Monday, March 21, 2011

Up in the air...

On the 12th we began our trip to Mexico. I was super-nervous about taking a multi-flight, out-of-country trip with the hooligans, but my husband was sure it would be great. ...and if he wasn't sure, he has a very good poker face.

We left early, parked in the new, ultra-luxurious Wally Park Garage (seriously - it was posh...and only a dollar more a day than the outside lot, with their grand-opening special).


Clearly we don't travel much (except in the van), because the kids were were super-excited about the shuttle ride to the airport.

Cozy climbed onto a seat and was so happy to be buckled up like a big person.


Sofia (like the new do? Shockingly similar to Odie's haircut - don't you think?), before the word "Shuttle" reminded her of Star Trek...


...and she stared making everyone do this....



Oh yea, we were on the party shuttle. It could only be downhill from there. The first flight went ok. We passed the credit card around so that everyone could watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Boo was predictably good (give him food and tv...). Cozy was predictably restless.

By the time we got to Houston, I felt like I had taken the kids on an all-day shopping trip and reasonable questions like "where is our gate?" and "Can we get pizza?" where making me want to scream. To make things worse, Tony (with our passports and boarding passes) was nowhere to be found when they started threatening to oust people from the flight if they hadn't had their passports verified before boarding!

Luckily he arrived in plenty of time, piping hot pizza in hand (seriously...we boarded the plane with a giant pizza box), and got us all squared away with the passport police. James and Cozy slept thru the last leg to Cancun, and all surrounding passengers expressed their gratitude (though relief might be more accurate).

We landed in Cancun at 10pm, Tony was unhappy with our rental car situation, so we sat around (car-less) for about an hour until he rented us our dream car...a Sienna (just like the one we left at Wally Park). We started driving south with Cozy screaming and everyone else sleeping. (How do they sleep through that?)

At this point, I did not have very good feelings about our vacation.

All of those feelings just melted away when we arrived at the "family compound" in Akumal. Met by Tony's wonderful family, at a beautiful, beautiful place (even in the dark) - how could you not be excited and happy.

The kids obviously felt the same way...and expressed it by trying to climb the palm trees after tempting coconuts. Thankfully, one of the caretakers got a ladder before anyone got hurt, and they cracked open coconuts to their hearts content. Behold the devastation:


Coconut Apocalypse 2011

6 comments:

  1. What excitement!
    I can't wait to hear about all your adventures (and if the shuttle ride was any indication, there will be plenty to share!)

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  2. You are a brave, brave woman. Did you make it back with all the hooligans??? I would have been seriously tempted to leave a few behind. :) Hope your trip was wonderful!

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  3. I can SO relate to this post. We took our kids to AZ this last week and it took three flights to get there. Every time I go on a trip I think it's not worth it--traveling with kids. But then we get there and I tend to forget how hard the travel was when we're in all that sunshine. :)

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  4. Awesome! So glad you got to have a fun family vacation. Mexico is off limits if you live in San Diego for military, so it's not looking like that's a vacation we will take any time soon. Can't wait to hear about the rest of it.

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  5. Oh, Lia thanks for letting us see your trip, please finish! Missed you guys . looks like you had a fun time!

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  6. It looks like the trip was off to a great start! Can't wait to hear about the rest of your adventures.

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