Every year we try to get everyone matching Christmas jammies. This year I ordered them online as usual, and about a week later they emailed me to let me know that ONE of my SIX pairs (Skyler's) was out of stock -- but don't worry -- we're not not going to charge you for that one. Um, duh. So I waited for the other 5 to arrive and promptly sent them right back. Since by then there were no other options for full family matching jammies, Kylee and I headed to Walmart and just chose out sweat pants and t-shirts for each kid. They always open them on Christmas Eve night, and they loved them just as much as they always do.
I love that our house has a mantle so we can actually hang our stockings!
Ally made an elf trap at school, and left it out on Christmas Eve night. Alas, she did NOT catch an elf this year.
Christmas morning came and the kids got a lot of cool stuff. They especially loved the custom quilts from grandma KD. What the kids did NOT know was that we were actually leaving for Cancun around noon. They were happily playing with their presents and putting together puzzles and I was starting to freak out because it was almost time to leave for the airport and Andy had not even given them the little wooden puzzle he'd made to break the news yet. FINALLY, he gave it to them, and they used the wooden letters to spell out "get your bags, we're going to Cancun!" They were super surprised, and they were like, "When are we going!?!?" I was like "We were supposed to leave 10 minutes ago, so go get dressed and get in the car." At first they didn't believe us, but then they realized it was real. I've never seen them get ready so quickly. Record time!
Our flight was out of Juarez, Mexico because it's only about 10 minutes further away than the El Paso, Texas airport and it cost less than half as much to fly from there to Cancun. So we got to drive across the border. The kids thought it was cool to finally go across this bridge. We see it every time we go to the zoo, but we've never actually crossed into Mexico before.
When we arrived at the airport the parking lot was TINY and there were zero parking spots. After circling twice Andy hopped out to ask someone where we should park. They pointed us in the direction of a dirt area that was beside the actual parking, but still with the airport fencing. They said we could park there for free. There were a few other cars already there and some of them were nicer than ours, so we went for it. When we came back 6 days later our car was still there and perfectly fine, so yay!
Kids were super excited to go on an airplane.
I had hired a shuttle to pick us up at the airport and drive us to our resort, so when we arrived they were there waiting for us. They brought this whole huge van just for us, and provided water bottles (which was awesome considering that our flight had no drinks or snacks at all).
We stayed at the Sea Dust all-inclusive resort. It was so fun! They had a rock climbing wall, zip line and mini golf for kids, plus it was right on the beach, there was a kids swimming area with water slides, and the food and non-alcoholic mango pina coladas were amazing.
They even let Colby do the zipline. He was a little nervous and the harness was pretty humongous on him, but he had a blast!
Mine and Andy's favorite thing was lounging at the beach enjoying the sunshine and listening to the waves.
The kids' favorite thing was the water park. It was not at all crowded and they probably went down these slides about 100 times.
They even had a littler kid water park for Colby. If you zoom on the picture below, you can see his lips pursed. He wasn't even going under the water at the bottom, but every time he take a deep breath and then hold it with his lips and cheeks pursed out like this. It was so cute!
One day we had tickets to go down to Xelha. It was supposed to be about 2 hours away by bus, but because of a couple of wrecks on the freeway it took more like 3.5 hours. It was a BRUTAL ride. We ended up cancelling our other day trip to see ruins because I couldn't take another long bus ride.
As we were walking around Xelha the kids found a couple of huge lizards.
The first thing we did was ride bikes along a path up to the head of a river, and then floated down the river on tubes. We didn't take our cameras because they said we shouldn't. I totally regretted it because we could have brought them and it would have been fine. When we first got to the bikes the choice was bike to the river or shuttle. We said we wanted to bike and the guy was like "all of you?" Yep. "You know you have to go on your own bikes?" Yep. "Without help?" Yep. "And no training wheels?" Yep. "Each person riding by themselves for the whole way?" Yep. I think maybe he thought Colby and Ally looked too small, but he underestimated them big time. They both hopped on and took off like pros! Those kids love riding bikes.
Later in the afternoon we picked up some snorkel equipment and I took Kylee, Skyler, and Ally out snorkeling while Colby and Andy went to have second lunch (free food at Xelha!). They all did a great job!
Kylee and Ally wanted to try this huge waterslide, so Andy took them to do that while Skyler, Colby, and I went to play on the playground and try the little kid waterslide.
At the end of the day we walked down to the other end of the park and there was a cave you could swim into. Ally really wanted to try it, and at the last minute Kylee came as well. Andy, Skyler, and Colby went up top to look at us through one of the crevices.
After our day at Xelha we had a few more days to just chill and play at our resort. It was such a great way to spend part of Christmas Break! The kids want to go back again ASAP.
One night after dinner we went out to the pool that overlooked the ocean, and there was almost nobody there. The kids pretty much had the whole thing to themselves!
On our last night at the buffet dinner, Skyler's mask disappeared. The best we can figure is that he must have set it on the table with his cloth napkin and the waiter accidentally grabbed it when Skyler was gone to get dessert (having forgotten to wear his mask). Being the OCD kid that Skyler is, he panicked. He thought for sure we were going to have to leave him there because there was no way he was going to be able to get on the plane without a mask. We headed down to the hotel shop area and most of the places were closed. Luckily one was still open, but they only had one mask on display and it was too big for Skyler. I asked the gal at the counter if they had any others, and she kindly went into the back to search. She came back out with this Luigi mask, and it fit Skyler perfectly. Plus it was only $4. He felt like a whole new kid once he had this mask on. He loves Super Mario, so it was perfect. It ended up being the mask he wore to school from that time forth as well.
When we arrived back in Juarez the plane parked away from the gates and we got to get out via steps at the front and back doors. The kids thought this was super cool. When we arrived back into the airport we were detained for a little bit because it turned out we were in Mexico illegally. Apparently we were supposed to have filled out some kind of paperwork declaring why we were there and how long we were staying. They were so confused about how we possibly got all the way to Cancun and back without the paperwork. Finally they figured that because we came on Christmas Day, someone must have slacked. So they "put warnings on our passports" (if that's even really a thing), and let us go.
Sadly the line to get back into the U.S. was REALLY long. It took us about 2 hours to cross back over the border, but we finally made it!
