Mexico

Mexico happened and now we are home, wishing we could go back, and counting down the days until we can.  In a nutshell, this trip was so much fun for every person in our family.  With the wide age range of my boys, it's hard to find things they are all interested in but this trip fit the bill perfectly.  I had to admit, I often referred to Henry as "Dead Weight" since he's too little to remember this trip so why the heck did I pay hundreds of dollars in airfare and passport fees so he could come along?!  But I changed my attitude as I embraced the fact that being all together, instead of doing the divide-and-conquer routine that we've gotten so good at, was better than leaving Henry at home.
This trip happened because my good friend is a travel agent and I was asking her about Hawaii vs. Mexico and how the costs compared.  Before I knew it, she had our trip to Mexico planned and we were so okay with that!  We booked our trip fairly late so our flights were terribly timed but saved us so much money.  And that is why we found ourselves at a little airport 45 minutes away at 4:25am.  Unfortunately when I got to the ticket counter, the agent politely told me that we were too late for our 5:15am flight departure and she'd have to rebook us.  I couldn't believe it!  But I shouldn't be surprised.  We always seem to have travel adventures/nightmares.  I'm still skeptical as to why it was easier for her to find 7 seats on three connecting flights to Cancun than it was to just quickly check us in to our flight that was leaving in 50 minutes.  But she rebooked us and we left at 6am only to find ourselves sitting on the runway for the next hour and a half.  It was maddening!  Eventually we took off but not after half the people on the plane had to figure out how to rebook their next flights they were going to miss.  We are not fans of that airport to say the least.  Luckily we made our next flight by the skin of our teeth but had to beg strangers to switch seats to allow Henry and me to sit together since the travel agent couldn't secure 7 seats together on our flights.  Good thing my boys are good travelers and independent!
We arrived in Cancun several hours later than expected, and tired after a very long day.  The rental car place was terrible and took two hours to give us our van that we had already reserved.  We will never use Dollar Rental again!  We finally arrived at 11:30pm to our condo (2000 sq feet, 3 bedrooms/5 bathrooms/full kitchen) where Henry immediately begged to swim in the pool that we had been promising him all day long.  Well, the pool was closed so I made the best of the situation by filling up the big jacuzzi tub on the balcony and let the younger boys swim in it.  Things could only get better from there and luckily they did.  Sort of.
The next morning, Randy took off to Walmart to buy food and in typical Randy fashion, backed out of the parking stall way too fast and broke the mirror off the rental van and broke one of the parking garage lights in the process.  What a mess!  Thankfully he'd paid for the full coverage car insurance so once he got over the anxiety that came with that, it was nothing but awesome from then on out.

While Randy was shopping and wrecking the van, the boys and I were sleeping and woke up to beautiful sunny skies and the sounds of a tropical jungle outside.  We even saw parrots flying around in the trees and a couple little green canaries landed on our balcony.  The view from our balcony was breathtaking and instantly reminded me of Japan.  I wasted no time getting the younger boys out to explore our resort.  The pool was HUGE!  In fact, it was a quarter of a mile all the way around.  That's a lot of pool.  We had fun running across the bridges and splashing through the shallow areas, still dressed in our pajamas.  We saw lots of iguanas sunning themselves until we scared them away.  So cool!  And then we walked down to the beach.  Oh my word.  It was breathtaking.  The sand was so white and soft and the water was the brightest blue.  There were rows of lounge chairs and umbrellas and a club house with a little swimming pool so we could order food and eat right on the beach.  I wanted to run straight into the water and roll around in the sand, giddy with joy.  But I didn't.  Instead we went back to our condo to wake up the teenagers and start our day.  Once they saw the pool, the iguanas, and the beach, they were more than happy to be awake.

4:45am at the Everett Airport

The cutest traveler in all the land.  His backpack was filled with Lightening McQueen cars

Arriving in Mexico after going through customs which takes a looooong time for a family of seven

Henry finally got to swim!

Waking up in paradise

Walking past the hibiscus flowers on our way to the pool

The POOL!

Henry running past the cafe where we ate dinner each night while the boys swam in the pool

See the boys running with excitement? 

A fun playground next to the pool 

the beach!

Henry was clearly not dressed for the beach yet :)

Iguana sighting

Parker knows how to soak in the sunshine

Ethan wasted no time finding coconuts and breaking them open to drink from.  

Epic Spike Ball games were played for days

The Caribbean Sea 

MEXICO

We’ve been in Mexico for three days and I’m still pinching myself that we are really here. I had no idea how beautiful it would be or how relaxing or how badly we needed some sunshine. I’ll post much more later but had to share where we are since I’m long overdue for a blog post.

Oregon Coast 2019

We are back from the Oregon Coast!  We just returned from a fantastic week-long vacation/family reunion.  It was a much-needed getaway and hopefully one we will repeat in a couple of years instead of waiting nine years like we have since the last time we went, which you can read all about here.
Before I tell you more about the trip I have to say that I was not looking forward to camping for a week.  It's been a long time since I've camped even for an one night.  Scoutmaster Randy has been doing enough camping for the both of us and I haven't missed it one bit!  For me, camping means a lot of work and preparation, dirty kids and dirt everywhere, sleeping uncomfortably in a tent and then waking up at the crack of dawn with a toddler.  Maybe I'm just getting old and tired but I really appreciate the basic things in life like a soft bed, electricity, and a shower to wash away the camping grime.  But I was excited to see my family and I know I can do hard things so I girt up my loins and did some meal prep in advance to make camping life easier and hoped for the best.  It turns out I was worried for nothing.  Mostly because of two awesome things.  A yurt and sunshine.

Our yurt:  Home sweet home!

 We stayed in a yurt which is a cool circular tent thing with wood floors, beds, electricity(!), and heat.  It's the closest thing to camping in a 5-star hotel you'll ever do.  Plus the public bathrooms were clean and the showers were free with plenty of hot water which we took full advantage of after a day at the beach.  We lucked out with sunny weather every single day we were there and that's no small thing.  Usually there's a lot of clouds and fog that sometimes burns off in the afternoon but we woke up to sunny skies every day which meant the kids could play at the beach as soon as they ate breakfast, so they did.

My boys playing double dutch would only happen on a camping trip where there are no screens.

 But the greatest thing about camping that I've forgotten about is that the kids play all day long.  If we had stayed at a beach house (which would've been my preference) the kids would've played at the beach and then come inside and watched TV for their down time.  Instead the kids played all day long with each other, strengthening their relationships with their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  It was priceless.  We played lots of board games late into the night.  My boys played catch with the football, they played lacrosse, they rode their scooters as they explored the camp ground, we went on easy hikes, explored the tide pools, walked along the beach, and ate a ton of junk food throughout it all. But mostly we were at the beach all day every day.

Here's a few more pics...

The sunsets were gorgeous but I hardly took any pictures of them.  Major regret!

I love these boys!

Daily trips to the Tillamook Creamery for ice cream were another highlight after a day at the beach

Sampling the cheese.....yummy!

Henry and I always shared a cone

These boys are returning from walking all the way to the end of the beach to look at tide pools

We had a huge group and staked our claim each day with our beach chairs (my Grandma and several aunts and uncles were all there as well)

lacrosse on the beach

Teenagers on the beach

Okay, this post took several hours to do as my computer kept crashing.  I'll post more later so hang tight! 

February Stuff

I love Parker.  I especially love that he still takes naps.  I love the photo above because he looks how I feel at 9:30pm every night after a day of going non-stop.  This morning my alarm went off at 5:40am so I could go running and after reluctantly climbing out of bed I walked into the closet and could hear the rain pouring down.  Perfect excuse to go running later! and I hopped back into bed for another hour.  It felt so good.

The Batmobile

 We survived another Pinewood Derby.  Randy and Ethan started out with minimal interest in the competition this year, especially since Ethan won 1st place last year, but Randy can't do anything half way so he still managed to put in lots of time building a fast car.  

But here's something you probably don't know about the derby.  Until you race your car for the first time, you really have no idea how it's going to do, regardless of the time you spent building it.  That first race is the moment of truth and that's what makes the whole thing exciting.  Well, to me anyway. Ethan's car did great.  He was up against 15 other cars and was holding strong at 2nd/3rd place when they raced the final four cars.  You'll have to watch the clip below to see the horrifying crash as Ethan's hopes are dashed to pieces.  After three consecutive crashes his car took a beating and finished 4th overall.  Oh well.

Ethan right before "the moment of truth"

The sun has been appearing more frequently which allows us to spend more time outside, specifically at the new park that just finished being built down our street.  Some rich lady in the community bought this huge property with a house on it and everything and then donated it to the city under the condition it remained undeveloped.  The city decided it would be OK to develop some of it which is annoying to us because we hate the trees and fence that were ripped out to make room for the parking spots that went in, but the slide, zip line, and walking paths are pretty great.  Oh, and the bridge over the swamp is pretty cool too.  Basically the whole thing makes me even happier about where we live. 

These blossoms wouldn't be appearing for another 2 months in New England.  So glad we live here!

The boys driving to our park

Over the swamp and through the woods to Landon's house we go

Landon standing proudly in front of what he thinks will someday be his house

This is Landon in front of the house that's in the woods at the "new" park.  It's a nice house and totally empty.  Landon decided that since he never wants to move out (I told him eventually he'd have to) he could move into this house.  He talks about it like it's just a matter of time before he moves in.  He even said, "I'll live so close to you, Mom!  And that way when you're going to the grocery store you can call me and I'll meet you there so you can pay for all my food."  I laughed so hard but was kind of disturbed that he's making big plans to be an adult who's still totally dependent on his parents. Hopefully he'll outgrow that!

 

That bobble-head looking boy running across the field is Marcus.  He's playing lacrosse now.  I know NOTHING about this sport and have never seen a game.  Neither has Marcus and his first game is Saturday.  I've decided to embrace my son's natural ability in all things sports and hope he can land a scholarship out of it.  Otherwise this is a lot of time and money down the drain but I try not to think about that.

His coach has a man bun.  As I stand on the sidelines watching and waiting for practice to end, I play out scenarios in my head where I run up and cut the bun off with a pair of scissors and run away before he knows who did it.  Can you imagine how awesome that would be?!