Daddy's Helper

It's been so hot this week that Ben hasn't been able to play outside much. We've been going for a ride in his wagon right after breakfast then playing outside before it gets too hot. He was so happy to be outside the evening "helping" his daddy wash my car.

Cinco Mexico -- El Final

Have I mentioned the iguanas? They were everywhere. Unlike the three billygoats Gruff, we let this one have the bridge and took another path.

Ring Ring

Ben loves playing with my phone (tone). Usually he just presses the keys, which I lock, but last night he was putting it to his ear. Notice that it's backwards. When I answer the phone, Ben starts saying, "Right, right, right, bye bye." That's what I must sound like to him. Now I can hardly talk on the phone without getting tickled because I hear myself saying "right, right, right." I need to expand my telephone vocabulary.

Cuatro Mexico

The main building at night.

The lobby (inside the main building) when we checked out.

Our room. In the corner on the other side of the bed is a large whirlpool. There was a shower in the bathroom, but this was the only bathtub and I'm a bath person. One night while I was bathing, I decided to turn on the jets. The tub was filling and I didn't notice that the jet behind me was still above water. I pressed the button and water started shooting everywhere. And then, of course, I couldn't get it turned off.

The funniest experience of our trip was listening to the hotel band. They were Mexican but covered American hits in English. I can't even begin to describe what "Sweet Home Alabama" sounds like with a Mexican accent.

Tres Mexico

John played volleyball every afternoon. I played once. John's favorite activity, though, was eating. Jim had told him all about each restaurant and his favorite dishes and John talked about the food for weeks before we went. The El Dorado Royale website describes the food as "gourmet inclusive cuisine." This was completely wasted on me. I was so excited to see a Dominos Pizza chain in the Cancun airport that we had big slices of pizza for breakfast the day we headed home.

The menus were completely over our heads. We would order knowing that we were getting shrimp or beef but not having any idea what it might look like when they brought it to us. One night I ordered beef carpaccio. Do you know what carpaccio means? I didn't until the waiter nicely informed me that it's raw meat. Here's the Wikipedia definition: Carpaccio is a dish of raw beef, veal, venison, or tuna traditionally thinly sliced or pounded thin served as an appetizer. Yuck! I quickly chose a different appetizer. Some type of tomato salad that turned out to be a small tomato finely chopped. Again, not what I expected but at least a raw tomato doesn't bleed.

Breakfast was fabulous, though. Breakfast is my favorite meal anyway. Probably because we ate breakfast foods 4-5 nights a week growing up. There were all types of breads, pastries, fruits, yogarts and cereals, as well as waffles, bacon, eggs, French toast, omelets, etc. But no biscuits, which I thought was weird. No restaurant in the airport had biscuits, either.

John's favorite was the Asian restaurant pictured below. He's eating Sushi Tempura (fried). He also had his dessert fried. Although we never really knew what we were ordering, everything we ate was very good.

While Mama and Daddy are away . . .

Nana and Grandaddy will play. Nana and Granddaddy stayed at our house with Ben while we were in Mexico. Here are some pictures they took during that time.





I recognize the kitchen floor, but I have no idea what Ben's doing on it. He seems to be enjoying it, though.

Dos Mexico

The building we stayed in looks just like the one behind John. We were on the second floor and had an ocean view. You can see our ocean view from the picture of me reading on the balcony. The next two pictures are also from our balcony. The rooms on the first floor were "swim up." The lazy river leads from the activity pool to the patio off each first floor room. These cost more, of course. You can see the edge of the swim up pool in the third picture. Notice how lush and tropical the vegetation is. The resort obviously spends lots of money on landscaping because I noticed driving back to the airport that this isn't natural. The area outside the resort is fairly rocky and brown.

Uno Mexico

We're back. And we had a lot of fun. Instead of spending ages tonight uploading pictures and writing about our trip, I'm just going to post a few pics and will keep updating throughout the week.

This is John in a chair at the beach on the first morning. Although the water was beautiful, we ended up not spending much time at the beach. There was a red flag every day so we couldn't go in the water. Pretty much everybody stayed by one of the pools. We hung out at the "activity" pool. There will be pictures of John playing volleyball later in the week. I wasn't as active as John, but we did both participate in the kayak races. I won my race, but mainly because Allison from Dallas got hung in the volleyball net and was stuck there longer than I was stuck on the fountain. We probably looked like an "I Love Lucy" episode.


You wouldn't know from this pic that we actually saw men out bleaching the sidewalks early in the morning. I walked to supper barefoot one night because my heels were uncomfortable. I promise I washed my feet before I put them under the white sheets and comforter. This is one of the few pictures of me. John isn't very good at remembering to take pictures.

El Sombrero

I bought this huge straw hat for our trip because I hate getting sun on my face. As you know, Ben loves hats. Here is a picture of him wearing both his green hat and my straw hat while I packed. This hat looks much worse now. It's been in my suitcase, in John's backpack, and got pretty wet when I wore it in the pool. I tried ironing it the last morning we were in Mexico to see if I could get it to flop less. Ironing actually made it shaped a little better, but it still flopped.

Sidewalk Chalk

It was so HOT this afternoon, but Ben loves to play outside. We got out the sidewalk chalk and wrote on the driveway. Our driveway is nice and shady in the afternoons.

Sunday

Ben loves to "help," especially in the kitchen. I try to let him help when I can so this morning while I was mixing up a coffee cake for breakfast, I sat him on the counter and gave him a wooden spoon. He stuck it in the batter and stirred. After I had put the cake in the oven and was cleaning up, I noticed that he was eating the batter off of his spoon. He must have really liked it because he licked and licked and licked. Then he chewed on the spoon for a while. I think it probably felt good since he is teething.

Saturday

Saturday afternoon we went to the carnival that was part of a local festival held annually. We went just to let Ben ride the carousel and to eat a funnel cake. This was Ben's first time on a carousel. He rode twice. He didn't smile or laugh, but he was very interested in watching the horses around him going up and down. It was very, very HOT. We were all sweated through during the short time we were there.

And we lost his hat AGAIN. And we found it AGAIN. Really I thought it was gone for good this time, but as we were walking out, there it was laying on the side of the path.

Friday

Our trip home was very quick: arrived on Thursday, left on Friday. After we unloaded Ben's wagon, we went for a ride. We've gone farther through the neighborhood each day since we've been home. Ben's wagon is "parked" in the carport by the back door. Everytime we pass he starts saying, "ride, ride, ride."

Thursday

Thursday we went home for Cara's shower. Before the shower, we went to MawMaw Wilma and PawPaw Sherman's house. This is PawPaw pulling Ben in the wagon in their living room. Ben LOVES his wagon. He also loved the chocolate milk MawMaw gave him. He had never had chocolate milk before and barely even came up for breath while he was drinking it.

After the shower, we went to Mama and Daddy's where Zac put Ben on a horse. Amazingly, this was the first time Ben had ever been on a horse.

Wednesday

I haven't posted in several days and I have lots of pics I want to post so there will be no catchy titles, just the days each of these pics were taken. We're starting with Wednesday. Ben continues to climb onto the hearth. Here he is trying to figure out how to get back down. He did finally manage to go down feet first.

Playing with Nana

Nana came to visit today to prepare for next week when they will be keeping Ben while we go to Mexico. We went to the park after lunch where the big excitement was still walking up and down the steps.

Ben's going to have to quit wearing the hat while we're strolling in the neighborhood. We've lost it three times. The first time John came in after work and said, "Did you know Ben's hat is laying in the road up the street?" Of course, I didn't. He hadn't stopped to pick it up because there was a car behind him. Another time, I noticed about halfway through our walk that Ben was no longer wearing his hat and we had to backtrack three blocks before we found it. Today, we had two hat problems. First, as we're walking down the road, I hear Ben talking, "hat, hat, hat." I didn't think much about it but after a few minutes, I lean forward to look at him and his hat has blown foward and is completely covering his face. Later as we're walking towards home, I see a lady in a Buick coming towards us. I think to myself, "That's odd. We just passed that lady." Then I notice she's holding Ben's hat out the window.

Walk, walk, walk

Ben is cutting two more back teeth. This time on top, so he didn't feel great this weekend. He still had fun playing in his pool Saturday afternoon, though. John "swam" with him again. Saturday morning he climbed up on the hearth, the first time he's climbed up on anything. He didn't repeat it so maybe it was an accident. I'm not sure I'm ready for climbing, especially on brick and concrete.

For the second week, we took him in church for the first part of the service. We made it all the way until time for the sermon this week. There were a few loud "Da Da"s and a couple of "books" (there are lots and lots of books in a church service -- Bibles, hymnals, bulletins), but he was pretty good. This afternoon he waded in the water that ran out of my ferns after I watered them. His mouth is wide-open in this picture because he said, "walk, walk, walk" with every step.

Go Vols?

When John came home for lunch we saw that he and Ben were both wearing orange knit shirts. I, of course, had no idea what John was wearing when I dressed Ben since John leaves for work at 5:15 a.m. I am a deep sleeper and I seldom even turn over in the mornings even though John snoozes two alarms for 20 minutes.