Some Beach. Somewhere.

Every couple of years for Christmas my family (all 15 of us) go on a vacation.... always somewhere warm. Just to get us away from the snow for a little while. This year we headed on down to Cancun, Mexico. We left Sunday January 3rd and got back Sunday January 10th.

To be honest, I was completely stressed out about flying with an 18 month old. The flight down there was a direct flight and because there were so many new fun toys and things to see Garrett actually did really well.

We arrived Sunday afternoon and pretty much just wandered around the hotel and took much needed naps. Monday we left open to a beach day so that we didn't have to jump back in a car or bus right away. Our hotel had a couple of kiddie pools that consisted of a pirate ship and some fun slides for the kids to play on. The water was pretty cold so Garrett was definitely not loving it.

On Tuesday we went to Xel Ha (Shel Ha). There were places to snorkel, a "lazy river", cliff jumping, a "floating" bridge, etc. Lots of fun things for the entire family.

Wednesday we went to Aqua World - we didn't really know what to expect here and all we did was canoe to an island. Actually Daniel, myself and Garrett stayed on land and fed the Iguana's. That same day we also walked to some ruins. I got a kick out of all of the boys / guys determined to catch at least one iguana before we left. No success.

Thursday we took a 2 hour shuttle ride to Chitzen itza. Very interesting tour. It was so cool to actually see and learn about Solomon's Temple. My mom was holding both Garrett and my niece, Clara, who both have blond hair and blue eyes and all of the little Mayan ladies that were there circled around my mom and were touching and kissing both of their faces. I kind of felt bad for the little kids but you should have seen their faces, they were terrified, it was priceless. Apparently in the Mayan culture- blond hair and blue eyes means you are perfect.

Friday, since they were reconstructing the beach in front of our hotel (from the Hurricane that hit a couple years ago) we decided to take the bus a couple miles down the road to a really sandy beach. I thought it would be a blast, I thought Garrett would love the beach! He hated it. He hated everything about it - the water, the sand, the sun. After sitting in his stroller for about 45 min, content as could be, watching his dad, uncles and cousins body surfing in the water I decided that I could put him on a towel and I knew that he wouldn't go anywhere. After a couple hours there and at about the time that we were packing up to go back to our Hotel, Garrett decided that the sand wasn't in fact as bad as he originally thought it was and wanted to stay and play in it - well, still on the towel because he wouldn't for the life of him actually sit on the yucky sand but with the shovel he had in his hand he sure didn't fail getting that sand in every crevasse on his body! I'm glad he had fun, because I know that we sure did!

Saturday it poured rain the entire day and people that live there said that it was the coldest that they have ever felt Cancun. You could definitely tell who the tourests were. We were all still determined to where our shorts, flip flops, fanny packs (I'm lying), and sun screen despite the weather. We decided to go to the mall because of the rain. The outside mall. We were all wet, it was freezing!

Sunday we Flew home! We flew straight to Atlanta and let me tell you... I have the most amazing husband!! He stood in the back of the airplane holding Garrett pretty much the entire flight because Garrett would cry every time he sat down. I love that man so much!! I wasnt even the one dealing with him on the flight and I seriously thought I was going to have a breakdown in the Atlanta airport. I felt like we were never going to get home.... Needless to say the second flight went so much better and both Garrett and Daniel fell asleep for the last hour and a half. I was so happy to have returned to the Motherland!