halloween festivities

Pumpkin patches, haunted houses, halloween parties, and candy, oh my! For me, it isn't halloween until you do all these halloween traditions...we started off the season by going to cornbellys pumpkin patch with our buddies Chris and Sepideh.

Ha ha, Eric and Chris found the biggest pumpkins they could carry, they each took one of these honkers home.
What's Halloween without a fun scary train ride? We went up the Heber Creeper for a haunted train ride with Amy, Tim, Emily, and Dylan. We rode on the open air cart to add to the scary effect, it actually wasn't too cold. I liked the train ride because it was definitely a different take on the haunted house (and a few bucks cheaper too, now a days haunted houses rape you for your money). The coolest part was when the train stopped and all the scary people hopped on with you.





Now it's dress up time. We went to our ward halloween party and this was my favorite costume of the night: sushi rolls, how creative!
We dressed up as Juno and Paulie Bleeker. To complete the outfit, my good friend Jalaine works at Motherhood Maternity and hooked me up with a pregnant pillow they leave in the fitting rooms. It looked so real and a couple people said they didn't know I was expecting, yeah, I'm not! But I will tell you that belly was so comfy, it was the perfect heater. Now I know why pregnant moms are always putting their hands on their belly, because it is the perfect arm rest! I found myself doing that all night.


On halloween night we went to a rad halloween party, it was 80's themed but we felt our outfits were appropriate...Eric looked the part anyway!
I look huge in this picture!
That kid in the ballerina outfit definitely had some confidence and called him ballerina boy all night.

This was only part of the group, we didn't get a group photo before people started leaving...and we all know i'm a nazi about taking pictures so we had to get a group photo.

We had an awesome time and played 80's scene it, I thought i'd rock at that game because I love 80's movies, but it was so hard and entertaining to see some of the 80's music videos, they were pretty ridiculous! Then we played mafia, the perfect game to play with a big group of people.
We already know what we are going to be next year!

ruins

Tulum ruins

Ceviche and best shrimp tacos ever!

playa del carmen

Every year we’ve been married, Eric and I have taken a vacation somewhere new. In august we went to playa del Carmen, which is just south of Cancun. Being that my mom’s family is from Mazatlan, the pacific side of mexico, I’ve never been to the Caribbean side and have been dying to go. In our travels we haven't kept a journal, but we made it a goal this year to start a travel journal and write in it during our vacation rather than after. So I stole snipets from our journal and plugged them in here for even better memories.

We landed at the cancun airport for our 10 day stay and the second we got off the plane we were hit with the smell – to me – of mexico. Its really the smell of the tropics because it smells the same in the Philippines. We both love that smell and it brings back so many memories for both of us. Smells are the greatest form of memory after all.

When we rolled up to our hotel in our hot sexy Nissan tsuru rental (like an old school sentra) we were amazed at the size and beauty of it, the Mayan Palace. The name says it all. After settling into our room, the first thing we did was have dinner by the pool. I ordered mole enchiladas and eric got some delicious beef tacos…then off to the pool that was 24 HOURS! Never in my life have we come across a pool that’s 24 hours. We swam until the wee hours of the night, it was perfect. There were about 10 swimming pools at this place, they all connected together so it seemed like one big one…and the lights in the pool even changed color, so it really set the ambiance. By the way, this wall is huge and is the first thing you se off the highway.

This is the beach at our hotel, its kinda rocky so we went and toured other beaches along the coast line, from north in cancun to south in tulum.

Here's the view from the little cabana in the middle of the ocean.

Despite being in mexico, everything was really expensive because we were in tourist town. We didn’t bank on spending a lot on food. So we kept it chill and hung out more on the beach than anything else. The water was the perfect temperature, you know the kind that’s cool enough to cool you off and be refreshing, but warm enough you can jump right in without shock to your system! The second day of our trip some gnarly clouds blew in and it started raining. We packed up and headed towards the “Kool” restaurant/lounge and made it undercover just as it started to pour. There were a bunch of us crowded underneath the palapa roof of the bathrooms. It was so windy the birds were flying in place, fighting against the wind. A few hippies, locals, and drunk tourists made the most of the situation by dancing in the rain (the club DJ was still spinning, so why not?). We figured we'd join but had more fun watching.

We mostly stayed south of cancun but had to venture up there to see what the “hotel zone” had to offer. We snuck thru a hotel to get to the beach and it was gorgeous. The water was clearer, the waves were bigger, the beach was less crowded and it was hotter than in playa del Carmen. Less crowds make for more encounters with vendors and activity guides.
playa del carmen:


We hung out under this palapa and played cards for most of one day...it was the perfect day.
Cancun:

Instead of renting boogie boards for a pretty peso, we decided to buy one. we hauled it every where we went and the waves weren't bad either.

tulum:

After a day at the beach we’d go back to our hotel and hit the pool after the sun went down. One night a few towel boys in lava lava’s started getting everyone out of the pool to head down to the beach for a beach party. The beach party was pretty cool, they had a DJ and the lava lava kids taught us (and by us I mean Eric and other gringos..ha ha) a few salsa moves and we danced the night away…more to come...