OOOOOOOOOh Mexico...

I've never ever been there, but I'd like to go!

OK, that's not true, we just went a few weeks ago!!!! :)

Oh man, I don't even know where to begin on this one. The trip was fabulous! Taylor and I have been singing Jimmy Buffet's 'Oooooh Mexico' for weeks now.  Well, I guess I'll start from the beginning...

We were off...

Well, let me back up a bit. Somewhere around October or Novemberish, our good friends, Emily and Kirt started talking to us about joining them on their Mexico trip to Cancun and the ruins. They had planned this trip with our other friends, the Fry's. Since we are also friends, they were trying to talk us into coming. I've always wanted to go to the ruins in Mexico. I am usually the one who is all over things like this, and wanting to travel and go places. Ben is the one who is more conservative with money, and more leery about doing things like this. But he was all into it, so I went with it. He said that if I could get my mom to watch our kids for us for the week, then we would go! I just felt bad because she had just watched our kids for our anniversary weekend in September. So, cautiously I asked her, and of course, she said yes. Weather she actually wanted to or not, I'll never know. But she did and we are so very grateful! So...that was November. The trip was already planned for the first week of February. Kirt got us a room at their resort, and we just had to find airfare! Well, that didn't happen until Jan. 2nd. So...I guess it wasn't official official until then. It almost didn't seem real to me, because it all happened so fast! One month later, we were on a plane to Mexico!!! It just so happened to be Superbowl Sunday and if you look at the above picture, we flew through Denver. Ben really stood out with his Seahawks shirt on. I think he tried to get in a few fights, but...

When we got to our resort that evening, it was just about starting time, so we were able to watch it in Spanish in our room. Our friends didn't get in until later, so we had a few hours to ourselves to watch the game. We were tired, and hungry and so we didn't get to enjoy it like we wanted, plus the game kinda sucked --YAY that the Seahawks won!!!--but kind of a boring game anyway.

We also had some other issues that we had to deal with right off the bat. The resort that we were staying in had a few different resorts all in one location, so we were actually in a different resort than the rest of our friends, so we tried to get them to change our room, which they wouldn't. That totally frustrated Ben, and after being tired and traveling all day, we walked into our room and there were two full sized beds!!! Doesn't exactly set the romantic trip mood we were looking for. So, he tried again to get our room switched to no avail. So, we totally slept in separate beds all week. :) It was actually kind of nice and I slept SOOOO good! :) ha ha

Finally Kirt, Emily, Delphia & Cary got in and we had a late dinner at our resort, and hit the sack.

The next morning we hit Playa del Carmen. Our resort was actually about 30 minutes south of Cancun, and we didn't even go there much. We were closer to a city called Playa del Carmen. It was about 30 minutes south of us. Closer to the ruins. There, there was a Wal-mart and bigger stores and we wanted to get some food for the week, and just check it out a bit. I love Mexico so much. I honestly felt like I was right at home there (dorky, I know!!!) 3 of the 6 of us spoke Spanish, so it was nice being able to talk to our taxi drivers and waiters and find out the local things to do and the favorite local restaurants.

The main beach at Playa del Carmen, right by the main ferry that goes to Cozumel, you could actually see Cozumel from the beach. All of us whiteys in our covered clothing. You could tell it was our first day! :)

After grocery shopping, we headed back to our resort to do some swimming. Unbeknownst to me, Ben brought this pair of speedos he has, as a joke, to wear. So, we change and head down to the pool, and Ben strips down into these bad boys. Then...starts to do some stretches, a la Michael Phelps before his Olympic races. :) Everyone was dying. It was pretty funny!!!  Even funnier were the old men all around us really wearing speedos. (like that guy with the cigar sitting next to us in the picture. He also had some pretty sweet gold chains around his neck!) :) Sadly enough, that was the only time that those speedos made an appearance.

The resort the Christensen's and Fry's stayed in was called The Mayan Riviera, and ours was called the The Mayan Palace. Both were awesome. I was kind of confused as to why there were so many separate resorts all together, it was like they were one, with one entrance, and then they separated, but anyway, the Resort had this amazing pool!!! It is the largest resort pool in Latin-America! It was huge and beautiful!

The beach was also right there, and amazing. They all got in a pick up game of volleyball, I'm not much of a volleyball player, so I wandered around and took some pics.

This awesome gazebo over the water, where they do special dinners and weddings. It was awesome!

Our beach was a bit rocky, but there were beautiful beaches right around the corner.

Looking back at our resort. You can see everyone playing volleyball...

Some more of our resort...

The beautiful Caribbean sea...

After their intense game of volleyball, we all just relaxed and read in the sun. It was perfect weather, and so beautiful...

One view of our pool. This was probably about 1/16th of the pool... :)

It sure was a good start to a great week!!!

January according to my phone...

Well, I thought I was done with January photos, until I found all of these on my phone before it died! :) Luckily I got them all off! But here goes, January according to my phone:

Grandma Glo send up this awesome battery powered car for Christmas! The kids have loved it, and on the first day it wasn't too cold to ride, they went out. They only lasted a few minutes, they had to try it out! The maiden voyage went pretty well!  :)

This little lady is such a ham! She loves to be the center of attention and make people laugh! (I don't know where my kids get that from!!!)

Lovin' on her little brother! Also, started spiking Jacksons hair when he gets out of the bath, which I think is adorbs!!! :) It usually stays like that until his next bath! :) Ben was horrified the first time thinking that I had put gel in our 8 month old's hair. Nope, just a little lotion on the hands after bath time, and viola! :)

I got Jackson a new toy in hopes of encouraging him to sit up a bit better on his own. I still have to put pillows all around him, but he does just sit there and play with his new little toy. I think it's so cute! :)

We took some time to re-vamp Taylors room! :) It was just SO not Feng-Sui and it was starting to drive me nuts! I took out the bunk bed since we never used the top anyway, and then we could put her bed under the window giving her a lot more wall space. Santa brought her a really cute doll house that needed some space, I didn't want it to end up in the living room or something!!! (my kids have WAY too many toys!!!)

I absolutely love the way it turned out! It is so adorable, and she just loves to hang out in there and play now, it is wonderful! We all do! :)

Here is some photographic proof that we really do love to just hang out in there:

Jackson asleep on her bed one afternoon:

And just staring out the window! One nice thing about our tall tall ceilings and windows is that both of my kids have pretty cool views from their rooms! It's fun to just hang out and check out the scenery!

We also did a little Valentines decorating. Taylor and I made this banner with just dollar store foam hearts and stickers! I love the Target dollar section. We had fun doing it, too! She is my little friend.

If the kids read 300 minutes a month, then Pizza Hut will give them a coupon for a free personal pan pizza. I love me some pizza hut, so we saved some up, and headed out with our friend, Owen. These two boys are connected at the hip! :) But I do love me some Owie, I'm glad Tucker has a good friend like him, he is so very sweet. Tucker started out the school year with 300 being his monthly goal because that was the minimum, but then told me he wanted to try for 500, then the next month it was 700, then 800 and now he's up to 1000 minutes of reading (extra reading) a month, and he's done it one month so far! He loves to read, and I'm so glad he does. He's always been my smarty pants!

So, the last week of January I wanted to lose some weight for Mexico. I tried this lose 10 lbs in 10 days program where you basically only eat salads, canned chicken (or tuna or salmon) and apples for 10 days. I've never been one to stick to a diet very well, but for some reason this was easy for me. And I did it! I lost 10 lbs in about 12 days. (that is how many days I did it before Mexico.) Really it was a starting point for me just start being more conscience of what I'm eating and when and how much, which is definitely not one of my strong points. I did my fitness pal religiously and I felt great! I would still make dinner for my kids, but I would just always have my apple and canned chicken or salad, and my crazy kids always wanted their own can of chicken. They loved it, and canned chicken wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. So, I had to laugh and get a picture of my kids eating canned chicken for dinner:

{real classy!!! Apparently pomegranates, popcorn and canned chicken was on the menu that night--yum!!!}

And this is what this boy looks like eating, I couldn't leave him out of the food pictures:

I took these pics of Jacks and Taylor on the night before we left for Mexico when I was getting a little sad to be leaving them for a week. I looked at them a lot while I was in Mexico! :) I just love these little ones too much!

Enero...

Luckily, after all of the craziness of the Holiday's, January was a pretty low key month. Since we flew home on the day of the National Championship game, and Ben's team was playing, our friends, the Nelson's knew that he would be up watching the game. We came home to this awesome chips and dip with a note. It was so awesome of them to do that, and the dip was DELICIOUS!!!  (Kirt came and picked us up from the airport in our van, so when he went inside to get our keys to the van, he saw this, scratched out the Nelsons name, and put in his--as a joke!) :) Yea, we have some pretty awesome friends! We got in pretty late, like at 10 or 11 if I remember right, but Ben was still determined to watch that game. He did everything in his power the whole flight home to not overhear what the score was because he knew it was being recorded at our house, and he wanted to watch it. A guy sitting next to me on our last flight from Boise to Spokane spilled the beans to me--thankfully Ben didn't hear--so I knew the score, so after eating a bit, I went to bed, but Ben stayed up until 2 in the morning watching the game. The outcome wasn't good, so it was a dark and dismal few days at our house after...

The one negative to always going to Alabama at Christmas time, is that I come home after, totally Christmased out, and STILL have to put away all of my decorations. I'm always so exhausted and over Christmas at that point, that I'm done! :) Ben usually takes care of the tree, but it was just eating at me that it was still up in the corner, dried and dead and wit no decorations. So...I found a little hand saw in the garage one day and went to town. Tucker's friend, Collin was over and I put him to work!, helping me put all the limbs in the garbage. We hauled out the stump, did a little vacuuming, and viola--Christmas was officially OVER! :) That sawing was quite therapeutic, I need to find something like that to do as my workouts every day! :)

Oh man, I love this little man. I love the big man, too! :) But he was snuggling with his daddy one night so I had to sneak a pic:

Since we had 9 oclock church last year, I didn't get any pictures of the kids in their church clothes. Tucker & Jacksons were pretty run of the mill, but I wanted to get a shot of cute Tatey. I love this girl so much! It is so much easier getting pictures with our 12:15 start time this year! :) I am rejoicing in the time change.

After weeks and weeks of wanting to do dance, I signer her up. She is so stinkin' cute. I had her go to one of my friends, Michelle, who is so awesome. Unfortunately it didn't last very long. Long story...but I started her out on Wednesday's, and I could tell right away that she wasn't at the same level at the girls in the class, so I changed her to the younger class, which happened to be like a half an hour before she got out of preschool on Friday's. Anyway, long story short, I was taking her out of preschool early on Friday's to get to dance, and it didn't seem like she even cared if she was in dance or not. Not that she didn't like it, but that it seemed like she was just indifferent. So, I decided all the effort I was making to get her there every week wasn't worth it until she showed me that she truly wanted to take dance class. I mean, the girl loves to dance, don't get me wrong. She wants to have a dance party every day, but I'm not sure she was ready for a class. We'll see how it goes in the future...

She sure was cute for the 4 weeks she took the class. :) Dance outfit and snow boots...

Michelle and Taylor in dance. I love this girl!!!And Michelle is awesome, if you live in Spokane and are looking for a place to send your daughter to dance, let me know!

Now she's saying she wants to do tinastics (gymnastics) and I think I might let her try that out to see if she gets more excited about that! :)

Our January field trip with the preschool was to the fire station. Taylor & Amber in the truck:

The whole group with the fireman. I love these little kiddos:

We had some major branch bonding this month of January. First, our Relief Society had a women's retreat at the house of one of the sisters. It was awesome. Just getting in and out of her house was an adventure itself. They seriously live in a cabin in the woods. It was a really cool house that they had built themselves, and it was a perfect setting for getting to know our RS sisters better. And there was seriously THE best food I've ever had. If all of our branch activities have this caliber of food, I am seriously going to gain 100 lbs. It will be the death of me! :)

Melissa, Lacey & Karla:

Hna. Zavala, Ashleigh, Hna.Gower, her daughter, Sonia, and another daughter...

Our entire Relief Society was there, plus the sister missionaries. I love these ladies:

The third Saturday night of every month is the Spanish session at the Temple. I love that it usually turns into a Branch activity with some sort of activity or dinner before or after. We had a dinner and activity before the session, then the adults went to the session while some youth and members from the other branch came and watched the little ones.

We played a getting to know you game where everyone was assigned an animal and you had to make the noise of that animal until you found others with the same animal. This was Tucker's group, with Hna. Martinez, Luna and Anna Mejia.

My sweet Jackson boy:

Taylor and I went to the Battle of the Bone. The wrestling match between U-High and CV. It was so much fun!!! John was wrestling, and is totally awesome. (Hoping to win state this year!!! woo-hoo!!!) Even though it's not the same building I went to U-hi in, it was fun to be there, and bring back some good memories! :)

John & Kathryn:

John & Taylor. John is so sweet to her:

John won his match, of course, and U-hi won the match, of course! I think U-hi always wins the battle of the bone. And actually, my senior year was the year that we started the battle of the bone for the U-Hi/CW match. Cool Beans...

John and his awesome friends with THE bone. U-Hi's theme this year was something about Bone round up, like Western something. John kept on making references to the 'brokeback bone' etc...I thought it was hilarious! :)

We did a lot of these type of indoor activities this month:

And the reason for that being:

It will be so nice to get out of this snow and into sunny Mexico. I think we picked the perfect week to go! :) And I do love me some free child labor! :) he he...

Our friend, Luna turned 6. We sure do love Luna!
Oh, and I was also commissioned out to make the posters for our Stake Adult Valentines dance. I love doing things like this. It was quite the adventure with Costco and learning how to print posters there, but we finally figured it out, and they turned out great! :)

And that's about it for us! Now on to bigger and better things, as we spent the first week of February in Cancun, and I can't wait to go through all of those pictures! :) I'm still in depression from being back in the frozen tundra of Spokane. Mexico was A-MAZING!!!

Reunited and it feels so good...

Here are some highlights of our time spent with family down in Alabama this Christmas:

All of the kids got new riding toys from Grandma & Grandpa. This motorcycle was a hit! We had to leave ours down there because we just don't have the space to bring things like that home. I'm hoping maybe this summer I can some how figure out a way to get at least one home. We'll see. Luckily, Elijah was more than willing to share his new motorcycle. These two were so cute, and played so well together this trip.

This is what happens when your mom and two of your aunts stay up WAY too late watching 'snapped' a photo-shoot happens wherein you are dressed like a shepherd. Luckily he doesn't seem too bothered! :) We spent entirely too much time laughing about this and taking photos... :)

My cute happy boy:

Of course, the I-pad is still the ever popular game of choice:

These older cousins couldn't get enough of their new little cousin, Jackson.

Sophie & Jacks:

Joshy & Jacks:

Everyone had left to go home by Saturday or Sunday, and we still weren't flying out until Tuesday. So it was just us and Meribeth's family for a day or two. It was actually really fun to have some one on one time with just their family and grandma and grandpas. It is usually so crazy and busy, it was nice to have some down time and quiet time with just Meribeth, Ryley and Kaiya! I'm actually really glad we had this time together with them since they are moving to England next month and who knows when we'll see them again! It will be WAY too long!!! I miss them already! We had a great time with just their family! Uncle Ryley and the girls:

Of course, when Aunt Meg's there, she is the ultimate, supreme fun aunt that the boys just love to climb on and wrestle with. It wouldn't be a family trip without an Aunt Meg wrestling match:

My two cute boys:

There's always lots of lounging and enjoying the kids. It's one of my favorite things about visiting Alabama. Grandma and Aunt Lynlee watching the kids:

We did some of our annual holiday shopping in shifts. While I was at home with the kids, we made some cookies. Fun times with these three little ones! All of them have such fun and spunky personalities!

Of course, Ben always tries to help and get as much stuff done as he can for his parents to help them out while he is there. This year his task was to power wash the house. I don't know if he was expecting it to take as long as it did. But he worked long and hard on it! But it looked great, and totally made the house look like new, it was amazing! Totally worth it!

My silly boy with his new Auburn hat. I thought it looked so cute on him!!

Oh my....this bear outfit. Quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen! I was so sad that it was a Carters 6 month outfit. It fit him this one day and this one day only! It will most definitely be passed down to the next grandbaby, whomever he or she is! Those cheeks!!!! I want to eat them!

My father in law has such great taste! :)

Another Alabama tradition is the bonfire and roasting of marshmallows. It still is so funny to me how their bonfire season is the winter. As it is just way too hot in the summer. I couldn't imagine building a bonfire here in Spokane in the winter!!! :)

It's also a good excuse to burn all of the toy boxes and garbage, so Ben and Taylor had to bring a few loads down in the tractor.

Jackson and I enjoying the fire:

Grandma also found an old box of fireworks that she wanted us to get rid of. So we set all of them off! It was so fun! Ben also may or may not have accidentally pointed a few at us, and had to shield us from wild fireworks!

This boy is so funny, he slept awful the whole time we were down there, but slept right through the fireworks!

Of course, it's the south, two HUGE things are football and food. Alabama played in a bowl game while we were there and it couldn't be watched without a feast. (especially with all of these Alabama fans in this family!) One of the many reasons I love my in-laws. We did an appetizer night, it was like the superbowl for us. And it was fan-frickin-tastic!!!! :)

Besides falling in love with his Aunt Meg, I think he fell in love with his Aunt Lynlee:

Especially after this incident wherein she let him eat off the beater of the fruit dip, he couldn't get enough! That aunt Lynlee is always sneaking treats and sugar to our kids!

I'm so sad that these girls won't see each other for a while since they are moving way across the ocean. Luckily they got in lots of snuggles and play time...

We flew home on the day of the BCS National College Football championship game. Which Auburn happened to be playing in. Auburn is Ben's team,and has by default become our whole family's team. We are an Auburn family. Which was really dissapointing t my mom this year because they were playing Florida Sate for the Championship, and Florida State has been her team since before I was born, and I was born and raised a Florida State fan. Anyway, Auburn is not too far from Atlanta, and it's right on the way. So, we stopped on our way to the airport that morning, and I had to get a picture of Tay on the Auburn Tiger! War Eagle!

Our flight home went well. Just long, as usual...

The kids started out happy enough. I always try to have ample toys and games and activities for them to do:

One major blow-out:

And a few tantrums later, this is what the end of our journey looked like:

{notice both of them are in new clothes outfits...}

One last picture of Grandma and all of her 16 grandkids. Not all smiling or even looking at the camera, but this is the best we got! :) I sure do love these people!

Christmas in Bama...

A few days after Christmas we packed up and headed south. All of Ben's siblings were going to be there for Christmas this year, and we were so excited to see everyone. We didn't go down last year for Christmas, and Ben doesn't go with us usually in the summer because that is the VERY busy time of year for work, so for him it had been a year and a half or two years since he'd seen some of his siblings. Luckily the flight down went off without a hitch. Our kids are pretty experienced travelers at this point in their young lives, luckily. But we always have about a two hour drive from Atlanta when we get there, so that usually puts us in pretty late. Everyone was asleep when we got there (we were the last to show) so the next morning was filled with lots of loves and hugs and always some wrestling and just playing and laughing with the cousins:

I don't know how we got so many little blondies in this family!? (although in this picture, they all look dark!) :) These cute girls were quite the pack this trip down. They're finally getting to the age of playing together.

Uncle Preston loving on some Jackson...

The two oldest grandchildren, playing with Jackson, the youngest. I still can't believe these boys are this old and big now. Where has the time gone???

Grandma's beautiful tree...

I brought a good ol' southern holiday banner with me: 'Happy Holiday's Y'all'

Since there was only going to be one or two days with everyone there, we did Christmas right on that first day we were there. Grandma did the traditional Nativity story:

While Alex read it from the Bible...

Cute Everett:

And Elijah:

And Jonah, one of my favorite little kids ever:

Of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without Grandma playing the piano and Aunt Meg singing:

Then the chaos began! And when I say chaos, I really mean chaos! 16 grandkids, 13 adults and loads and loads of presents! It's hard to keep it under control:

But everyone has such a wonderful time! We are truly to blessed to have this wonderful Alabama family of ours! Full of so much love and laughs and friendship. 

Jackson with his cousin Josh. Josh loved him some Jackson!

I think this guy had a thing for his Aunt Meg! (who wouldn't!!!???)

Uncle Jeremy was really enjoying the festivities:

After the kids went to bed that night, we did the traditional adult Chinese Christmas. Jeremy with his awesome Twilight trilogy game:

Grandpa with his new Elf boxers complete with jingle bells!!!

We got this frame that one of Meg's patients from the ER made out of burnt matches. Truly a treasure!

And Meg will never have to clean her ears again with his Wax Vac:

Even Zoe got a gift! A new hat and scarf!

After the Christmas festivities were over, we had the whole rest of the week to just enjoy one another, shop, watch football, go on Nature hikes, play with our new toys and lots of fun stuff!

Christmas day...

Finally the actual holiday's arrived and we were ready to celebrate with just our little family. Well, maybe not JUST our little family, but you get the idea. Our good friends, the Vazquez's invited us over for Christmas eve dinner. They invited the missionaries, and we had a delicious meal and a wonderful evening. Seriously, Maria is the best cook I've ever met. I seriously LOVE every single thing she has ever made for us. Hands down, the best! We had delicious posole, chiles rellenos, tacos and flautas. Also, she makes a mean creamy cilantro spaghetti. Anyway...enough of the food. We had a wonderful time with our friends, and the missionaries.

After the missionaries gave their spiritual message and left, then the party really started! :) Juan and Ben started singing some good ol' fashioned Mexican canciones, and the fun was just beginning! :)

We love the Vazquez family. Juan works for Ben and he is in our new branch presidency so we've gotten to know them very well over the last few years and are so grateful for them and their friendship!

Christmas day was fabulous. Our original plans were to fly on Christmas day to Alabama, which would have been fine, but we would have had to hustle through opening presents and then catch a plane late morning and get into Atlanta REAAAAAALY late. BUT...we changed our plans last minute so that we could enjoy Christmas day here in Spokane and we flew out 2 days later to Alabama. 

Anyway...we had a wonderful day. 

Not really sure what to think about this whole stocking thing...

Lots of great homemade gifts from the kids:

THE only thing this girl wanted was the game, Pop the Pig. She hadn't ever even played, but saw it on the shelf at the store one day in October, then that was all she would ever talk about. Needless to say, she was excited when she opened it up from Santa.

Then the excitement got a little out of hand. Even a bit scary...

Papa wasn't so into the excitement...

Tucker playing his new Play Station game, Jackson just chillin' on the couch and Taylor passed out on the floor. Great times!

Close up of our Tater bug...

And......a few hours later, they were still like this:

mess cleaned up, dinner eaten, movies watched, games played and they're still out cold! :) I love these babies so much! And I'm so grateful for my little family. Merry Christmas all!