What happens in Mexico...

I feel like I need to start this post out with Adele's song.

 

Hello, it's me.

I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet...

 

It's been a while. A long while. My last post was about Eric's 40th birthday...in May. Oops. Quite a lot has happened since then. If you remember, we were living with my parents after selling our house and waiting to build. That plan went awry...three times, and in September, we bought a house, moved in and life has been happening all the while.

 

Before we moved, though, we had a few fun things happen, one of which was celebrating our 15 year anniversary! 15! That's quite a milestone. Fifteen years of wonderful things, horrible things, love, laughter and life. To celebrate, we grabbed the other half of our Core Four and planned a trip to MEXICO! Eric had never flown outside of the United States, so it was a blast to get to experience this with him!

 

Peace out, America. Hello, Mexico!

 

 

 

After a full day of travel, we finally made it to our destination...an all inclusive resort about an hour south of Cancun. It was beautiful. And hot. We went in July, so you can imagine...

 

 

I could seriously post hundreds of pictures of the gorgeous resort, but I will just keep it to a few of my favorites. You're welcome. ;)

 

We explored the resort for a little while the first evening. Being the young and crazy people we are, we went to bed around 9 o'clock due to sheer exhaustion! Be jealous. You'd think that without our insane, early-rising kids around, we would have slept in and had a lazy morning. No. Sadly we were up around 5:00 in the morning, raring to go! We heard no peeps from our friends sleeping next door, so we grabbed the camera and headed off to catch a Mexico sunrise.   

 



 

It was so beautiful there. Breathtakingly beautiful. The water was such a pretty color of blue and even when you were swimming in the ocean, you could see the ocean floor.

Our trip was so much fun! We spent our days at the beach and pool and our evenings eating at new places. 

 

 

One of the things that cracked us up was the word "tequila". It was used just about as much as the word "hello". ;) We would go to breakfast, sit down barely awake, and wait for the waiter to ask for our drink order. "Orange pineapple juice, please." "With tequila?" "Um, no thank you." I mean, at 8:00 AM? Haha!!

Seriously, the views got old after a while... ;)



This was before dinner out at a great Italian place... 

 

 

One of our favorite days by far was when we got to rent a catamaran to take out. BY OURSELVES. Like, no joke, they let the FOUR of us take a catamaran out into the ocean after only an hour training session. And it was only Eric and Matt at the training session. Later, the guys admitted to us (ON THE CATAMARAN) that Eric thought Matt had been paying attention and Matt was sure that Eric was paying attention. Oh dear.

It was such a great time, though! Minus the few times that we screamed in shear terror because we thought our boat was TIPPING and were surely staring into the face of DEATH, it was pure bliss!
THAT WATER THOUGH...

Oh how I love these people.

Just some fun, random pictures...

 

Eating Japanese...

At our resort, outside the piano bar...

 

A day of shopping... (Eric's face SLAYS me)

 



And a few more around the beach...

 

 

 

Sadly, our trip came to an end. We couldn't have asked or a better vacation together! While waiting at the airport, the first order of business for our return to reality:



 

As we boarded the plane, no one really was ready to leave our fantastic little getaway behind, but we were looking forward to getting home to our babies. Kind of. Kidding! Sort of...

How appropriate...

And once we were home, all was right in our world again. Love.

 

It is ONE degree outside, so I will post about the beach.

In honor of the 1 degree weather this morning, I thought it was only appropriate to do a review of our vacation to Gulf Shores over Fall Break! (I mean, I don't want to be old and complain about the weather, BUT ONE DEGREE? That's ridonkulous.)

If you've been around my blog for a while, you know that we are quite spoiled on our vacations. And by "we", I mean that my mother is spoiled and we get to live in her world for a while. (Love you, Mom!) My parents take us on vacation every year (you guys -- that is a blessing in itself!) and there are a few criteria that the homes must meet. 

• Oceanfront
• 7 bedrooms and bathrooms
• an elevator
• a private pool
• two kitchens
• enough seating for 14 people

IF it has all of those things, then my mother will look at it. If she likes it, it goes to my dad to get final approval. If my dad approves it, then it is a go and there are many grandchildren squealing in delight! 

This year was the first time we have ever returned to a home that we stayed in before. It must have been THAT GOOD! ;-) This was our home away from home for Fall Break. Shabby, it was not.

It was our own little piece of heaven. Note: see the boardwalk on the picture below? That was a new addition since we had stayed there and it was wonderful! It went from our pool right to the beach. 

As soon as we arrived, my kids could not wait to check out the beach. 

I managed to snag a few pictures of the main floor before all 14 of us arrived and started unloading enough food, clothing and beach supplies for the entire military forces.

 

The bunk beds were a hot commodity. 

Enough seating for 14 :-)

Here's a better picture of the boardwalk right off our pool patio. LOVE.

Maggie was pretty timid when we first got near the ocean. I remember her being that way last year, too. She would kind of feel out the waves, right near her feet.

However, it didn't take long for her to request her swimmies and join in with the big kids!

She adored the sand. I adored watching her.

Levi? He was all, "Give me a boogie board and watch out, waves!"

He has always loved the water. 

 And the sand...

This picture can pretty much sum up a Miller vacation! Love it!

This was our first time to be at the beach during the Fall. I really loved it. I do wish the water in our pool had been a tad warmer, but the kids didn't seem to mind. It was really nice to sit out in the sun and not be dripping in sweat!

The breeze was just perfect. It cooled you off, but didn't make it too chilly.

Most of our days were spent at the beach or in the pool.

It was like our own private beach.

We also spent some time away from the house doing fun things. Maggie fell in love with the kiddie swings at a small amusement park. She was literally the ONLY child on them. She kept asking to go again and again. The ride operator just let her keep going without swiping her ticket. After about 30 minutes, I wanted to CUT HIM.

Bumper boats and go karts were a must, too! My kids could not get enough. Mags in the little harness next to Eric...I die!

The gals spent one day doing some retail therapy and I was able to visit my happy place.

And, this? I just don't know. Don't even ask...

We celebrated my parent's anniversary with some salted caramel brownies. Their 43rd anniversary. That's pretty impressive.

And, little Emmy girl celebrated her 7th birthday with a beach themed cake. 

I'm kind of thinking at this point, this post is a little sing-songy. A little "oh look how sweet" we all are. And that is not us at all! We are loud, borderlining on obnoxious at times. We are messy (hence my mom following behind all of us wiping off the counters, picking up wet towels and swim suits, and throwing away trash) and we are really quite funny. I will insert a funny story here.

My brother and Jenny wanted to take Griffin and Emmy deep sea fishing one day. All were invited, but only Daniel and my dad chose to go along. Later in the day, I texted my brother to see how it was going. They were planning on catching some fish to fry up the next day for dinner. Yum! More than S-E-V-E-R-A-L hours later, I got a text from him. It was a picture of someone I didn't know YAKING OFF THE SIDE OF THE BOAT. He sent me a picture of a dude throwing up! He said that more than half of the boat was sea sick!! I asked how dad was doing and he said, "looks green". Oh my word. That was awful! Luckily, none of our family tossed their cookies...so that was good news. We all kept talking about it all evening. At dinner, dad, still feeling the effects of the boat, shouted "CAN WE ALL JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT?" Somehow, though, it didn't get dropped and everyone would finish their sentence with a gaging sound, like they were going to hurl AT THE DINNER TABLE. (Sorry to be so graphic. That's just us.) Needless to say, that became our big inside joke for the week. Oh, and they only ended up catching 3 small fish. Yes, there were jokes about getting two loaves of bread to feed all 14 of us... (ba dum bum) 

We spent most evenings at the house and took turns cooking dinner, but did dine out two different nights. Lambert's, Home of the Throwed Rolls is one of our favorites and a must to eat at. We also enjoy the atmosphere at LuLu's (that's Jimmy Buffett's sister for all you Parrot Heads!).

I think one of my favorite memories of our beach vacations will always be seeing my dad sit at the edge of the water, just kind of taking it all in. I choose to think that he is enjoying God's creation instead of escaping the madhouse behind him! Ha!

His happy place :-)

I also love making memories with my mom. Usually, before any of the kids were awake, I would sneak out onto her balcony and we would enjoy some quiet time drinking coffee (or chai tea for me!) and talking about the kids or my grandparents. Such sweet time.

And, oh how I love watching these two...

And, these six.

Until next time.