Monday, May 24, 2010

The longest update ever! Mexico!!


Andy and I took our first solo vacation a week or so back. We went to Cancun Mexico and it was glorious! We stayed in an all inclusive resort, which only makes sense regardless of how often you eat there for the drinks alone! The weather was beautiful and we arrived with relatively small issues. We rented a car, which I highly recommend so you can set your own schedule, BUT only if you or someone your with is capable of driving with no signals,speed limits and virtually no rules. Right up my ally, honestly, nothing can be worse than driving in Milan Italy, although Andy swears his blood pressure went up just walking in the direction of having to get into the car! We got to our hotel easily, they are all on one strip so if you drive past it, just turn around. First stupid American moment, I can't get the car into reverse.......Ummm, I have driven stick before, Andy's truck IS a stick shift. So we get all huffy puffy trying to figure out how to call the rental company to have them bring us a car that did actually go into reverse. We stop to ask the front desk people to help us with the call and they ask the simple question, "did you pull up on the button thing?" Ummmmm, noooooooo, what button thing? Yup, it went into reverse just fine once you knew how to do it. I guess allot of their cars are like that, woulda been nice to have been told that sometime before we left the rental desk! That first night we decided to go to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville in honor of my dad who is a true parrot head. It was fun, we ate fresh made guac, drank margaritas, watched a singing dancing shark and bought my dad the most kick ass t shirt ever, srsly'. We went back to the hotel sat by the beach for awhile, had another margarita and then turned in because we were already exausted from the traveling to get there. The next day was sunny, and hot and humid and just wonderful! After breakfast we set off to try to find Market 28, a huge flea market in Cancun, we were given directions and told we can't miss it! Yeah...you can. Eventually we found it, and the Wal Mart we had also been looking for, hey, we had to buy razors and shampoo and conditioner since those were no no's in our carry on bags. Market 28 was just exactly what you would expect, and we didn't stay to long, just long enough to get Andy some sunglasses and the girls bracelet's with their names weaved into it. The rest of the day we lounged by the pool and the beach and just read and talked and generally enjoyed (ahem ahem) each others company. Looking back this may have been my favorite day. We watched the nightly show, Broadway songs, and then walked on the beach before we went to bed. The next dayy...ummmm, Sat I guess was suppose to be a great day. We were going on a Catamaran to go scuba diving, then go have lunch and shop on a neighboring island. It started out great, we met a fun couple from Texas around our age, then we got into the water, huge swells, that didn't bother me in my Dramamine induced state, but Andy does NOT have sea legs and started puking...and puking...and puking... Poor thing, he finally felt better once we got to dry land, but at one point during the trip there I asked him if he was okay and he dove over me to puke over the side, I think that answer was no. Shopping was fun, we didn't buy anything because everything was uber overpriced and they were not willing to come down at all, but we did eat a tasty tamale from a street vendor and some delicious ice cream, we were both exhausted by the time we got home but managed to watch the night show hit's of the 70's!!! We had designated Sunday for a road trip to the Aztec ruins in Tulum, it was about a 2 hour drive from our hotel, but ended up being longer because of road construction. The ruins were awesome and we even hooked up with a gentleman from New Orleans and a guide. The drive back was fun, we stopped at a grocery store, it was just a really relaxed day. Monday was the day of our departure, we tracked down a Starbucks for the drive to the airport and ended up in a parking structure that we didn't have enough pesos to get out of, so we had to find someone to convert out one dollar to pesos so we could validate our parking ticket. We weren't really stressed because I had already printed our tickets online that morning. We returned the car with no extra charges, woo hoo! and after initially going into the wrong terminal finally found the right one and were so glad that we had already printed out tickets because the line at US Airways was crazy long. We head up to get through security where we are informed that our tickets aren't "real" tickets. Weird because they were real enough to get us here! Ok, stress time, wait in the long line, we can't do that there is no way we will make our flight, so we go up to the first class line since we already have our tickets printed and they should take them. This is the beginning of travel hell. The print our tickets but tell us that our flight is delayed due to storms in Charlotte, and that we may not make our connecting flight. Greeeeeaaattt. So we get through security, head to the airport margaritaville where I suck it up and make a few 99 cent a min phone calls to our babysitter, and my mom, to let her know whats going on and that we will figure it out more when we get into NC and it isn't so expensive to call. To add insult to injury our bill was 80 bones and we each had 2 margaritas and SHARED a fajita plate. OUCH! Finally we got onto our airplane and I have hope that we will make our connecting flight, hey if our flight was delayed, maybe our next departing flight will be to, and we seriously only need it to be delayed by like 10 min. It wasn't, and we missed it. So we tried to get to get on the next flight standby, but there was only one seat open, so we stayed the night in the Raddison Suites on the airlines dime, which would have been great, except that we had to be back at the airport for our next flight departing 7:30AM, which means in the lobby to catch the shuttle at 6AM. My sweet sweet hubby is always the romantic though and while showered he went down to the bar and bought a bottle of wine and some little cookies since I had mentioned earlier that we would get cookies at a doubletree. What a nice surprise to step into the room to find Andy, two glasses of wine and cookies. He truly is my knight in shining armor. We made our flight to Phoenix the next morning, and caught our flight to Spokane just fine, I was so giddy when I knew we were getting close because I couldn't wait to see my babies and they were right below waiting with my mom for us to land. So what did we do? We circled the airport for 30 min due to fog before they detoured us to Seattle. This is about the time my wild mam instinct kicked in and I broke out bawling. Had the been handing out parachutes at that moment, I am sure I would have been the first person to jump. I cried and sulked and was just miserable the entire hour to Seattle, finally we landed and I could call my mom. I told her to take the kids home to nap since I didn't know how long it would actually take us to get to Spokane. My heart ached for my kids, I knew that there had been such buildup at the airport that mommy and daddy were coming home, and then we didn't. I felt defeated and even just remembering it stirs deep emotions in me. We did make it home, and not too much later either, they refueled the plane and headed back this time able to land. We finally landed in our home airport late Tuesday afternoon. We called a friend to come pick us up and he dropped everything to do it. We get home and jump in the car to go to my parents house to get the kids, but where are the car keys? I call the babysitter and ask her and hear the dreaded words, "Oh crap, they are in my purse right here." AHHHHHHHHHHH! This is NOT our day! Luckily before I meltdown again Andy reminds me that we have a spare and he knows where it is. Thank goodness! Seeing the kids was wonderful! I guess Emmy cried home from the airport and off and on till we got home that day, poor thing. She was the most excited to see us. It was a quick night once we got home it was almost bedtime, so we gave them their presents, snuggled and read books and then they went to bed and I set in on unpacking. I figured in a couple days live would be back to normal, and it almost was. Gaving was back the next day, we went to our BFF's house to BBQ dinner, but on Thursday night I started feeling kinda achey, I figured I pulled something, but it was so much worse. Swine flu. That's the next post, I'll probably do it tomorrow since it's getting late and I'm still sick.

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