A love of reading

It's pretty cute how Ansel loves to read. He will flip through the pages and "talk" away. We have the Fox in Socks book, which is kind of a tongue twister book. I'll read it too him pretty quick, then he'll look at it and jibber jabber away for quite awhile. Here's a little video I got of it!

Car seat

Yeah!!! We FINALLY turned the carseat around!!! Ansel loves it, and I like it much better too. It's so much easier traveling with him facing forward.

After we first turned him around, he just smiled and looked around the whole time!

Our trip to Cancun!!!

We had a great trip this past week. It was busy, we saw and did a lot of things! (Needless to say, I've added about 5 posts, just of our vacation!) I love the color of blue the water is there!

Cody and I went to the beach at night.. (I got my hair braided the day after I got there.. it was so nice not having to do anything with it all week, and having it already fixed whenever I was done swimming, etc!)

We saw a lot iguanas all over the place.. (Nearly as frequent as seeing squirrels here!)
The flowers and plants were so pretty.
One day we took a ferry ride to Isla Mujeres..

Have you ever seen a circle rainbow!!!!??? I thought it was pretty neat, although hard to capture with the sun being in the middle. (We saw that while we were on the ferry ride)
We had good weather most of the time, but it rained a lot the day before we left! We went swimming at the beach for awhile anyway.. had some good waves that day! It's amazing what a beautiful blue the water still is, despite the gloomy sky!

Xcaret

We went to a tourist spot called Xcaret on one of the days.It was beautiful. There were lots of different animals, a beach, snorkeling (outside and in caves), reinactments of different cultures, etc. There was definitely a lot to do and see there. I loved snorkeling,except for the part where Cody lost his wedding ring in the cold water :(















One of the parrots let Cody hold him. It was a little nicer than the one sitting next to him!

There were also tortoises of all sizes..

tiny ones

and really huge, older ones.

This animal is a tapir. It's one of the endangered species. I'd didn't know much about them, so I had to read up on it a little. It looks part pig, part anteater, but I guess it's actually in the same family as horses and rhinos. Cody got to feed it some leaves.

Chichen Itza

We got to visit Chichen Itza!! I thought it was pretty amazing.. and it's amazing to think about all the knowledge the Mayan people had. You're no longer able to climb up it like before, but it was still great to see. Chichen Itza is one of the finalists in the new seven wonders of the world.

This is the observatory at Chichen Itza.

Cody and I in front of the pyramid

After (and often during) the tour, the little Mayan kids would run up to you to try and sell you souvenirs.

Cody and I with the souvenir they tried to sell us on the bus.. a bottle of tequilla with our picture and a picture of the pyramid on it. Yeah, we didn't get it..

On the way to Chichen Itza, our tour bus stopped at this gorgeous cenote (a fresh water, limestone sinkhole) I loved the way the vines hung down.

A view from above, of everyone swimming in it.

The Mayan Palace

Thought we'd throw in a few pictures of the resort we stayed in, called the Mayan Palace. It was huge and gorgeous, but we didn't really spend a lot of time there because we were out traveling so much.

The pool was HUGE! It was all connected together, but it went all different directions.

We did get up really early one morning to watch the sunrise at the beach.

It started to get real pretty...

... but the clouds kept following the sun all the way up. By the time the sun finally got out from behind the clouds, all those gorgeous colors were gone; so it was pretty, but anticlimatic.

Friends from the mission

One of the best parts of our trip was meeting some of the people I'd heard Cody talk about from his mission. They were the nicest people and offered friendship and help instantly. (The couple in the middle are the Nygren's. Bryce served the same time as Cody there and we stayed at the resort with them and another couple from their ward. It was a good combination of people to travel with. We all got along really well)

This is the Rocca family. They picked us up when we arrived to Cancun (funny story.. we actually took a taxi to their old house.. luckily the girls living there knew them and called them for us, and they came and picked us up there)

Anyway, we were a mess after flights and driving late to Dallas the night before. They took us to church (it'd already started by the time we got there, and Cody and I were in shorts and t-shirts from traveling!) I was a little embarrassed for looking like such a scrub but everyone was just so happy to greet us.. it didn't matter what we were wearing. The Rocca's took us back to their house and fed us lunch and got rides lined up for us to the resort. . . so hospitable.

I really enjoyed spending time with this family as well. We spent the last couple of evenings with them. They made us dinner one night, and they took us out and showed us some different places and things. This particular evening was their anniversary of when they'd been baptized. We had a lot of fun with them!