tuesday.  jan. 19.  2016

today is a rainy day-completely overcast drizzly rainy day.  we all got ready thinking it was a rainy day that rained and moved on, but it never moved on.  so we got our comfy clothes back on, and read and watched movies.  alex and i were working on finishing her college application to byu idaho today too.  uhhhhh, sometimes having kids is a lot of work!  especially when they don’t do what you ask, like writing their college essay 3 weeks ago.  it is what it is.  alex is great-it’ll all work out:)

monday.  january 18.  2016

shopping with two of my girls today-it was great fun to walk around with them in the mall and grocery shopping and just visiting together.  they’re such great girls.  we came home, put groceries away, and all of us went to swim at the pools at the big resort.  it was a great day.

 

saturday.  january 17.  2016

when we were getting our rental car the first day we arrived, the guy giving us our papers before we finally get the car tells us we can tour a facility, eat a free breakfast, and even if we aren’t interested, they’ll give us $100.  he just needed a $20 deposit we would also get back.  45 minutes for breakfast, 45 minutes for the tour.  i kept saying, how long is the presentation really, and he would say it’s not a presentation, we just walk around and look at the beautiful resort-no pressure.  we’ve done plenty of timeshare sit-in’s for free things…disney tickets, our honeymoon was free because we sat in on one-and thank goodness we found that deal because we were poor students when we got married.  so we figured-free breakfast, kids swim, and we make money back-ok-we’ll bite.

earlier this week, i wasn’t feeling great, so jarom thought he would just take the kids and feed them breakfast and do the walk through.  this is almost an hour north of us, we are pretty close to tulum.  he drives all the way up there, and they refused to give him the tour/presentation without me, and offered a free week to come back for his time(like we would ever see that).  so we planned to go up the day we take jarom back to the airport, since it’s right on the way, and they are both up north.  we arrive, having an hour and half before we have to go…we were told an hour and a half.  it takes them an hour just to get situated, and we told them he has to catch a flight, and that threw them in a tizzy.  they needed all afternoon, not just an hour and a half.  the head guy said just go through it, don’t mention the flight, and they’ll get us through it.  we finally get assigned a guy, sit down, he’s asking us questions, and said-let’s go to breakfast, and the presentation will be another 90 minutes after that.  again…another timed amount that is different than the first two people said.  what a gimmick.  we finally just tell them to give us our $20 back, and we would be on our way.  it took them some time, you can tell they probably don’t give money back much, but they returned our money, and we left.  we were there an hour and a half, and accomplished absolutely nothing.  we decided to have jarom catch a cab from there-since the airport was another 30 minutes away, an hour just to get back to this point, and the kids were starving, it was about 12:30 at this point.  so we part ways with our sweet daddy.

the girls and i headed to a natural food store someone told us about, i was looking for a few specific health items, and we found a restaurant first(that even made pancakes)!, and then the cute health food store-bio health. they had our favorite octagon chips and veggie straw chips there too-but they were $9/bag.  yikes!  we have found mexican grocery stores to not have good chips…we like the octagon(food should taste good is the brand).  we don’t eat junky chips, and besides a few brands of junky chips, are the hand made hard to eat chips. so i guess we’ll do without.

we made our way home and chilled, the girls got in a swim in the evening(nadia is getting the hang of snorkeling)!, and we chilled out more at home.  good day overall, we will miss our dad for the next two weeks-but so grateful we could have fun with him for awhile while he was here:)

 

friday.  january 15.  2016

playa palaiso was pretty when we went before, but it was really windy, and there was quite a bit of seaweed from the winds-hence the 9 rating.  jarom wanted to go back today, his last day here, and we decided it was a good idea.  it ended up being perfect-the water was gorgeous!  and clear like a pool.  it was just amazing.  our four hours there may have been too much as we are all tomato’s, but it was just lovely.

alex had to stay home again today because of stomach pains from something she ate yesterday-maybe food poisoning from the buffet at chichen itza…we aren’t sure, but that’s one reason why i don’t like buffets.  hopefully next week she’ll get to make it to the beach!

jarom took me on a date tonight-the outdoor thatched roof restaurant on the beach in akumal.  it was lovely eating a dinner together watching the sunset on the ocean.  he will be flying home tomorrow for 2 1/2 weeks, and coming back the last few days we are here.  he is just amazing.  does all the laundry, and grocery shops.  he’s also just so fun to be with.  a great dad, makes us all laugh.  just such a great hubby and father.  so grateful for this amazing man who does so much for us.  we love you!

something funny nadia said that i want to remember…jarom said he had blonde hair, and nadia said he had blonde hair when he was younger, but he now has brown hair with grey highlights:)

 

thursday.  january 14.   2016

moroni, our tour guide in tulum, told us to stop by his house on the way to chichen itza and he would leave out a carving of the tree of life he had for us.  we missed it on our way up, but on our way back, we found his house, and sure enough, it was hanging on the tree out in front of his house just like he had said.  it was so nice of him to have given a hand carved tree of life to us that he had done-was really kind of him!  we will treasure it!

 

thursday.  jan. 14.  2016

jarom couldn’t wait to get to chichen itza before he left-and today was the day.  it’s been stormy lately, but today, the rains held off, and it was nice and cloudy.  it ended up being a perfect day for walking around.

we drove the 2 1/2 hours from where we are staying, and arrived in chichen itza.  right after you go through a highway toll, you can pull over, they let you buy tickets and parking pass right there at a little booth, and they also offered for $5 each, the buffet to eat at afterwords.  i’m not a big buffet person, but the kids were ecstatic.  “remember the one time we got to eat at a buffet?”  i think they were more excited about that than the actual ruins:)

we pull in, walk down the beautiful cobblestone pathways through the jungle, and enter the area with all the beautiful historical ruins.  this city was huge, there are so many things to see and imagine that went on here.  as you walk the dirt paths down to see the ruins, there are many vendors trying to sell you stuff.  the best line was, “almost free…one dollar today-no?  ok, than two dollars.”   it got to be a little annoying.  but you just don’t make eye contact, or you do to scare them off.  we made it to the big temple of chichen itza-just beautiful!  even though it is dwarfed by pyramids in egypt, and those are tombs, as chichen itza is a temple, it is still pretty magnificent.

we made our way around looking at other ruins of the city, including the great ball court where they had to get the ball in using their hips…the winning captain would present his own head to the losing captain, who then decapitates him.  this was an honor, as they believed they would go directly to heaven instead of having to go through the 13 high steps to get to heaven.  i personally would have preferred going the 13 high steps.

the observatory was amazing, it even had a cylindrical structure.  it was beautiful-and massive.

the sacred cenote’ was pretty cool too-if you jumped in and survived, you were considered a god.  everyone died but one man, emerging from the water claiming his role as deity.  not sure how shallow it is or what made it so dangerous, but i believe he probably studied the other men and where they jumped, and figured out a better place to jump into.  however he did it, pretty smart.

wednesday.  jan. 15.  2016

pouring rain all day, which is awesome-we took it easy today, reading and watching movies.  it is a nice re-charge day.

tuesday.  january 12.  2016

we were all set-had our tour reserved with helaman, someone who gave us an lds-mormon tour of the tulum ruins years ago-probably 8 years ago.  we were excited to have him give us a tour now with our kids.  we were going to meet him by our bridge at 9:15.  we all got up at 7:30 to be ready by then.  and then right before we step out, i check my email, and sure enough, at 7:00 he emailed that the other family on the tour didn’t want to have anyone join them, that we could find someone at the ruins.  i honestly can’t blame him though…we negotiated a good deal, he probably decided it wasn’t worth taking us in the end.  which ended up being a good thing for us, because we paid half of that once we got to the ruins.  we found another tour guide-name moroni-who also gave us the lds perspective.

one thing about being here at the ruins…you go in-and you go out-they won’t let you in and out multiple times.  so we carried all our beach stuff(yes, kids carried swim noodles the whole tour) and wore swimsuits thinking we would swim after the tour-because the beach is beautiful.  but when we finished the tour, the beach area was pretty small and quite a few people were down there, so we carried all our stuff for nothing, but it was fine.  built character somehow i’m sure.

it was a very hot today, and after the tour, everyone was famished.  in search of a good pizza joint, we were guided to a pizzeria with authentic italian food.  we decided we would go there-and it was amazing.  just a couple lights down from the ruins…called la nave.  fantastic!   if you are ever in the area-come here-10 stars!  and traveling with 6 people, and trying to be economical, we have discovered we just fill water bottles at home, and bring them with us throughout the day and into restaurants, and there’s never a problem.  sometimes they want 40 pesos a bottled water($2.35 x 6 people =$14), so we are saving quite a bit when we eat out-it all adds up.

we all came home and napped, because site seeing and touring is exhausting!  and then kiddos went and swam a bit.  so glad we don’t have to get up at 7:30 tomorrow!  it’s not my favorite-thank goodness we homeschool and can get up when we want!

ps.-if you want a fast foot cleaning, you can put your feet in the mini foot cleaning tanks.  no thanks for me.

 

 

 

monday.  january 11.  2016

i’ve said before, we are renting a condo, and this residential area we are in is part of a larger resort, which is pretty cool.  we get to use some of those resort amenities for free…bikes, huge swimming pools, the beach, and also see the dolphin show.  we woke up today, the girls got their schooling done and their hour of reading done, and we headed across the highway to the other part of the resort to the dolphin show.  the show ended up being just fine…at least it was free, and the 15 minutes of watching the dolphins was entertaining enough…well, at least for our 7 year old.

we jumped back in our minivan, and headed to akumal playa, four minutes down the road.  it said rain showers today, so we didn’t have high expectations for anything, just thought we’d hang out at the beach for a bit.  we had no idea what to expect at akumal- people online have said you can swim with the turtles, but we weren’t sure what that meant.  we take the exit for akumal playa, and just down the road a bit, is a little hut building.  people in the hut were talking to us as we were driving by, and i wasn’t sure if i should just stop in the middle of the road, but i did…it’s mexico-anything goes, right?  he was offering us snorkel gear, lifejackets, flippers, and a private guide for $25/pp.  i told him there were six of us, and i asked if he could do any better than that.  he dropped to $20/pp-which ended up being the best $120 ever spent.  you never know what you’ll get with these guide deals or tours, but it turned out to be pretty amazing.  the most patient guide too, as our kids have never snorkeled before, and nadia and madison had quite the apprehensions going in.

snorkeling can be a bit tricky for a kid, switching your mind over to just breathing out of your mouth through a tube, so we totally understood their nervousness.  our guide had a round lifesaver for nadia to hang on to, and we got our gear on, put our flippers on our feet and walked backwards into the water, and dove in to crystal clear, warm water.   it was beautiful.  even though it was overcast, there wasn’t wind blowing today, so it was very calm.  we started snorkeling out, and were able to see magnificent turtles just a few feet below us.   the fish were beautiful.  we even saw a school of gorgeous fish swim by.  we saw two sting-rays, and a few more turtles…one that was huge and 93 years old.  it was the best nature trip we’ve had, and even better, we got to snorkel together as a family.   towards the end we were able to swim by a coral reef, which was spectacular.  we probably swam for an hour and a half we are guessing…so once again, it was a great deal.

we swam back to shore, de-geared, and said good bye to our guide.  we dumped our stuff on the beach, and walked 10 steps to the beautiful thatched roof restaurant, and ordered a few meals to share.  it was reasonably priced too.  for four meals, and a piece of chocolate cake, and the tip the waiter self-added(which the tip turned out to be $5.80), we paid $58 total for 6 of us.  pretty awesome.

we decide to lay out and play on the beach a bit more.  the sun even made it’s way out a few times.   jarom got his drone out, and was able to get some pretty awesome shots of the area.  you can see how this little cove is perfect for snorkeling.

we head home, and the girls want to jump into the pool for a bit at the tao residential area we are staying in, and alex heads to get some school done at the wellness center.  so we part ways.  we make it back home, shower, and were just in time to see the sunset.  it turned out to be a pretty productive day after all!

 

 

sunday.  june 10.  2016

oh we had good intentions to get up and go to church.  we love going to church whenever we are traveling-gives us a chance to mingle with locals, and make friends.  but it just didn’t happen today.  yesterdays activities just wiped us out.  and alex studying late into the night wiped her out.  she didn’t even wake up until noon.  we also have a sore throat thing going on, which better pass soon.  so it was a lovely, overcast, rainy and humid day, in which we ate yummy food, slept, watched movies, and had a great discussion about the iron rod and the tree of life.

being allergic to gluten, dairy, and sugar(i’m the only one allergic to sugar), makes us eat pretty healthy.  but when we are traveling, we sometimes eat whatever we can.  plus with six people, it’s usually a lot cheaper to make meals-except when you can find a good taco stand in mexico.  so i will be posting here and there the yummy food we make.