TRAVEL DAYS
The kids didn't have school on Friday because of parent teacher conferences and had early release on Thursday. We planned parent teacher conference for Jay and Lily to match up with when Crystal got out of school. Crystal walked across the street when she got out, and we were just finishing up conferencing with Jay's teachers. He is in the Spanish immersion program and despite the fact that he was going to miss a week of school, his teachers were SO excited for the opportunity he had to spend a week in Mexico! In fact his English teacher was leaving for Mexico too!
We stopped at home for some last minute items and headed on our adventure! We drove till midnight to get to St George where we slept at Ty's grandparents' condo. They were actually there this time so it was nice to visit with them a bit.
The next morning I woke up without a voice! WHAT!?!? I felt fine other than I couldn't talk and when I talked too much it would make me cough a little. I used to lose my voice all the time when I was teaching. It just gets strained easily. Crystal had had soccer games that week (she missed her last tournament because of this trip. It was sad but I think she decided it was worth it). I thought maybe I had just yelled too much and strained my voice, since I felt fine otherwise. It would prove to torment me all week. I never felt sick/congested... just had a terrible tickle in my throat.
Friday we drove from St George to Mesa. We took the shortest route through Vegas (pictured) which had us spending a lot of time in Navajo Nation. We had to mask up just about everywhere we went there. We haven't had to wear masks in Idaho Falls for a long while now. I'm just glad I thought to grab the bag of masks on the way out the door! Crystal (who hates masks the most) survived the few trips into gas stations and restaurants. Haha. We had to settle for Burger King for lunch since it was the only restaurant we had seen in hours. Not our favorite place but we made it better by getting shakes. Burger King can make a decent shake. Haha. Then we made the last leg of our journey to Uncle Todd and Aunt Brooke's house.
I did some last minute work on my computer so I wouldn't be too far behind when we got back into the States. I wasn't going to have access to internet for a week once we left. We had pizza with cousins and then headed to bed for our BIG day in the morning!
Saturday
We left bright and early around 5:30 am. I started the day off right by losing a contact as soon as I sat down in the truck (I found it days later but at the time didn't even know if it had fallen out in the truck or the driveway or the gas station... haha). Already on my spare set of contacts, we set off for Mexico. Right before getting to the border, we stopped at a McDonald's. Everything was already in Spanish. I was really surprised at how southern Arizona is Americanized Mexico. Spanish is possibly the first language there. Even street signs changed to Spanish before we got to the border. It was an interesting discovery!
We made it across the border with ease! The SECOND we crossed the border, my phone promptly stopped working. I was expecting it but was surprised at how accurate it was. Haha. Ty's phone had a notification popped up that said Welcome to Mexico! We stopped at the visa office and were on our way! It was a 5 hour trip from the border to the beach house, but we made it with just one other pit stop at a toll booth. Impressive with 6 kids! After unloading the vehicles and a quick meeting on beach rules, we changed into swimsuits and walked out on the beach! We spent the afternoon and evening on the beach and in the water!
Ty and Todd headed into town to get ice, tortillas, and dinner from the local taco shop. We had delicious carne asada street tacos pretty much all week. And went into town for fresh tortillas every other day. It was all soooo good!
SUNDAY
After only 1 day in the water and on the beach, Jay had a sore foot. It was just irritated but it made it hard to walk on the sand. That's why he's wearing socks in most of the pictures today. We were told the public beach stores and stuff weren't always open during the week, and we decided even though it was Sunday to go check it out and hopefully get Jay some water shoes. The kids of course each found something they couldn't live without. There was a place there that cut fresh fruit and put it in a fresh coconut. I LOVED it. Everyone else wasn't sure about the Mexican sweet/spicy sauce they put on it. I spent the next 2 days eating it by myself. Haha.
LILY'S BIRTHDAY!!!!! Lily had a real Mexican Birthday this year! She turned 11 in Mexico! We decorated it all up and had a fancy breakfast (thanks to Aunt Brooke). We asked her what she wanted to do for the day and she said BEACH. She decided she made the best decision because it was the PERFECT day for the boogie boards!!!! We had some big waves today. TONS of fun on the beach!! After beach she wanted to head to town. It ended up being kind of late, so we didn't wander around much. We just went to the Taqueria place for carne asada tacos and carne asada potatoes. The potatoes were my favorite all week. Haha. SO good! We also drank coke from a glass bottle!
When we got home from dinner we had cake and of course the piñata! I couldn't think of a safe place to hang it so since it was a beach ball the kids got in a circle and kicked it around until it broke open! Haha! More candy than they ever needed that's for sure! She opened the last of her presents and the kids finally went to bed! The adults stayed up and played games for a bit and we headed to bed too!
TUESDAY
We took a break from the beach this morning and drove into town for some site seeing. We went out the pier to see all the shrimp boats! There were a lot of booths set up on the pier and we found ourselves some more souvenirs. Everyone in the family ended up with a hat and we found a new wooden dominoes set. Lily found a ceramic skull with the Mexican flag colors on it that she just had to have! We tried to go to a pottery place Brooke loved, but it looked like it was permanently closed when we drove passed. We still went out on the beach in the late afternoon/evening! Ty and the girls made a Urithiru Tower from the Stormlight book series that Ty and I have been reading. Ty was quite proud of his creation!
That night we left Crystal with the sleeping kids after feeding them Mac and Cheese and we went to the carne asada place again. The first night we all went on Lily's birthday, the baby wasn't feeling good and poor Brooke had ended up eating in the van with the baby. We went without kids this time so she could enjoy it with is! 
We got the volleyball net out today! It was tough playing with the actual volleyball and not a beach volleyball. I didn't think it would matter but it turns out it does. Haha. The ball was too heavy. But we played for a bit anyway. Jay made a new friend today. His name was Nikko and his family had rented the beach house next door for a few days. Nikko knew a tiny bit of English and Jay knew a tiny bit of Spanish, so they were able to pretend to understand each other a little bit at least. Jay got some real life Spanish speaking practice in for a couple of days!
We had some fun taking pictures with the sun behind us. My phone kept lightening the pictures automatically so the didn't turn out exactly how I wanted but it was still fun. Earlier in the day Ty and Todd made the trek into town again. This time after getting tortillas, they went to the pier where people sale their shrimp catch of the day from coolers. Before we came in for the night, Ty decided he wanted to try some fresh clams so we had all the kids digging in the sand for clams. We got a good amount of them collected, more than we could actually eat as it turned out! Brooke cooked them up with the shrimp and we had a delicious meal that night!
Our last day on the beach!!! We made sure to really enjoy our last beach day! When we were all done that evening, we cleaned sand off all the equipment and the back patio and got the back area all locked up, so we wouldn't have to worry about it the next day.
As we were finishing up, the kids who were waiting for a shower to open up were just running around the back cement area outside the gate to the beach house. Jay jumped off a raised flowerbed landing right on top of some broken class. He started screaming, but Ty and I don't react to his screams the way you'd think a parent should. It's hard to gage the situation when everything makes him scream like he's dying. Haha. I feel pretty bad about it now because when I did get over to him to see what happened, he had a small cut on both heels. Poor kid!
I got down and managed to get him in a more comfortable position without his feet touching the ground (he had been stuck on his hands and knees). I held him in my lap putting some pressure on this heels while we waited for a shower to open up. Ty was inside trying to hurry the girls along. Once we got him in the shower and got his feet cleaned up, they looked much better. Both feet had gotten cut by glass. One was deeper but smaller and hurt worse than the other. Neither wound was very big though, and they cleaned up so well you almost couldn't see them. We got them bandaged up and put socks on him to keep them clean. I am just so grateful it was the last night and he wasn't going to miss out on any beach time!
They did hurt. Maybe not as much as Jay thought they hurt. We love him dearly but when he's running around playing with the kids and then sees us and starts limping, we know maybe it's not quite so bad. Haha. He milked it for all it was worth, but he was running around the next night at Todd and Brooke's house. I made him wear socks for the next few days to keep his feet clean and they healed up just fine.
Once we got Jay all situated, Ty and I went to the Taqueria to get dinner for the last time. We got it 'to go' and made the mistake of not checking the bag when we left. Ty and I are fired from picking up dinner because they didn't give us all the toppings, so we only had semi good tacos/potatoes on our last night in Mexico. Haha. Hopefully Brooke will forgive us!
We packed the truck back up and cleaned the beach house top to bottom. As we were cleaning up the front driveway I found a tiny little lizard sitting on the wall. I used a pen for size reference. It was tiny and cute! We got one last picture in front of the beach house and drove into town for one last trip the the tortilla shop. We ate tortillas all the way home to Idaho! Tortillas in Idaho just aren't the same as tortillas in Mexico! After dropping some stuff off to the family that helps Brooke's family take care of the beach house, we began our trek home!
According to Brooke, we were going to have at least a 2 hour wait at the border. She has been making this trip for a long time and said it's always a long long wait. When we got to the visa office near the border, the wait time online said 0 minutes. Brooke still didn't believe it so we weren't getting our hopes up.
Just as we were about to enter the lanes that have barriers up to prevent changing lanes near the border, someone stood in the middle of the lane we needed to take. Todd in front of us swerved to miss him and Ty followed. We ended up in the commercial lane for the border crossing. Ty looked back and the guy was waving his arms. He had a construction vest on so we thought maybe he was supposed to be flagging for some type of road construction ahead. Because our navigator was also trying to take us a different direction, Ty backed up and asked him what was going on. He told Ty the border was closed and that his buddies (in a car nearby) would escort us to the next border. He was standing on our foot board at this point and refusing to get off. Ty called Todd who had pulled off up ahead of us. A truck driver had seen what was happening and went to Todd's van to talk to him. He told him not to listen to this guy and that the border was in fact open. He showed Todd a break in the barrier up ahead that allowed Todd to get back in the correct lane. Ty told the guy on our truck that we were going to risk it and continue to the border. Ty said thank you as the man protested, and Ty started driving away. Thankfully the man got off the truck and out of the way. We took the break in the barrier to get in the correct lane and then drove directly to the border with no wait. We crossed the border with no issues in minutes. Brooke was astounded! We were going to go to the McDonald's near the border again for dinner but since we made it across the border so early we decided to wait and get dinner when we got to Mesa. We ordered bbq in Mesa and ate at the house since we were all exhausted from the trip.
The incident with the guy in the road was pretty scary and was our only scary encounter the entire trip. Of course it happened just minutes from the border! Haha. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to direct traffic into the nearby town that we would have had to go through to reach the next border crossing and wanted us to pay for the escort there, but we will never know what his real intensions were.
SATURDAY
We woke up bright and early because we had to make the entire trip home today. Ty's parents were giving talks in church and being set apart as missionaries on Sunday and leaving on their mission to Chile early Monday morning, and we wanted to be there for all of that. It was a long drive back through Navajo Nation. This time we bypassed Las Vegas and drove through Kanab instead to save us about an hour. We still of course stopped at Burger Supreme in Provo for dinner before driving the last 3.5 hours home. It was a fantastic trip but we were exhausted and glad to sleep in our own beds again!
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