No kids allowed

Beautiful beaches.  Rest and Relaxation.  Adults only.

No diapers.  Uninterrupted sleep.  Excellent food. 

Book reading.  Alone time.  No schedule. 

That sums up the trip Geoff and I took a few weeks back down to Cancun.  After 13+ months, we were ready to leave Olivia behind for a few days for a much needed trip with just the two of us.  Geoff's mom, also known as Mama Glory, was kind enough to come down from the Forth Worth area to watch Olivia along with our nanny, Romelia, while we took off for three nights.

Cancun was lovely.  We stayed in a super nice resort called the Le Blanc.  It was as an adults only, all-inclusive place which is definitely the way to go.  We never left the property once we arrived.  The restaurants on site were terrific.  The beach was gorgeous...the sand was so soft.  The weather wasn't the greatest while we were there.  It rained everyday and we had a hurricane scare (see more on that below).  However, it didn't rain all day long and there were chunks of times the weather was partly cloudy/sunny so we were able to enjoy the beach and pool then.  Unfortunately, because of the weather, we couldn't really play in the ocean as the waves were too big and the red warning flags were out.  The other bummer was that we had scheduled a romantic steak and lobster dinner on the beach one evening.  But again, because of the weather, we had to enjoy our steak and lobster indoors.  Not quite the same experience, but nice nevertheless.

View from our room

MASSIVE hot tub in the room

Our indoor romantic steak and lobster dinner.
Food and service were excellent.  My date was pretty good too :)

The trip wasn't without a little bit of drama.  Right before we left, there was a terrible out break of mosquitoes in Houston. They were swarming every time we went outside.  They were the worst I've ever seen them.  Several managed to get into our house and attack Olivia while she slept.  The morning we left, I went to get her out of her bed and her face was covered in big red bites.  She looked terrible.  Poor thing.  We briefly wondered if she had come down with chicken pox, but quickly decided not since the bites were only on her exposed skin.  So that left us trying to figure out what to do as we were trying to get ourselves out the door and to the airport.  Fortunately, Mama Glory and Romelia took very good care of Olivia, got her some Benadyl and by the time we arrived back home, she looked much, much better.

Also right before we left, we checked the weather and they were beginning to predict that a tropical storm was heading right to the Yucatan Peninsula while we were going to be there.  We continued to monitor the storm once we got to Cancun.  It had strengthened to a category 2 and they were now predicting it to make landfall the day before we were scheduled to go home.  I was a bit amazed how the approaching hurricane just didn't seem to be a big deal at the resort.  There didn't seem to be a sense of urgency or worry.  I guess they're used to dealing with these types of things and have plans in place or something.  While I was never worried about our safety if we were going to have to ride out a hurricane (we've ridden out two hurricanes in Houston...we're experts at that! :) ),  I was concerned that depending on what happened, the airport might be shutdown and we wouldn't be able to get out on our scheduled flight.  After three days, I really, really missed Olivia and was ready to get home.  Fortunately, the storm lost its strength, slowed down its course and got out of Cancun without any problems.

Approaching storm in the distance

I'm so thankful for the time Geoff and I had to just hang out together and rest.  It was wonderful to have a break from juggling some my roles - mommy, employee, housekeeper, cook - and just focus on being a wife for a few days.

 

Olivia @ 1 year

My!  How my baby has grown!  For Olivia's 1 year pictures, we once again called on our favorite photographers, Jonathan and Blakely Fletcher at framedbyfletcher, who also did Olivia's 3 months (here) and 6 months (here) photos.  They always do such a perfect job of capturing exactly who she is and her little personality. 

Here are some of my favorites:

Knock! Knock!

Who's there?

Ketchup.

Ketchup who?

Ketchup with me and I'll tell you!

This pretty much sums our our Halloween evening...trying to catch-up with our little Ketchup all night! Olivia dressed as a Heinz ketchup pack for her first attempt at trick or treating around our neighborhood.  She definitely was not into it.  She was much more interested in exploring everything on our neighbors' porch than waiting for candy.  She also showed us her independence, not wanting to hold our hands and running in every different direction as we proceeded up and down the street.  Our neighbors were really sweet and asked Geoff and I want kind of candy we wanted.  After all, we would be the ones eating it! We ended up spending most of the evening hanging out in the front yard of Olivia's little friend Lance who lives about 4 houses down from us.  Lance, who is 2 years old, is currently Olivia's best friend.  When they first saw each other on Halloween night, they went up and gave each other a hug.  It was so sweet and I wished we could have gotten a picture of it.  Fortunately, their yard is fenced in so it gave us a momentary break from chasing her all over the place. Olivia also liked helping us pass out candy to kids when we were back at our house.  Although she did get a little freaked out the first time she heard the doorbell and saw some kid in a scary looking mask.  Ha ha...  

On the move

Checking out the goods!

  

Somehow we managed to get her to sit just long enough to snap a photo