Our Summer + our fantastic six year old!
It was dinner parties, late night games and endless sangria, island hopping with friends visiting from England, climbing Pico mountain, and celebrating our 11 year wedding anniversary and our daughter’s 6th birthday.
So many memories were made this summer, all while working through the busiest summer yet! We are so lucky to be able to do what we love from anywhere, and are so excited to share a little peek into our life with you!
First, our besties came to visit!
Then, we climbed a mountain!
Climbing Pico Mountain was the most challenging, and incredible experience! We started around 6PM and climbed for about 4 and a half hours. It would have been a bit quicker, but a post was down so we went out of the way quite a bit and when it got dark it got more challenging to find the crater where we were camping for the night. When we finally made it to the crater, we toasted over a glass of delicious wine, put up our tents and ate a quick snack, then almost immediately fell asleep. It was fairly cold (5ish degrees celsius) and started to rain around midnight, which continued the entire night. We didn’t put the rain cover on our tent so we got rained on the whole night, and Sims & Zoe’s tent collapsed on them in the middle of the night 😅 It was truly an adventure! Our plan was to go up to the peak (a short climb) for the sunrise, but because of the rain and absolute zero visibility, we decided to nix that plan and wait a bit for the rain to calm down so we could start our descent. Well, the rain didn’t really stop so around 8:30 we decided to start our climb down. 8 hours later (YES 8!!) we reached the end of this adventure. Soaked, exhausted, and starving, yet still exhilarated from this experience, we got in our car, stopped for takeaway pizza, and headed to the house to shower, eat, and sleep. I (Kelly) was ready to head up the mountain again just a few days later, but the rest of the crew said “maybe next year” 😂
After a day of rest, Chris, Sims, Zoe, Felix & I hopped on the ferry and headed to Faial (a 20 minute ride from Pico Island). We explored, drank lots of gin & tonic, ate some horrible sushi, and laughed til our bellies were sore. Then we sadly said goodbye to Sims & Zoe who headed back to England, and luckily took the rain with them 🤪
Here are some photos from our Faial adventures:
After all that fun, Chris, Felix and I took the ferry back to Pico, rested for a day then celebrated our primo’s wedding. The most fun wedding of all time, we ate, and danced, and drank, and danced some more. We don’t have hardly any photos of that night because we were too busy having a blast!
The next day, we rested, then we took the ferry back to Faial to spend our last week and a half there before coming home to Terceira. Our last week and a half in Faial was filled with rest, catching up on work, and Chris and I celebrated our ELEVEN YEAR wedding anniversary! We spent a night in the city of Horta, had some delicious beer and burgers, then took a nap (parent life haha). After our nap, we had a glass of wine at the hotel, then ventured out to our favorite gin joint for gin & tonics, lapas, and cheese 🤤. Then, we got an extra large pizza and a bottle of our favorite wine, and watched our favorite show (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) in the hotel room. The next day, we went back to Chris’s uncle’s house where we relaxed and worked the rest of the week before heading home.
When we arrived back in Terceira, it was Festas da Praia time! This is one of our favorite festivals on the island, so we made it a priority to get out to it a couple times during the week!
Immediately after the Festas, it was time to start getting everything ready for Ava’s 6TH Birthday Party - it was a Mermaid theme and it was a BLAST!
It has been the most amazing summer, filled with stellar experiences, quality time with friends and family, and so much sunshine and happiness! Next week we start back school, routines, and a more regular groove and I can’t say I am not excited about it 😅
For now, here’s a little q&a with our fiesty 6 year old!
Get to know Ava Melody!
(her answers are verbatim 🤣)
Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Ava: Um, well there’s two things. A science teacher and a ballerina teacher.
Q: What is your favorite color?
Ava: There’s a lot. Well there is pink, and light blue, and purple, and green mixed with blue, and red.
Q: What is your favorite thing to do for fun?
Ava: giggles Roblox, and play hide and seek with you.
Q: What is your favorite movie?
Ava: That’s a hard one. My favorite movie is Inside Out.
Q: What is your favorite food?
Ava: There’s two of my favorite foods. It’s Ice cream and Popsicles.
Q: If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be, and why?
Ava: It would be, hmm, maybe the beach because the sand is fun and the water too.
Q: Would you rather go to the bottom of the ocean, or outer space?
Ava: Outer space, because it’s fun and you get to go on a space ship and you see aliens.
Q: Who is your best friend? What do you like to do together?
Ava: Emilia, we like to play Roblox together.
Q: If you were a superhero, what would your magic power be?
Ava: My magic power would be flying, because you could fly to anywhere, to another island, to anywhere.
Q: What makes you laugh the most?
Ava: Running around.
Q: What is your favorite outfit and why?
Ava: The new dress that I got, because I just love dresses and they just twirl around.
Q: How would you describe yourself?
Ava: I am funny, smart and beautiful.
Q: What’s the best thing about being SIX?
Ava: giggles I don’t know.
WOO!
If you made it this far, pour yourself a drink! You deserve it!
Thanks a million for reading and following along our summer adventures. We are SO EXCITED to share more in the coming months regarding the business, new things, and little pieces of our life 🎉