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Considering all I wanted out of this day was to deep clean my house, this day feels like a smashing success. Granted, my day effectively started at 11 am and cleaning didn’t happen until 9 pm, but it got done! And in the meantime, I had so many good experiences with the girls.

As I was getting lunch cleaned up, I heard on the radio that it was 60 degrees outside. I dropped everything, packed the girls in the car and drove to the nearest park.

I have figured out a way to get Lydia to nap. All I have to do is convince her to cuddle with me and boom! she’s out for a good hour or two in the middle of the day. That’s perfect, because I’m generally out of commission for a good couple hours then anyway, so we can just be out of commission together.

This afternoon Abe called to tell me that his Aunt Christina, Isabella’s mother, passed away this morning. Our hearts have been so heavy as we have prayed for Isabella and her family. We love Isabella, and we simply can not imagine how hard it must be to lose her mother at age 11.

And what a mother! Christina epitomized love, long-suffering, empathy and compassion. Abe’s fondest gastronomic memories are of meals she lovingly cooked for his family after his parents’ divorce. Even though she suffered greatly during her life, Christina always listened to others and spoke only words of encouragement and kindness. She was an inspiring example to all who knew her. When Suzanne broke the news to Abe, she said, “A mighty oak has fallen.”

Pictures.

Abe has been wearing broken glasses for nine months now. Karin generously bestowed Abe with new glasses for his birthday, and he is so excited to not stare through peeling lenses anymore!

He’s so handsome. Doesn’t he look great in his new glasses?

On the home front, we had a smooth day. I worked out at home and at the gym while Lydia was in ballet, and then we came home for lunch, math, and naps. Lydia actually napped curled up in my arms. Sleeping with my arms around my first baby was definitely the highlight of my day.

And then it was off to school. I successfully redid the dishes I messed up yesterday. Abe was supposed to bring the girls to the restaurant, but I accidentally brought the car seats to school with me. Oops! Thankfully, Karin and Jay still came, so I had someone to look forward to. It helps to have people I care about in the dining room. I enjoy the process so much more knowing that the food is going to land on loved ones’ plates.

Today was a reality check for Abe and me. Abe had a deluge of work waiting for him in the office, and I had restaurant tonight. I messed up every. single. dish. It was so depressing. I am going to redo it all tomorrow in a quarter of the time so my station can be ready for service.

One cool thing we did was smoke cream cheese for our cheesecake. Even though I forgot about the cheesecake and let it cook too long, the flavor was amazing. We used pickling spice, woodchips, galangal, cinnamon sticks, and orange zest to flavor our smoke. I also caramelized cornflakes, but I must have looked away while pouring the salt or something because they tasted like salty potato chips. I must have accidentally dumped salt on top of them. Oops. And I also made (and messed up) milk crumbs. Lots of redos tomorrow.

Speaking of mistakes, the girls made one this morning. While I was on the phone with Mom, Lydia grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped away at her hair and Mary’s. You can barely tell on Lydia’s hair, but poor Mary. She was shorn and lopsided before, but now her hair is a cross between Euro-punk and chicken.

I took a picture of the girls because I was laughing inside, but I told them sternly that I was only taking the picture so they could see the damage they caused. The result is–a mug shot! Two guilty little faces caught fresh from the act.

Before we left for Cancun, one of the bishopric approached Abe and said they had a calling for me: First counselor in the Primary. (That was the calling that was so hard in my last ward.) Abe turned ashen gray and explained that while I would accept whatever calling they gave me, that particular one might be hard for a number of reasons. He then gently suggested that the calling I had already suggested to each individual member of the bishopric, a calling to the nursery, might be better.

Last night I got the call to the nursery. Hip, hip hooray! Thank-you, Honey, for helping me land there. Of course, I credit the listening skills of our new bishopric, my own culturally inappropriate talks with them (effectively preemptive strikes), and God too. Basically, I am thankful to everyone who helped me get a calling that a) I enjoy b) makes me feel like I have something to contribute c) is every other week so I can go to Abe’s Gospel Doctrine classes and c) syncs with my school stress this quarter. A blessing indeed.

Today was my first day in nursery, and it was awesome. It was especially nice not to abandon Mary after having been away so long.

After church, we rushed home to get the house in order for dinner with the Maudsleys. They were in town for a baptism, and Katie offered a couple weeks ago to come over with a raclette dinner. I enthusiastically welcomed yet another opportunity to get out of cooking dinner, and when the Maudsleys got here today, we joked that they were like a food truck. Just look at the amazing dinner they made after transporting ingredients and equipment from over an hour away:

Abe got spit up on twice while holding their adorable new baby, Phillip. He was so happy to be holding a baby again that he didn’t care a bit. Even though I am no longer at the stage where I feel actively allergic to babies, I preferred to watch and coo from a distance.

Just fell asleep twice while typing. Good night!

We made it back yesterday night, and it was so, so, SO wonderful to see the girls. At one point, Mary looked up at my face and exclaimed gleefully, “You came back!” Heartstrings warmed. Both girls came into my room this morning and preferred a long, long cuddle to any offers of food or other entertainment. I got lots of cuddles throughout the day, and we ended with…yet more cuddles in Lydia’s toddler bed. Mary squeezed herself happily in the middle, and I felt like I was in heaven. It is so nice to be back home with my girls.

The only real activity today centered around going to dinner at Chelsea and Derek’s house. Chelsea made magazine-worthy eggplant involtini. It was so good, and it felt so great not to have to cook dinner; the return to reality was softened slightly when Chelsea offered to outsource that task.

For most of the day, we lounged at home with the girls. Abe did a couple of lovely home improvement projects, and we rounded off the day by watching the movie, Emporer. It is about the end of WWII in Japan and the drama surrounding the U.S. decision on how to deal with Hirohito.

Today felt filled with WWII, actually. I devoured the rest of my book on the U.S. rowing team that won the gold medal at the Berlin olympics, and I read a cousin’s post on Facebook about how today marks the 71st anniversary of when Darby’s Rangers were gunned down behind enemy lines. Grandma, I thought of you, and I couldn’t imagine how you felt after you learned about Ralph. You are such a courageous woman. I love you.

Pictures.

I couldn’t bring my camera to our outing today, but never fear! I lifted images off of the internet that show exactly where we were and what we saw.

Trip one:
Akumel for snorkeling with sea turtles, a barracuda, parrot fish, giant sting rays, coral reefs, and an enormous green eel. The eel was coiled up inside of a coral cove, but you could see its mammoth head and neck near the opening. The guide asked us, “shall we continue?” to which I responded with my solo chorus, “YES! Let us please continue!!!” I swam away from that as fast as my flippers would let me.

After forty five minutes in the ocean, I felt cold and very ill, but I did emerge with a shifted paradigm. I had no idea how interesting snorkeling could be! To be honest, I didn’t even feel that scared of being eaten by a shark, even though we were out deeper than I have ever swum in a body of natural water.

Here are my copied pictures:

Trip 2:

It was amazing. I have never seen anything like what I saw today.

After the adventures and lots of good times visiting with Kim and Lucas, we headed back to the resort to spend a couple hours on the beach reading…and ordering food. The food came right to our lounge chairs by the ocean. It was not only magical, but also a little windy and cold. So as soon as we ate our food, we headed to our room to warm up and get ready for dinner.

The farewell Qualtrics dinner was set out on the beach. We ate a bunch of fish that the deep-sea fishing group caught today, and I got to visit with some of my favorite people from the trip.

And now to finish packing. Tomorrow we will be back in Salt Lake with our girls!!

Happy 31st birthday Abe! We celebrated with excessive self indulgence. We skipped our scheduled outing and instead lay by the pool and beach for most of the day. When we’d had our fill of lounging, we got massages (and I got an additional facial). From there we headed straight to the best restaurant on the resort, where we ordered a five course meal, after which we retired to our rooms and ordered brownies for room service. I feel like I can only have one day like this a year if I still desire to call myself a Christian.

Everything we’ve prayed for in terms of Abe’s big deal happened today. It was the best birthday present of all. Thanks, Mom, for your prayers! I know they helped.

We also got to Skype with the girls! It was so fun to see their beautiful faces. That might have been the highlight of my day.

Also, I am sick today. Darn. But it was so good otherwise, I don’t feel like I can complain much. Tomorrow we are snorkeling with sea turtles and in underground caves. It is very uncharacteristic behavior for me to be so adventurous, but I don’t want to let our little group down.

I also took lots of pictures, so here they are:

Right now there is are some beautiful vocalists serenading one of the terraces of the main building on the resort. Our hacienda is very close to the main building, so it feels like I am being personally serenaded with arias and Broadway hits. Very lovely.

I think I actually went into gastronomic shock at dinner tonight. The food is just so amazing, so creative, so abundant, so all-the-time available, and so free. I had no idea we were embarking on a vacation that had the same food issues as a cruise. Tomorrow I am going to practice restraint, if only so I don’t see stars at the end of the day.

Today was also a beach day! Hallelujah, though I think I put on too much sunscreen. I didn’t tan at all! Not making that mistake tomorrow.

And tomorrow just happens to be Abe’s birthday. I do so hope he can submit his big deal to the legal department tomorrow. That would be an over-the-top birthday present for him. Today he got some great news, and he is literally one step away from submitting it all to the legal department and getting this all wrapped up. It’s so close that I’m not sure if Abe is entirely relaxing on this vacation, but he sure put forth a good effort today.

He played tons of beach volleyball, and he convinced me to kayak in the Gulf of Mexico with him. I was scared to death that we would be eaten by a shark, but because I love him, I went with him. I got a little seasick from the waves, but it was fun. We just headed out as far as we wanted towards the horizon, and when the ocean turned black beneath us and the waves got extra choppy, we turned back and returned to shore.

We also had a great visit with some of Abe’s coworkers over lunch. There are just no words to express how pleasant everyone is. I enjoy them all so much.

In the evening we headed downtown to get some shopping in. We took pictures with Abe’s phone there, but they didn’t come through to my email yet. I will post them tomorrow.

I am also getting slightly sick here because at night it gets cooler and I didn’t wear properly warm attire the past couple days.  Off to bed so I can be healthy on Abe’s birthday!

Today we visited Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. I took a ton of pictures, so I’ll just post those here with captions.

When we weren’t being scared silly by tales of ancient Mayan worship, we were…eating. The breakfast buffet was the best buffet I have ever been to in my life. There were multiple cheese plates with incredible cheeses, fresh ricotta, a ton of fresh exotic/non-exotic fruit, delightful fruit compotes, stuffed veggies, smoked salmon, an omelette bar, a taco bar, a bread bar, and hot buffet bar, and whatever drinks you could possibly desire to accompany your breakfast.

We had dinner at Las Ventanas, and the whole affair took two hours and forty five minutes. I wanted to take pictures of everything but it wasn’t appropriate. And now we are chowing down on room service. I love this place.

Back home the girls had fun in day care! We are so relieved. They were on our minds throughout the day, and when we heard Lydia tell us she made a lot of new friends, we were so happy. Mary even talked to us tonight! We are so happy they are so happy.