Christmas Carriage Ride

As you know, my parents have "relocated" to Charleston.  They still have a house and "live" in Lexington, but truly they are spending most of the their time here. My dad is constantly traveling back and forth to work some days in Lexington each week, but he is lucky that he also has an office in Charleston. He is also lucky that one of his favorite pastimes is driving (seriously, the man loves to drive).  Anywho, we have gotten to experience Christmas with my fam a little bit different this year.  Instead of making the trip to Lexington and spending just a jam-packed couple of days with them, we get to do our Christmas-y things sporadically throughout the season. I will have to say, I have enjoyed it!

Well a few weeks ago we found a groupon for a Charleston Sleigh Ride...so we all bought one and made a plan!  For dinner we went to the new Jack's Cosmic Dogs.  I do not normally eat hot dogs...meaning I have eaten probably 2 since one of my friend's moms explained to me how they were made on the way to gymnastics in 2nd grade.  But I do make an exception for Jack's...well because if you are going to eat a hot dog you may as well make it a good one, and Jack's is the best! 

Lauren and Richard with their dogs!

After we ate our supper we headed downtown to hop on the sleigh

Before we got on the carriage, I mean sleigh, we got to spend a little time with the horses!  They were sweet for the most part...except for one that was not very happy to be in a tiny stall...but the others were nice :)

Merry Christmas from the whole crew!

Santa took us on our sleigh ride!

After the sleigh ride we got to roast marshmallows and have hot chocolate

The whole family...

Here is the whole family how we really are!  

Merry Christmas!

Palm Island: Part 5

This is the last Palm Island post, are you excited?!?  

On the last full day of our vacation we took a catamaran to the Tobago Cays.  Tobago Cays is where they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean, I was hoping we would spot Johnny Depp!

Our catamaran, the Yannis

It was a nice 45 minute sail over to the Cays, of course beautiful views along the way...

This is a view of Palm Island from the water. Its so crazy because it does not look like there is a resort right on the water at all.

I didn't realize I got them in the picture, but those were our British friends (on the right) we met while we were there! They live about 30 minutes outside of London and we talked to them about doing a house-swap for a week.  It would be just like Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz :)

We finally made it to the beautiful Tobago Cays.  There were many private sail boats anchored around the cays, it was hopping the day we were there.  While we were there we snorkled and then swam with the sea turtles and even saw a few sting rays!   The sea turtles were HUGE...some of them were probably 4-5 feet across!

Handsome hubby enjoying the sun!

Chilling on the front of the catamaran on the way home.

Whew! That sums up our trip to Palm Island!  It was such an amazing trip, but it was more fun to get to spend that time with Matt.  It was nice to unplug and reconnect for a week, all the while making memories that we will cherish forever.  I know it is on the verge of sounding very cheesy, but going anywhere together would have been awesome, but I think we picked a great place!  I am so thankful for a sweet husband and a wonderful marriage to get to go places with and get to experience new things.  Going on a trip is great, but its who you go with and share the experience with that really matters.  We are usually just as excited to get home back to our life...after all its a pretty good one!

If you have stuck with me through all  5 posts- congratulations! I feel like I should mail you a prize or something :)

Palm Island: Part 4

Are you sick of seeing these pictures yet? If you are, just ignore the next two posts!  

This is how we spent most days.  Laying on the beach, pina colada in hand, and enjoying a good book. 

Matt got really addicted to the Hunger Games series while we were there...have you read them? They are pretty good!

Before dinner one night 

The water was so pretty!  Right when you got in the water these angel fish would swarm around you.  At first I really didn't like them touching me, but after a while I got used to it!

We played a good game of Bocce ball on the beach.  In this case, Matt homemade our Bocce ball set with different size coconuts.  We also had a very intense beach volleyball tournament going on between the two of us.  I won't brag too much, but I will note that I went 3-0 :)

This was the restaurant that we ate most meals at. The weather is perfect there with very little humidity, so you don't mind eating meals "open air." 

Before dinner again 

I swear, only one more post!  ;) 

Palm Island Part 3: Bike Adventure

On one of the mornings while we were there we woke up and it was more of a "gloomy" day.  When I say gloomy, I mean it was still sunny....there were just a few clouds in the sky.   We decided instead of heading straight to the beach we would take a bike ride around the island. 

These little friends were all over the island.  He looks small in this picture, but he was probably 2.5 feet long!  

There are several "roads" around the island that get you from one side to the other.  There are no actual cars on island, but there are some golf carts.  We took the roads to the corners of the island to see each one of the beaches- it was a very fun ride!

The islands are all very mountainous, I believe that island in the background is Petite St. Vincent.  

We did a lot of biking on our vacation- it was the perfect way to get around the island.  It was fun, but the resort should really consider letting the guests borrow the golf carts to ride around in :)