The Journey of Parenthood…

Playa Del Carmen

We literally only spent $22 while on this trip! We spent $4 tipping the shady driver ($2 to the resort, $2 to the airport) then $17 on souvenirs at the airport (an ornament for us, rain stick for Kye and magnet for Mom). We vowed to take advantage of the all-inclusive and the Mexican sun and we did just that 🙂

After getting in at 2 am we got woken up at 8 am by the front desk telling us we had to do our timeshare presentation that morning…happy anniversary to us! After that was done we just RELAXED for three straight days. Our resort was Sandos Caracol Eco-Resort and Spa so there were a TON of neat animals all over the place and beautiful wildlife. It was fun to “hunt” for animals every time we walked to our room. Here are all the ones we saw:

outside our room

can you spy the crab?

at the pool…HUGE

fed the turtles

sweet kitties

the first night we were there the raccoons were eating from people at the tables!

For our anniversary we spent the day laying out and relaxing then went to eat at the Japanese “Restaurant” at the resort. It was still part of our all inclusive but it was a little nicer than a buffet!

we decided no gifts this year to save money so I got Z a nice card

finally a REAL married couple again!

 (Z had his wedding band stolen from a locker and it took forever for the insurance to get him a new one!)

a walk on the beach after dinner

Before we left for the trip Zach surprised me with an Anniversary present…I was SO mad b/c we weren’t supposed to buy gifts!!! But I was also happy b/c it was the black Toy Watch I’ve been wanting! After seeing The Blind Side I LOVED Sandra Bullock’s watch and they carry them at Steels. While I love the white one she wore, I’m a “practical” type girl and with the dumb southern rule about white after Labor Day I knew I wouldn’t get as much wear out of it as I would the black 🙂 Yay for the awesome surprise! I LOVE IT!!!

Pretty much our entire trip was spent by the pool. We only walked to the beach twice and both times were at night. The bugs there were SO bad and they were worse on the beach. We stayed by the main pool during most of the days because they had all the entertainment and you know Zach was all about some water sports! Here are some videos of him participating in three heats of the kayak races…heat 1, heat 2, heat 3. I wonder who won??? Also we took this video of some people participating in the salsa dancing lessons…our favorite is the guy in the red swim trunks (ignore the obnoxious guys who think they are so cool getting in my shot!) Here’s some of the pictures from our time at the resort!

the pool!

water polo domination

pool kayak king

he won a shirt for me! yay!

I enjoyed watching the action…not participating

no doctoring was done to the beautiful sunset (or Zach’s red “lobster” face!)

we played SO many rounds of Bingo yet never won 🙁

When we weren’t at the pool (or in our room watching episodes of The Office!) we were grubbing out! I say that like I ate SO much but in all honesty, I don’t care for all-you-can-eat situations. I never eat that much. And I NEVER like the food. Even on our honeymoon I didn’t enjoy a thing other than the ice cream. This trip? I ate potatoes and bread for every meal (and I loved the chocolate milk when they had it)! No joke!

the waiter wanted in on my pic!

One thing Zach and I were PUMPED about was the ice cream! When we went to Cancun with Aflac back in October we loved the sprinkles. While these weren’t exactly the same they were still awesome and we pigged out on ice cream every chance we got. I, of course, ate more than Zach did because it was my meal 🙂 Here are all our ice cream indulgences…caught on camera!

first time I found the ice cream!

It was a LOT of ice cream, a LOT of sunshine and a LOT of fun with my favorite travel partner! Can’t wait to try somewhere else next year and hopefully have a better travel experience to match our resort experience 🙂

Emily Parker
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