Turks & Caicos Vacation

I guess I should begin ... at the beginning.  Last year, when Q and I honeymooned at a Sandals Resort in St. Lucia, we wanted to book a family trip for this year.  They told us and showed us pictures of this beautiful place called the Turks & Caicos Islands. Sandals/Beaches has a resort there!  So, we booked it and didn't even tell the kids until about a week before we left. They were very excited!!!
So, because I kept forgetting to book our flights, we ended up having to fly into JFK, spend the night, and fly out the next morning to the island. We were supposed to stay at the JFK International Hotel, BUT the wonderful taxi driver took us to JFK Inn.  We had to spend $140 for 1 night/ 1 room, and this notel motel was the most disgusting motel I have ever seen.  However, we were very tired, and just wanted to eat something and get some sleep. Well, so much for eating. The only place that delivered there was closed. We open the motel room door, and there is a HUGE hot tub in the middle of the room, surrounded by mirrors. The hot tub, however, was filthy and out of order.  The walls were disgustingly dirty, the ceiling was caving in and brown. Half of the lights were missing. AT LEAST the bathroom was clean. Needless to say, we were all kind of worried about getting unde the covers, and nobody slept much. We couldn't wait to get the heck out of there in the morning. We grabbed breakfast at the airport and were on our way to our destination!
     The boys absolutely loved the resort!  They never stopped smiling, and they must have thanked us a hundred times a day. It's really nice that they are at ages that they can really appreciate things.
     There were 16 restaurants, a water park, a video game place(The Game Garage), a gym, a spa, several pools, bars, water sports, teen night club, adult night club, teen billiard room, and let's not forget the most beautiful beach and water!!!  The water was so clear and blue. It was absolutely beautiful!!!  The water was so clear that we could see the reefs at the bottom when we were up in the airplane! Amazing!
Aside from breakfast and dinner, we hardly saw the kids. They were having a blast!  They made new friends and spent most of their time on the surf simulator, water slides, and hanging out and eating at Bobby Dee's!  Bobby Dee's is a 50's style diner that actually had pretty good food. The kids' favorite thing was the ice cream cones. Between the 2 of them, they had about 40 or so ice cream cones during our 1 week there.  LOL   
Jordan got to go on a 3 hour cruise, saw the other islands, went snorkeling, and the boat even had a slide on the back!  He had fun and got some good pics of him on the ocean floor!
Jared took a DJ class and even got to perform and show off his new skills at the teen night club. We forgot to bring the camera, but he looked so cute up there!  He really enjoyed doing that!
Q and I took a snorkeling trip, but didn't see too much. I got in trouble for swimming too far out, but dang it..I wanted to see some fish!!!!  We also celebrated our anniversary(a few weeks late) with a candle light dinner on the beach. It was beautiful!  We also finally got each other anniversary gifts:)  He got a watch, and I got earrings!!  I call them my Turks & Caicos earrings because(aside from the fact that we bought them there)they are blue diamonds, and they are the color of the water there!
We all got to go to the beach party on Fri night, where there was lots of good food, great entertainment, and a good time had by all!!  We also took the paddle boats/water bikes out for a ride. Those were fun...and a good workout!!
Sat morning was departure day. The kids wanted to stay, but we were kind of ready to get home. We had to be up bright and early to get ourselves ready because they were picking our luggage up at 8am.  We then went to breakfast, booked our next trip, and did a few things on the resort before it was time to leave.  Around 1pm, we took a shuttle to the airport.  Now, their airport is a tiny little place, and it was a mad house!!  We FINALLY got our bags checked and through security. We sat on the floor and waited for our flight to board. However, they kept telling us we would be boarding in 15 min. About 3 hours past the time we were supposed to depart, they tell us that anyone connecting in Charlotte to Phoenix will have to stay in Turks & Caicos another night because we have already missed our connecting flight, and there are no more until morning. On top of that, NASCAR races were in Charlotte; so all hotels were booked. GRR....  We said, NO!  Get us to Charlotte!  We don't care if we have to sleep in the airport for the night!  Anyway, we finally boarded the plane and headed to Charlotte, 3 hours late.
We got to Charlotte, and they told us we are flying to Minneapolis, staying the night, and flying to Phoenix in the morning. We were late, and they were holding the plane for us. There was another family heading back to PHX as well.  We decided after all we went through together, we had to consider each other family. LOL  We made some new friends anyway. We still had to go through customs, get our luggage, recheck our luggage, go through security, and run to the plane that was waiting for us!  Our plane was at gate B1. We ran past gates D and C to gate B, just to find out it was locked, and everyone had to go through gate C. So, we ran back to gate C, and had the absolute worst TSA people at security there. I guess they thought they were on a power trip or something. They were very rude and had attitudes like you would not believe. Anyway, we finally made it through and found our plane. We got to Minneapolis around midnight. We still hadn't eaten since breakfast. We were freezing.  It was like 50* there, and we were in shorts and t shirts.  We then had to wait..get this...15 min, for the shuttle to the hotel. Thank God there was a Denny's attached to the hotel!  At that point, even Denny's sounded good!  We got most of the way done with our meal(the other family was there too,) and Jared stated puking on his plate. he couldn't even stop puking long enough to run to the bathroom.  He just kept throwing up until it was splashing onto other people's food. It was so gross. I finally got him to run to the restroom, where he left puke trails all along the way.  After that, he felt fine!!  

We were able to sleep for MAYBE 2 hours before we had to get up and get back to the airport.  As you can imagine, everyone was exhausted.  Everything went smoothly from there on out...until we landed.  We actually landed 20 min early, but there was still a delayed plane at the gate we had to go to. They said we would have to wait....15 min. LOL  Somehow, we arrived at the gate 20 min late!  Now, we were worried about our luggage.  We spoke to a US Airways employee, he told us where to find our luggage. Thankfully, it arrived at the same time we did on a flight from Charlotte. We did make it home safe and sound!  We are going back next year and taking my mom with us!!  Hopefully, the trip home will go better next year!!
     I almost forgot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Even with all the food that was there, I managed to eat pretty clean most of the time. I did splurge a few times, but we went to the gym almost every day, and we were very active....walking, swimming, water bikes, etc.  I weighed myself this morning, and I managed to lose 1 lb while were gone!  I have officially lost 20 lbs.  It's coming off very slowly, but it's coming off!!!!!