Playa del Carmen

WARNING...there are a lot of photo's in this post and they are not in order:)...read on....Luke and I went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico for Spring Break. You fly into Cancun and then drive about 45 minutes to our resort. Landon and Josie went to Playa Del Grandpa and Grandma's house for the week. The kids were very excited to spend the week with them. Here is landon all packed and ready to go!

We flew out at 5:30 AM on Easter Sunday, so we missed easter with the kids....but they got to dye easter eggs and do a lot of other fun things with my parents:)

Here is a selfie of us when we arrived in Cancun.....

Whenever we arrive in Mexico....we always stop at the bar (there is always a bar outside of the airport) and drink up on the way to the resort.

We stayed at the Hard Rock Resort.....

Our room had a bathtub in the bedroom.

We also got matching slippers in the room...

Meanwhile back in Washington...My parents took the kids out on the boat to the sand dunes and let them burn off some energy.

Here is part of the hard rock lobby

The color of the water was amazing. It was so clear you could see fish swimming all around.

My dad is retired and my mom is still working....so dad had both kids to himself monday-thursday during the day...They went hiking one day:)

Back in Mexico the bartenders were very entertaining...

This is a picture of the ocean water...there were fish everywhere.

Flashback to Ellensburg...Dad took the kids to the park too.

And to the yogurt shop after riding bikes.

Luke and I took a taxi into the town of Playa del Carmen one day.

We stopped at a bar for a beer...but I prefer Ice cream over beer...so does my stomach, so I got some Ice cream instead.

I thought it was funny that they had a 7-Eleven.

Us on the way to dinner one night.

Last Thursday we took a tour to the island of Cozumel that was all day long. You have to take a ferry to get there. Luke and I were some of the last people on the ferry and there were not a lot of places to sit...so we ended up sitting on the back stairway. This was our view.

When we got to Cozumel we boarded a big monster truck looking thing and it took us to some mayan ruins.

Then we saw Crocodiles and it also took us to a light house that we were able to climb and see the ocean pretty well.

These Iguana lizards were all over.

Here is a view from one of the windows of the lighthouse.

Climbing the lighthouse...this was one of the signs.

The tour also took us to this beach. Apparently it is where they filmed the corona commercial.

This was a funny sign at the bar on the beach where we had lunch.

The tour also took us on a snorkeling adventure. I don't have any pics of us in our snorkeling gear...but here we are on the boat.

The Ferry from Cozumel to Playa Del Carmen and back is about a 25 minute ride. It can get pretty rough and we didn't realize on the way to Cozumel (when we were on the back steps) That a large portion of the passengers were puking there guts out. On the way back we actually got to sit in a seat and so we noticed the 'barf bag ladies'. These girls work on the boat and run around handing out barf bags to the passengers. what a horrible job!

Luke and I at the top of the lighthouse.

This is the lighthouse we climbed.

Like I said...these are completely out of order....One day Luke went golfing and I was hanging out by myself at the beach. Long story short, I made friends with a girl from London. Her name was Sarah and she traveled to mexico all by herself just to go on 'holiday'. We quickly became friends and headed up to hang out at the pool. We met a bunch of people while hanging out at the pool. One group included a guy named  Randy. Randy was a total crack up and apparently had decided to dive head first into the shallow pool at the night club the night before and had a huge gash on his head!..One night Luke and I joined Sarah and a bunch of our new friends at the night club. It also happened to be Luke's birthday.
                                                       Sarah and myself...

Here I am with some of our new friends..Randy is the one next to me with the huge gash on his forehead. This group of guys was in Mexico celebrating their friends last alimony payment:)

We took over one of the VIP booths...but were soon kicked out of the VIP area...it was fun while it lasted.

Here is Randy dancing with Sarah...Note his sweet white dancing sneakers and his sweet dance moves. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

The next day we headed to our beach at the hotel and it had been over run by seaweed! The workers worked all day trying to remove the seaweed...

Fortunately for us our friend Sarah had a cabana reserved for the day and invited us to share it with her.

Luke enjoying some complimentary champagne in the cabana.

Luke and I loved the 'green juice' that they had there. It was probably the only 'healthy' thing we ate the whole time we were there.

Here is a pic of the inside of the lobby.

Meanwhile back at my parents house...dad and the kids were building birdhouses and dinosaurs.

Luke went golfing one day and his golf ball landed near an alligator! Note the golf ball in the Lower Left corner...and the alligator in the water.

Here are a couple pics he took of the course. It was called Mayakoba El Cameleon.

Back at my parents house...The kids rode the motorcycle and josie gave landon wagon rides.

Landon painting his birdhouse. After being at my parents house for a couple of days Landon said 'This place is Awesome!'...It made being away from the kids a little easier knowing they were staying busy and having so much fun with my parents.

Josie got to drive my dad's boat.

Landon put his new birdhouse on the porch...He told my dad that his birdhouse needed a 'ding dong'...a doorbell:)

Back in Mexico...I can't get this picture to turn...so here is luke sideways at the beach.

Downtown Playa Del Carmen.

Even the nun's in mexico swindle you for money:)

This statue is on the main beach downtown.

for some reason the statue has two people wearing thongs imprinted on the side....Luke thought he would be funny and stare at their butts.

When we were there they were doing some sort of tribal dance.

I took a picture of all the Tequila at the beach bar.

I thought this was clever....They have walkers and wheelchairs that can go on the beach for all the people who need help getting to the water.

Not sure I would temp food poisoning fate eating here...but luke said it is probably really good.

These people were swinging by ropes in the downtown area.

downtown

I snapped a photo of one of the lizards by our resort.

The hard rock has an adult only side and a side with kids...We stayed on the adult only side:)

These guys were guarding the Ferry to Cozumel....

I still can't get over the color of the water...I think most of my photo's were water pictures.

this is the ferry terminal in Cozumel.

Luke in front of the ruins.

We also went on a Crocodile tour....

This was our monster truck tour bus.

I'm not sure what kind of animal this was....a Lemur maybe?...it was friendly, but a little strange.

Another Iguana picture..

The top of the Lighthouse.

This Lady was real and posing downtown...

 My mom was able to take friday off and they all went to the woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.

 A random Photo of my office...Apparently we are on the front of some magazine in spokane with this photo.

We had a long travel day on sunday..It took us over 16 hours to get home with layovers and travel time. My parents had taken the kids back to our house so they were there asleep when we got home. I am so thankful for the time Luke and I were able to have in Mexico and even more thankful to my parents for taking care of our kids. I think the kids did more on vacation than we did. Josie and my mom went shopping and had tea parties, They went to the Zoo, went bike riding, hiking, boating and built things, rode the motorcycle, did chores around the barnyard with my dad and made countless fun memories with each other. Now we are back to reality working and school. Josie is back in Soccer so our saturdays now will be soccer instead of skiing....