Turks & Caicos

I can't believe I didn't post one blog update in June. I think this is the first month I've missed posting a Tucci update since this blog began three years ago so let me do my best to give you the Reader's Digest version of what you missed.

We spent the first two weeks of June on vacation, including a week on the Turks & Caicos Islands for Ross and I to attend a friend's wedding. My parents we kind (brave) enough to volunteer to watch the boys for us during the trip and it marked the first time I had ever been away from the boys overnight.

Saying was goodbye was tough for us (Ross and I) and we thought of them all of the time during our trip but we also enjoyed our first vacation since our honeymoon six years ago.

Turks and Caicos was amazingly beautiful and the 30 family and friends in attendance for the Piercy's wedding were a lot of fun to hang out with on the beach, at the pool, snorkeling and site-seeing.

Here are some photos of our resort (The Sands at Grace Bay)...







We had a one bedroom unit on the first floor with a view of the ocean from our sun room. We spent a few evenings out there reading and watching mind blowing thunder and lightening storms that shook the building.

The entire group took a half-day trip in a catamaran to go snorkeling and it was a lot of fun. The water wasn't as clear as I excepted but we still did see plenty of beautiful fish and Ross was lucky enough to swim right above an either non-deadly or very full shark that thankfully ignored him.





After snorkeling, the catamaran docked on a local beach to let us explore and look for seashells. This exploring lasted about all of 3 minutes before the local celebrity dolphin, Jo-Jo, showed up and entertained us for about an hour swimming amongst our group and following our boat on our departure.



Ross and I also toured an old cotton plantation ruin on the island, Cheshire Hall, which included just 1 acre from the original 5,000 acre plot created in the early 1700s. This was really only an interest of mine but Ross was good enough to play along and suffer in the heat, humidity and swarms of mosquitoes for my desire to experience some historical perspective on the trip.

Here is part of the original limestone wall that once surrounded the entire 5,000-acre plantation. This is Jonathan- our private tour guide.

The original 30-ft. well...

The foot print of the slave quarters...

A re-creation of the slave quarters, complete with thatched roof...

The ruin of the Master's quarters. Most of the crumbed rock was the result of Hurricane Ike in 2008.

The Turks Head cactus, from which the island was named...

We also toured the Conch Farm, which is the only conch (pronounced conk) farm in the world. It was a really interesting tour and we learned that for every 500,000 eggs laid by each female during mating season, just one will live to adulthood (4 years old) because everything in and out of the sea loves to eat conch.

We tried conch a few times since it is the most popular food on the island and we enjoyed conch fritters and conch wantons.

Here are some photos from the Conch Farm. This photo is of two baby conchs (about 3 month old).

A 1 year old conch...



An adult conch (about 10 years old).



And then of course there was the beautiful wedding, which was the precipitous for this trip. Jeff and Katrina were married right on the beach in the most intimate ceremonies I have ever seen. Ross was a groomsman (repaying the honor Jeff gave us at our wedding) and the setting could not have been more breath taking.











After the ceremony we boarded the same catamaran from the snorkeling trip for a sail and hors d'oeuvre before docking down the beach for a sunset dinner.

The first dance aboard the catamaran...