Illuminer Photography July 2012

Camping

Our flight home arrived from Mexico at 7:30pm, then we got through the airport, picked up the kids, unpacked and did laundry and re-packed to go camping Friday morning! It was a marathon 12 hours but we made it!

 This was the girls second time camping and they had a blast!  We had a fire going to make hot dogs and hamburgers and we toasted marshmallows at night for smores, yum! We took the girls fishing, on a little hike, and to a nature presentation about cougars.   And we got to spend some time with our old neighbors and some neighborhood friends.

The whole weekend was great until around 8pm on our last night a wild group showed up at the campsite next to us (like 20 feet from our tent) and stayed up drinking until 5am, argh! Of course early the next morning we "accidentally" set off the car alarm and had the kids singing The Song That Never Ends as loud as they could! Hoping to give those partiers a taste of their own medicine! We did not get much sleep so we were happy to see them get a fine, a ticket, and booted out the next morning. Seriously, who goes to family campground Reverend's Ridge to stay up all night partying!?!

Viva Mexico!

We were so happy to join our friends Kassie and Brian in Mexico for their 10 year anniversary trip! Thanks to Mimi and Papa and Katie for watching the girls so we could go!

As you can tell we were pretty excited to leave town!  We were also a little bit nervous since a few days before we left Hurricane Ernesto appeared in the Carribean and was projected to arrive in Cancun on our last day as a Category 1...yikes!  Lucky for us Ernesto changed course and made landfall 140 miles south of us, leaving us with a rainy day and nothing more, whew!

Excellence Playa Mujeres
Excellence on Trip Advisor

We stayed at the Excellence Playa Mujeres and it was absolutely amazing! The most luxurious resort we have ever experienced. We were blown away from the minute we arrived when we were greeted with glasses of champagne! Here are some pics of our room...

Brian and Kassie at the Lobster House for breakfast

The beach was beautiful and we could see Isla Mujeres just across the ocean

We experienced one rainy day, just before the hurricane made landfall. But a rainy day under a palapa in paradise isn't so bad after all! Kassie and I relaxed under the palapa and Brian and James played ping pong. No complaints about the weather here!

The lazy river started right in front of our room, that was my favorite part of the Excellence Playa Mujeres, floating around the lazy river with a drink in my hand.

There were 9 gourmet restaurants and we were only there 4 nights so we did our best to hit them all but didn't come close!  It was fun to get dressed up every night and go to dinner and then check out the shows the resort put on.



Another day in paradise! We had fun lounging in the pool near the swim-up bar and drinking our crazy pineapple drinks

We were sad to leave Mexico but anxious to get back home and see the girls.  Can't wait to take them back to Isla in November!