I didn’t think we would have Internet here, but for a small fee (30 pesos for 15 minutes), we can actually connect to the world.

So, let me give you the run down of our activities here. We had a pretty uneventful flight, other than driving through the snow and ice to get to the airport by 5 am (I must interject for just a second to let you know that in his channel flipping, Ryan has stopped on Robin Hood in Spanish. Most all the TV is in Spanish here –go figure– although there is one channel in German, and a couple in English with Spanish subtitles. Oh, great. Now he’s watching Lazy Towne in Spanish. That show annoys me in English, can you imagine it in Spanish?). We met some of the other winners at the airport, and then had a nice boring flight. I decided to pay the $8 for an in flight movie, and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I’m sure it would have been much better on a large screen (as opposed to the 6 inch screen on the back of the seat in front of me), but it was a diversion, and when I fly, I need a diversion to pass the time. Our hosts from KODJ, Dickie and Angel, had a little trouble at the airport, however. It seems Angel had received a new drivers license recently, and the birth date was wrong. By one day. They told her at the airport that they would let her fly, but she probably wouldn’t be able to come back without the correct dates on the legal documents. So when Dickie got on the plane, he had no idea when his wife would make it, if she does at all. But since he was the “host” and leading all of us, he had to come, anyway. We’ve heard that she won’t be able to come until Tuesday.

When we arrived, we waited a long time for the luggage to come, and while waiting, met up with the members of our group, and one of the winners was from Chicago! Seems they were visiting their kids here, their sister-in-law told them about this contest she was trying for, and he got through and won! Now that’s what I call lucky. After gathering our luggage and going through customs, we met “Pepe”, our fun jet vacations representative, who brought us to the bus, which would bring us here to our hotel, the Riu Caribe’. It’s an all inclusive hotel, with three restaurants, a couple of bars, several pools, right on the beach. It’s kind of like being on a cruise, but we’re not moving (which is good for me, since I don’t enjoy the whole motion sickness thing). Even alcohol is included, which is surprising. Even our mini bar in the room is stocked with bottled water, sprite and Pepsi and Coronas. We told them at the front desk they can take the beers and just give us more waters and Pepsi light, but they left the beer anyway. So, as you can guess, there are a lot of “happy” people here.

It was too late to do anything yesterday, so we just ate dinner and came back to the room and went to bed early. I think I was asleep before 9, I was very tired.

One of the other couples here asked if we wanted to go to Church with them in the morning, and we said we would. So, this morning we met up with them and another couple at 9:30 to catch a bus and get to the LDS church by 10:00. While on the bus, the guy sitting across from us pointed and said, “Mormon?” like, “there’s the Mormon Church, you dolts, get off the bus.” We said, “Right here?” and got up, telling us that “that guy” said to get off now for the Mormon Church. So, all six of us get off, look to the left where he was pointing, and see no Mormon Church. What we do see if a WalMart. “What kind of Mormons does he think we are, shopping on a Sunday?” said our new friend, Sharon. We laughed, realizing that we don’t know where we are, but we didn’t get off at the right stop. We asked someone, and found out that we were about “8 BIG blocks” from where we needed to be. I’m guessing it was about a mile’s walk, in my non walking shoes. By the time we finally found the place we were sweaty and my feet were very much hurting! We went in the church and there was no one in the chapel. That darn website lists the sacrament meeting times wrong. So, we killed a bit over an hour chatting with the others in our group and the other Americans who also came early, and the missionaries. We met a guy named Lemuel, who is a tour guide. We arranged for him to take us on a tour of Chichen Itza tomorrow, and give us the whole Mormon scoop.

By the time the meeting started at noon, there were almost as many Americans in the chapel as natives. Needless to say, I didn’t catch much of the meeting, although it was cool to be there. Three people, who had been baptized the day before, were confirmed, and we got to sing Christmas hymns in Spanish. Ryan did a little bit of translating for me until his brain went into overload and he said he couldn’t think anymore. Our trip home was much less eventful. We caught a bus and came right back. After lunch, we came back to the room and Ryan had a nap and I went out and relaxed on the beach. Since it was late afternoon, there wasn’t much sun, and I could only stand to be out there “sunning” for about an hour until it got to cold. Yes, there were some obvious Europeans who wanted to enjoy the sun topless, but we can look past that.

At 9pm we have our dinner reservations for the Shangri-la. Thanks for reading, sorry this is so long, and we’ll post more in a few days!

A few full size pictures from the trip are available HERE

UPDATE: All the pictures from the trip are now posted here.

Nothing much to say here, just getting ready for the trip. I’ve got our suitcases packed, presents wrapped, groceries bought and my bedroom and bathroom cleaned. Now I can work on the kitchen and bathrooms and get the neighbor gifts organized. Who’s brilliant idea was it to schedule a trip the week before Christmas?! It’s probably cheaper, right?

Anyway, you probably won’t be hearing from me–but maybe you will–who knows. So, enjoy your week before Christmas!

Does anyone out there like packing? I guess it’s better than unpacking, and I’m glad it’s just for me and Ryan this time instead of for all 7 of us, but it’s not all that fun. But I’m pretty much packed for both of us. I’ll still have to throw in cosmetics and hair things, but the clothes are all packed. Things I need to remember to include would be sunscreen, a razor, dramamine, chapstick and a hat.

I’ve written a 4 page “manual” ( I feel like I’m on wife Swap or something) including schedules for the kids’ activities for the kind souls who will be staying here watching the kids. It includes things like what they like to eat, when the kindergarten talent show is, where the jr. High band concert is, even how to operate our tv and the automatic lights. I feel like I’m being OCD about this, but I don’t know how easy it will be to get ahold of us in Mexico, and I just want things to go smoothly for them.

I’ll need a vacation after all this prep–oh, yeah, that’s what all this is for–so we can go on vacation!

I wanted to toss up a couple of pictures from our concert last weekend, just for fun.

Can you find me in this picture?

or this one?

This is a cool one that shows the whole stage with the organ and everything. We look pretty small and insignificant from so far back, but the setting is so nice.

Here’s a picture of the audience. I still can’t believe we had that many people come to the concert!

And here we are in our “up on the housetop hats”.

Yesterday I woke up from a dream starring John Stamos. If you aren’t watching ER, you are missing out on a serious treat, because he is just the cutest thing ever. Now I don’t even really remember what the dream was, just that John Stamos was in it. I woke up in the usual way, with a small child climbing over me and demanding breakfast. That same child later threw up his breakfast (out of consideration for the squeamish, I won’t mention what color it was, but if you are interested, ask me later). So, needless to say we had a lovely morning.

This morning I woke from a dream where all the members of the Bells on Temple Square and their families went to Disneyland. It was so much fun! I don’t know if we did a concert there, or if we were just all on vacation together, but we had a great time. Let’s work on that one. I just hope my morning happiness and fuzzy dream remembering isn’t cut short by another such incident as we had yesterday.

And on a totally unrelated subject, I’m pretty sure I’m done with my Christmas shopping. I have the neighbor gifts almost all finished, kids presents all bought, family presents bought and wrapped, even stocking stuff is ready. I have a bunch of different teacher gifts that I’ve been collecting, and I just need to have the kids pick them out for each teacher and wrap them (yesterday we wrapped the Christmas t-shirts, but I don’t have any more of those except in smalls, and I don’t think any of the kids have teachers who wear smalls. ) I have a few gifts squirreled away in different places and I need to bring them out and make sure they get wrapped and under the tree, but it’s a relief to know it will all be done BEFORE.

I woke up today with a TERRIBLE headache. It could be because of the long exhausting rehearsal we had last night, or maybe the early morning getting a child ready and off to her band concert early, but it was just a huge headache. I’ve also been under quite a bit of stress, what with our Bell concert tomorrow night, and getting ready for Christmas, which all has to be done before our trip. I’ve also got to clean my house, since the parents and the in-laws will be staying here to watch the kids. And I’m trying to plan for everyone’s schedules so that the week we are gone goes as smoothly as possible. So, yes, I have a bit of stress going on right now.

So, today for my preschool time (9-11), instead of going to aerobics like I usually do during preschool, I….are you ready for this?…I took a bath. A bath! Me. The queen of quick showers. I never take baths. But today, I decided that to help my headache and maybe my sanity, I was going to have a bath. So, I filled my bathtub with nice hot water, but some nice smelly bath milk in there, and took a nice dunk. It was quite nice. Afterwards, I cleaned the tub, started some laundry, started the roomba, and got dressed. I wish I had time to take a nap, but I had to pick John up at 11, so my freedom couldn’t last forever. But I’m pleased to say I feel a bit more relaxed now. Except for the fact that I totally twisted my ankle when picking him up from preschool, so now my ankle is aching (to go along with my head). The headache has not totally left yet, but after a Dr. Pepper, some chocolate and 4 tylenol, it’s much less now than before. I’m sure going to Megan’s band concert at 2:00 will help, right?

As most of you know, I have quite the handy husband. He can do electrical wire, build computers, and is pretty good in the trouble shooting department. (He also has a really really tall ladder in case you need one of those.) He’s a good guy who doesn’t mind helping people. That may have been his downfall. You see, he has helped about half of our ward with their computers in some way or another, and right now everyone seems to be having computer related issues. There’s the neighbor who’s daughter hooked up a wireless router for her laptop and now nobody’s internet works. They panicked about this as that’s the way they write their missionaries. So, he fixed those issues. Last night it was the friend who’s son downloaded something so that he could play free games, but meanwhile it was sucking resources from their computer. And the list goes on and on and on. Saturday he hooked up a CPU fan for another neighbor, and Sunday they brought us treats! That’s what I call a quick turn around on the thank yous. Not that treats are required, but it sure is nice when people at least offer to pay him or ask what they can do for him in return. I ended up with a great Reflections Slideshow because Ryan fixed Shelly’s computer, and Shelly does powerpoint presentations. Great trade. We’re looking for someone who does stucco work to need their computer fixed, or maybe a landscaper who could give us a deal on some sprinkler work next summer. That would be helpful. But I think he’s feeling a bit bogged down by all the needy people who constantly call and ask him to fix their computers. I don’t know if they realize that thiers are not the only machines he services. He’s working on getting his dad’s new computer to somehow work with ancient windows 98. I personally don’t think it’s going to happen. Oh well, it’s his superpower, and he’s got to (whisper this part) “Save the computer. Save the ward.”