Family photos!!

We finally got some family photos done! Yeah! This is only a handful of the photos that we got and I will add more periodically because they are so great! And the last photo is good for a giggle, the boys wanted to make sure we knew they were done!























A big thank you to Dana Krause Holt for your patients and getting some great photos!

Happy 4th Birthday Anna!

Today we celebrated Anna's 4th birthday! It is hard to believe that 4 years ago we welcomed her into the world at 3:22 a.m. She was so excited to celebrate her birthday.

She was excited to get a doll house for all of her princess dolls!

Plenty of room for all those princesses!
We had a gymnastics party for Anna. It was a lot of fun and Anna was thrilled to see the trampoline decorated for her!
Warm up exercises.
The boys warming up to everything going on!

The got to use the parachute.
And they were very good for their coach. Anna loved being the leader for the day!
Can you tell?
Julie and Lina following the leader.
Olivier decided one of the foam blocks would be a good stool.

Eli had to check out what Olivier and Mason were doing, looks like fun!

Anna enjoyed showing off her skills.
Look at all those kids. Surprisingly organized for so many kids!
Olivier having fun on the tumble track.
Mason enjoyed the foam pit.

And Lina didn't want to get out!

Eli and Natalie having fun on the balance beam.
And the birthday girl!
Olivier is good at saying "cheese"!

They did really well following the circuit.
And time for the song.
Time to eat those strawberry cupcakes!
I think they were a hit!
We opened gifts at home and she was so excited to get a nightgown! And it is so fancy! She wanted to wear it for nap time this afternoon! :-)
And a cute video of Anna and Mason jumping on the tumble track.


Happy Birthday Anna! We love you!!

New hats

We got the boys some baseball style hats from Cancun. They seem to like wearing them and I got a couple funny photos. Olivier liked wearing his sideways and backwards.
But he did wear it correctly too! Can you tell they are saying cheese?

Cancun!

Where to start! We had a great vacation and really enjoyed the time away to recharge our batteries. It took us a while to get used to the idea of having no idea what time it was!

We arrived late in the afternoon on Monday, January 9th. The beach was beautiful although the red flags, warning us that the surf was rough.


The next day we headed back to the beach to enjoy the warm sunshine! The red flags were still out but so was the sun. It was a nice quiet day on the beach.

That night I tried taking some photos of the moon. They didn't come out as good as I would have like but here is one that shows how the clouds were coming in overnight.
On Wednesday, January 11th we took a charter bus tour to visit Chichen Itza and learn about the Mayan ruins. To learn more than what I will be able to tell you here, visit the web site: http://www.chichenitza.com/

On the way (it was a hour and a half from our hotel) we saw some blue agave plants.
And then we went to see the ruins. Here is the welcome sign and mentions that the site is now one of the seven wonders of the world.
This is one of the wells where sacrafices were made. Very odd to be standing there talking about sacrifices. And this was just the start.
This is one of the entrances to the village. It is not original but rebuilt long after the original Mayan's lived there. It was built in the same manner but not as elaborate as the original structure.
And this the type of "hut" that they lived in.
Many of the round stone columns.
A photo of the main structure.
And an interesting feature, standing on one side of the structure, when you clap your hands, it has a very strange echo back.

They are still researching and they found this. We were told that many areas have sunk into the ground or have been covered over the thousands of years.
Another good photo of the ruins.

Some of the surrounding area. If I remember correctly the larger structure on the left was used for human sacrifices.
And this is where they played a ball game. The winner of the game during certain times of the year was offered as a sacrifice. Is that a game you want to win?
Some more photos of the ruins.
A very large lizard that was enjoying his hang out.
And this was the marketplace at one time.
After visiting the ruins we went to lunch. We had these "friendly" faces watching us eat.
We saw this beautiful fountain and I had to take a photo. There was some amazing tile work and detail.
And yes, we were there too!

Then we visited a very old Catholic church. It was rebuild around 1500 (if I remember right!). The white part is from the original structure.
Inside the church.

We went across the street to a small park. They had these very unusual chairs.
A very nice fountain in the park.

And from the park I finally got a good photo of the church!

Another of our mug shots! :-)

Our last stop was a "sink hole". It was created by natural craters. We were told it is 300 feet deep. All I know is it looked really deep! And we saw quite a few catfish enjoying the water.
Natural water comes into the sink hole.
And this is standing in the back part looking out.
And here is a short clip of people swinging into the water.

On Thursday, January 12th, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! Another great day at the beach! It was our only yellow flag day (and in some areas they were still red). We enjoyed the beach and Matt went quite a ways out to enjoy the water.
Wave hi!
Look at that beautiful beach!
Yup, that is Matt out there!
See! :-)

For our anniversary Matt decided to take photos of our meal. We got a bottle of champagne and started with a caprese salad. Yum!
The we move to soup. I had a minestrone and Matt had lobster bisque.
Happy 10th Anniversary!
And our main course, lobster! It was very good!
And of course we had desert. Matt choose the desert with chocolate.

And I choose vanilla ice cream.
That night we went to the show at the hotel. We thought it was going to be a magic show but it was a comedy show. And Matt was part of it. Lucky guy got picked to go on stage. Unlucky me didn't have the camera! He did take one photo while on stage. He did a great job and we had a lot of fun. Great memories for our anniversary!
Friday was another beautiful day!
We had a few more cloud but it was still a great day to be outside!




Matt enjoyed swimming in the pool at the hotel. A little too chilly for me!


And on Saturday, the storm that was beginning to brew on Friday finally hit. It was very, very windy and rainy. We made the best of it and enjoyed some time in our hotel.

We borrowed the game of Battleship. It was a bit different than the version we are used to playing! We figured it out and played quite a few times.

A nice part of our room we used to play Battleship.

This is what it looked like around noon. Happy we didn't go see the ruins today!