Sunny days...sweeping the clouds away!

“Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, 

sunlight turn to fog; but you’re never friendless ever, if you have a dog.”

I love this quote, it has been so applicable to my life over the past 7 months.  Things here on the Island haven't always been as exotic and exciting as I make out on the blog! and one thing's for sure Sunny has made my days brighter regardless of everything that's been going on, and it's hard for me to imagine life without him going forward (cue the 8th time I have cried today!)

On Monday night we went for our last sunset walk on the beach together at our local beach. 

Look at those cute little paw prints!

and here's my footsteps along with his.

When we first got Sunny he hated the car and never wanted to go in it.  He would run a mile if he thought you wanted him to get in.  The times when he needed to go to the vet, we would have to coax him in with pieces of ham and even then he wasn't happy! In the past month or so all that has changed and he hops in the car as soon as you open the door, even if you weren't necessarily planning on taking him! Last night I had to run some last minute errands and he of course wanted to come, I managed to snap this pic of us quick.

I had decided I wanted to make one last visit to my favourite beach on the Island, Taylor Bay.  We passed this street sign, and I've always wanted to take a picture of it with the lovely turquoise hues of Chalk Sound in the background, Picturesque Lane is certainly apt! 

We arrived at Taylor Bay and Sunny headed straight for the water, it had been a pretty warm car ride... 

 and as soon as he's out of the water his favourite thing to do is roll in the sand, I don't think he likes to feel wet! 

This afternoon we took our final walk on the beach and then we headed home to hand him over to his new family.

It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to him, I know he will be well loved - the two little boys he will be living with just adore him and have been so excited all week about being able to come and take him to their home....

but that still doesn't make it any less sad.  He has been a part of our family and he will certainly be missed, but we know we helped to save his life and that we were able to give him lots of love whilst in our care and we hope he will always remember us :) maybe one day in the future we will even return and get to pay him a visit! 

It was very sad to return to an empty house tonight, after having a delicious conch curry at the Behlmaier's!, and to not have Sunny's happy face and wagging tail there to greet me but I know Eden (above) will be taking good care of him for us and I know that we have made enough memories with him to last a lifetime! 

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.

An action packed week...

I can't believe how much we have done this week, and it's not even Friday yet! We are just packing in as much as we can and trying to show Mar as much of the island as possible, and loving every minute of it!

On Monday we dedicated the day to beach volleyball! Mara is an even bigger volleyball fan than me, and was so looking forward to Friday night volleyball when she came. However, I completely forgot to inform her that since the clocks changed and the sun sets earlier beach volleyball doesn't happen anymore! She was pretty disappointed so we met up with some people from church and played all afternoon which was so fun...and of course it wouldn't be Monday without a little bit of Mexican so we finished off the night with a yummy taco bake.

Tuesday brought some not so hot weather, perhaps Mar brought it over from England! So our plan to hang out at the beach was ruined by the 'chilly' wind...first day I've worn long sleeves since I've been on the island! These were the waves that greeted us at the usually calm waters of Emerald Beach...

But we did manage to get some good shell collecting in!

Then we went on a little Bike ride down to Grace Bay to check out some of the tourist shops, which are pretty tacky, but we got some tasty banana and mango milkshakes at Giggles to make up for the disappointing shops!

We found this cool mural painted on the wall, this is the whole of the Turks and Caicos Islands...here I am showing you where Provo is!

Yesterday the weather co-operated with us and so we ventured out to Chalk Sound. The turquoise hues were amazing as usual...

Next, we went swimming at Taylor Bay beach, I love the shallow waters there! 

  

We were even able to play a little sea frisbee...

And we found a starfish which was exciting for Mar!

We took a stroll the whole way along the bay...

and found a little shipwreck which By took some shots of, and then we wanted to try somewhere tasty for lunch!

I've been drooling over the beach BBQ menu at the Gansevoort hotel for a while now and so we decided to give it a try. The hotel itself is so snazzy, we had to take a pic in the gorgeous lobby!

And we sat on these nice white sofa chairs overlooking the beach, and were able to see our lunch being cooked.

It all looked so good Mara couldn't decide what to have!

So in the end By and Mara shared meals of Jerk Chicken and Mahi Mahi, which they were trying for the first time.  It is a local fish here and Mara said it was the best fish she had ever eaten. We were beyond impressed with our meals, and the prices were reasonable too!

After that we went on a beach stroll and decided to pop in at Windsong Resort. We'd heard good things about the homemade cookies and milkshakes at JoJo's Cafe. The milkshakes were

some of the biggest I've seen and mine was super tasty...By and Mar had a slight mix up with their chocolate milkshakes which somehow ended up being Cappucino flavoured...not so cool! But the homemade choc chip cookies were delicious 2nd time round! Our first batch ended up being a little burnt!

Last night Mar and I continued with our Christmas bakefest and stayed up 'til Midnight decorating and icing gingerbread cookies! They were going to be the toppers for our gingerbread cupcakes we made this morning...check out more on my baking blog

Today By went out with a dive company, it's owned by some people from our church and he is helping them out from time to time. He was pretty excited as they taught him how to drive the speed boat today so he cruised to French Cay and spent the day at Sea...topping up his already crazy tan no doubt!

Mara and I went to top up our tans at the beach and then went for a bike ride after By got home to Long Bay Beach, on the other side of the island.

We found a whole pile of cracked conch and enjoyed listening to the ocean! By showed us some of his impressive conch blowing skills that he picked up from The Conch Festival

Tonight, after we have a fish dinner provided by the big catch By brought home from fishing last night, we're heading to the beach to make s'mores around the fire!