2 Little Gals and 3 Little Pals

Monday, November 12, 2012

A getaway for 2

The first and only time Mike and I had been on a vacation with just the two of us was on our honeymoon. We've been married for 12 years, and our kids are getting older (as in, they no longer need nourishment from me), so we decided that it was time for a kid-free vacation. Just us.

We both wanted to go somewhere tropical, so deciding the destination was pretty easy. Somewhere in the Caribbean! I literally researched for months and months before we made our decision to go to the Mayan Riviera, more specifically, the city of Tulum, Mexico. My oldest sister has been to Riviera Maya a couple of times, and she always comes back with the most amazing pictures! She said that we must check out the Mayan ruins in Tulum, so we just decided to stay at a resort in that same city! We stayed at Dreams Tulum and it was fantastic!!

The coast of Mexico as we were flying in

The main lobby of the resort

This was where we ate our first meal! The view was amazing! :)

Just more of the resort's landscaping...

A cenote (which is a natural sink-hole...something like that) that was on their property

The activity pool

The quiet pool

One of the bars where we tried a variety of drinks ;)

Look how precious the workers are in their fancy little hats :)


They stamped these designs into all the ashtrays. Pointless in my opinion, but whatever. They really do strive to make the place as pretty and relaxing as possible! So that's nice.

The ocean was incredible!! Really, that was one of my main must-haves, a nice turquoise ocean, and it definitely delivered!

We took a cab to the Mayan ruins, which were only about 5 minutes away. It was beautiful! The buildings were incredible and the view of the ocean was breathtaking. Seriously!!! It was gorgeous!

By the way, I didn't change the color or anything on these pictures at all. They are completely unedited. The water really is that blue!

These sweet little lizards were everywhere! Here in the ruins and all over our resort as well.


The walk through this jungle was probably the most peaceful walk I've ever taken! :)

We decided to wake up early one morning so that we could watch the sunrise together. It was just as beautiful as I'd hoped it would be! :)

This was the most relaxing vacation ever! I had so much fun with the love of my life, my best friend, my sweetie! I'm so happy he talked me into doing this! We had such an amazing time together!

To say I was extremely nervous about leaving the kids would be the understatement of the year. Not because I thought that they wouldn't be taken care of, but because I've never been away from them for more than a day! I didn't want them to think that we weren't coming back (mostly Jett...I knew the older kids would get it). Not having ever worked since Laney was born, I am not used to being away from them or them from me for so long! In fact, the morning we left, I woke up about an hour early...you know how it's hard to sleep the night before a trip? I woke Mike up and told him that, even though we would get to the airport way earlier than we needed to be there, we had to leave immediately, because the longer I laid there thinking about how much I would miss them was just making me anxious. I had to get out of there! ha! I know that it was good to get a little independence (for them and for me!), so I'm glad we went. But man, was I ready to see them when it was time to come home! They did awesome and didn't cry for us at all, which was such a relief to me! I'm so happy they did so well!

My amazing mother-in-law stayed at our house for the 6 days we were gone and took amazing care of them. I don't know how we will ever make this up to her, but we are so thankful for a Mom and a Ma-Maw who was willing to do this for us!!! My mom took the boys a couple of days, so a big thanks to her, too!!! My mom and my mother-in-law are pretty much rockstars!! We literally could not have done this without them!!! I love both of them so much!

I miss the beach. Can we go back now?

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Elijah's funny, yo

Well, if that title didn't draw you in, I don't know what else will.

First, a confession.* I watch Roseanne. and by watch, I mean I've seen every.single.freaking.episode 8,000 times. Mike could probably recite each episode word for word. So, okay, I know it's probably not the healthiest (okay, not probably, just not) show out there, and it's lame and not kid-friendly, and blah blah blah. whatever. it's funny.
So I was watching an episode the other day. Let me set the scene:
Roseanne, Dan (her hubby) and the kids were sitting in the kitchen in the dark, because they didn't have money to pay their electric bill. Jackie (Roseanne's sister) comes in and doesn't notice their power is out and is just talking away and making herself breakfast. After a few minutes of not paying any attention to what she's doing and just going about like nothing's wrong, it finally hits Jackie that they have no electricity and Roseanne says "Well, we don't have any power, but now we know the speed of stupid."
hahaha. funny, right?
Anyway, so Elijah was in the room when that part was on**, and he thought it was funny. So a few days later, we're sitting in the living room talking about fast cars or something along those lines, and we're laughing about something and out of the blue, Elijah says "Well, we don't know the opposite of stupid, but we know the opposite of speed."
??? =)
I dunno, maybe you had to be there.
The kid is hilarious. His teacher agrees. We had parent/teacher conferences this past week,*** and his teacher went on and on about how he's constantly making her laugh.

*that probably wasn't a confession. I'm sure I've mentioned my love for Roseanne and the Golden Girls at least once here. hmmm.

**I actually do monitor what he watches. No, really. Like I said, I know every episode of Roseanne and what happens on each one, so I know if something is coming that isn't appropriate for someone under the age of 7. and I don't watch it all that much. Seriously.

***My kids are rockstars. I have never received a bad report at any P/T conference. Pretty much all I hear is "If I had a class full of Laneys/Chloes/Elijahs, my world would be much easier."
And if that wasn't braggalicious enough, Laney's teacher handed us her big 1st quarter math test, and showed us her 100% A+ grade, while saying "The child got a 100%. No one gets 100% on this test." By the way, Laney didn't inherit this gift from me. If you couldn't already tell, what with all the Roseanne watching and what not.