On Our Way to Cancun

We are on our way. A bit of guilt requires me to give some background...Gary and I have been married over 13 years. The first 5 were childless. We were able to do a little traveling but just as far as we could drive. (California, Arizona, etc.) Since being pregnant with Spencer we haven't gone anywhere for more than one night (maybe two once). So we felt justified in taking a trip, just the two of us. That being said, we started planning about 6 months ago. We discussed different locations and began researching the cost of each one. We eventually narrowed it down to Cancun Mexico. I have never been out of the country so I was super excited. And going somewhere tropical in the middle of winter was a must. Gary spent umpteen hours planning, researching, scheduling, and booking everything. It was time well spent. The entire trip went so smooth. I really can't think of anything I would change.

Gary's parents came to watch the kids. We are so blessed to have them. They love our kids so much and we all absolutely LOVE having Papa and Mangya come visit. We left home Sunday, January 25th. The original plan was that we would leave after church, however, the weather didn't want to cooperate. There was a storm rolling in so we left about 10:00 a.m. We got to Lehi unscathed and got to bed early. We were up and going by 3:30 in the morning. The plane flew out of Salt Lake at 6:00. We had a layover in Minneapolis and left behind the -8 degree temps to arrive in sunny Cancun at about 80 degrees. It is no fun to spend an entire day traveling but it was so worth it! By the time we got settled into the hotel it was time for dinner. If you ever go to a resort with an "All-inclusive" option, do it. The food and drinks were endless, 24 hours a day. We filled our tummies with yummy stuff and headed back to our room to get some rest for the fun week ahead.

Our first real day here we didn't have anything specific planned to we decided to get our shopping out of the way. We went to Market 28 which is a huge flea market. It was fun and frustrating. It is not a flea market like in the US where people are selling their old stuff or hand crafts. There was a variety of stuff but everyone pretty much had all the same stuff. Jewelry, chatchkies, shirts, wood carvings, etc. You can barter over the prices but we were a little timid so we didn't get as good of prices as we could have. We did get two dresses and bracelets for Desirae, I got a necklace and some "real" vanilla, Gary got a Brasil soccer jersey, Each of the boys got a shirt and a carving. We even went to Walmart. It wasn't much different from the ones here. We rode the bus everywhere. It was really easy and only cost 7 pesos. The exchange rate was almost 14 pesos to a dollar so that was about 40 cents per ride. We had fun but I was really ready to be done by the time we were finished. On to day three...