Valley Alley

This was Scarlet's first time bowling and she was a natural! She waited so nicely for her turn and then she learned perfect Granny bowling skills. The only problem was the 15 minutes it took for her ball to get to the pins.

Charlie won for the second year in a row and I was happy he did because he was so certain that he would and no one else cared.

Fairmont Hot Springs: Our Warmth Comes Naturally

Charlie prides himself on his bowling skills. He wins every year.

 We had to put all four kids in one bed because we only rented a one bedroom. I promise this is not how we left them when we put them to bed...

 Scarlet is my new camera hijacker.

 We made millions of pompoms with our new pompom makers. Even Jacob could do it.

 More on that later.

 Baking clay is our new thing.

Toadstools, hamburgers, cupcakes, bananas, fishy crackers, watermelon, donuts...

We went swimming every day. 

The climbing wall was the highlight this year. This place was way chill so the kids just strapped in and started climbing all over the place.

 Later they hooked the kids on to this rope hanging from the roof so it was a giant swing. They would have swung back and forth all day if we let them.

 Jane and Charlie are hooked on together.

 Tim makes some killer guacamole these days. He made it a few times for us this trip.

On the way back we saw this. At first we just thought it was a dog on the side of the highway but we turned around just in case and if was a baby cub. We see bears everywhere!

The Gravitational Pull of the Moon.

Note that this is the first day and we are WHITE. We get consistently tanner as the pictures go on.

This is Sergio, Timmy's new best friend. They talked for at least an hour after dinner while I sat there wishing I new Spanish so I would know why they were laughing. The waiters made fresh guacamole at your table and we had some every. single. day. because it was deeeeeelicious. I watched it so many times I could do it with my eyes shut now. We made some when we got back to we could teach the kids but its just not the same here- the avocados aren't as good. Here's the ingredients:

Mexican Guacamole

4 avocados

1 tomatoe

little bit of garlic

fresh lime juice

fresh oregano

serrano chilies (spice)

1/2 a small onion

Meet the chocolate man.

Timmy fell for the classic "I didn't know he was real" joke. It was so funny.

Just wanted to note how nice it is to go out for dinner without kids. Its a whole new experience :0)

I should also note that we had tasty ice cream every evening after dinner.

I thought this was a beautiful scene so I took a picture of this random lady on the beach selling her wrappy scarf things.

Sandy toes.

We got these treasures for the kids. I'm thinking about using the conch to call the kids inside for dinner when they are down by the creek near our house.

How I love a good market. Tim was making all the Spanish guys laugh.

I was loving Tim's scruffyness while we were on vacation. He's always clean cut and that's nice too but I like the scruff best.

The kids always tease me about having donuts when they are with Gramma so I got this picture for 

them.

I'm trying to keep all my Mexico posts G rated but its hard since we were in our suits like 80% of the time. I turned 30 while we were there so it was a fun birthday. We went to this RADICAL Italian restaurant. So this may be my last picture without wrinkles, saggyness, gray hair and all the rest of oldness. As if turning 30 wasn't bad enough, to make things worse this older lady came to my house to deliver me a Birthday card while I was gone and she slipped and fell and broke her leg! It is the most tragical story ever.

In the tank at the restaurant.

This is just sick and wrong.

We took this picture in the dark, while we were sitting on the beach talking about life.

Love Birds.

More market stuff.

Lots of shopping time.

The last day. We were so sad it was over. I was so used to being with Tim every second that it was hard to leave his 5 inch radius when we got home. We may have to move there with the kids for just a year or something...

                                                            The eyeball moved around.

We had a crazy long 8 hour layover in Arizona. So we walked around and took the train downtown. Afterwards, Rachael (one of Timmy's best friends from BYU) met us at the airport for dinner. She hauled her three kids all the way to the airport just to see us for an hour but we were SO HAPPY she came. It really was the highlight of our trip and it made us want to try harder to see old friends because its always so worth the effort. She has darling babies and it was such a treat to see them.  Our kids are the same ages so it was painful to think of how much fun we'd have together if we lived closer.

We love this little family!!