Viva Mexico (numero uno)!

Mexico was amazing. I, of course, have tons of photographic evidence which I will share with you. Because it's tons of pictures I'm going to keep my narratives to a minimum. That said, this will probably be the first of two pretty long posts.
**Note: I am 7 months pregnant. I am large. Please choose not to focus on my beefy face. Gracias!**
Just off the airplane. Ready to start our vacation!
Look Ma! No kids!
The view from our hotel room. The weather was perfect all week.
One of the first orders of business: Wal Mart! We needed to get water, sunscreen, and a few other supplies. I have to say that Wal Mart is Wal Mart, no matter where you are.
It was so fun to have our friends, the Gardners, come with us.
Chowing down on the homemade guacamole we bought at Wal Mart. Best. Guac. EVER!! No lie. I have dreams about it.
Funny signs at the restraunt we ate at. Carlos and Charlie's. It was good food, a rowdy crowd, and a seriously entertaining place to eat!

J$ and I and our yummy drinks.
They made me wear a bib. (I actually ended up kind of glad I had it on.)
Tuesday was Justin's and my 9th anniversary. I can't believe it's been 9 years! Since we spent our honeymoon in Mexico, it was pretty special to be back there over our anniversary. Justin is so thoughtful; he was in conference all morning so he booked me a spa package at the hotel spa for that morning. I got a pedicure! My pedicurist kept telling me I had toes like a little baby. Not sure whether that was a good thing or not...
At dinner that night. I always feel so lucky to be married to Justin. Love you Babe!
One of the things we tried to do was get out of the hotel strip and eat at some local places. The food was amazing!
On Wednesday, we went to a place called Xcaret. It's an ecological preserve. Basically, it was a big natural waterpark. It was my favorite thing we did the whole week!

This is a tapier. It's an animal that they show on 'Diego' sometimes and it's always so cute on that show. In real life though, yowza! That's not a cute animal! The best thing ever was that I got to swim with the dolphins! It was as awesome as it sounds. They are such beautiful animals, it was such a treat to get in the water and swim with them! This is the dolphing pool.
Baby dolphins!
Me in all my beautiful pregnant glory!
(There is video of me in the water with the dolphins. I'll post that a different time.)
This was where we ate lunch after the dolphins. It was so picturesque and lovely. I could have sat there (and ate) all day!
I think Mexico is home to the largest iguanas ever. We saw them all over. It was crazy how big those lizards get!
That big blob in the water is a manatee. Supposedly sailors used to get them confused for beautiful mermaids. I really can't understand how that would happen. It doesn't speak well for the women they left back home!
Snorkeling!
I look at this picture and seriously wish we were still there. Sad.

Justin being the king of the faux Mayan ruins.
We saw so many amazing sea creatures. I took zillions of photographs. However, I edited them down to my very favorites (lucky you). There are still a lot, but we saw a lot of cool animals, so there you go! Here are the jellyfish.
Justin trying to capture the sea-life.
Sting ray
Upside-down jellyfish. These were so weird and cool looking.
This is a little upside-down jellyfish colony.
Puffer fish
Baby sharks
Manta ray
Shark
Cute turtles
Did you know turtles do this when they're resting? I didn't, but I love it!
Our last activity in Xcaret was to watch a show about the history of Mexico. It was all in Spanish, but even so - it was easy to follow and super entertaining. As we walked into the theater they had actors dressed in ancient apparel. They were all so cool!

Hands down, my favorite!
When I showed these pictures to the kids, the boys decided this one was the coolest.
The beginning of the show.
They demonstrated this ancient game that seemed similar to hockey except there was no ice and the puck was on fire. I wouldn't want to play it, but watching would be awesome.
The show was really amazing, but as it got darker my so did my pictures. That was the first half of our vacation. It was so lovely. There hasn't been a day since we've been back that I haven't dreamed of being back there. I will post the rest of our pictures hopefully later this week (it'll be a shorter post as I took most of our pictures at the beginning of the week), plus I have to post the video of me and those dolphins (oh yes, there's a video)! I know looking at other people's vacation pictures isn't always super fun or interesting, but I love looking back at these and my kids sure loved looking at them! I do have to give out a quick shout out to my parents (i.e. - our lifesavers). They stayed with our kids while we were away and, I have to say, we're not sure who had a better week. Us or the kids. I'm still hearing things like, 'Grammy did this' and 'Grandpa let me do that'. It's comforting to be able to go away and know that your kids are in the best hands ever! Thanks mom and dad! Best. Vacation. EVER!

So far...

Mexico is amazing! I'll for sure post more about it when we get back, but for now...
Yes, I got to swim with dolphins. It was awesome!

One with Pictures!

Since my last two posts were heavy on talk and light on pictures, I figured I'd reverse it for this post.
For her birthday, Josie got a cute little pram stroller and several dolls. She loves babies, so this has been perfect for her. Josie doesn't really understand the concept of one baby in the stroller and she is often seen pushing around a stroller full of naked babies (because there is a rule somewhere that states that when you are a little girl, none of your dolls can be dressed). I think it's so cute!


Baseball continues. I continue to be impressed with Clayton. I have to admit that I love watching their games and cheering my boys on.
Pretty typical. Clayton is playing pitcher and standing in the ready position with his eye on the ball, waiting to field it if he needs to. Noah (in the background) is missing his hat, not even wondering where the ball is, and needing coach's wife to stand next to him to constantly remind him that he is, in fact, playing baseball. He's getting better every game though (and he is one heck of a hitter when he's paying attention)!

And what does Josie do during their games? Eat snacks and watch shows on the iPad of course! Honestly, how do people cope without one!?! I actually get to watch the whole game!
Clayton had to give a presentation on Illinois last week. He's had to give several presentations this year, but this one was my favorite by far. He's such a good little public speaker. I do have video of it, but I can't figure out how to upload it.
Just a cute one of post-dinner Josie (I can tell it's post-dinner because she has no shirt on).
Clayton came home from school one day obsessed with paper airplanes. So we had a little paper airplane workshop. I showed the boys how to fold them and correctly throw them (they kept trying to throw them like baseballs). We had a fun afternoon making and throwing airplanes.


Even miss girl got in on the action!
Noah had his end of the year concert at school this week. He was incredibly cute. By far the cutest and most animated kid in his class (the cutest part might just be me being biased, but the animated part is just plain true). Again, I took tons of video of his concert, but can't get it loaded. Maybe a different post.

I smiled throughout the whole concert. So cute!
They also had a mini-graduation and reception after the concert. Here's Noah with his diploma.
Noah with his teacher. We love Mrs. Holiday and Noah was so lucky to have her as his teacher this year. We're going to miss her when Noah moves up to the 5 year old class next year.
A while ago, we had the wallpaper removed in our entryway and had it painted a lovely shade of gray. I love it, but it's a lot of gray. I wanted some pops of color to brighted up the entryway so I made a curtain. It's not perfect so don't look to closely, but I love it!
I also really like the tassle pull-back! I think it's classy and whimsical. The entryway isn't quite done yet (we're still waiting on a few things), but I'll do a seperate post on it when it's all done.
From the outside. I did the reverse on the back. I love the little pop of green you see from the outside!
Hope you enjoyed the pictures!