A few precious days in paradise

At the end of February Cal and I spent some frequent flier miles and jetted off to Cal's favorite place- Mexico.  My parents graciously watched the boys for us and we took 5 days and headed to Cozumel.  It was so nice to fly directly to Cozumel and not have to travel far once we got there.  We stayed in a fantastic resort outside of the main town.  We had an awesome room that was not directly on the beach, but so so close.  

Testing the water the afternoon we arrived.

Gotta love the guy in the background...

Since we were on the west side of the island we were able to enjoy a couple of gorgeous sunsets.

We ate all of our meals at the resort, most sitting in this exact spot.  Not bad.

We thought about going in to town to eat, but by the time we paid for a taxi it was going to cost us more.  And really, how can you compete with this?

The "inside" walk to our room.

Cozumel is known for its amazing scuba diving, but I'm not certified so we stuck with snorkeling.  There was great snorkeling right at our resort so we went out often.  There were 3 piers with stairs going into the water that made it so easy.  Beautiful water, coral, and lots of fish!

Since we were in a single story area, we had a nice patio with a hammock, and lots of iguana friends.

One day we took a snorkel cruise and went to a few areas of the reef that are supposed to be some of the best in the world.  The pictures don't show much, but it was spectacular.

You can get a little bit of the feel for how big the reef is by this diver.

Snorkel pictures are always flattering.  :)

We called this Iguana Alley, because every time we walked down this path to the beach we passed at least 2 or 3 iguanas.

We headed into town for about an hour one afternoon just to check it out.  The main area was very touristy, but we wandered off the beaten path a bit and saw some of the real town.  I didn't take my camera on the trip, but took a few phone pics.  I really missed having my camera on this vacation, but was also glad to not be lugging it around or worrying about it.

It was a quick, much needed, fun, relaxing trip.

January

I've been feeling a bit uninspired in the blogging world lately, but here is a sampling of photos from our everyday happenings in January...

Austin was supposed to be getting dressed one morning, but I found that he got a bit distracted.  Can't really be upset at finding this:

Lego mania continues.  They explode in an impressive way, but I love seeing the little creations he comes up with.

I often find this.  Ugh.  (what it doesn't show are the millions of tiny legos scattered in the carpet...and on his bookcase... and under his bed and dresser...)  It's good I love him so much.  :)

Austin has loved playing in the snow!  It's strange to not have any pictures of Zach out there since he's in school all day and it is cold and getting dark by the time he is home.

Everyone decides to repaint their main interior themselves during the busiest time of year, right?  Like starting the week before Christmas.  Cal was a good sport and we repainted all the yellow (wall below) to a beautiful gray (wall above).  I hadn't initially intended to repaint that brown wall on the right, which goes into the kitchen, but I was ambitious and did some touch ups on it with a paint sample in that color and it turned out to not be an exact match.  So it was a polka dotted wall or a repaint!  So it is gray now too.  It has really brightened up the house and is a definite improvement.

The boys were excited to help, although we didn't let them do too much.

I'm a little nuts and did all the edges with an artist's 1/2 inch paintbrush, often with a headlamp because we did a lot of painting at night.

We have had some ridiculously cold weather here this winter!  I opened Zach's blinds one morning to find some amazing frost.  I grabbed my camera but it only lasted for less than a minute before melting.  Spring is so close I can almost taste it, and we are so excited!