Spicy Family Vacation

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and did the American thing of stuffing your face until you’re full and then some! My family and I went on our annual family vacation. More on that below…

But first just a quick mention to check out two blogs I wrote for BLACK+DECKER that were inspired by this time of year and having holiday guests arriving on the regular! Click on over to see how I made this pet gate from plastic lattice.

And I also put together this DIY rustic-style ladder from shovel handles!

Now back to Thanksgiving! We’ve been going on a week-long family vacay for as long as I can remember. Thank God my parents got the travel bug and took us with them! But since both my sisters are still in school (1 is getting her bachelors and the other is working on a masters), there is generally only one week during the year we can all take off together for a family vacation. And that’s the week of Thanksgiving.

This year we got our passports stamped on the island paradise of Grenada. It’s about 90 miles off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean. And it’s called the Spice Island due to all of the spices grown on the island like nutmeg! And hence the title of this post.

Most of the time on these vacations, we rent a house or apartment. Generally it’s cheaper for our family of 6 (with the new addition of my husband, Brandon!) since you can prepare meals instead of eating out all week. And this year was no different. I’d say my mom topped the cake of past years’ rental houses with this year’s. I mean, just check out the view from the back porch…

At the bottom of the hill the house sat on was a dinghy, sailboat, and 2 kayaks that came with the house rental. On the Sunday we were there, all 6 of us loaded up in the dinghy rated for 4 adults and headed across the water to Hog Island.

Hog Island has a “bar and grill” called Roger’s that serves food on Sunday afternoons. The island has no electricity and no running water. So it’s a unique place to visit. Looks like a postcard, but that’s what it looked like when we pulled up.

We spent a lot of our time relaxing around the infinity pool. But also took the time to go for a short hike to see a cool double waterfall. It’s the first 2 waterfalls in what’s called “Seven Sisters”. If we had hiked further, we would have seen the other 5 sister waterfalls.

After we hiked there we spent a little time sitting on the rocks in the pool below the first waterfall. Mom pretty much captions it all in this picture.

On a separate day, Dad, my sister Melanie, Brandon and I went scuba diving. We visited 2 different reefs and saw a variety of underwater wildlife.

But my favorite dive trip was on Thanksgiving morning! All 6 of us went, 3 of us were scuba diving and 3 were snorkeling.

We went to an underwater sculpture park that’s about 20 feet deep, so it can be seen from the surface for the snorkelers. And this is probably my favorite picture from the whole trip, Brandon and Dad enjoying a lovely feast under da sea for Thanksgiving!

But as always, I’m glad to be home! Before we left on our trip, we started working on replacing the retaining wall in our front yard. We left it unfinished for over 2 weeks while we were away and then waiting on a weekend to finish it. But we finally did it this past Saturday and I hope to share how we did it soon!

In the mean time, comment below to let me know what you and your family did for Thanksgiving! And be sure to follow me on Facebook for notifications when a new episode or blog is posted.

Thanks for Checking In! ~Chelsea