skimboarding

I don't think skimboarding has been discovered in the Caribbean (or in Europe, as a European guy stopped Jamal to ask what he was doing). Jamal loves to skimboard, and he was definitely the only person skimboarding on our beach in Turks & Caicos. If you're not familiar with the activity, a skimboard is like a thin boogie board, made out of plywood or fiberglass. But, instead of riding big waves, you sort of "skim" along the water on the shore. I've include a short video clip at the bottom of this post. Jamal has also discovered that you can also skimboard in our backyard when we get a lot of rain.

Jamal and his new friend Blake (also an Edward Jones kid), whom he taught to skimboard

Sunday in Provo

One of our favorite things to do when we're outside of the States is go to church. It's fun to meet our brothers and sisters all over the world and see how they worship. We (okay, the little kids would rather be at the beach; I'm speaking for the adults here) love church in the Caribbean. The people there, inside and outside of church, are just so nice and so happy to be there. They don't have much, but they are so grateful for what they do have. And we usually find friends there. When we went to church in Grand Cayman a couple years ago, we met several people who knew the preachers our church used work with in Jamaica and Dominica.

After much research, Mom found a church for us to attend in Provo. Once we arrived, she called the number a gift shop owned by a Christian (a church in the States gave her this number). She talked to the niece of the owner, who was actually at Harding the same time I was. So on Sunday, her uncle, Lofton, picked us and another family (we met another COC Edward Jones family on the trip) up and drove us to their little church.

The church actually meets in a high school auditorium (one of their leaders is the principal of the high school). The service was very different than other Caribbean churches we've been to. Many of the members are from Haiti, so they did part of the service in English and part in Creole. Our kids were whining the whole time about how hot it was (it was pretty hot - no air conditioning in this place), and they were in the coolest Sunday clothes they had. Everyone else at church was in their Sunday best. Suits and ties, lacy dresses and socks with ruffles, and they never complained once of being hot. Not even the kids, who were so, so cute. I wanted to bring them home with me. Everyone was just so happy to have us there and eager to meet us. Dad and the other guys with us actually ended up helping lead the service. As usual, we met some people from Jamaica who knew some of our preacher friends there.

After church a little girl, who looked to be about nine, approached me. She was holding the hand of a tiny (too tiny) beautiful, barely walking, little girl. As all of the other children were, they looked like they were dressed in the nicest clothes they owned. I asked their names and the older girl, Jillesia, told me. The little one only smiled but didn't speak. More on this after a few pictures . . .

The drive was beautiful.

the high school

That night after dinner, Mom, Kia, and I were walking back to our room and passed a couple of housekeepers. We smiled and said hi, and they did the same. Then one of them, who had apparently been cleaning our room all week, said she would be off on Monday and wouldn't be cleaning our room again before we left. She wished us a safe flight and then asked if we'd gone to church that morning. We told her we had, and I thought maybe she'd seen us leave with Bibles in our hands or something. Then she asked if we went to the church at Blue Hills. We had no idea. She said, "The church with no clapping?" Haha! We said, "We went to the church of Christ that meets at a high school." She said "Yes!" Turns out, she goes to that church but has to work on Sundays. Her daughter was there and told us that there were people from her resort at church. Her daughter was Jillesia, the little girl I'd met, and the baby was her niece. Jillesia told her mom that there was a mom, a dad, and a daughter, and they had a little boy and girl who were "like me." Jillonise (our housekeeper) said, "Yes! Yes! Those are my guests in eight-oh-three!" (803). Small world!

Mom and me with Jillonise (photo by Kia, who became a little photographer on the trip)

She sells sea shells down by the sea shore.

Actually, she collects them. She wears goggles, sticks her face in the water, and digs shells out of the sand. This is how Tekia spent much of her time in Turks and Caicos.

She also helped save the planet by picking up plastic cups off the beach and using them to hold her shells. Kia preferred to have a helper who could hold her cup, hence Mom floating with a cup in her hand.her treasures

her teeny, tiny "honk" (aka conch) shells

If a picture's worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?

Jamal and I went on a little adventure during our trip. We had no idea we were going to be dipped in the water in the middle of it, though! The guys who took us told Mom (who rode with us to take pictures/video) that we were up around 750-800 feet above the water. I believe it, because we could hardly see the boat and we could see all the way on the other side of the island. I had to talk Jamal out of having a panic attack after we'd been up for about fifteen minutes (and the quick dip in the water snapped him out of it!), but, other than that, we had a blast!

back in Tennessee

We got home tonight and are pretty sad that we're no longer in our Caribbean paradise. Where do I even start with this trip? We had such a wonderful time. I first fell in love with the Caribbean when I was about Tekia's age and began going on mission trips to Jamaica with my parents. The scenery was beautiful and the people were friendly. Turks and Caicos was no different. This island actually reminded us a lot of Jamaica, though it's much, much smaller (and probably much safer). When driving down the main road, there are times when you can see the water on both sides of the island - and this was one of the largest islands!

Our resort, Beaches, was wonderful and huge, which at times was a pain, but we needed the extra walking to work off all the calories that come with an all-inclusive vacation! The kids loved it, of course. There were five pools, a few hot tubs, and more restaurants than we had time to visit. We were lucky enough to have a room that was close to the beach and one of the pools. Most of the resort employees were from Provo or other nearby islands, which we loved. The people of the Caribbean are so happy and kind (more on that later).

We were there with about 65 other Edward Jones families from all over North America, so we made lots of new friends. We didn't get a chance to talk to everyone there, but, interestingly, they all seemed to know us . . . our family tends to stand out in a crowd. Tekia was especially sad to leave her "best friends" - three sisters from New Hampshire. E-mail addresses were exchanged, so hopefully we'll keep in touch and maybe see each other on future trips.

A few pictures, and then I must crash. I'll be back in the coming days with more stories and pictures and videos.

the ridiculously blue water. It looked like a big swimming pool.

Tekia and her new friend Shreya. They loved getting virgin pina coladas at the swim-up bars. Can't you just see Kia swimming up to a bar and announcing, "I'd like a pina colada, please"?

a thousand words

Turks & Caicos!

Obviously, we are here, ha. We arrived around 4pm yesterday afternoon. Our flight from Memphis to Miami was delayed about an hour because one of our pilots didn't show up and they had to call in a new one. But fortunately we made our connecting flight in Miami without much of a problem. We made it here with all but one of our bags. The missing bag is a small one with a few shoes, some toiletries (including Tekia's hair stuff!), and almost all of our sunscreen in it. So we do have all of our clothes and most of our other necessities. We're still trying to locate the bag.

This place is amazing! We were picked up at the airport by one of our Maritz travel directors, and when we arrived at the resort, we were greeted with cool scented towels, fruit punch, and cookies and fruit. Kia said, "They really know how to greet people here!" None of us has ever been to an all-inclusive resort before, so we're all pretty much beside ourselves. We just can't get over the fact that we can drink the Cokes in our fridge, haha. We didn't get much of a chance to swim or play yesterday. We went to a welcome dinner for all the Edward Jones people last night. I don't have much time to post pictures now, but I'll try to later.

Dad is sitting here driving me crazy telling me to post his picture and tell everyone hello. So I'm going to sign off now. Ciao!

Off we go!

(Pretend like this was posted early yesterday morning, because that's when it was supposed to be posted. I couldn't get the internet in the airport to work right. And I don't feel like re-writing all that.)

In just a couple of hours, Dad, Mom, Jamal, Tekia, and I will be on our way to the Turks & Caicos islands!

We're so fortunate to have Dad's company take us on another wonderful family vacation. This year we opted to head back to the Caribbean (the 8-hour flight to Hawaii last year was not exactly fun for Jamal and Kia -- or us!). If you've never heard of Turks & Caicos (I hadn't before this trip), they are a group of 30+ islands in the Caribbean. Most of these are uninhabited. We'll be staying on Providenciales (aka "Provo"), one of the Caicos islands and the most populated of any of the islands (around 22,500 people). We've heard that the Turks & Caicos have recently become a celebrity hot spot (Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner were married there), but, according to my internet research, most of the stars' homes are on a little Caicos island called Parrot Cay. But, don't worry, I'll keep my camera with me just in case. ;-) Maybe they'll come over to Provo to shop.

By the way, the picture above was actually taken at our resort. I can't get there fast enough!

Hope everyone has a great week! Please a say prayer for safe travel for us. I'll be back next Tuesday with lots of pictures!

EIGHT!

Can you believe this little diva is now EIGHT years old??

What a blessing the past eight years have been. Tekia turned eight last Saturday, but we celebrated with a pool party on Friday. Our friend Becky has generously donated her pool for Tekia's parties the last two years. We sort of had a rubber ducky/bath theme, as there were numerous rubber ducky decorations (Patty threw a rubber ducky baby shower once, so we're trying to help her get her money's worth out of all those ducks!) and bath goodies for party favors. But the cake was just a cute pool party cake that Mom made after seeing it online, so the theme was really just anything and everything "water." Here are some pics!

Max the birthday dog (Becky's dog) was there and impressed the girls with all his tricks! This is the coolest dog ever.

How cute are the Teddy Grahams in their little Life-Saver floats? Eight eight-year-olds in a pool is so much fun. Can you find the birthday girl? ;-) Though it looks a little like she's sitting, she was actually jumping.
little fish

I needed a flash for this, but, by the time I realized it, it was too late . . . cake and ice cream sundaes

Happy 8th Birthday, Tekia!

daisy of the galaxy

My cousin Ashley is currently spending three weeks going to language school in Costa Rica. When I was in Little Rock a few weeks ago, she asked Jill and me to help her start a blog before her trip. So we went to work. Here are a few pics of Ashley and me during the blog-making process.


The hardest part of this job as "blog teachers" (as Ashley called us) was coming up with a name for the blog. We asked Ashley if there were any song lyrics or quotes that she really loved, as we took both of our blog titles from quotes. No luck. Then we asked her if there was a celebrity that she really liked. Grace Kelly. So we googled Grace Kelly quotes. Let me tell you something . . . Grace Kelly didn't say much. She certainly didn't say anything profound, at least nothing that was ever recorded. She had about thirteen quotes, and one of them was "daisies of the galaxy." That's it. No verb. No direct object. (It's like someone taking the last two sentences I just wrote and making them my famous quotes.) Not even "the daisies of the galaxy." Just "daisies of the galaxy." Thus, here is the link to Ashley's new blog - daisy of the galaxy. Enjoy!

something (or someone) I never posted about

Whenever I have time to blog, I start to think of all the things that I never blogged about but always meant to. This situation is one of those things. Back in May, my friends and I were hanging out after Bible study one Wednesday night when our friend Thomas called. His wife Micah was home alone and had opened the back door to do something with the dog, and, when she did, a small critter of some sort ran into the house. She was so freaked out that she grabbed the dog's food bowl, flipped it on top of the animal (she didn't take the time to see what it was, but she thought it might've been a rat), stood on top of the bowl, and called Thomas for help (while still standing on the bowl). He was out of town, so he called my friend Justin for help. Justin and Brooks went over there to help Micah out with this situation, and a few minutes later they returned with this. . .

Isn't she/he so cute? We pretended it was a girl, and we decided to name her Nimpra, after Avery's "friend." Somehow I ended up taking Nimpra home with me, because I live more "in the country" than everyone else and had somewhere to set Nimpra free. Once getting her home, I googled as much as I could about baby bunnies. Mom and I made her a little cardboard box home and got her some things to eat. I had planned to turn her loose the next morning, but, after my extensive newborn rabbit research, we began to wonder if Nimpra was big enough to live on her own. We ended up keeping her a couple more nights before determining (with the help of a guy from church who's a game warden) that Nimpra would be able to survive in the wild on her own. So at dusk one night (dusk or dawn, by the way, is the best time to release a baby rabbit back into the wild), we let Nimpra hop off into the woods. And was she ever ready to go! The first night I had her, she would hide in the corner if anyone came near and wouldn't move at all if you picked her up. But she got braver after a couple days, and I could hardly hang on to the little thing when I got her out to set her free!

Nimpra and her feast (she would eat all of this!)
About to set her free. Please notice how mad she looks here compared to how calm (aka scared to death) she was being held in the picture above, when we first got her. She was definitely ready to go!

teenagers

I'm way behind on this birthday post, but I have to say something about Jamal and Jamier being TEENAGERS! It's a scary thought, isn't it? These boys turned 13 on June 23rd. It seems like just yesterday Mom and I were picking them up at the mall with Mama Gail (you can find that story here and the newspaper rendition of their story here). They've come a long way since then. They've both spent this week at church camp, and I think they've finally decided to like each other. Even though they don't live together, they have always fought just like brothers who spend every waking moment together. But they got along well this week. :-) We celebrated their birthday by having a family party with Jamier's family at America's Incredible Pizza Company last week (which, I must say, is actually pretty incredible). Below are a few pictures.

Happy Belated Birthday, Jamal & Jamier!