Fri Night after Santa. Time to play.

THURSDAY! K'S 3RD BIRTHDAY.

Every night the little boys wanted to play football. They did the Tebow after a good play. We thought Chels was doing the Tebow too, but she was looking at her computer.

K spent his 3rd birthday going to his Neurologist in the morning and having an MRI at Primary Children's Hospital in the afternoon. Wendell, Carole, Chels, Boo, Tom and I all met Clay, Tara & K at Gateway for his birthday dinner. We went to Z Tejas. The plan was for a horse and carriage ride to see the Temple lights also but it was cold and the line was long. So we just did a drive by.

WEDNESDAY~MIMI DAY

 CAN WE PLEASE  OPEN JUST ONE PRESENT???? WE WERE GOOD  BOYS TAKING FAMILY PICTURES!

 CHELS LET THEM OPEN THE REMOTE CONTROL CARS FROM HER

STORYTIME IN MIMI'S BED

Tuesday~Killian's here and he has a secret.

Clay, Tara and Killian drove in today from Great Falls. They asked if we all wanted to meet at Tapanyaki's for dinner. K made us all a snowman picture with a mommy, a daddy, and two little snowmen. We still didn't get it until Tara took off K's hoodie and we saw his t shirt. We're so excited for a new baby. New hope for the New Year.

K liked Mimi's Nutcracker.

An Apple and a Nap

Boo: "Mimi, I can't tell you what your Christmas present is but I'll give you one hint~ it has an APPLE on it" :)

Killian: "Mom can I watch Caillou?", Tara told him No he'd watched enough TV today.
Killian: "Mom, can you go take a nap and I can watch Caillou?"

Quote from the move The Descendents last night

"Give your kids enough money to do something, Don't give them enough to do nothing."

Elf in a Boot & Handmade Gifts

Gavin found his Elf on a Shelf in his snow boots.

Every Christmas I get this urge to make handmade gifts. We decided to buy Tom's agents spa gift certificates  and Tom wanted to put them in an envelope. I wanted to make them more special. So I bought these paper mache stars, painted them, antiqued them, got bells & red tuelle and made these cute little boxes. I shopped at 5 stores to find everything (never did find the antique jingle bells I wanted), spent several hours and my desire to make something handmade has now been fulfilled for the season. Tom told me they're just going to get thrown away. I say it's all in the presentation. And Tom did admit these were pretty cute.

From Sand to Snow~Papa and Boo tried to build a snowman but the snow wasn't sticking very good. They also went sledding today.

Reasons to get a direct flight home from an Int'l destination

We always fly home direct from Mexico, but the only direct flights are on Saturdays, and we wanted to come home on Thursday. So I decided flying through Den wouldn't be bad. Worse case scenario we would miss our flight & spend the night with mom and dad.
After our peaceful sunrise morning and packing & one last breakfast, and one last lunch and one last walk on the beach our shuttle service arranged for us to leave at 1:15 for our 4:40 flight. This is so early, I'm sure they're in cahoots with the CUN airport restaurants and shops. Once we got to the airport our flight was an hour late due to bad weather in Den. So we found a nice spot in Margarittaville and got on the WiFi and played on the computer and ate chips & guacamole. We had a nice flight, but knew we only had 1 hour and 20 min to catch our flight home from DEN to SLC.
Once our plane landed we ran to customs. I swear this was at least a mile. We were the first ones there, then we had to wait for our luggage to re check it. Got our luggage and we were told we missed our flight. So we're negotiating if Frontier was paying for a hotel or a taxi ride to Grandma's and thinking that would be nice to. . Just as our adrenaline had calmed down they hollered for us and said our plane was late and there was a chance we could still make it if we ran, do not stop anywhere, just run. So we took off again. The plan was to change in Den out of my skirt, tank top and flip flops and we didn't have time. Did I mention it was 10 degrees in DEN? So we ran from one side of the DEN airport to the other (I think this was 1.5 miles) in flip flops to go through security again, hop the train and find our gate. We made it just as the last people were boarding. We had to pee, but no time for that. We got on the plane took a breath, looked around and it was the same plane we had just rode in from CUN to DEN, only it was moved to this gate. Couldn't we have just stayed on???  After all that, our plane sat there for another hour due to problems with luggage and people missing flights. We finally got home a little after one am. Happy to be sleeping in our own beds. Another lesson learned.

Our last morning in Cancun. We woke up at 5AM to see the sunrise. Well worth it.

Every walk ended up with more seashells. 

Our favorite housekeeper Luticia. She brought us fresh towels and Hershey Chocolates every night with a big ole smile.

Cheers. Our last lunch before heading to the airport. 

Tuesday

We've been here long enough I've started decorating our balcony. Found these beauties on our walk this morning. K has requested 5 seashells.

A good book, a comfy chair, and the ocean close by. Mimi is happy.

Found spiderman on our walk.

Went by a real estate office and thought I could use this advertising in Stansbury.

  Beautiful morning. Little seashells everywhere.

When we asked Boo if he wanted us to bring him back seashells he said No just a jellyfish. So this picture is for him. One perfect jellyfish, but we're not bringing it home.

I wonder who took this pic.....she really did have a thong there somewhere.....

Tommy saying "How do you want me to pose?" haha  What a trooper.
We ended the day with a couples massage on the beach and room service.

Sunday and Monday~playing on the Beach

SUN: We got up and walked along the beach to the Beach Palace. This is the resort we stayed at the very first time we visited Cancun. A hurricane trashed it several yrs ago and it was remodeled. We stopped in and one of the employees gave us a tour. It was beautiful. When we first met him he told us he started out as bellboy, then waiter, and now head waiter. After our tour he told us the Palace job was just a hobby and his real job was selling organic coffee and he gave us his card. All the mexican people here have more than one job.
We went back to our resort and played in the ocean, took another nice nap, ordered room service once again for lunch,then read and lounged most of the afternoon. At night we had dinner reservations at Maria's. It was excellent and the Mexican coffee & the presentation of it were awesome.  After dinner we sat in the lobby for a couple hrs first listening to a guy singing and playing a guitar  (we joked that we were going to bring him home to Chels and they could start a band), then enjoying and laughing at  all the karaoke people.

This was a wall of sand and seashells the waves created. 

Annual pedicure shot.

Love this pic Tommy took of me walking in front of him. So simple, yet so perfect.

Maria's Restaurant

Our after dinner Mexican Coffee presentation. It was so delicious.

Saturday Nov. 26th,

SAT: Just Tommy and I this year going to Mexico. Staying at the Gran Caribe Resort. We tried to stay here when we took the kids and they were booked. We had a great flight on Frontier and easy commute to our resort.  Our room is in the walk out villa's and so close to the ocean. We explored the resort a little, walked the beach, then went back to our room and ordered room service.

Salmon, Fajitas, salad, chicken noodle soup, and my favorite Choc Cake and Cheesecake for dessert.

Thanksgiving Day 2011

Boo and I were trying to make these rice krispy turkeys.

Instead they turned into Rice krispy "Angry Birds".

They still tasted good.

Dinner at Peggy & Big Papa's. Over 50 people there.Yummy food.

DeWayne & Big Tom carving the turkey.

DeWayne and Rosey napping after dinner.

Boo thought this football game was the funnest thing ever!

He's scoring a goal here. He can't wait until next year so he can play again.

Mom and Dad's Anniversary Week-end~Sun

Allanah has the most beautiful color hair. Looks like it's been dyed. And a really cute dimple when she giggles, which she does a lot. Below Uncle Josh playing with her. Not sure what we would do without these babies. So much fun.

 Tom and I got up and went to the Denver Botanical Gardens to their Holiday Sale. It was fun. Then Lori's grandbaby Allanah and her mom & dad & sister Eden came over, plus Josh, Lori, Tom, Lacy & Gale.

silly family picture

 Happy 57th Anniversary Mom and Dad. We watched the video from their 50th anniversary party.

Our flight was out at 8:55pm and when we got to the airport this big yellow ball was the Moon. Tom was trying to take a picture when we were on the shuttle bus and it got to be comical as the lady driver wanted to make sure he got one. At one point she hollers "Hey Guy, come up here and try one now". We never did get a good picture but we were fascinated because it was so big, so yellow and so low. Our moon is always behind the mountains until we see it.

It was a great week-end.