A Visit from Mama and Papa Rigg

About 10 days before Thanksgiving Taber's parents called with the exciting news that they were flying out to spend the holiday with us. 

This was an unexpected surprise that was the result of some other good news. Taber's Dad had been diagnosed with Mantle Cell lymphoma back in March and had been battling cancer for most of the year. After months of Chemo he went in for a pet scan at the end of October and found that he was cancer free. I can't tell you how amazing it is to hear those words about someone you love. 

Once they got the good news it wasn't long before they had their tickets booked to New Hampshire.

The kids were so excited when they got here that Teya was jumping up and down and Brinley was literally rolling on the floor ; )

Cam was happy to see them too and showed off all his clapping, climbing and crawling skills.

 Grandma came loaded with fun activities for the kids, starting with a gingerbread house.

 This is the perfect combination of happiness for my girls. Candy and crafts. : )

She also brought them a new stack of books and they relished all the reading time with Grandma.

The day before Thanksgiving we went to Outback so we wouldn't have to do major cooking 2 days in a row.

 While we were there poor Teya started complaining about pain in her ear. It was so bad she was sobbing and couldn't eat her meal. We ended up taking her to the urgent care and sure enough she had an ear infection. I thought this was such a sad/sweet picture of her trying to muster a smile despite all the pain.

 We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal (see post below) and then Melinda, Mama Rigg and I left the boys on clean up and kid duty and caught the last matinee of Breaking Dawn. I wore my wolf girl shirt for the occasion ; ) All the haters are gonna hate, but I LOVED it!! And I also think I'm switching back to team Edward...maybe... ;) 

 Other highlights from their visit include a taking the kids to see Arthur Christmas, which was awesome and a perfect family friendly movie for the holidays. Cam even sat still and watched it for a whole hour! 

We had beautiful weather while they were here and got to spend an afternoon at the park after our movie.

 Climbing cutie

 Happy squishy face

 Love these smiles so so much.

 I thought this was a sweet picture of Brinley and Grandpa.

I was trying to get a picture of Taber and his parents with the kids and a nice stranger offered to take one of all of us. I love it when people do that : )

Later we celebrated Papa's birthday and somehow the girls managed to get gifts too. ; ) 

After a tough year with Papa Rigg's health we are so grateful he was able to come out and make new wonderful Thanksgiving memories with our family.

A Simple Thanksgiving

This year for the first time in our marriage we didn't travel to Utah or Colorado for Thanksgiving.  Instead, Taber's parents flew out to NH and we hosted a humble little Thanksgiving at our house.

Taber took care of the turkey so there was no pressure on me. This was his 4th time grilling one and he's got it down to a fine art. 

 

The smoky, flavorful, juicy masterpiece.

The Draschils came up from Boston and Mel brought some amazing pumpkin, chocolate silk, pecan and banana cream pies. 

We kept it was very casual and low key but the girls decided they wanted to wear dresses. : )

 Teya even fixed her own hair with a bow to match.

Melinda brought Thanksgiving coloring pages for the kids to keep them entertained at the kids table.

We ate all the traditional Thanksgiving fare, although this year I tried a new sweet potato recipe and it was AMAZING! I will definitely be making it again for Christmas. You can get the recipe here.

It was a simple Thanksgiving. 

We ate on paper plates. 

But the food was incredible and the company was even better. 

My belly and heart were full. 

I really couldn't ask for anything better : )

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 : )