Our Family Getaway

I put together two movies that are compilations of the movies I took on our trip. You can check them out at the links below if you want to watch them. They aren’t the best quality, only filmed on my regular camera, not a video camera. They are also kinda’ long!

Movie 1

Movie 2

Our last full day in Playa we spent at Zenzi beach club. We rented a couple of chairs and chilled out for the day alongside some friends, Erica Vanessa and Terry. We played in the water, had some lunch, took a photo or two.

Kelsey’s self portrait of her ballet point:

We went home early to finish packing. After we finished that, we showered and went out to Babes for our last Playa dinner.

Jorden got a shot of me as I was laughing with some friends who were passing by on the street:

love this shirt of Jorden’s:

kid close-ups:

Kids gettin’ goofy as per usual:

Dinner tonight at Babe’s was VERY VERY disappointing!! Generally we really like it here, but tonight the food was horrible (mushy meatballs that were inedible) and the service was just horrible as well. It took about ten minutes before anyone even came to the table to give us menus, another 20 to come take our order, and once we got our food, no one ever came back. We had to eventually wave them down for the bill….we never got second drinks, nothing. We were NOT impressed!

We left Babes and went down to the Zocalo by the ferry dock. We hung out there taking in all the action of “Mexico”…watching the beach soccer game, etc. I took some photos, then we bought some fruit from the fruit vendors (we love Guaya!)

After that we went by the Beer Bucket to say some last goodbye’s to some friends. Then it was time to head home as I still wasn’t 100% feeling better….I was still having some kind of vertigo issues…very weird (and very uncomfortable!).

The next morning we all woke up early and went for one final breakfast at our favorite breakfast place, El Bistro at La Tortuga hotel. We took a photo of us, and our waiter took our photo also:

The wait staff here are fabulous, and we gave them a final big tip this day and said our goodbyes. We then made our way down to the beach, and took a walk north towards Mamitas along the beach.

We spent some time playing in the water together:

but my ‘vertigo’ soon got the better of me, so I got out to sit on the beach. Kelsey came to join me, and we spent some time burying her legs in the sand:

With one wave, we see a little fish flip-flopping in the sand, and Kelsey picks him up:

She runs him out into the deep water and saves him. Funny thing is that she did the very same thing on this same beach about 7 years ago!! Strange, eh? We were walking here one early morning when we were staying at the Pelicano and a little fish got washed up in front of us, and she saved it then…what a strange coincidence.

Kelsey went out to play in the water some more, and sweet Jorden felt bad for me since I wasn’t feeling well so he came out to sit with me. He’s such a sweetheart that way! We chatted for quite awhile, and soon it was time for us to head back as we wanted to stop by the Luna Blue Hotel to say goodbye to our friends Tony and Cheri. We said our goodbyes there and managed to hold back the tears!

We got back to the condo with a bit of time left to hang out in the pool for a bit. Then it was time to get ready for Luis who was picking us up and taking us to the airport. We paid our electric bill for the month which came to $312 US !!!!! (yikes!) and soon we were off to the airport. We checked our luggage in and John juggled some stuff around, and made it so each of our luggage was about 50.3 lbs each!!! Phew! We said and almost-tearful goodbye to Luis, and made our way up to go wait for our flight.

Flying away from paradise wasn’t as sad as usual, I think because we had been there a month and we were all really ready to go home. I took some photos of Cancun as we were taking off:

The sun was starting to set as we pulled into Los Angeles:

Unfortunately, we were put into a holding pattern over LAX due to airport congestion, so the sun had pretty much set by the time we landed.

I say ‘unfortunately” because this meant we had to run for our connecting flight. Yeesh! We had to collect luggage, go through immigration, and run across LAX to another terminal, all within about 20 minutes…we barely made it. We got into Seattle at about 2am Pacific Time, but our inner clocks were set to Playa Time, so for us it was 4am. We were asleep in our hotel about an hour later.

It was such a spectacular trip, I can’t even put into words. I guess I don’t have to, since it’s all here in photos. I’m so happy to have shared it with everyone. It was truly a great time for our family to just spend time concentrating on each other, without any distractions of work, school, friends, or whatever. It was exactly what I needed after a kind of rough year, and I feel completely regenerated!

When we returned, our home town was having it’s annual summer festival. We live in a beautiful city ourselves, and it is a bit of a resort town in summer itself. I thought I’d end this report by sharing some photos of MY town with everyone who is reading this who isn’t from my home!

Today John, Kelsey and I walked down to the beach to check out the sandcastle competition at the Sea Festival. (Jorden was biking down there with his friends and their family). It’s about a 10-15 minute walk to the beach from our place.

This is the high school, where you could catch a free shuttle bus down to the beach.

They offer this service because parking down at the beach fills up so fast during the festival. We were amazed at the shuttle lineup, considering it’s not that far a walk!

The view when walking down the hill is obviously beautiful. Also note that the land mass on the opposite or far side of the water is actually the U.S. That’s Birch Bay, in Washington State:

A band was playing in the beachfront bandstand:

The tide here goes WAY out and leaves little tidal pools of water. It’s great for making sand castles, finding crabs, digging for clams, or running with the dog! (Here you can see the San Juan Islands of WAshington State in the distance as well)

Usually there aren’t that many people on the beach, we were in total amazement at the volume of people that were down here!

The sandcastles were great, check out the whale shark!

The train runs right alongside the beach:

again, we were amazed by the crowds, and by how many people we saw that we know!

THe pier looked great all decked out in the flags:

We had a hamburger, then we made the hard trek back UP the steep hill home. Ugh! but good exercise. I stopped for a pic partway up:

The lineup of cars coming down was amazing:

Thanks for enjoying my blog!! If you want to keep up with my regular, day to day activities and travels, I’m going to start a more permanent blog when I have a little time. It might take a couple weeks for me to get going on it as I have some work to get caught up on first, but if you are subscribed here then when I get going on it you will be notified automatically!

I spent a day or so pretty sick after the fair day, and didn’t even leave the condo for over 24 hours. It was horrible, and finally I was feeling a little better. We decided to go to Akumal, although I still wasn’t 100%. But I didn’t want to waste any of my dwindling vacation time!

We got to Akumal and parked outside the arches. We walked in and to the beach at Akumal Bay. We found a piece of shade under a palm tree and set our stuff out, and Jorden and I went to the dive shop to rent some flippers and a life jacket for him. We are all pretty strong swimmers except Jorden, he just isn’t as comfortable in the water and prefers to have a life jacket, which we prefer also when he’s snorkeling around. Each item at the dive shop was $5 for the whole day, they don’t take a deposit or anything.

Once outfitted, Jorden and I decide to go out first into the bay to see if by chance we can see some sea turtles. We were told that they eat the sea grass in the bay so we may see them here. Well were we surprised to see MANY turtles, it seemed almost everywhere we turned! They weren’t afraid of humans at all, and we just sat and watched them munch away on seagrass, coming up for air occasionally. Some of them we swam alongside of them and they weren’t bothered by it at all. They are magnificent, so beautiful to watch and it’s so neat the way they swim around you and just look at you with their big eyes! I reminded Jorden that they are wild animals so not to try to touch them, they had big snapping mouths afterall!

I got a lot of great pics of them with my new underwater digital:

We went back in so John and Kelsey could go out and see some (we were sharing flippers!). Jorden and I sat on the beach, chatted, and read our books.

When they came back, John asked me to swim out to the reef with him. Offshore a ways there was a coral reef, and just a word of warning if you go: it is farther than it appears! You will think it looks like an easy swim, but in the water it is easily double what you think it is.

On the way out, we saw more turtles:

as we get to the reef, I spot some sea urchins:

I came up to let out all the water that was constantly seeping the crappy mask I had, and when I pulled it to tighten it…it broke! Crap! Now here I was wayyyyy out at the reef, with no mask. Grrr. So what I had to do was hold it on my face underwater the whole way back.

We got back and enjoyed the beach for awhile:

then we went to the restaurant for some lunch. It’s a beautiful restaurant with a wonderful view, amazing really.

A little kitty came to see us, and shared some chicken with him

After an expensive and not so great tasting lunch, we returned to the beach where we all went and just lounged in the water.

Kelsey started practicing acro in the water, her dance teacher would be so proud.

oops…where’d she go???

Then we got a little goofy, and then we all tried to squeeze in for a self-portrait family shot. At first we couldn’t all squeeze in, and Jorden kept getting left in the lurch:

We told Jorden to jump up to get in the picture, and when we all looked at this shot on the camera LCD we had a laughing fit:

ahhh…finally a good one:

then some wrestling ensued:

Kelsey and I started getting really goofy, and taking photos of our feet:

I can’t even explain this….

John and Jorden threw the football around, and Kelsey and I gave ourselves exfoliating spa treatments, heh heh:

THE NEXT DAY

this was going to be our last day with the rental car, so we all decided we wanted to go back to Akumal, we really loved it there! (next time we’ll stay there). We went back to Akumal Bay, rented equipment again, and Jorden and I headed out into the water. Jorden wanted me to take him out to the reef this time.

On our way out, I looked over at Jorden and I noticed this wee little fish who was swimming right under Jorden’s chest, like he was using Jorden for protection. It was sooo cute! I signal to Jorden and he comes up and I tell him about the fish, then I see that it is sitting right in his armpit for protection.

The little guy went all the way to the reef with Jorden and then all the way back! I told Jorden he was his protector, I think Jorden felt very proud.

Of course, on the way out to the reef we saw a few turtles:

This was a neat looking formation:

Then I spot this lurking barracuda:

Jorden was a little apprehensive about him, but I convinced him we would be okay.

Jorden spotted this sting ray at the bottom, it was weird to see him watching us with his eyes that would move around….creepy!

It was the most beautiful reef we had seen yet, absolutely teeming with sea life. Every differnt kind of fish, all beautiful colors.

Soon Jorden was getting tired, so we headed back. I tugged him along for a ways as he was pooped. And of course we saw more turtles!!

I loved how they swiped aside the sand to get to the grass:

The cutest thing was when they would come up for air!

Here’s the little fish hanging out with me this time!

We all hung out again on the beach, reading books and building sand castles.

Another wonderful family day.

We went to the fair, “La Feria” with our friend Mark and his family after Tulum one day. It was way far back in the Ejido, we’d never have found it without following him. It was an interesting thing to do, and we had a lot of fun while we were there.

First we went to see the animals:

The pigs were so cute!

They had a cow so big it looked like a hippo, but my photo of it didn’t turn out. The funniest animal we saw was the horse that was painted to look like a zebra…hahahahaha:

Jorden played foosball with Mark’s two gorgeous boys!

while Kelsey tried her hand at the games:

Some gentelmen purchase their tickets for the concert that night:

My kids weren’t brave enough to ride the bull, but Mark’s boys were!

The kids all tried their hands at the firearms, heh.

Father/Son bonding:

Lots of great fresh juices to choose from:

or some pots/pans/dishes if you so desired:

and of course, what is a fair without candy and churros!!

Kelsey and I tried some plantains, but we weren’t big fans.

Everyone road the bumper cars:

which were much crazier, faster, and longer than any bumper cars we have back home. I haven’t seen John laugh so hard!!

At this point I started to feel AWFUL, and unfortunately we had to beg out and go home. By the time we got home I was violently ill, developed a fever and everything. I spent the whole next day in bed, never leaving the condo! After some meds and a day of rest though, I started to feel somewhat better.

The fair was great, and we were so glad Mark told us about it and took us there! And Mark’s family is the nicest….his boys are so cute I could eat them up!!