In June, we took an impromptu 5 day vacation to Riviera Maya in Mexico. No, this isn't the sort of thing we usually do It was one of those rare opportunities that come up when you have a job in the publishing industry. Sometimes PR companies randomly seeming send people on these awesome vacations completely paid for and this time it was Danielle's turn. She unfortunately had to turn down a trip to Orlando a few week prior due to my previously planned trip to Minneapolis. But this trip to Mexico promised to be even better. The fact that it was partially celebrity related and partially kid related made it the perfect trip to bring her family along on too. The purpose of the trip was to cover events surrounding a concert by a touring group on minor mostly singing celebrities as well as the opening of the Little Big Club children's center at the hotel that we were stayed at that was becoming a Hard Rock Hotel in the near future.
Unfortunately, it rained for the majority of the trip. Though with Lily, it's easy to have fun regardless. We danced, we swam, we ate lots of cookies, and we got to hang out with Barney. That's a pretty solid vacation for a one year old. For the opening of the Little Big Club children's center / daycare, everything was completely dripping in Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine (Train Tank), Bob the Builder, and Angelina Ballerina paraphernalia And along with that opening was a red carpet and party with these guys, a whole stage show, and a breakfast with them the next morning, so Lily had plenty of opportunities to give Barney a hug and she didn't waste one of them.
One day when we got to the hotel after being out, there was an unexpected Barney performance in the Lobby. When Lily saw him, she flipped out. This was one of the highlights of the vacation for me. We put her down and she RAN for Barney, right pass the barriers and stopped and danced. She did her signature backward leg kicking move and spun around. When Barney was done with a song, she did her sign language for "more". When Barney started singing his "I love you..." song, she cried because she knew he was done. It was super adorable. At the end she got to go up for a hug. Well the way she hugs, head first saying "Awwwe". She didn't want him to go. The vacation could have ended right there and I would have been satisfied. She loved it so much.
Other notes from Mexico:
- We had a hot tub in our room. Tried it out, Lily only liked it when it was empty so that she could throw stuff into it.
- She got a babysitter one night in the hotel. Played with some weird international kids. It went really well.
- Went on a tube ride at Xcaret. Lily wasn't so sure about it, but we strapped on a life vest and floated around for an hour while she just hung out and looked confused.
- Went swimming at the hotel. Her favorite part was playing on the 4 inches of water perimeter around the pool, which scared the crap out of us. She also had some of those fun pool toys. What are those called... oh right, plastic cups.
I was happy to have all that time with my girls in Mexico since I spent 4 days in Minneapolis for the Eyeo festival. As much as I had fun out there, I was tough to be away. We tried to skype and learned that it's great when it works and completely awful when it only sort of does, which is the majority of the time. It's such a tease when you get audio but the video keeps freezing and going in and out. I don't have any plans on leaving for any length of time, but before I do, I'll be sure to have a reliable to spend virtual quality time with the fam.
