Haskell family pictures

These were taken months ago but I lost the pictures and haven't been able to post them. Our cousin Kelsey is so great-she tagged along and took the pictures of all of us. We love her! Amber took the pictures of the guys and of each family. I know there were some taken of her family but for some reason I don't have them. Could our nieces and nephews be any cuter??

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Weird happenings in Cancun

-A lady pulled down her shirt and nursed her baby right smack in the middle of a food court at the Mexico City airport.......with nothing covering her breast. It made for some interesting/unwanted entertainment for those around her eating their lunch. Like us.

-Our waiter at the restaurant we went to at the airport came over with a little credit card machine for us to pay. And then he asked us how much of a tip we wanted to leave him. The choices were 10 or fifteen percent.

-When we arrived in Cancun and walked out of the airport there were at least 25 or 30 taxi driver's yelling at us to come with them. We were warned ahead of time about this so we ignored them, but it still took us by surprise how intense they were. I felt like a movie star with the paparazzi yelling at me. (In case you're curious how we got to our hotel, we took a shuttle bus. Much cheaper. My hubby did his research.)

-Luckily our hotel was all-inclusive and included gratuity because we got so tired of people asking for money outside the hotel. After our tour to Chichen Itza ended, the guide held up a box asking for tips as we got off the bus. This was after we spent $120 for the tour AND had to buy bottled water on the bus even though we were told beverages would be included. On the snorkeling trip which also was NOT cheap nor very impressive, our so-called "tour guides" in the water held up a box before we left as well, and also the men that drove us to and from the snorkeling boat. That tour at least included beverages. :)

-My only other experience at a "market" was about ten years ago when my family went on a cruise to the Bahamas and I have only good memories from it. Maybe I'm forgetting, but I just remember walking through and looking at the things I was interested in. I bought several little things for really cheap because they were very willing to bargain. In Cancun it was a very different experience. It didn't help that we were literally the ONLY ones there, so every person yelled at us, begging for us to come look at their things. They would try to wait patiently as we stopped in one place, and then yelled, "My turn! Come look here." We had a couple people lie to us to get us in there, by telling us they had t-shirts for only "one dollar". We would walk in to find out he just meant one dollar off the price. One man even lied to Kyle about the peso exchange rate hoping to make a sale. So funny.

Warning: Very long post ahead

I still haven't figured out how to make picture collages but I'm not going to let that stop me from posting all of our pictures to Cancun- they're just too good. So ready or not, here they come....

We had a 6 hour layover in Mexico City and we passed the time by playing our favorite game-Settlers of Catan. (Ours is actually a different version-Settlers of Zarahemla)

For some reason when we arrived at our resort, they didn't have us coming for two more days. Luckily our papers showed otherwise, and they sent us to another resort that we think was even nicer. We got there late and went right to bed but when we woke up the next morning and walked out of our building and were directly on the BEACH we realized we were in paradise. I couldn't have been more excited about the beautiful scene around me.

One day the it clouded over and rained for about 3 minutes and then cleared up again

None of the pictures do it justice. The restaurants all had really pretty views

Even the hotel lobby was pretty






We spent most of our time lounging by the many pools (I think there were 5) and on the beach. There were swim up bars in the pools where I enjoyed many diet pepsi's, and Kyle fell in love with the virgin Miami Vice. (A strawberry and pina colada daiquiri) There were also snack bars with hamburgers and fries and at least 10 restaurants that we could choose from for each meal. With our black "all-you-can-eat-for-free" wristbands, we were set for the week. We found that the buffets weren't delicious, but the rest were great. We could order as much food as we wanted, including appetizers and desserts. It was great not having to wait for a bill or worry about a tip. My favorites were the Thai, Mexican, and Italian restaurants. Kyle made sure to order a couple Miami Vice's almost everywhere we went and I'm pretty sure that's what made him sick all week. Let just say, we didn't do any exercising while we were gone, but a part of Kyle kept running.

Should I order another daiquiri...

No I shouldn't have.....

There were mariachi players at the Mexican restaurant

Kyle requested a song and they serenaded us

One day we took a short snorkeling trip that we were really excited about. We've both had really cool experiences in the past so we had high expectations. But we weren't able to explore on our own because we had a "guide" that insisted we follow him. And maybe it happened to be a bad day, because there wasn't a lot see. It was still fun though, and on the boat ride back one of the guides put these hats on us and offered to take a picture.

We spent one day on a tour to Chichen Itza and that was probably our favorite part. We left in the morning and came back in the evening so we were able to see a lot. On our way we stopped at the Yucatan Cenote, which is a really cool cave with fresh water that we were able to swim in. It was considered magical to the Mayans. The trip included lunch at a Mexican Restaurant and after that we went to Chichen Itza. We welcomed the rain that started as soon as we stepped off the bus because the temperature must have cooled 20 degrees. AND we heard thunder for the first time since.....I don't even remember! We haven't had a thunderstorm in Cali yet. Another night at our resort we sat outside and watched a lightening storm. The waves were so loud next to us that we couldn't hear the thunder.






This Mayan girl sang to us. She was so sweet. She was selling little handmade hankerchiefs and I had to buy one from her.

Looking down from the top

There was a different show every night at our resort and we went to the Circus show which was seriously fascinating. There were amazing acrobats, a juggler, a poodle dog that did really cool tricks, a Michael Jackson impersonator (random? yes.) and a hoola hooper that had 4 going at a time and picked them up off the floor with her feet. It was crazy and I loved every minute of it. After that Kyle suggested we stop at the dance club and see what was going on. We found the dance floor empty and my husband surprised me by asking if I wanted to dance...not slow dance, but dance dance, by ourselves with everyone watching. I couldn't turn down an opportunity like that, mostly because I wanted to watch him. I haven't seen him dance for like 2 years back before we even started dating. And he didn't want to stop! I had fun for a few minutes and then truly starting getting embarrassed when nobody would join us. That was our goal, of course. I snapped this blurry picture before I pulled him away. It's something I hope to always remember.

They say all good things eventually come to an end, which of course was true for this trip and I was a little depressed coming home. I loved spending so much time with Kyle and I knew coming home meant he would be starting his busy life with student teaching, work, and school. I'm so glad that we were able to celebrate our marriage by going on such an amazing trip together and to experience another part of this beautiful world we live in. And I'm extremely grateful that unlike our trip, our marriage will last an eternity.