We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019 full of love and wonder!
This Christmas after some plans fell through, we found ourselves on the beach once more trading snow and cold for sand and sunsets. They moved the annual Pig Roast celebration from Almendros Beach because it was devoid of trees after Maria to Playa Lala. Playa Lala was once just “the beach behind the old Econo” and has now become a popular destination especially with all the little kiosk bars right nearby.
The 3 of us getting into the Christmas Spirit
Playa Lala on Christmas
Driftwood tree
Another unusual tree
Breaking out the Coquito at sunset
What a beautiful sunset it was! Almost watercolor
Britton and Aeden away from the crowd
My silly sweety -my favorite Christmas present ever!
Also, the Newstory about us aired in Colorado on Christmas Eve. Check out more of the story here if you haven’t yet seen it, or watch the video below!
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!
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!
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
What a beautiful sunset it was! Almost watercolor
Britton and Aeden away from the crowd
