The boys are back in town...

So the Braithwaite boys were finally reunited yesterday (minus Ja who will be hitting up the slopes of Andorra next week) and doing what they do best they headed straight to the beach.

There's no denying that they are South African through and through with their love of the sea and the sun!

Not even the choppy water could keep them away, here is Kevin diving straight in for a swim!

By and Cam were picking the best wave spot to ride the boogie board! 

When we got home it was time to open up all the prezzies that were sent over for us! You can see the pure excitement on my face...check out all that English chocolate! and my cupcake tee my mom sent for me.

By's dad also had a few hours to kill in NYC on a layover and went to M&M world to buy us that bottle full! The awesome lipglosses and polka dot pumps are from my mom as are all the malteser bunnies...which are fading fast right now! 

By's mom, Kathy, sent me these amazing cupcake earrings! and plenty of dairy milk to go around and By even got some little rubber duck earphones since he has a bit of a duck collection going on back home!

This morning, the wind was still going pretty strong, but it was perfect kite flying weather! So we headed to The Point with a kite By's dad had brought over from England.

By holds it in the ready position...

and all it needed was a gust of wind to send it soaring...

it kept them all entertained for about 15 minutes until unfortunately the wind got a bit too strong and it broke!

Here is Sunny and his new best friend, Cam, as I write this he is licking Cam's ear off on the sofa right now! 

After that we headed to Taylor Bay for some calmer water, and some swimming and sunbathing time.

This evening, despite the wind still blowing strong, there was no better place to watch the sunset go down then 'Somewhere' our fave Mexican restaurant.

Here are the boys with their fruit punches, and By snapped this sneaky shot of me...too bad you can't see I'm wearing my polka dot pumps here too! 

You have to love eating quesadilla's, listening to Gwen and watching the sun set! It was a great evening...

and I think the fact that we devoured our food within about 10 minutes proved how much we all enjoyed it! 

After the sun goes down, they light up the tiki torches and turn on all the terrace lights.

How we love being able to share all these cool places with our family, it's going to be an awesome two weeks!

Tracking down the pirates, Taylor Bay and Taco Tastiness...and it's only Day 2!

Another fun filled day here in Providenciales! We went to Pirate's Cove in the morning and Jade was quite the adventurer scaling the top of the cliff until she found the ladder that led down to this amazing view.

We also saw four sting ray in the super clear water, here is one we managed to take a snap of before it got camera shy.

Sunny was pretty pleased that he could join in the day's excursion...thanks to his new biggest fan - Jay-dee!  She even wanted to take him to dinner with us!

Then we headed to one of my fave beaches on the Island, Taylor Bay, and we were greeted with that super clear aqua water...it never disappoints.  How funny it was to think that only 2 days earlier Jade was  trudging through a snowy New Jersey and now here she was basking in the sunshine and the warm Provo waters!

We played a spot of frisbee in the shallow waters while Sunny topped up his tan.

We were quite amazed that despite being thousands of miles apart we had managed to colour co-ordinate our toe nails perfectly!

We had a late afternoon ice cream snack at Giggles, and bought Sunny a snazzy new snoopy collar that he is showcasing in the pic above.  We were chilling at the marina here whilst Jade was practicing her scuba skills in the pool all ready for her first time dive experience! 

After an action packed day we headed to Somewhere, our fave Mexican restaurant on the beach.  We were loving these brightly coloured tortillas and salsa we had to start, and even better was the cool little lounge chairs we got to chill in on the upper deck of the terrace.

Our fruit punches were pretty impressive too, and Jade and By went for their infamous fish tacos whilst I got the beast of a burrito in the middle of the pic below!

We had the best night feasting down on our tasty food accompanied by some local island tunes that were being played live, all the while sitting under the stars and listening to the waves of the water below.  Day 2 was good to us.

The countdown is over!!

So Mara is finally here! It felt like it took forever to get here but now she's here it's like we've never been apart! just eating too much junk and talking about cupcakes like usual! I was getting slightly worried at the airport, she was literally the last person off the plane! and so we watched hundreds of people filing out of the airport and she was nowhere in sight...I thought for sure customs had caught her and confiscated the masses amount of gifts/goodies she had brought for us! but no...everything made it through safe and sound! What fun we had as she delved into her suitcase pulling out more and more and more....all for us! and we haven't even opened any of our Christmas presents yet!!

Of course...I was spoilt with amazing amounts of cupcake goodies!

and even cupcake Christmas tree decorations! how awesome! 

Mara went to Holland in September and brought us alot of yummy European chocolate too...

and of course we got massively spoilt with English chocolate...oh how I've missed you!

By was very pleased with his South African chocolate and biltong...thanks Mom!

and I found this amazing recipe for a corn dog cupcake in a recipe book Mar brought! We are so making these at some point...in amongst the vast amount of Christmas baking we have planned!

Since Mara had to spend the night at JFK airport she stocked up on Martha magazines to aid us in our Christmas bakefest!

I was very excited to start up our Christmas card collection:

and we can't wait to start decorating with all the amazing decorations my mom, Mara and my friends sent over for us! I'm so grateful to have so many lovely people who have helped to make sure our Christmas will be super fun! 

Mara even managed to bring some fake snow...hooray!

Mara wasn't left out in the present opening...she had a basket of American goodies awaiting her arrival!

Since Mara is the guest, we gave her the choice of where to eat tonight to welcome here to the island! Of course being the mexican lover she is and wanting to experience her first Provo sunset she picked 'Somewhere'.  

It was a pretty nice evening and after her 2 days of travelling it made everything worth it! 

By held up the menu for us to see! He and Mara went for the fish Taco's and I had quesadilla's! We toasted Mara's arrival with some rather delicious fruit punch:

and just cherished the time spent with our lovely sister.  Oh, how we are going to enjoy the next 3 weeks! 

Somewhere...a great Mexican with an even greater view!

Yesterday morning I awoke to this amazing sunrise...coupled with the fact I knew I had a 5 day weekend ahead of me, I knew it was going to be a good day!

We had a bit of a lazy morning, which was greatly needed after a really busy week at work. We went to Friday night volleyball as usual and had a victorious night, and then Byron made me very happy by suggesting we go to Somewhere for dinner. I have been wanting to go there ever since we arrived after reading up about it and seeing that it served 'Tex-Mex' food and since Mexican is my fave food I definitely wanted to try it, but it had closed for the whole month of September like many businesses do on the island. It just re opened on Thursday for the tourist season which was great news for us.

It is the only restaurant on the Grace Bay beach stretch that has a second floor which means it has the most amazing deck overlooking the ocean. I've been told you can catch incredible sunset views there which we will definitely have to go back for, I'm sure we will frequent it often! This was the view we had there:

It has a really laid back atmosphere and I love all the lights everywhere, coupled with the flaming torches:

On trip advisor out of the 69 restaurants on Provo, travellers have rated Somewhere as the 5th best place to eat on the Island.  Most of the restaurants that come above it are really posh and fancy ones which aren't really my kind of places to eat at! The prices were really reasonable, our tacos were £8 each which is super cheap for Provo, and the service was really fast which is also unusual for Provo! 

Here I am with our tasty multi-colour tortilla chips! and check out my strawberry smoothie in the background! It was delish...but unfortunately nearly as expensive as the tacos! I think I'll be sticking to the sprite next time too! 

They are known for having the best fish tacos on the Island so By gave them a try, and I think his smile says it all! He was very impressed...I stuck to chicken tacos, being the fish wimp I am! but they were still great too! 

All in all it was an awesome way to start off the weekend!