Jimmy * Esther * Zeke * Lilly

My parents and brother were leaving Monday afternoon, so we woke up really early to go swimming, and do as much as we could before they left.

It was the best seeing how happy and excited Zeke was about the “little Zekie pools”

there were a few underwater bars, they looked cool

We ate lunch at a restaurant in the resort, my quesadilla grande was so good!

After lunch, we drove my parents, and Adam to the airport. Then we drove down to Playa Del Carmen and took a large ferry to Cozumel island. We took the 3:00 ferry out, and got there at 3:45. There was a ferry going back at 5pm, and 7pm. We thought we’d take the 7pm ferry, but once we got there, we soon found there wasn’t much to do.

Zeke got to hold a parrot out there for $1. His poor sunburned face got burned the second day. For some reason, we forgot to put sunscreen on his face :(

Jimmy the warrior.

There were a lot of shops, and people trying to get you to come buy from them. We tried to go to the museum, but it closed when we got there, that was a few minutes before 5pm. We were done, and didn’t know what we were going to do on the island for 2 hours until 7pm. I noticed the 5 o’clock ferry was still there, and we decided to run and see if we could catch it. We ran hard, and luckily there was a man buying a ticket, so they were waiting for him. We barely made it! We were so happy we didn’t have to be stranded on the island for 2 more hours! Especially since it got dark at 6pm.

Back in Playa Del Carmen, Zeke wanted to roll down the dirty street.

Tuesday morning we had a delicious breakfast, and got packed up to go home. We couldn’t wait to see our LillyBelle! We wished we could have gone home the day before with my parents, it was a long time to be away! Zeke kept asking “Where’s our Lilly Belle?” all through out the trip.

Flying home to see our princess!

We finally got to my sisters, and I ran inside to see Lilly. My sister was holding her, and she looked confused when she saw me. She kept looking at me, and then at my sister. When she saw her daddy, and brother, she got so excited! It was so nice to be back home with our Lilly!!

Here’s what Lilly would have worn in Cancun :)

This picture of Lilly was from today. My friend Krisitn gave this dress to Lilly, and it would have been perfect for Cancun too! She looks so adorable in it!

Saturday morning we went to the beach so my mom, brother Adam, and Jimmy could go parasailing. I was a little afraid to go, but I would have gone had it been a lot cheaper.

My mom and Adam high in the sky! They all said parasailing was fun, and the scariest part about it was riding a wave-runner out to the boat.

After the beach, we drove to some Mayan ruins. On the way, we passed by a few residential areas. The above picture, and the 2 below, are people’s homes.

It was very humbling to think that most of the people living in this beautiful part of the world, lived in very not beautiful homes. They also lived with so much less, as far as modern conveniences go. It made me appreciate all I have, and I also felt guilty for taking my blessing for granted.

We saw a lake with wild crocodiles!

It was a hot day, can you tell? We went to the ruins in Coba rather than Chichen-Itza because Coba’s ruins are one of the few rauin sites where you can still walk on and touch them. It was really neat!

This is where they would play sports, only the losing team got sacrificed :( I’m so glad I wasn’t born in that time period!

This huge pyramid was about 1.5 miles from the entrance, and it stood 12 stories high! Zeke was determined to climb to the top, and I was so scared!

I think I was almost to the top when I took this shot

On top of the world! Zeke wanted to climb down all by himself too, and a man said, “That guy’s a machine!”

Driving through a town, there was this poor, skinny dog in the road. It wouldn’t move, it’s like it was saying, “Please hit me, and put me out of my misery!” So sad. There were stray dogs all over the villages.

back in Playa Del Carmen for dinner

We found this towel creature on our bed when we got back to our room. We think it’s a bunny?

Saturday night we all, (except for my dad), went swimming in the awesome pools. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip! There was pretty much no one else in the pools, and we had so much fun exploring, and laughing, and playing together! My mom made us all laugh with her “graceful” move of slithering over the small water fall edge to get from one pool to the next. She’s so much fun!

Sunday we went to church in Playa Del Carmen. It was fun listening to so much Spanish! I felt like I could communicate really well too, not we well as Jimmy could, but pretty well :) I took 2 years of Spanish at BYU, and I love speaking it! It was really fun to be able to speak Spanish to anyone while on our trip!

My parents in front of the building our room was in.

The rest of the day we walked around the resort, and took pictures. It was so beautiful!

They had flamingos and crocodiles in the resort!

Jimmy and Zeke took a long, much needed, nap while we were taking pictures.

When they woke up, we went back out for some more lovely walks.

The pool at this resort was unbelievable! It went on for what seemed like miles, and it was right by the ocean!

My mom and I stayed out the latest, and got some night photos. We had fun talking, and laughing about the night before when we went swimming.

When we got back to the hotel, we all had a delicious spaghetti dinner made by Adam and Jimmy :)

Zeke calls our blog “our adventure book”, (from the movie “Up”). So, welcome to the Cancun chapters of our adventure book :)

We woke up early on the 25th of March, and dropped off our princess at my sister’s home. (We weren’t able to bring Lilly since we couldn’t get her passport. I had the passport application all filled out, but we needed her birth certificate to get her passport, and I thought we’d have it for sure by the end of January, or at least mid February. Alas, here we are into April, and we’re still working on getting it. The MN dept. of Health sure takes their time.) It was very hard leaving Lilly for so long, but she lightened my mood while we were dropping her off, by babbling so funny, it made me laugh. I knew she’d be spoiled and have so much fun, and I was right!

We met my parents, and younger brother, Adam, at the airport at 7:45am. Zeke was really excited to fly in a plane. Everything was so much more fun seeing how thrilling it was for him! Kids make things new and exciting again, especially holidays! He thought it was neat to see the cars and buildings get tiny as we got higher, and then half way through the flight, he fell asleep.

We landed in Cancun at 2pm, and spent the rest of the day driving around and looking for a hotel for the first night. We had a room booked for the rest of the stay. Downtown Cancun was crazy, and not too many tourists went there at all. It felt like authentic Mexico. The road systems, and the taxi drivers were out of control! You’d be driving on a small 2 lane road, and all of the sudden, there’s a car on either side of you trying to make it a 3 lane road :) We had some close calls, and we were all praying we wouldn’t get in an accident.

It was Spring break, so a lot of the hotels were booked, but we ended up finding this place called the Cancun Plaza hotel. It looks so much nicer in pictures online! It was decent, but there was no AC, and the beds were hard. The advantage it had was that it was right on the beach, and the ocean view from the room was amazing!

My parents and brother woke up at 5am Friday morning to see the sunrise. These pictures were taken from our room’s balcony.

they did have a neat pool area too

and great beach access

My brother waving from our balcony, (he’s hard to see, but he’s on the 4th floor).

Jimmy and Zeke both fit in the closet, it reminded us of  “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”.

My mom is so cute! I love this picture of her too, she had her shoes and sock on, but really wanted to walk in the ocean. She loves beautiful oceans, flowers, and plants. (Her house looks like a jungle with all sorts of beautiful real and artificial plants and flowers.)

After checking out of the hotel, we took a small, private boat tour to an island about 20 minutes east of Cancun. The island was called Isla Mujeres. It had the best beach!

Zeke wanted to get closer to this large iguana we saw on the street, and they got within 3 feet of  it before opened it’s mouth and hissed. Jimmy quickly jumped back :)

I loved the white sandy beaches of this island! It was as beautiful as in the postcards, and island calendars!

Zeke and Jimmy made a sand dolphin.

The water was so nice, and you could wade out 100 yards before it was deep enough to swim! It was crystal clear too, which I loved! I can’t stand swimming in water where I can’t see what’s swimming around me.

It took Zeke a while to like playing in the big ocean, but once he felt comfortable, he didn’t want to leave. He had a blast!

I couldn’t get enough of the palm trees everywhere. I love palm trees!

The boat tour included snorkeling out in the middle of the ocean! I stayed in the boat with Zeke, but we could see lots of different kinds of fish from the boat!

you can see fish in these pictures

I loved the beautiful water!

We drove by a dolphin show, and they jumped so high out of the water! We also went to the whale shark beach, and saw a whale shark. For $3 you could go in and get a picture with the whale shark, but Jimmy and I felt bad for the shark. They kept it in a 15 foot area, but it just seemed a little inhumane. Seeing that really reminded us that we weren’t in the US anymore, that would never fly here.

After the island, we drove about 30 minutes south of Cancun to our resort, The Grand Mayan, close to Playa Del Carmen. Jimmy and I found this resort online, and wanted to stay there so much! The pool looked so awesome! I checked many different sites to try to get a room in this hotel- hotel sites, timeshare rental sites, online ads, and the cheapest I found was fore $1700 for our stay. We decided to book with Holiday Inn in Cancun, but I kept looking. Finally, 2 weeks before, I found an ad on ksl for $500! I bought it, but both Jimmy and I were nervous that we might get there and find out we had been scammed. Suites go from $629/night at this resort, and we got the whole week (Friday to Friday), for $500 total! That’s even a lot less than if we had stayed in the Cancun Plaza hotel the whole time! We were all so excited to find out it was a real reservation, and that we could stay there the rest of our trip!

It was by far the nicest, fanciest resort any of us have stayed in, or probably ever will, it was so out of this world beautiful! It was a once in a lifetime experience!

The first thing Zeke went for when we got to our suite was the pen and paper :)

The next thing Zeke discovered was the, “little Zekie pool” as he called it, on the balcony. He jumped right in!

Friday night we went to an authentic Mexican restaurant in downtown Playa Del Carmen. Jimmy’s food was one of the best Mexican dishes he’s ever had! He loved this place! Jimmy, my brother and I all got horchata drinks, mmm!

Zeke’s favorite beverage is Sprite, and he got a lot of it on our trip. I usually order water since it’s free, but you can’t drink the water in Cancun. We had to buy bottled water to drink, and brush our teeth with.

We ended the night with a trip to the Mega supermarket to get some groceries to cook at our hotel. They had escalators for the carts!

Snack time before bed

Lilly turned 10 months on this day too. I had my sister take Lilly’s 10 month pictures. I made the sign the night before we left, and put it in Lilly’s bag.

I laughed when I saw they duct taped the sign to her :)

Lilly wasn’t in the picture-taking mood

Here’s the best one!