After our picnic on the island they took us out to the reef to snorkel one last time. Turks and Caicos has the third largest reef in the world, Australia is number 1 and Belize is number 2. The water was clear and the fish we saw were incredible. It was hands down the coolest thing I have ever done on my birthday.

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By the way: The WINNER of the goodie care package for guessing the price of our T&C groceries is Rachel Murdock! She guessed $95 and the total price was $92! Isn't that crazy? I'm used to expensive groceries in Boston so I thought it would be close to $50, but when the girl said $92 I almost died! Guess that's the price of living in paradise : ) 

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!!