The Twins are 9 Months!

Three quarters of their way to being one year old. What???

This month not much has changed except for their hair. 

Bee's hair has been fun to play with as well. I tried out a little pony for the first time and she hasn't tugged at it or been bothered by it all. Plus, how cute is that tiny little pony? 

 Milo's hair is growing and growing and I know I should cut it, but I don't want to. Milo reminds me so much of my dad and his hair is a big part of that. In fact, I want him to have grandpa Bill hair always. 

I took them in for their nine month check up and they are looking great! They got their first dose of their flu shot and something else. They weren't too happy about their shots but they recovered quickly. Milo was so curious to see what Dr. Templeman was checking him with. He was just such a little busy body and Briony was just calm and observant letting the doctor do his thing. 

I see these babies every day and I can't believe they are mine and that they are here and that there are two of them. It took a while to get them here and a lot of tears and prayers and pain and emotion, but man all that was SO worth it. 

Frightmares!

Season passes to Lagoon have been the best Christmas gift for the past two years. Our favorite part about it has got to be hands down, Frightmares. I love that fresh excitement that you get when fall first hits and seeing hay bales and pumpkins and all things scary and harvest. I love it. We also love that we get to enjoy the rides in the cool weather and not in the blazing heat. If I could just buy a frightmares season pass, I would. 

They have the best decorations and I think they just keep getting better and better. 

 Me and the twins mostly hung out, 

 while Oliver and Luke went on the rides.

 My most favorite part was seeing the shows. We got to see the Hack and Slash show and the Zombie Mambo performances. It is weird that I have always wanted to be a part of the show. It is. I realize this. 

 Milo couldn't stop staring at the guys and they were fun to play along with him. 

 Like I said, best decorations. Moment after this picture was taken, those dang vampires got me and scared the living day lights out of me. 

Missing body parts

 There was also this zombie at this booth that would chomp his teeth at us and talk to us. When he saw the twins he was talking about how he wanted to eat them. He asked if he could grill them up and put them in a tortilla. We were all pretty amused with him and he did a great job. 

Love Love Love doing things like this with my family. I hope I am able to pass the excitement of Halloween onto them. 

Mexico Part 1

We finally decided to celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary with a trip to Mexico. I was so happy when everything was booked months before and that we were able to arrange sitters for the kids and request time off. This was something that we had been planning on doing for a while and I was so excited to go and experience this with Luke.

 

We had a layover in Georgia {where we had the worst customer service ever known to man} and we hung out in the airports for a little while, but it was all so thrilling knowing that we had an amazing adventure waiting for us. 

 

We arrived.
 The moment we stepped off that plane, we could feel the hot humidity of the coast and it felt incredible! It took us about an hour to get to our hotel {via shuttle} where we checked in. As we were checking in, the nice workers brought us a cold margarita. when we refused the alcohol, they were so surprised and brought us some virgin drinks right away. Looks like we may be the only non drinkers in this part of town.

After we dropped off our bags and changed into our suits, we ran to the beach.

It was Luke's very first time stepping foot on an actual beach. He had a wonderful welcome by a soft sandy beach with beautiful clear blue waters. It was a little cloudy when we got there but that was certainly not going to stop us from having the time of our lives. 

And I wouldn't want to be there with anyone else. 

 

The following day we had a full day planned of adventure. We booked a tour of the cenotes where we were picked up by a tour guide and a shuttle bus and taken out to the middle of nowhere to explore the Cenotes. The Cenotes are natural pits, or sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. These are out in the middle of the jungle so the surrounding are incredible and lush and so amazing to explore. Our tour guide, Edwardo was so great and we had a pretty fun group that consisted of people from Canada, England, Australia and Mexico. We were the only Americans.  

 

 

It was so much fun to see the Aztec culture and to learn more about their Gods and the traditions that took place. Each Cenote that we visited had a different God.

 

At the first stop, we did some zip lining. Luke was the first to go and he showed us how NOT to do it. His hands slipped and he quickly fell in the water. I was up next and was a bit nervous but ended up making it all the way down the line and into the water. We swan down the river in just our life vests and got to enjoy the amazing scenery.

Floating down the river.

 

This is where we did a little cliff/ledge jumping.

 

Luke and his mad Fish-out-of-water skills. He sure got the crowd laughing on this one. 

 

That day was a bit overcast with a little rain so when we weren't in the water, it was a little chilly. One of my favorite parts was warming up to a delicious concha and some really good Champurrado. YUM!

 The next stop was to another Cenote where we got to repel into the cave. It was really cool and a bit spooky all at the same time to repel into a dark cave.

 

Inside the cave we jumped off the ledges and tried not to get freaked out by the dark roots all around us and bats flying around.

 

 Floating in the depths of the cave with Bats flying around us. Pretty eerie if you ask me.

A better picture inside the cave with our group.

 The next Cenote was where we got to kayak and snorkel. Since the water was high, our kayak trip was very short but it was still amazing to be surrounded by so much beauty.

 And the snorkeling was fun, even though we didn't get to see much.

 

The last Cenote was the best one. We got to zip line some more and because there were a few people that "dropped out" early on, Luke convinced our tour guide to let us play at this one a bit longer, to which he obliged. 

Some cliff jumping with a Canadian.

Swimming back to squeeze in just one more run.

This seriously was so much fun to do. We spent the entire day doing such fun things. They fed us lunch which was delicious and there was just so many memorable moments. Just to include a few more...

-Luke getting farted on by a French man

-The rich couple and their wet suits.

-"You shouldn't be cold, you have wet suits on"

-Playing in the rain

-Switching busses

-Getting pulled over by the 'Federales'

-Paying $80 for pictures

-My bottoms skidding off

-Tiny life jackets

 

 Already our trip to Mexico had been perfect. We loved that we still had the rest of our vacation to bum around and do anything we wanted. No schedules or itineraries to follow. Just the two of us, as much food as we wanted, and the beach. We were in paradise.

Mexico Day 2

 The next day we woke up at 8 and it was beautiful out. We were so excited to get going and head out to the beach for the day. We hit the breakfast buffet and went and picked out spot on the beach. The breakfast was my favorite meal because it was so similar to the food back home (buffet food gets old fast)

 

And quickly jumped in the water.

And then quickly jumped out...

 

We were in there wading around and looking at all the fish it was so cool. Luke decided to sit in the water with all the fish swimming around. And then I heard him say "OWE!" He was laughing and telling me that a fish just bit him on the nipple. Nearby there some swimmers feeding the fish so these fish must have gotten confused and thought Luke's nipple was a piece of bread. He said that it not only bit him but when it grabbed on, it tugged and shook. Haha! Makes me laugh everytime. 

Our hotel included some snorkeling rentals which was so fun to do. We had never done it before and it was pretty awesome. It took me a while to get my breathing down. It can be a bit nerve racking when your mark isn't on tight or when you see a huge fish swim by your legs. 

 

There were fish everywhere! It was hard to tell but some of those fish were as big as my torso. 

 

One of the best parts about where we parked was that we were so close to the snack bar. We got unlimited amounts of drinks including Pina Coladas and especially Coke and lime. For lunch we just walked up to the snack hut. It was pretty awesome. 

 

One of our favorite things to do as we sat on the beach was people watch. And there was a lot of people watching going on. We quickly found out that we were probably the only LDS people there or people that weren't drinking or in scantily clad swimsuits. There were women in thongs and laying out topless and a lot of very beautiful people on the beach. We were so blown away by the Italians and we saying how they were the best looking ones.

 

At one point we saw a family that had a boy just younger than Oliver and then two twin boys that were about Briony and Milos age. We got talking to them and it made us miss our kids and at the same time glad that we had left them home. That cute little Spaniard family looked like they were having a rough time.

 

We also made friends with a Brittish group and Luke sat in the ocean with them chatting away about the people around them. There was a couple that looked like they were from the middle East and this girl had a nice body so of course she was wearing a thong. Well, her and her boyfriend were out there snorkeling and the Britts and Luke were laughing because as this girl was snorkeling, the only thing that was bobbing out of the water was her big bum in a thong. They joked about it being the blow hole. There was another time where there was this girl who was also just as pretty but she was white as snow and the Britts said "reminds me, we need milk!" they had us laughing for quite some time. Love those Britts.

 

We loved taking this day easy and talking to the people around us. So far we had not met any other Americans. A lot of Europeans and Canadians (which were so annoying), but no Americans.

 And by far the best part was watching Luke have the time of his life. I loved seeing him out there.

 

Later that day, we thought it would be fun to go into the small town of Tulum. The locals told us to ride the public transportation there and it would only cost us $3. So we did. Luke was very surprised how much everything reminded him of Brazil. The people, the streets and even the smell.

 We mainly wanted to go to the town to see if we could find an LDS church to see what time services were for the following day so we could attend them. With a little bit of walking and asking a few locals we found it. Luckily the building was open and we found one single member cleaning the chapel that day. ( I will never complain about cleaning our chapel with a huge group ever again. This man was dripping with sweat and had to do it all by himself) He told us that it was their Stake Conference the following day and that all the members would be attending church in Cancun. I'm so glad we found him there and it really was so nice to find another member. I was starting think we were the only ones in this part of Mexico.

 We loved this little town. All the locals were so nice and helpful.

 We were also able to find a few souvenirs and enjoy the Mexican Culture.

 

At night, we walked around and found that our favorite place to hang out at was the bar. They had dancing and singing which of course made for some very entertaining people watching and we ordered drinks and loved relaxing there.

 Every night they had a show theme. Most of them were cheesy but they were fun to go to. We watched Lev Jackson (Micheal Jackson...don't know why they called it Lev), a circus act, acrobatic dancing and few more shows that we didn't make it to.