Tuesday in Mexico

Today was a really great day in Mexico. We went to the island of Isla Mujeres ("the island of women"). We arranged a tour with AquaTours. A pretty good deal - $69 for adults and free for the kids, since of course in Mexico Sydney is still only 5 years old. wink wink! We started at the AquaTours marina and took a boat ride through the lagoon and over to the Dolphin Discovery area on the island. The boat ride through the lagoon was rather hot because it was a slow moving boat. We even had to fold down the top hand rails of the boat and no one could ride on the top when we went under a bridge! Once on the island we took another boat over to the central part of town on the island and rented a golf cart.



We went "downtown" and had lunch at an authentic mexican restaurant.

Alan and I were really in the mood for some "real Mexican" food -we haven't really had any yet! We ordered burritos and were surprised to get a tortilla with ham and cheese in it! No complaints though, the food was really good. The kids even liked it (well not as much as pizza, but they said it was good.)


Sydney really can't wait to have some good old PB&J's though.


After lunch it was time to go see the dolphins! Since Zack is only 4 he can't participate in the other programs, so we with a "Dolphin Encounter" program. The taught us 2 sign languages that instructed the dolphins to give us a kiss, and shake "hands".

The dolphins we met were 6 and 12 years old. We all got to do our new "tricks" for the photo shoot.

Although we did turn down the video of the experience, we did spent $60 on those pictures. But hey, those are priceless memories, right?

We got to pet the dolphins as they swam past us several times. It was really cool, they are such gentle animals.

Then we headed out on our golf cart again for a tour of the island. The first stop was a beach where there was a shark we could hold!


As you can tell, the photo shoot was not the quality of the Dolphin Encounter, but it was pretty cool to hold a shark too! I was easily convinced to spend another $12 on this shot since the whole family was in it. Too bad I picked out the picture with my eyes closed in it!

It was a very beautiful beach. Postcard perfect!

Next we went to visit a lighthouse, then around the other side of the island where it is rocky. Sydney loves the camera, and the camera loves her! Zack, well he is quite sick of getting his picture taken.

After investigating the rocks we went back around to the side of the island with the beautiful beaches and played around in the water. It was funny, we just wore bathing suits all day. Who needs clothes when you're on vacation!

Ahh, paradise!!!

Finally it was time to say goodbye to the dolphins....

Time to board the boat and head back to Cancun. What an exciting day!!! We had a lazy dinner at our hotel and shortly afterwards the kids were in bed by 8:45 - they didn't make a peep after the lights went out.

Monday in Cancun

Since I had packed my workout clothes, I decided to get up and exercise - mostly because I was awake and knew I wasn't going to fall back to sleep. So I went over the exercise room. It was nice, and I used the elipical training. Dang, I was exhausted after my puny little half hour workout. Not sure how Alan is doing his running outside in the middle of the day!! (hey, maybe he's just down at the pool bar, and gets wet from swimming and not running. hmmmm)

After another yummy breakfast...

... we took an excursion over to the ruins at El Ray. These ruins are right on the same street as the hotels, so it's only a bus ride away. Unfortunately our bus driver did not understand where we were trying to go and dumped us off in the wrong spot! But it was as easy as flagging down another bus to go farther down the road and we were there. As expected the kids didn't understand the concept of "ruins" but they had a great time chasing the iguanas around the park. The lizards were really big - but very fast, so no one got close to one (except the one that was hiding under the rocks and we got to pet his tail!)

Sydney even got to try out taking pictures on my camera. She did pretty good!


After the ruins we went across the street to a beautiful public beach. I took some pictures that turned out pretty good! :)

Back to the splash park for the rest of the afternoon. We are having so much fun going down the big slides. I even overcame my claustrophobic fear and went down the tube slide. I still didn't enjoy it much, so I haven't been missing anything!

We needed to get out of the hotel for dinner (well, at least I wanted to!) so we went to Carlos 'n Charlies for a change of pace. Wow, I must be getting old because that place was SOOO loud. I know it's a fun party place which I can appreciate, but we tried to get there before all of the partying really began. When we got there they were having a Michael Jackson contest and blaring music. It would have been a little better if my dining partner had not been Zack, the boy of a thousand questions a minute. I had a such a hard time hearing him and he wasn't too pleased about that. The dinner was really good though, and I'm glad we went.

The kids were thrilled because there was a clown and they got cool balloon hats :)

A brand new day in Cancun

Breakfast at the hotel was really good - and a welcome sight. Alan and I were exhausted. Last night was a party night for the other hotel guests and they woke us up all night long. Midnight, 1am, 2am, and on and on until at least 4am. Also, our hotel room looks out over the "party pool" and people were out there until all hours of the night. We did realize this morning that if we had turned on our A/C, it would have drowned out the noises. The halls just echoed every footstep and conversation everyone was having. So hopefully tonight will be better.

We did get a good laugh at breakfast when Sydney opened up the box of Coco Krispies on her own and they went flying all over the table. There was quite a variety of breakfast foods and we all enjoyed that. After breakfast we took a walk on the beach. The sand is super soft but the waves were very big. I believe some hurricanes have eroded much of the beaches in Cancun, and there was construction still underway to retain the beaches they still have.

Finally we made our way over the Oki Splash kids area. We were really impressed - it far exceeded our ideas on what it was going to look like. Very big, and brand new! It was a pirate ship with 4 slides on it, surrounded by water guns. The second pool for the hotel is right next to this kids are and it was not crowded at all. No DJ blaring music and playing drinking games. We were able to relax a bit here. It's nice because the kids are able to run around and swim and we can sit back a enjoy a cool drink without worrying about them. The kids did love an audience in the splash area so we didn't get to relax a whole lot though :)

The splash area also had these awesome slides. Zack was scared to go on them (he tried them once, but was not interested in going again). Sydney did need supervision on the slides, and they were just so darn fun to go down, we got a lot of exercise going up and down those slides!

We had lunch a restaurant that was right next to the pool and was also pretty "Zack and Sydney friendly". All inclusive is a nice concept, but the choices are quite limited when you have a couple of picky eaters dining with you. At least they don't seem to be complaining about burgers, chicken nuggets and pizza all of the time so far.

I convinced the kids that I was in need of a nap since I didn't get much sleep. Zack also has a cough so I didn't want him to over do it. We all took a nap, while Alan went out running for his marathon training. Zack slept almost 3 hours! Alan was supposed to run for 17 miles but he only made it for 10 miles since the weather was so hot. Along his run he got to help out a taxi driver who needed his car pushed to the side of the road! I can't believe he ran 10 miles, I would have been dead after 1 mile in this heat. The report said is was 93 degrees today. Yikes!

We had dinner at the hotel again and tonight was oriental theme. Good food! Then a short trip to the mall again for some shopping. The kids will hopefully see something they want to buy soon - Sydney is starting to drive us crazy with her shopping interest.

It was a good first day here in Mexico :)

Cancun - here we come!

Well the Cancun trip has finally arrived. I would be lying if I said we were anything but a little disappointed with our first day. It was a long journey to Cancun, starting out at 5:30am this morning. We were thrilled that the Detroit airport has been remodeled and has a tram to ride on and this cool jumping water pond.

We left on time, and the flight went well, but as soon as we got to Cancun it was a few long frustrating hours of waiting. First waiting to go through customs, and then another line where they checked our luggage, and again waiting for the bus to the hotel. But the longest and worst wait was at our hotel itself. The room wasn't ready for a whole hour and everyone was just tired of waiting at that point. The kids were being impatient and the weather was hot and humid. When we finally got to our room, we needed to wait more to get another bed put in, and to get the safe working. Finally it was time to get to the pool. The pool was OK, but very crowded, with lots of kids. I guess that is to be expected at a "family friendly" hotel!! However, when I think of family friendly, I think of everyone accepting my kid's bad behavior, and no other kids around!! haha

Zack scared the crap out of me when he started walking right from the shallow end of the pool into the deep end, which was only one step over a ledge. He immediately sunk underwater before I got there and thankfully there was a nice guy right next to him who pulled him up out of the water since I hadn't got to him yet. Zack thought that was funny, but I certainly did not. After swimming for a little bit we got dressed and checked out the hotel. It is nice - I just hope the dining offers more of a variety other than the buffets we saw. Otherwise Zack will be eating hot dogs for every meal!


We went shopping at the mall down the road and the kids were already wondering what they could spend their "Cancun Cash" on. They each earned $15 from doing chores before the trip. By 8:30 (9:30 Ohio time) the kids were fast asleep and so was Alan. I'm heading to bed right now too. Hope tomorrow brings a better, more relaxed day. Or maybe just lower expectations! :)

My guys

Here is a great picture I took of the guys when we were camping at East Harbor.

Demolition Derby at the Fair

Tonight we went to the Lucas County Fair and saw the demolition derby! I had no idea what to expect. When I first saw the space I was surprised how small the area was they there were driving around in.. and they had 8 car in there! I quickly found myself rooting for the cars and smash-ups. It was a lot of fun!! It reminded me a lot of Battlebots (what a great show!) and of course bumper cars. We saw several cars come up over the barriers. One car caught on fire and we also got to see pickup trucks competing. The show was almost two hours long, but definately a night of fun!

Number 47 was the winner of the derby.

The car was still moving up until the point he got pinned in - amazing since the back and front of his car were smashed up in the air, and the passenger door was too!

New water camera case... and an Ooops!

I bought this cool water case for our camera in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Cancun. It works really well - other than it being a little awkward to wait for the camera to focus, but the pictures turned out good I thought. I can't wait to get some shots of tropical fish!!




Ironically this is what we were doing when we were supposed to be at a birthday party! What a dummie I was - I got an invitation from Emma, Sydney's good friend from school and our neighbor, and I wrote it on my calendar for the wrong day!! I thought it was 8/2/09 instead of 8/1/09. I was so bummed when I found out we had missed it. I was sick to my stomach, upset at what a dumb mistake I had made. I vow to pay closer attention to details and write stuff down correctly from now on!! :(

Camping at East Harbor State Park

This was our first trip to East Harbor. The park was nice, but unless you were camping on a cul-de-sac, it was very crowded, without much space between the sites. Our site was very private, we liked it alot. This weekend was the Christmas in July weekend, so people decorated their sites with lights and other displays which was fun to see.

Zack got to use his new camping chair. Not surprising, we had to buy one for Sydney too as she thought Zack's chair was now bigger than hers (which it really wasn't).





A big surprise was a "meow" we heard from the bushes. It was a cat! A very friendly, and probably hungry, cat came out of the woods and hung out with us all night.





It rained a lot on Saturday morning, and the people next to us packed up their stuff and went home because they were in tents. We just laughed at them was we watched DVD's all morning in the comfort of our nice dry camper. haha





We went to see Santa and Mrs Claus, but Zack was less than thrilled to talk to them.





One of the nature items to see at East Harbor are the glacial grooves. I remember seeing these as a kid when we camped here. Sydney had some other thoughts on what the glacial grooves would be and went to go pout (and probably cry!) and she told us they weren't cool. Here she is pouting!!





The beach was very soft and sandy. In fact, the majority of it had a sandbar! That was nice for the kids to go play on, while I enjoyed laying on the beach :)









We made a camping speciality, "fire pies". We were very careful this time not to burn them, like we often do. The kids actually ate several of them, this will be added to our camping menu!





On the way home we stopped at the Marblehead lighthouse.




This place was cool because we could see Cedar Point. So close, but so far away. *sigh*