Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

The Holiday Season in Puerto Rico 2019

The holidays are in full swing here in Puerto Rico this year. The festivities are on fire and it seems that every other day we have one party or another to attend. It has been so much fun! Thanksgiving with our neighbors, birthday parties, cookie exchanges, encendidos, parrandas, school parties and more. It has been non-stop. It is so true that Puerto Rico knows how to party and the winter Christmas season is the best for that!

   

When we haven’t been out having fun, we’ve been trying to take advantage of the extra time we have with Aeden in daycare and the fact that it has been so much cooler in order to expand the gardens. We recently planted over 35 new cultivars of heliconias and are so excited to see them grow! The cabana has been steadily booked with guests and so that keeps us busy with maintenance, tours and turnover. It’s been a very fufiling time in our lives. I’ve been trying to make more videos in order to capture the essence of life these days, sort of “vlog” style if you’d like to watch some other things that we’ve been up to. Here’s our channel: LIFETRANSPLANET YOUTUBE


Christmas Fun


Primer Cumpleanos for friend Nico’s Birthday Party


Holiday fun. At the beach, with a Norfolk pine (a tropical Christmas tree!) and surfer statue has been Santa-fied


Winter is the best time for a swim!


Or just visit the beach


There was a fun party at the lighthouse


We went out to the encendido in the Rincon Plaza – the best orchestra in Puerto Rico (Orquesta Sinfónica)!


Cows and geckos- normal sights


Had a fun stop at Tres Sirenas Inn


And an awesome farm called “Finca Brutal”



Thanksgiving with our neighbors was a lot of fun!


The beauty of this place still astounds me


More fun out and about



Some new additions to the garden and harvests


Preparing for a flower delivery and working outside in December!


Check out this GIANT heliconia called “Beefsteak” or Mariae. With our new friend Carlos

It’s been an active period of growth, literally, while we enjoy the holidays as well. We hope yours are going well also! Felicidades.

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Thank-Full

We have a lot to be thankful for this year. So many changes have occurred. This time last year we were just getting the electricity working again after two months without! Things were starting to come back to life, but the shock waves were still pulsing.


Walking on a “beach” this time last year (2017)


Beach sunset with Baby Aeden this year

In the year that followed we continued to clean up from the mess of the hurricane and then I became pregnant for the first time ever after many years of trying! It was a wonderful gift but also very taxing on me, and Britton. He had to take care of the whole property and also help me. During this time, Britton’s father became sick and died and that was very hard on us because we are so far from the rest of the family. Additionally we started the flower business and continued to push forward.


My sweet baby!

When Baby Aeden was born right around the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, we experienced a sigh of relief that was short lived. Only 5 days after he was born I became very sick and was hospitalized for nearly 2 weeks out of the first 3 of his life. In a very short period of time I came to understand how precious and yet fragile life really is. I am so grateful to still be here in this realm with these two loves: Britton and Aeden.


Britton and Aeden at the beach

We spent Thanksgiving with our friends Missy and Ben and their family as well as other great friends who have helped us through this very tough year. We are so grateful to them. I don’t know how we could have managed that without them.


Thanksgiving dinner


Delicious food on fancy china!


Baby’s got to eat too!


A visit to a neighbor’s tortoise

So beautiful!


Climbing palm trees!

Baby hanging with the big kids

I love Thanksgiving because it gives us the opportunity to step back and reflect on what we are truly thankful for in our lives: our family, our friends, and our beautiful, precious and fleeting lives. Our life is full of thanks!

PS: Baby Aeden is now over 2 months old and doing great!

 

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Giving Thanks

IMG_2063Chickens ranging the property

Gratitude. For so many things. We all go through trials and tribulations in life. It just seems to be the way of the world. And if we compare them to others we may see ours as better or worse. But there will always be someone or something better and always worse. Rather than compare, however, giving thanks seems to open our hearts rather than close them. 

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Working around the property

Two days before Thanksgiving we were mowing the field. This takes about five hours of work with both of us on a mower -dueling lawnmowers if you will. It was sweaty, hot work, but one of my more enjoyable chores on the homestead because it magically transforms  a field into a golf-course looking resort. Just as we were resting on the bench admiring our work and giving thanks for water in our pipes to clean up and drink, our neighbor yells down “llego la luz!” The power was back!

IMG_1979Light at the cabin!

Britton had seen the trucks and crews of men descend upon our neighborhood a couple of days before but we didn’t have our hopes too high. But sure enough, when we returned to the cabin the lights, the fans, the fridge! (ahhh ice!) all worked once again. It was amazing the sense of calm and relief that washed over us. A feeling that after almost exactly 2 months without electricity and nearly the same without water, we were nearly through this whole ordeal. The final key will be when the internet is restored, but for now we are bathing in a sense of gratitude as well as water and illumination -literally.

IMG_1988At our friends’ house in Cruces checking out the blimp in the telescope

IMG_1998A wonderful Thanskgiving high atop the world!

We spent Thanksgiving with friends perched high in Cruces overlooking the Rincon peninsula and the patchwork of light throughout that the valley that indicated more or less where the electricity had or hadn’t been restored. And what a feast we had in spite of their lack of electricity and water. We are reminded why we love it here so, despite the constant daily challenges of life here as a stranger in a strange land.

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With friends on Thanksgiving 

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Having fun playing music

We have friends like the Kersches who have taken us in and loved us as family. We are on a beautiful tropical island that even in times of crisis tiene una buena cara. We have friends and family near and far who care about us. The island is regaining its glory and magnificence just as the trees are sending out more leaves and the flowers bloom. Some areas have lost beach land and palms, but overall our gorgeous lush paradise is Eden once again.

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The trees are growing back in strange ways including shooting out branches directly from the trunks

IMG_2069Marina Beach is empty but gorgeous!

Cassie
Taking a break for a well-deserved swim!

IMG_2045Britton working on the concrete pad

Britton and I have been busy mainly working around the property. We have been clearing, cleaning and planting. We are also doing some small projects. We recently finished the concrete pad on the ridgeline side of the bridge that connects to the cabin. One of our many titles around here includes forest ranger and trail building is a key component in that function. Like the trees and the plants reinvigorating, so are we. And for this and much more we give thanks.

IMG_2066Turkey boy (as we call him) approves of the new pad

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A sigh of thanks as the sun sank

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A Happy Friendsgiving and After

Just as we predicted at last year’s Thanksgiving, our first Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico was quite different from Thanksgivings in Colorado.

We were invited by some friends to a “Friendsgiving” which is essentially Thanksgiving with friends rather than family (thanks to our friends Naomi and Sage of Rincón Beer Company, you rock!). And since most of us at the gathering have virtually no family around, it was the perfect idea. As a potluck, each of us brought a dish and two people made turkey.

Friendsgiving

Because people come to Rincón from all over (Puerto Rico and the world!), they also bring their geographic and culinary experiences. Plus we had a few chefs who made some awesome dishes and I got to try coquito for the first time! Coquito is basically egg nog but made with coconut cream.

Some people told us that Thanksgiving is not very celebrated in Puerto Rico, but in our neighborhood, there was a pretty big party going on. The day before there were bands in the streets and the grocery stores were pretty full.

Friday we went to our friend Miri’s house/studio where she was having an after Thanksgiving sale on her handmade pottery and picked up a few items. Then we stopped by a little nursery and talked with a nice and knowledgeable woman most people call “Mother” about her plants.

Jardin de Mother

We noticed that in the middle of the small “vivero” or nursery she was growing a carambola (starfruit) tree and it was just covered in starfruit. We commented to her that they looked ripe and she said they indeed were but that she just didn’t really care for starfruit and that they often go to waste (que se pierde). She encouraged us to take as many as we wanted for free! We are consistently impressed by the generosity of people here.

Rincon Pottery Bowl
Our new pottery with some of our gifted starfruit and homegrown passionfruit (parcha)

She talked with Britton in Spanish and to his astonishment he answered her in a complete Spanish sentence! He said he felt surprised to hear it just come out of him. Something is sinking in!

We bought a few more plants from her (yes, more plants) and now we have to plant all of those as well as all the other ones we bought from our second expedition to Cabo Rojo’s Jardines Eneida.

Plants from Jardin de Mother

We enjoyed the rest of Friday at home drinking freshly made starfruit juice and working in the garden on a perfect 80 degree November day.

Starfruit juice

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We missed our families this year but we had a chance to talk with them and it sounds like everyone is doing well. We really have so much to be thankful for.

 

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