BIENVENIDO A MEXICO!

These didn't upload in the order I wanted, but oh well...this is a picture of the resort we stayed in. Moon Palace - Cancun, Mexico. We had a fun time, but by Friday I was ready to get home to Lauren. A week away was incredibly too long! I cried when I saw her at the airport...but I digress...I picked a few pictures to post about.

Troy and I are waiting on the hotel transportation to come and take us to the "hotel zone" so we can check out Cancun. We had a really fun time. I decided to try and look cute rather than be comfortable, though, so we ended up purchasing some flip flops at a store in order to continue walking to another mall. :) It was kind of fun to see peso bills. I was a total tourist when it happened, but oh well. I kind of stand out as a tourist anyway. No worries. We ate at a place called Chocolate City - it had good food, but there were NO people. Why? Because everyone is terrified of Mexico and the swine flu. It was nice to have the resort essentially to ourselves, but I hate that the people down there are suffering as a result of the panic over what is nothing. We went to two malls, got Lauren some clothes - after Troy bargained with a woman, which I would never do, but he saved $3 so whatever. They had a Dora shirt that said "Vamanos, let's go!" but they didn't have her size. We got her some cute stuff anyway. I admired some Coach bags, but figured there were pretty expensive...or seemed that way in pesos!

Troy and I got burnt the first day on the beach - I covered my burn with makeup in this pic, so he looks worse than me but it was about the same...despite our base tans and application of lotion. Well, it was SPF 15. The 30 spray worked much better and we were fine the rest of the trip. This picture is taken on our balcony. I must admit, it's not bad waking up, looking at the window and only seeing the ocean. I could get used to that, so long as my little peanut was along! We were dressed up to eat at Bambu this night, which was an Oriental restaurant. It was one of the better places to eat...but that doesn't say much because all the food was bad. Except Los Tacos, which I would still eat everyday. We had a few good things, and I liked my sweet 'n sour chicken at Bambu as well as my dinner at El Caribe - Troy enjoyed his dinner at the Brazilian restaurant. The food was hit and miss - but more miss. There were some things that we enjoyed, but overall the food was the "most disappointing" (to quote Troy on his survey turned into the resort) aspect of our vacation. :)

An awesome picture of the sunrise. We naturally woke up early and took a walk on the beach on Tuesday. It was really nice - the beach was beautiful, and the water was pretty too but there was a lot of seaweed. We only got in the ocean once, as the pool was EMPTY and gorgeous as well. The grounds of the resort were really pretty - lots of beautiful flowers and plants. There were lots of critters, too. We saw lizards - many, many awesome looking lizards - and some kind of night critter...maybe a possum? Not sure, just saw the eyes. We also saw signs for crocodiles, but never got to see them. In fact, at one of the pools we hung out at, there was a guy that told one of the girls in our group that we needed to stay away from the wall of the pool (it was an infinity pool with the "forest" behind it) because crocodiles could jump 12 feet. Not because of his warning, but later on we moved and the poor man finally rested.

We brought rain to the resort, and I like this picture of Troy carrying me piggy-back. I wore jeans and sandals, and was soaking wet. It was difficult to walk because my jeans were weighing me down, so he picked me up to speed things along!

All in all, we had a great vacation. We missed Lauren terribly, and I'm pretty sure we won't leave her for that long ever again. She missed us, and about panicked when we were packing up the car to leave St. Louis today because she thought we were leaving her! She talked to us every day on the phone, and it is awesome being back with her. She's a sweetheart, and we love her dearly. Hard to believe that after counting down for months over our Mexican vacation that it is actually over! Fortunately, we have lots of pictures and great memories to entertain us while we head back to work tomorrow!