A family of 36 people went to Mexico and this is their tale

I'm starting this post at 12:34 in the am and that has never once been a good idea.  But we are headed on a road trip to beautiful, cool Phoenix in the morning and I promised myself I would get these pictures up before we left.  I know you are probably thinking, "Weren't you just on vacation?"  The answer is yes and the explanation is that Greg and I are both teachers so when summer rolls around we do what we want!  Ask me if there is anything in the world as great as having ten weeks off of work with your husband and your baby.  There is not.

We got back from Mexico two weeks ago and I am mad that I still haven't gotten around to posting these pictures.  It isn't so much that I haven't gotten around to it, as I lost the cord to transfer the pictures.  I am technology disabled.  It is no fun.

I am tired enough that I probably won't go in to a lot of detail about the trip.  Here's the short run of it- I went to Cancun with my entire family- my husband and baby + my mom + all seven of my siblings + their spouses + their kids.  There were 36 of us.  It was wild!  And so fun.  I don't remember a time in my life where we have all just hung out for a week.  It must mean we really like each other, right?  Either that or we're just totally nuts.

My mom planned and organized the entire trip.  She's a soldier.  I don't know how she did it all.  Organizing a trip for that many people- she should practically be a travel agent at this point!

And now, an absolute ridiculous amount of pictures.

WE ALL ARRIVE AT THE AIRPORT IN CANCUN...

THE HOME WE STAYED AT...
My mom found a beautiful home with ten separate bedrooms.  Each room had a bathroom and small living area for each individual family + a room for my mom + a room for some of the older grandkids.  The accommodations were awesome.  Our only slight disappointment was that it said the property was beach front.  We thought that meant we'd be right on a beach and be able to play on said beach all day.  Well, beach = lots of dangerous rocks but you know, at this point we're just arguing semantics.

WE PLAYED IN THE POOL...
Almost all of our activities involved water.  We swam in pools, in the ocean, in a cenote! (A spring.)  It also rained every single day we were there.  It was warm enough that it didn't matter too much except for the two days there was a hurricane and we literally couldn't leave the property.  Ah, mother nature, you sneaky vixen you!  (I'm mad I didn't get any pictures of the hurricane.  It was unlike anything I've ever seen.  I seriously wondered if we were all going to blow away.)

WE RODE BIKES UP TO SOME RUINS...

Our tour guide was really nice to always offer to take pictures for us, but sheesh, he ain't got no picture taking skills...  I'm so bugged you can't see ANYONE'S FACE in this picture.
 

Again.  Awesome sight; bad picture.

My handsome beau... check out that sweetmaroon/ bright red color combo.  You're telling me you're not in to that?

Greg insisted we make human sacrifices when we got to the top.  I obliged.

That hat that Greg is wearing is my favorite history in the history of ballcaps.  We lost it that day.  A moment please, for the ballcap.

WE GAVE AWAY SOME STUFF...
Hands down the coolest part of the trip was when we stopped in a village to give away school supplies, clothes, toys, etc.  My mom had organized a humanitarian effort to bring some of the extra stuff we have to those who need it more.  She somehow talked Delta into letting us all bring an extra suitcase free of charge (my mom is AMAZING) so we each stuffed a suitcase full of stuff to give away and brought it down with us to share.  (The last day of school I sent an email to teachers asking for any old notebooks, pens, pencils, binders, etc.  The response was overwhelming.  We filled three full, big suitcases with school supplies to take down.  People are good.)

The experience was very sweet, but also very painful.  The distribution of wealth in this world confounds me.  It was so sweet to see how the people gathered and crowded, anxious for our supplies.  It was heartbreaking though, at how quickly the stuff was gone.  I felt like it was a matter of minutes and the suitcases were empty.  There just wasn't enough.  And when the stuff was totally gone people kept coming, hoping to get clothes for their kids, notebooks for school.  We had to keep saying, "Ya no hay. Ya no hay." (There isn't anymore.)  It was crazy because I felt like we had brought an absurd amount of stuff down with us and then it was just gone.  Like that.  There will never be enough in the world to fill the need and gosh, that's a hard truth to stare in the face.

Even though we couldn't give "enough" and there will never be "enough", it was still a beautiful experience.  I'm so grateful for my mom who always encouraged us and continues to encourage us to think about more than just us and to look out for the world around us.  My mom is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. (You can see her in the left of this picture giving something away to a little boy.)

WE JUMED IN A CENOTE (SPRING) OVER AND OVER.  AND OVER.  AND OVER.
Even though it was rainy and cloudy most days, Cancun was still plenty hot.  We were sweaty all day (Oh, the humidity!) and jumped at any chance to get in the water.

My mom and two grandbabies.  Jensen and June were born weeks apart.

WE SAW MORE RUINS...

WE HUNG OUT ON THE BEACH
 Well, some of us slept on the beach anyway...

A rousing game of smashball.  It's like four square meets racket ball meets tennis.

WE WENT TO XEL-HA 
Xel-ha (Pronounced Shell-ha) is basically a huge water park for snorkeling, tubing, jumping off cliffs, ziplining, and eating!  All you can eat food the whole day and all the outdoor adventure you can imagine.  It was the perfect day.
 
This is my pretty mama who organized the whole trip.  I'm sure she'll be mad that I put the picture of her up with her snorkel on, but she's gorgeous nonetheless, right?

Above and below are pictures of me and my adventurous, free spirited niece, Josie.  She's one of my favorites.  Sometimes I wonder if she is me in a five year old's body.  We also share that spirit with Davy, my 12 year old fun loving nephew.

One of my favorite pictures from the whole trip.  EVERYBODY GRAB A HAMMOCK.

The afternoon we all left for home.  WHAT A TRIP!

If any of you are thinking about traveling to Cancun/ Tulum area I'd be happy to answer any questions or share any advice we have.  All of our activities were so much fun, but my favorite part was just the uninterrupted time with my family.  We played late night games of mafia, talked about books, shared spiritual insights.  The cousins played and played and played with each other.  I feel so grateful for my family.  They are everything.  And I like to think that my dad was there with us too- watching us run wild around Mexico and being so dang happy for all of us.

P.S.  A short short side note on vacations with a baby.  They're awesome!  I loved having June along for all of our adventures.  There were definitely things that were different or that we couldn't do in the same way that we would have pre-June, but having our girl with us on the trip made it that much sweeter.  Before I had June I thought kids would be the end of vacation and the end of traveling and that's not the case at all- if anything vacations and traveling are better with kids in tow.  It is so fun to experience everything through their eyes.  Somehow it makes everything a little bit more magical.  I am totally of the mindset that you shouldn't let having a baby stop you from doing any of the fun things you would have done before kids- it is easy to make it work and so worth it for me.

Be Right Back

See that picture?  I'll be there if you need me.

For the next seven days I will be soaking up the sun Mexican style with Hubs and my whole fam damily.  There's 22 of us embarking on the family cruise of a lifetime courtesy of my madre.  You gotta love a mom who knows how to party, right?

I'll make sure you won't miss me too much, though.  I've got so much to say and so many freaking opinions to share that coming up with material to entertain you with while I am gone wasn't hard a bit!  Next week we'll be talking about when girls married to men go on dates with girls, what happens when the "honeymoon" stage wears off, and most importantly, how to prepare to have a baby by babysitting a giant teddy bear!  You're going to want to stay close. 

Everything you've ever wanted to know about MY HONEYMOON!

Did you ever wonder about my honeymoon?  Did you ever stand there, while making dinner, mixing onion in with that ground beef, and let your thoughts run away with you?  Did you ever start pondering, "How was Bon Bon's honeymoon?  What did she do?"  Did you ever wonder how long my honeymoon was?  Or where we went?  I'm sure you have.  It's a normal thing to wonder, folks.

Today you're in luck because I am going to fill you in on the gory honeymoon details.  Hold on to your seats, gals, this is going to be good!

(Interesting side note- we forgot to take our camera on our honeymoon.  I therefore paid a completely outrageous price for a disposable camera at Catalina Island. Twenty four poor quality pictures are all the evidence that we have of our honeymoon.  The pictures that you see below are actually pictures of the pictures from the disposable camera (you still with me?) so let me just tell you that they are not the best quality pictures you have ever seen.  They just might be the cutest, though.)

The honeymoon week was my favorite week of all time.  Yes, there were the normal reasons- a week off of work, a complete escape from reality, no one calling me, spending 24/7 with Hubs after months of self control. But it is also my favorite for another reason... because it ended up being nothing like we thought it would be. AKA everything that could have went wrong did.  This was not our fault, however.  This was the fault of the travel agent, Larry.  You see, Hubs decided to go with a travel agent because Larry was an old acquaintance of Hubs' and Hubs figured, "I've got enough hooplah to worry about with this crazy woman and her engagement frenzy, so I'll let someone else worry about the honeymoon."  And he did.

Problem is that Larry had a few tricks up his sleeve.  We were supposed to go on a seven day cruise.  Five days before the wedding, I was in the middle of teaching a creative writing class and my phone started vibrating off the hook in the my desk.  My students always know when my phone vibrates because as one of them so eloquently stated, it sounds like "a robot farting."  I chose to ignore it, but it kept vibrating and vibrating and vibrating.  But people, you can't ignore a robot fart forever so eventually I had to answer.

On the other line was an absolute panicked Hubs.  "Bonnie!  Larry called!  Our cruise has been cancelled!  We have no honeymoon!" (Later I realized the cruise has most likely not been "cancelled" but that Larry had never booked us on the cruise to begin with)  I tried to reassure Hubs and finally after a lot of frenzied phone calls and a lunch period spent on the phone and NOT eating my tuna fish sandwich, we had figured out another option.  Larry could get us a 4 day cruise.  We would stay in a hotel in L.A. the first day.  We would get a refund for the downgraded cruise.  Everything was going to be okay.

From that point on there were problems, problems, and more problems with the honeymoon.  We got married on a Saturday and stayed at a hotel in Salt Lake.  Our plane left for California the next morning at 7 am.  On daylight savings...  Making it feel like it was actually 6 am.  Now I don't know if you've ever been married, but the last thing you want to do the morning after is drag yourself out of bed at 4:30 am.  All the way to the airport, I elaborately plotted ways I could kill him.

Once we were at our hotel in L.A., Hubs noticed a charge from his bank account.  Apparently, Larry was using Hubs' account to pay for the hotel instead of using the extra money from our downgraded cruise.

The real kicker was when we got to our cruise cabin.  There was no queen bed, no ocean view like we had originally bought and planned for.  Instead there were two twin beds.  One on top of the other.  Bunk beds.  For our honeymoon.

Que romantico!

We spent the honeymoon trying to share one twin bed, and I guess it was romantic and cute in its own way, even if I did get many an elbow to the face.  When we look back on it now I say, "How did we ever share a twin bed?"
Hubs reply: "We were in love"
"We're still in love now!"
"Yah, but then we were in twin bed love."
I guess the man is right.  We were in twin bed love, and maybe that's the only way we could have survived it.

At this point in the ballgame, all Hubs and I could do was laugh.  "That Larry!  He sure did get the best of us!"  When you're in love and you're on your honeymoon I guess anything can go wrong and you'll be happy.  From then on, everything that went wrong we blamed on Larry.

"Oh man, we're late for dinner!  This is Larry's fault!"
"Hubs, you're feeling sick?  Larry, I am so sick of you screwing everything up for us!"
"We just got ripped off by a Mexican selling fake vanilla?  Larry, you will pay for this!"

And somehow, the trend has continued on throughout our marriage... even a year and a half after the big honeymoon, we still try to blame everything on Larry.

I forgot to do the dishes?  It was Larry.
Hubs didn't call to tell me he'd be late for dinner?  It was Larry.
I got another speeding ticket?  It was Larry.

And that my friends, is the secret to a successful marriage.  Have a scapegoat.

(And P.S.... six months later we finally got the $600+ back that Larry owed us, thanks to the help of my lawyer brother.  Sometimes you just gotta be persistent!)