Turks & Caicos - BEACHES

Our off season family trip this year was to Turks & Caicos, somewhere Adam and I have always wanted to check out..and it did not disappoint. Right after football season ends each year we try and do a fun family trip just to get away and soak up some good quality family time.

Many of you asked if I would do a review of the resort we stayed at, so I’ll do my best to share some of the pros/cons..plus lots of pictures.

We stayed at Beaches Turks & Caicos, an all inclusive family resort on the beach. It was so nice not to have to cook for the week;) I will say in regards to travel, Charlotte is a great city to live in because you can get to most warm places fairly quick. The flight was only 2.5 hours direct to Turks! The shuttle from the airport was only about 10 minutes, so overall an easy travel day.

I listed some of our favorites things about the resort below..

  • The beach and water are gorgeous. I’ve never seen water that blue/turquoise and the sand was so soft.

  • The kids loved the Sesame Street theme. They had a different show each night at 6:30 that lasted about a half hour.

  • The resort had different activities throughout the day such as water aerobics, pool music trivia, karaoke, etc

  • They had a kids club for 5-10 year olds and a separate one in a different building from babies to toddlers. If you wanted to keep your kids in longer or throughout the day, they will also feed your kids lunch and dinner. We only put our kids in for an hour or so a few mornings so we could workout and they enjoyed it… But they would rather be with mom and dad on vacation of course! But it is a nice option that they offer and I trusted them / it seemed very well run. It’s awesome they offer this and is perfect if you need a break from your kids for a lunch/dinner date with hubby or a quick hour of workout/ reading time;) They also change diapers for Coras age or younger which is a bonus!











  • There was a cute little train that we went on that takes you through the different villages on properties.

  • There are plenty of restaurants to chose from and a yummy little ice cream place we went to every night after dinner:) The ice cream place also had cotton candy and shaved ice throughout the day that the kids could get. The hibachi resteraunt was our favorite (we went there twice). It’s a fun show for the kids, plus a yummy meal.

    Breakfast




  • Highly recommend the jerk shack for lunch (the jerk chicken is to die for), and Dino’s pizza..so yummy! They have a yummy little Mac & cheese food truck too.





  • Very fun water park with an area for smaller children and a few bigger slides, with a lazy river also. They had a wave pool where you could wake surf/ boogie board and the boys both got to do it!

    Wave pool

    Lazy River

    Water Park

  • They had a fun small parade one of the nights that led to a Street party with food and some local vendors…and of course the Sesame Street characters.

    Parade

  • They had a cute small playground by Cora’s kid club Sesame Street building.

  • They offered hair braiding right on the resort and airbrush tattoos. We thought that stuff was included but 70 bucks later Cora’s hair looked beautiful;)

  • One of our favorite things that was not apart of the resort was on our final day we rented a boat for the morning with our friends who met us there from MN, and it was awesome!! Besides getting a little sea sick it was so worth it and so fun to see more of the island. They took us to a shipwreck boat that got pulled out to sea and got stuck there during a hurricane awhile ago, we saw tons of fish and got to snorkel, we went to a desserted part of the beach that was just beautiful, we saw a huge iguana, and we even spotted a dolphin who followed our boat for a while. The boat we went on was called Calypso. The boat had a driver plus a helper. Lunch was included and one of the guys brought a drone and sent us all these cool photos and videos after.

I’ll share a couple of the things that I thought weren’t the greatest below…

  • The service was pretty slow. We had to wait forever for our room when we checked in. Check in time was at 3 and we got there around noon. By the time we even got to our room it was close to 3:30. I didn't leave the kids swimsuits out so I’d reccomend doing that so you can at least use the pool/ beach while waiting. The service in general was slower. At restaurants especially, which is hard with kids who are active and also impatient parents lol!

  • I wish they had a few more healthy options. It would have been nice to have a smoothie bar or juice bar. Especially, for the price you pay. They had lots of fruit at breakfast each morning so I would stalk up!

  • It is quite a big resort and theres different villas throughout so you have to walk a bit of a distance. Our stroller broke down before our flight left of course lol, but I’d reccommend bringing a stroller, especially with little ones. Plus if you’re like me you always have a bag full of stuff so it would have been nice to shove it under the stroller instead of always carrying it.

Hope this information was helpful! Overall I’d recommend this resort for your family to check out. If you have more questions I’d be happy to answer any.

xoxo,

MRS T

Maternity shoot with baby girl

I was planning on not doing a maternity shoot this time. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved the maternity photo’s I’ve done with the boys but definitely prefer the newborn/ family pictures more. My hair girl (Emily Woodstrom- she’s amazing and one of the kindest people I’ve met) had wanted to do a shoot and I’m so thankful she pushed to do this because the pictures turned out so great and it truly is special with a baby girl in my belly this time….she might actually care to see these some day (unlike my boys I’m sure) :)

Mackenzie Merrill Photography was the one who took the pictures and she did a great job and made me feel very comfortable (which I’m usually not, especially by myself in front of a camera lol). Emily thought a sporty type outfit would be fun so we did kind of a Calvin Klein bootie underwear/ bra look in some of the pics. Let me be the first to say I was not too excited about this look/ unsure I wanted to do it. Looking at the photos now and thinking about the beautiful bodies (all different) God gives us made me feel proud to do it and ok to share them with you here. I am in no way perfect but am truly proud of myself for working hard to have a healthy body and am so blessed and thankful I am/ have been able to even carry children… so why not show off the bump God has blessed me with. It is fun to see how women carry their bumps so differently, all beautiful.

Below I split up some of my favorite pictures into three galleries. The first is pictures of my bump, close ups, hair, etc. The second ones are of my “risky” shoot (lol it’s not super risky..but I’m usually pretty conservative so to me it was;)). And the third set is family pics, more bump, and of course pics of the boys:) (Also side note- but I am not good at the serious face lol it’s super hard for me to give a “serious” look so some of the pictures I feel like I look so weird because I was trying to be serious without laughing :)

With Mothers day around the corner it really had me thinking of all the different types of moms… not just moms that have carried their children inside them but moms who’ve adopted, moms who are in a mom type role, and so many other kinds And to those who can not have kids, who are waiting, who’ve experienced loss, etc I am praying for you and just want you to know I don’t take this for granted. I don’t know what it is like, and truly I can’t imagine but I know from heartache God can make things new. Trust God and know that he has a good plan for you, even when it seems like he doesn't.

So to all the different kinds of moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day. I pray you get to do something you love, and are spoiled… and get a little peace and quiet :)

xoxo,

MRS T