Cancun

Nate and I finally went to Cancun after having to reschedule 3 times since May! It was a really fast trip, but a much needed vacation. It was so nice not having to worry about Bladen since I knew he'd be happy and taken care of with my mom and Brandi watching him the 1st day we were gone and Brandi the rest of the time. My mom flew out to stay with Brandi and Tyler in Philly and toured NYC and DC the week before they came to stay with me. I got to hang out with them for 6 days before I left :) Mom had to fly back early to start work and Brandi had until Monday to start school so the timing was perfect.

This is the view of the ocean and the pool from our balcony

We stayed at the Moon Palace and it was SUPER nice!

Nate and I spend most of our nights on the balcony reading... I loved it in the hammock!

Day One - Our goal was to wake up early every morning so we could enjoy as much time there as possible! We woke up at 6:00 am and had room service breakfast on the balcony while watching the sun rise. We were then off to the pool for the rest of the day.

These things are kinda gross, but they hung out everywhere around the pool

This was after our first day in the sun haha... we were freaking whiter than a ghost and were stupid enough to only wear SPF 4 our first day and this was the result ~ fried and sore the remainder of the trip!

In the two pictures above we are on our way to a steak place for dinner. During dinner, I started feeling SO sick and the smell of the food was killing me. I had 2 bites of my steak and we had to leave! I got right into bed when we got back to our room, which was around 8. I kept waking up during the night thinking of the food we'd ate so far and I wanted to die.

Day Two - Nate ended up getting sick this morning so we both slept in until 11 and didn't eat anything the rest of the day! Once we got up and going we spent the day laying under umbrellas around the pool - no sun for us!

Day Three - We were up at 6 am again with our room service breakfast on the balcony. We then jumped on a bus at 8 for a 3 hour drive to Chicha Itza (one of the 7 Wonders of the World). I wanted to do something like snorkeling or swimming with the dolphins, but the snorkeling tour wasn't being offered and Nate really wanted to go on this tour so I gave in.

Cemetery on the side of the road

How convenient... our bus took a bathroom break at a big tourist trap, which ended up taking us another hour! The only thing I found that I liked was a really pretty necklace; however, they wanted $420 for it and I could buy a lot of clothes with that much so I turned it down haha.

They all said that their stuff was "unique", but everywhere you went everyone had the same stuff.

After 4 1/2 hours on the bus we finally made it to Chichen Itza!

The first Mayan pyramid

A tomb

Our awesome tourguide, Erik, and yes he pretty much talked over a microphone the entire bus ride there!

The second Mayan pyramid

An observatory

The last Mayan pyramid - notice that each one over the years got taller and taller... they wanted to get closer to their Gods.

This is me standing in the middle of one of their ball fields. The goal was to get the ball through that little hole above left of my head. Someone on the losing team was always sacrificed after the game.

This picture of me is SO not good, but I put it on here so that I could remember what a ronch (sorry no better word to describe myself) I was during the tour. As noted above, this was not how I wanted to spend my last day in Cancun. It was hotter than Haities and it was SO humid. I have never sweat so bad in my life. It had already rained on us once and there was no where to hide so we just had to stand there and get soaked (with a white see through shirt on no less) and then here Nate wanted to take my picture and I about bite his head off because I was miserable. After all my whining and complaining, I do feel bad because Nate really wanted to come here so I'm going to act better next time:)

A store on the side of the freeway on our way back to the hotel... not what we'd call WalMart and this was one of the nicer stores we saw.

A neighborhood - I've been to Mexico twice and both times its made me SO grateful for what I have.

After a 12 hour tour and being drenched twice by rain I was SUPER excited to be getting off this bus and back to the Moon Palace!

The next morning I was up at 3 am to catch our shuttle back to the airport at 4! Everything went smooth until we got to the American Airline counter and they asked us for our Immigration Form from when we flew in... hahaha we threw it away! Ooops... had to wait an hour for customs to open and it was only a little room in a secluded area of the airport. When the guy walked in he asked us if we knew it was $50 each and that it had to be "cash in bank" and that the banks didn't open until 8 and we had to board our plane at 6???? Hell I almost had a nervous break down... I just wanted to be home! After filling out another form, Nate asked if he should go reschedule our flight and he threw us the forms and told us to give them to the security people... WHAT?? He let us off... thank you, thank you, thank you was our response. Well once we got through security and to our gate I was sitting there reading the piece of paper we had filled out and he had stamped and in bold it says "issuance of this is free"... this guys tried to screw us over and we never even had to give the paper to anyone! If I would have paid the $100 I would have been SO angry! I'm keeping that piece of paper forever! I am so glad to be back in the US!

While we were gone Auntie and Bladen...

Went to the water park

Went to the park

and went to the mall everyday to play on the germ infested play place :) Thank you so much to my mom and sister for watching Bladen while we were gone!

Summer Activities

I can't believe it's already August... where did the summer go? It has been the coolest summer on record here in Champaign-Urbana so it hasn't quite felt like summer yet and it's almost over! I need a tan so bad for our Cancun trip next week, I know that's why the sun hasn't been out. Anyways, I thought I'd post some random pics of some fun things we've been up to:

The not so fun thing... we lived out of a cooler for a week and half - had to throw out $150 of groceries we had bought a day before the fridge died and ate out every meal since the only things we could fit in the cooler was water, milk, butter, ketchup and some juice (does appliance stores really not carry any fridges in stock...uugggghhhh annoying!)

We took B bowling for the first time... like our socks hahaha
Jill Jenna Me

We tried having him bowl with all our us but he got too impatient so we let him bowl 2 games on his own lane

Our family

At most points during B's games he had 2 balls stuck on his lane because he couldn't get them going fast enough!

Taylor Lauren Bladen at Lauren's 3rd birthday party

Black frosting all over his face from the LadyBug cake

Jenna and I decided to take the kids to the Carson & Barnes circus since it was only $5! Paid $5 extra to sit on the front row!

Jenna Kendal

Bladen Me

Bladen LOVED the elephants

Last Sunday, we went to Kickapoo State Park with Nate's lab group. We canoed 8 miles in about 4 hours. It was B's first time canoeing and he did pretty good the entire time. The only thing that sucked is we lost his sunglasses in the river!

The little trooper!

All the nerdy chemists! I really don't fit in!

Ready, GO!

I wish the water was actually going fast so I didn't have to paddle my A off for 4 hrs straight!

My mom and sister will be arriving tomorrow and Nate and I will then be leaving for Cancun on Friday so we have a couple of busy, but fun weeks ahead.