A Little Bit of Paradise

After much preparation, we enjoyed an amazing trip to Cancun Mexico. When I say preparation, I think I must go a little overboard because Justin's comment the day before we left as I was frantically working on my 25 item to-do list was "I don't think I would ever want to go on vacation if I felt like I had to do what you do to get ready." So I completed my list and we headed to the airport with our fingers crossed that we would make it on our flight flying standby (tis the life of a pilot's family). We made it and even got to fly 1st class (the steak was amazing!) We had ahead of us 6 days of paradise. We left the kids behind with Grandma and Grandpa, with who the kids had a ball and didn't even seem to have missed us when we returned. Infact, Andrew cried when we told him that Grandpa (aka his constant buddy for the 7 days) would be leaving in the morning when we returned. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you Grandma and Grandpa Hogge!

Our resort was absolutely beatiful. I could have spent 6 days sipping virigin pina coladas at the pool. The weather was perfect and the scenery what awesome!


Our first day we went on a tour of the ruins with Helaman Tours, as you can guess it was a LDS guided tour of the Mayan ruins. It was amazing. I had lots of "child free" time to practice taking some shots with my new camera and learning about Book of Mormon history. Here are a few shots:

Chichen Itza:

This type of tree is called the "Tree of Life", coincidence?

On another day we saw the beautiful ruins of Tulum that are right on the coast. I can definitely see why the Mayan people chose here to build their temples.
Definitely a favorite part of the trip was our "jungle tour" from Alltournatives. They took us on a wild jeep ride in the jungle (I truly wondered if we might roll the jeep or get bounced out-- a little more that I was anticipating), snorkeling in centotes (sink holes) and sea kayacking to a coral reef for more snorkeling:

There were a few more pics that I wanted to post (I think I took nearly 400!), but it's taking WAY too long to upload. So, I'll spare you and call it a night. So here's our trip in a nutshell.