Christmas in the Caribbean

What can I say - I missed home a lot this year being our second christmas away from home and in St Kitts, but we had a great holiday with the two of us and our pets and extra pets!

Season of Giving - Our karma here should be SO high, that we should be getting nothing but good.. I wonder when it will start happening?!  Anyways, it is not about Karma, it is about our love of giving.  This year we made a HUGE tray of cookies (ranger cookies, raspberry bars, oatmeal butterscotch cookies, banana muffins and hershey kiss peanut butter cookies) and gave them to those people who have been really important to us here!  We gave one batch to Sylvester - our loyal gardener and friend!  He has been great to us!  We will miss him!  We also gave a batch to Avan - our property manager who has also been extremely good to us!  Our final batch went to the neighbors and they too were here for Christmas with just the two of them and they had given us a small christmas gift as well!

As you all know - I am not the best baker, although I AM getting better!  Here is some evidence of our baking =)

Cookies!

Banana Muffins (with choc. chips of course!)

All the 'wrapped' platters in the fridge to prevent melting!

and the clean up! 

Christmas Eve - Since moving to St. Kitts, I am a Sushi FANATIC!  I  crave it!  We spent the day laying by the pool and relaxing in the sun.  Sylvester (our gardener) even came up and have some drinks with us to celebrate Christmas!  Brayton and I headed to Rituals Sushi for Christmas Eve Dinner - mmmmm, soooo goood!!!  When we got home, Brayton humored me and helped do a little christmas photo shoot with us and our animals!  It was great!  I am so grateful for my amazing husband and our awesome animals!  I would truly be lost without them!  As  you can see, we all had a rough day!!

Brinley the sun-bathing beauty <3

B and Sylvester enjoying a nice refreshing beer! 

Lazy bones! 

Its not a day by the pool without some jumping
and swimming done by the Nev! 

Precious girl!

Our little christmas tree! 

Joli

Duke!

Merry Christmas! 

Our little family (minus Koala..she's not so good at sitting still and taking photos!)

My pups <3

They are SUCH good posers!  Love them! 

The Duke man! 

Puppy Roommates! 

The 4 pups! 

Christmas Day - Up and at it early on, we headed over to the SNAPPER farm to fetch Brimmie(Hawksbills Sea Turtle) and Frodo(Green Sea Turtle) who were to be released into the wide open Caribbean Sea that morning after two years in captivity.  They were rescued as babies, bottle fed every two hours, and for the past two years have been raised with special care from the St Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network.  You can read more about them here! It was an amazing experience.  We were able to go to Ross with Dr. Stewart and assist in getting radiographs of the two turtles, we were the transporter of the turtles to the release location, and Brayton got to carry Frodo down to the sea and be the one to release him.  I was taking pictures throughout the whole process which you can see here on FB or some here!

Putting the turtles into the car to head to campus for radiographs

Arriving at the beach with the turtles - waiting to release! 

Brayton carrying Frodo down to the release spot

Brayton and Dr. Stewart with Frodo and Brimmie giving explanations to the crowd

The beautiful Brimmie! 

The gorgeous Frodo! 

Ready...Set...GO! 

After turtle releasing, we headed home and let the dogs open their Christmas presents - which they did exceptionally well!  They were great and loved all their new toys!

Brinley LOVED presents! 

What is inside?!!??  It squeaks...We must get it out!!!! 

Nevi with the toy...Brinley with the paper!! 

"WE LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!"

Not sure if he liked chewing on paper, or what was inside!  

In the Caribbean - who doesn't spend Christmas at the beach?  We headed over to ShipWreck with our bottle of Champagne, jug of orange juice, and BIG Fat Tuesday cups, and spent a few hours drinking Mimosa's and laying on the beach - what a Christmas Day!!

We also spent some QT with the pups and took them to the beach to run and play!  What fun we had!!

Surprise wave for Brayt and Brinley! 

LOOK!  A Palm Tree is growing out of this coconut! 

Jumping for water splashes! 

The things dogs will do for some water being flung in the air! 

As is ritual in St Kitts on Christmas Night, we Skyped with family, made dinner and were in bed by about 8 pm with a 3:30 am start time for J'Ouvert!  We joined a different troupe this year - Red Devils, and didn't start until 4:30 (instead of midnight like last year), and when we got there the group was already marching into town so we missed out on the 'pre-party' part, and joined in the marching.  The 'bar' was a moving truck which made it difficult to get drinks and when we got our first Rum Punch and took one sip, it was PURE rum!  I couldn't even drink it!  So, this year we spent J'ouvert with no drinks, enjoying the people watching and the fun of J'ouvert from the 'outside'.  It definitely was not as much fun, but we did enjoy the experience! I really wish I had taken my camera so I could share some of the people watching experiences I had with all of you - but I didn't. I will post some pictures when they are up on the local websites!

J'Ouvert bags ready to go! 

We ran into some friends in the Xtreme Tribe downtown! 

Upon returning from J'Ouvert, we headed home and back to bed!  We stayed in bed most the day, made a great dinner, and headed back to bed!

In the next few days, we will be making our 5th move to our 'new' apartment in St. Kitts .. oh how I wish it was back to the states...  Hopefully we will be there for the remainder of our time here.. I'm realllly getting sick of moving!!!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed time with their family, friends, or whoever you may have been with and were all able to count each and every one of your blessings and give time to think of those who were less fortunate.