Category Archives: Strange Sights

Season’s Greetings -A Photo Update from A, B, and C

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Now that we have Baby Aeden with us we are A, B and C (Aeden, Britton and Cassie)! So we thought we would make it as easy as A, B and C to say Happy Holidays and Felicidades from our home to yours! 🙂 Here are a few photos and a short video from our life recently in Puerto Rico. It has been speeding right along. I can’t believe Aeden is already 3 months old and almost sleeping through the night! Now I might have time to actually blog a little more again.


The beauty never ceases to amaze me!


Lots of yard work even in winter -Baby Aeden is lulled to sleep by the sounds of the mower haha


Cool abandoned airplane I saw off the road in Aguadilla looks like it should be in Lost


This banana tree was just asking to be photographed in this light. Gorgeous!


So was this monstera! One of my favorites in the flower bouquets and arrangements we sell


We took a little holiday photoshoot at the finca with our little Santa Baby


So cute!


Mommy’s kissing Santa!


My most precious gift!


Afterward he was tuckered out!


Check out how long this banana flower goes (with Elsa from the Farmer’s Market)


Always lots of Holiday Cheer around here (haha)


Watch out! It’s pica pica season!! eek this stuff is painfully itchy


My big boy can almost keep his head up by himself. He is growing so fast!


These prayer/blessing/curse candles are definitely a “thing” here


Close up of the “velas“

Campaign to try to prevent people from shooting guns in the air whilst celebrating the holidays -“ni una bala mas al aire” means “not even one bullet more in the air!”


He can be such a guy smiley when he wants to be. My little flower child


He IS awesome like Daddy!


Awesome Daddy trying out the Moby wrap

News Anchor Jeremy Hubbard visited us here in PR a bit ago. For those of you in Colorado, stay tuned to Fox 31 in Denver for a couple of news stories about us that should air this week and in January!


Fun times with friends


Pretty turkey boy

I think we have more than enough lemon grass -sheesh! Poor Britton was all scratched up after this!


I’m pretty sure Aeden is going to be an astronaut! lol

Oh, I love this little guy so!


Sunset over Tres Palmas

Aeden’s 3 month update video complete with turkey photobomb!

Until next time! Hasta Luego!

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Thank-Full

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We have a lot to be thankful for this year. So many changes have occurred. This time last year we were just getting the electricity working again after two months without! Things were starting to come back to life, but the shock waves were still pulsing.


Walking on a “beach” this time last year (2017)


Beach sunset with Baby Aeden this year

In the year that followed we continued to clean up from the mess of the hurricane and then I became pregnant for the first time ever after many years of trying! It was a wonderful gift but also very taxing on me, and Britton. He had to take care of the whole property and also help me. During this time, Britton’s father became sick and died and that was very hard on us because we are so far from the rest of the family. Additionally we started the flower business and continued to push forward.


My sweet baby!

When Baby Aeden was born right around the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, we experienced a sigh of relief that was short lived. Only 5 days after he was born I became very sick and was hospitalized for nearly 2 weeks out of the first 3 of his life. In a very short period of time I came to understand how precious and yet fragile life really is. I am so grateful to still be here in this realm with these two loves: Britton and Aeden.


Britton and Aeden at the beach

We spent Thanksgiving with our friends Missy and Ben and their family as well as other great friends who have helped us through this very tough year. We are so grateful to them. I don’t know how we could have managed that without them.


Thanksgiving dinner


Delicious food on fancy china!


Baby’s got to eat too!


A visit to a neighbor’s tortoise

So beautiful!


Climbing palm trees!

Baby hanging with the big kids

I love Thanksgiving because it gives us the opportunity to step back and reflect on what we are truly thankful for in our lives: our family, our friends, and our beautiful, precious and fleeting lives. Our life is full of thanks!

PS: Baby Aeden is now over 2 months old and doing great!

 

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Catching Up: Baby Shower and Out and About

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Boqueron for my Birthday

Life sometimes just sweeps you down the river and you hardly have a chance to pop your head up out of the water. Life events (and death) and mostly this pregnancy has taken us down all sorts of strange and stressful paths that has led us to dropping some of the balls, including keeping this blog up. While I have a moment I thought I had better at least share a few catch up photos from the last month or so.


Near Wilderness in Aguadilla


Lighthouse ruins (Ponderosa) of Aguadilla


Fun baby shower

With very nice gifts


Including a cool henna design


Friends and neighbors at the baby shower!


Henna design stain


Hiking through our jungle for the photo shoot -notice there are still a lot of down trees in this section of the property


My belly is huge! And I am nearly cooked!


Cool tropical flowers


Strange bug -longhorn beetle I saw in Aguadilla


Britton hiking our jungle


A “Survivor”-style shack on the beach someone built


I’m now in my 9th month and ready (sort of) for baby!

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Adventures in Jungle Taming: Felling a Giant Royal Palm

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A Daunting Task

It’s not all planting flowers and building trails when it comes to taming our jungle. In this case, we had one of our favorite huge Royal Palm trees die of Thielaviopsis trunk rot. It’s a bummer because it was sort of the statement piece of this “room” in our botanical garden. This occurs when palms suffer some sort of trauma to their soft core such as tearing off palm fronds or wounding it in some other way. You know, the sort of thing a huge hurricane could do. After Maria all the surviving palms (the ones that didn’t get knocked over completely or bent in half like a straw), seemed to slowly come back replacing their fronds one by one. Including this one. But then a yellowing came over the spire and then the upper green trunk. The rot had been slowly and quietly eating away at the palm from the inside out. We kept thinking maybe it got struck by lightning and would grow back, but it never recovered. Finally the entire crown just fell off. If there is no crown, a palm can’t survive.

We contemplated just leaving the huge concrete-pole looking tree there, but we knew it would eventually start rotting away and pose a safety threat when it finally fell on its own, so we decided to chainsaw it down. Chainsawing is dangerous and even with a lot of experience, you can’t always predict where trees will fall. This one was a pretty scary job, and made this pregnant lady waddle away as fast a possible when the tree started coming right in my direction. Check out the video.

In the end it all worked out and we planted a new mango tree in its place. And the jungle grows on.


It smushed a mulberry tree, some bananas and heliconias, but we managed to save them


It stinks from all the rot inside!

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