Disneyland!

We finally exchanged our good deeds for real Disneyland passes last week. And, since Ryanna has the world's longest Fall Break, it was the perfect time to go. Apparently quite a few other people had the same idea, but it was still fun!

I think that the kids would say that their very favorite ride was the Buzz Lightyear ride. They would've gone back again had we had the time. Second to that for Owen would've been Autotopia--driving his mom around in style. He didn't do too badly either. Though I hear Ryanna's a crazy driver. Ryanna went on Space Mountain with me. It was actually called Ghost Galaxy Space Mountain since they had it all scary for Halloween. Owen was just tall enough to ride it too, but Ryanna and I went first to make sure it wasn't too scary for Owen. When the ride stopped, the first thing Ryanna said when she pulled her hands off her ears and pulled her head out from between her knees was, "Owen is NOT going on that ride." Yeah, a bit too scary for him. We did do the Haunted Mansion though--it was a combo of Halloween and Christmas.

I wanted to do It's a Small World--childhood memories you know?--but one of the boats had bottomed out, so the line was frozen and they didn't know how long it would be and then we never got back over there.

So, things I learned:

1. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to do Disneyland in one day. No possible way. I think we did 12-13 rides and we were there from open to close.

2. The food is super expensive (not a surprise) and pretty much tasteless. I've never had cheese without taste before this. You can bring your own food if you want, but who wants one more thing to lug around? I did hear that the hand-dipped corn dogs are delicious, but I didn't know this prior to my visit.

3. Buying the program RideMax for your Iphone would've been worth the $15. It's an application that allows you to enter in every ride you want to go on and it takes all of the park data and tells you exactly which ride you should go on and which ones to do fast passes on and how to make your time at the park work for you. Since we had never gone before, all of the rides seemed great to us, but now that we've been we'd probably be able to pick out some favorites and use the program to our advantage.

4. There are not characters wandering the park waiting to take pictures with you like when I was little. I don't know if a Cinderella got trampled once or what, but when we did see two princesses walking through the park, they made it very clear that they would not stop for a photo, so I had to snap as fast as I could. Given that we had only one day, I wasn't going to spend it waiting in line for picture opps. However, we did get some villain shots while we were waiting for the parade to start.

5. A bubble gun may be worth every single expensive penny you pay for it. The guy in front of us in the Haunted Mansion line had one and he shot bubbles for his and our kids and it made the time go by so much quicker. Thank you bubble man.

6. Always bring a change of underwear and shorts for your potty trained child. You never know when you'll have ventured to a new part of the park and he'll wait till the last minute to inform you that he has to go NOW! Of course you'll have no idea where the bathroom is for that section of the park.

7. It may just be the Happiest Place on Earth.

We also went to Newport Beach the next day and there were dolphins swimming right by the shore!!! Seriously close enough that a guy who was snorkeling went out and swam with them. We sat and watched in awe. It has been the coldest summer on record for Newport and given that it's October now, you can imagine how that water temperature felt. The kids loved the beach and found tons of seashells to take home.

I also got to meet another biological cousin of mine for the first time! We had a great visit and she took us to an amazing Italian Restaurant.

Lastly, we stayed with our friends, the Bradshaws, in Lake Elsinore. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of that, but it was fun. We had a fun, exhausting, wonderful trip.

And, for a close-up of that big, pouty lip:There were seriously dolphins everywhere!!! See the guy in the water with them?

The Rest of It All

So, I know you've all been checking my blog every day saying, "When is she going to post about the rest of her vacation!?!?" Sighing and eating lots of junk food at your frustration with my lack of consistent posting. There's a very good reason I haven't finished. The pictures are trapped.

Do you remember the dark ages when cameras actually used film? My kids certainly don't understand it. I took a waterproof camera on our trip to Cancun to use on our trip out to snorkel with the whale sharks. Yes, SHARKS!!! That's the kind of woman I am--I drive five miles over the speed limit, I always save room for dessert and I swim with sharks. A lesser person would've just viewed those namby-pamby tropical fish, but not me--I say give me sharks or give me nothing!

So, they are super huge and their mouths are about 3-4 feet wide with about 5.2 billion teeth (would I exaggerate?) that look like they could eat you in one gulp, but they don't because they are almost vegetarian choosing to slurp on plankton instead.

(See the size of the guy next to this thing? I told you they were HUGE!)

So, those pictures of that whale shark that I swam beside--I say it in singular sense because I was only able to stop myself from vomiting long enough to see one (maybe two?) whale shark(s) before I had to get back into that rocking, rocking boat of misery--are trapped on that water proof camera and I haven't finished taking the rest of the pictures yet, so I'll have to find some on the internet and post them for you and you can pretend like I took them. (See all photos in this post.)

Let me give you some advice though--Dramaine doesn't work for serious sea sickness. I had eleven "incidents" to tell you that it doesn't work. Each incident involved about 5 up and outs and that my friends is the best ab workout on the planet. You may think you can crunch your way to perfect abs, but really, just get yourself about four miles out to sea and you will soon see your abs look rock hard--except you'll be way too sick to appreciate any of it.

I do have to say that the whale sharks were amazing!!! I wish that I could've appreciated them more, but I was a bit under the weather. However, there were about 50 of them where we were and they are huge, gentle giants that everyone should appreciate--from the shore, where things stay still just like they are supposed to.

Chichen Itza, Ek Balam and a Cenote

If the title sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, don't worry--none of it's English.

So, once again, this is going to be a lot of pictures with some commentary listed underneath.

And, I wanted to answer a few questions about our resort:

1. It's all inclusive--that's the only way you can stay--you get it all. And, we just booked it through the resort's own site as it was cheaper than any of the other various sites out there and I looked at A LOT.

2. It's also an adult's only resort, so there were no children around.

Okay, now back to the fun!

Of course this trip wouldn't be the same if our guide hadn't been pulled over by the police. We thought he was going to have to pay some money for a "fine" but they let us go--perhaps because they saw us taking pictures?

This is the ball court at Chichen Itza. It was considered the ultimate field to play on--think of the pros vs. college fields that you would find at other ruins. The players had to score a goal by using their hips to knock a ball through a hoop mounted on the side of a wall. The lucky winners were then sacrificed to the gods.

I tinted this picture, so you could see some of the detail. They have so many ruins in Mexico that they don't have the money or time to restore all of them, so it's hard to do justice to everything you see in these photos, but just imagine only having a chisel to do this kind of work on rocks.


This was at one end of the ball court and it was reserved for the high priests and nobles. The sound in the stadium was amazing. Our guide stood at one side and clapped three times and it echoed loud and clear at the other side. Imagine how intense it must've been during a game.


This was a wall on the grounds that had skulls carved all over it. I don't personally go for decorating with skulls, but there were lots of vendors selling skulls painted in various rainbow colors.


A skull close up.

You can see in this photo a warrior carrying the head of another warrior. You'll also notice while you're there that there are several snakes carved onto their structures. Some of the snakes also have feathers. The symbolism is really cool to learn about, but I won't ruin all of the surprises for those of you who want to go. But, I will say that if you go, you need to go with...

This guy, his name is Nephi. Really. That's his name. His dad's name is Helaman. They run an LDS tour of the various ruins called Helaman Tours. They teach you all of the symbolism of the various carvings and what each building was used for. It was an incredible experience and well worth the money. There are no placards to explain anything while you're there, so you want a guide.


This is it--the temple that is one of the seven wonders of the world. You're not allowed to walk up it anymore because back in 2005 a woman fell down--there's 91 steps on each side all carved in stone, so you can imagine how that felt. For those of you who aren't mathematicians, 91 steps x four sides = 364 + the platform on top = 365. And, that craziness you hear about how the Mayan calendar stops in 2012--not true. The Mayan calendar cycles through every 52 years. 2012 is when it ends this current cycle.

These big guys are crawling all over Mexico. Not only did we see them at every site, but our hotel had them too. They don't let you get very close, but they sure aren't worried about being around all the tourists.


So, after lunch, Nephi took us to the cenote called Ik Kil. It was absolutely beautiful!!! That is the natural color of the water and you can't see them, but there are little black fish swimming all around down there too. These cenotes are constantly getting fresh water circulating through some underwater system. The Mayans used these underground lakes to sacrifice people and bathe for rituals. But, we use them for...

JUMPING!!! It's a 20 foot drop which doesn't seem like much until you're up there. It's a rush. In fact, here's a video of Derek and McKay.



It's only about 30 seconds long. (If it will work.)

We are so in love.


The couple that did the tour with us were named McKay and Rachel Barlow. We had never met them before, but now they are our best friends. Seriously though, we had such a great time with them and wished that we'd all been staying at a resort together, so we could've done more activities with them. It's such a small world, but McKay's roommate in college married my roommate from Spain. Plus, the blog that I looked on to learn about the tour we took ended up being McKay's brother's blog. Small, small world!


Lastly, we visited the ruins of Ek Balam which were smaller than Chichen Itza in total area excavated (for now), but completely worth the time because you can still climb and explore on these ruins. We climbed to the top of the temple which is where I took this picture of some of the other ruins. The temple at Ek Balam is the third tallest ruin in Mexico, behind a building at Tulum and Coba, but taller than the temple you saw at Chichen Itza. I can't remember how many steps it was, but they were steep and there were no handrails.

You can see how narrow the passage way between the buildings is.

We were able to be right next to these ruins which were discovered only a couple of years ago after the wall which was hiding them accidentally fell down. Pay special attention to the hands on the statues.

This tour was one of the greatest things we did while we were there. If you ever have the chance--GO!!!

Cancun--The Hotel

SOOO...We're Back from Paradise! Just in time to be interviewed by the news upon our arrival in the Phoenix Airport. I've included a link to that right here. Seriously, funny to be interviewed looking so completely fabulous, but I had a lady stop me in the library today and tell me she recognized me from last night's news, so I guess I better get some glamour shots made up with my signature at the bottom. Got to keep the masses happy right?

We stayed at Excellence Playa Mujeres. It was separated from the Hotel Zone and in a different part of Cancun which we really enjoyed. The only trick being that if you wanted to venture out, you had to get a taxi. The hotel was seriously fancy though.

So, this was the first thing we saw when the bell boy took us into our room. Yes, a bottle of champagne which we never drank and a leather couch to relax on while we watch our flat screen TV and enjoy the fresh tropical flower bouquet that's in our room. BUT wait! Before we could even sit down, a second guy knocks on our door with these:

Fresh made pastries for us to eat after having traveled so far! Did I mention that when we first walked in the lobby they greeted us with a fresh, wet towel for our faces and glasses of champagne? We had to decline the champagne of course, but it was a nice thought.

In addition to the bouquet of flowers, there was a rose for us on our bed. Speaking of the bed--they made it for us every morning as would be expected, but every evening they also came by and turned down the covers and put mints on our pillows along with a report of the current temperature and weather conditions as well as all of the activities the hotel was going to offer the next day and any other special info we may want to know.

I loved our double sinks and the shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and lotion they give you are the largest bottles I've ever seen! They also gave us a toothbrush and comb and a shoe brush...

I am just sorry to say that this picture doesn't do the shower justice and I couldn't get the right angle to take a picture. Let's just say the shower was about seven feet long and had two shower heads--one that you can see and another from the ceiling as well as a bench to sit on. I loved that huge shower as much as I loved....

Our gargantuan tub with jets! It also looked out onto the balcony. I was in heaven. And, you could see the TV from the tub as well. In fact, there was not a single place in the entire room where you couldn't view the TV--even the shower!

Another perk I loved was the slippers.

This was the bed on our balcony where you could lie down and read or enjoy a view of this:

Our view of the lazy river. There are seven pools at the hotel and this lazy river.

Relaxing in one of the hammocks at the pool.

The stairs to the lobby of our hotel--I love the stained glass.

And, the restaurants. Did I mention that it was all inclusive--so all of our food was included, so we did what any good couple would do and completely gorged ourselves--multiple times! This was our first dinner at the French restaurant in the hotel and it was delicious. We had four desserts that night.

Yummy!! Love those virgin strawberry daquaris!! In fact, I had Derek sample one of mine and he ordered those almost exclusively from that point on. The only other drink as good as that was the hot chocolate at breakfast. That was amazing!!!

This was the tapas restaurant--all appetizers. I loved it.

The view from the Lobster House. You can see how close we are to the beach which was gorgeous.

The last dessert we ate during our stay. I can't remember the name, but it was ice cream with some sort of yummy sauce and fresh berries all in a crust of some sort. I was in dessert heaven!

Not only was the hotel beautiful, but the service was amazing. Almost anytime you asked for anything, you were told, "It is my pleasure." Boy, I could get used to this!