The girls had some fun dance experiences this summer that merit their own post. Annie had been taking a weekly class from a cute girl in the stake named Abby. The classes were at her house in the back yard. Our neighbor Shaylee, whom Annie loves, was in her class with her. It was a win-win situation--Annie got Shaylee time, and Lindsey and I switched off carpooling to and from rehearsals.
They had a little end-of-year recital at the stake center.
We were very happy with Annie's cute costume.
Here is her performance in full. My very favorite part is her scuttle off to the side after a leap at 2:11. The angle of her elbows is especially wonderful.
Abby made them all little bracelets and gave them all roses at the end of the recital.
She is a sweet young woman! Annie had a marvelous first foray into ballet.
Here is Abby's full studio:
As for the Vivs, she participated in Dance Theatre Southwest's "Nutcracker in the Land of Enchantment." It was supposed to have happened in December, but with COVID everything got pushed back, so they decided to do a drive-in performance on an outdoor stage during the summer.
There were many rehearsals. Here's Vivs in the corner with all the amazing dancers.
Here she is learning her mouse leaps.
When the small dancers weren't rehearsing they were outside on the lawn, tended by parent volunteers. I signed up for a day or two so I could pretend to be a good dance mom.
It was funny to be there. Sometimes the older dancers would come outside for a break from their masks. One day a high-school aged boy came out looking flushed and distressed. I asked if he was ok and he said, "It just wasn't a good day for it! I'm on the stilts...and with the heavy head...and the jackalopes running all over..." then he shook his head and walked back inside. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I definitely understood when I saw the show!
As the performances approached, the rehearsals got to be very long and late. Vivien was a tired girl.
We had a lot of dance-world related learning to do. Vivien's teacher taught us the art of ballet buns.Vivien endured the torture of Mom's French braiding with good grace, as long as she had a book to read to distract her.Just look at this ballerina!
It was a rather grown-up thing to do for our little Vivs. We arrived at call-time (which I felt was ludicrously early) and she walked by herself to the performer's tent...
... and laid out her things in her 6-foot space (the ballet studio was rigidly strict with COVID precautions).
I got to sit and watch the New Mexico Philharmonic orchestra players warm up while the mountains turned pink with the sunset...
...and then watch the moonrise!
When they would finally get started, out she would come, as a mouse, or a bumblebee, or a little angel (her biggest part). I'm pretty sure that's her on the left.
They did two nights of performances. I came the first night with Krista and some of the Morgans...
...then Drew brought all the kids the second night while I was working.
It was a HUGE thing for Vivien to do. She was not happy about it for the majority of the time and there were many, many tears. I even told her she could quit ballet as soon as it was over if she wanted to. But in the end she still wanted to do ballet, so I think it was a good experience overall.
The studio also had an end of year recital. Look at the Long One:
They did all their stretches for us...
...then they moved their barres into the other room...
...to do some more barre things. This is Vivien's favorite thing to do on a barre:
They did a little routine for us in here as well.
Then her teacher taught us about ballet shoes. I'm not 100% sure about this whole ballet thing, with the body image/identity issues dancers seem to have and the foot problems and injuries, but it is the only active thing we've had Vivien try that she even remotely enjoys, so we'll stick with it for now!
Okay, things are getting pretty bleak here on the blog. I am now five full months behind. They changed the Blogger editor in a few key ways that have made it a lot more inconvenient for me to work the way I am used to (like when I select pictures to insert them, they appear in the editor window in the OPPOSITE order than that which I clicked--so irksome). But, I need to catch up, because things are getting missed and forgotten! So, here is a quick post where I am not going to fix the backwards pictures or lovingly craft my words. Desperate times, desperate measures.
Haley will love this picture so much, but every mother of a newborn can relate.
We were at Haley and Jacob's trying to watch a chick flick for our Sister-Mother's-Day outing. Which movie was it? I think How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I am so old now I can't make it through movies after a big meal without falling asleep.
And what meal was that? It was a Mother's Day dinner at the Riverwoods shopping center (where there are these manakins that scared Colette when we left).
The restaurant was La Jolla Groves. Here is dessert.
Here is the mouthwatering appetizer.
Here is my glamor shot. We all took them. It's a beautiful restaurant.
Here is our pre-dinner group photo. There were a lot of high school students doing the same in fancy dresses for some dance or another.
Here is a pre-evening chat with the boy with the cutest hands.
I made Grandma Paula a lemony mother's day cake, which she was kind enough to pose with.
Here is Drew wrapped in a blanket at the Alworth's after a fun Saturday together.
A fun day that included taking no-lips pictures...
...a pizza party...
...and a walk around the Thanksgiving Point gardens.
Colette expressed irritation with all of us for not wanting to take nice pictures ever since she got home from her mission. She bullied us into many shots.
Look at all these wanderers.
Vivien is a cool cat.
More walkings. It's funny to look at Kate in these pictures, because she was still fairly early in her pregnancy after many months of hormone therapy and now she is about to give birth any day!
I don't even think we knew it was a boy at this time yet. She will be an excellent boy mom.
I want to make a joke about someone having "big shoes to fill," but it will take too long to think of one! So just look at the picture.
Here is Rafe snuggling baby Theo. As the mother-baby nurses at the hospital told Haley, "There's peanuts and there's bubbas, and this is a BUBBAS!"
It's so fun to meet a new baby.
We got to meet Miss Jasmine as well! Back in March Melanie had told me she was naming her baby Jasmine. I said, "You're naming your child after your bird?" They have a budgie named Jazz. She responded, "I hoped he would be dead."
Mel even let me hold her after a sweaty, post-Cancun-trip run...
...during which I saw this glorious view. I love these mountains!
It's fun to get some baby time. Annie asked the other day, "When's the next time we're going to have a baby...*cough*cough*cough*...sitter?" I felt a thrill of unease during her coughing fit. I don't think I'll have another baby. But I do love to hold them!
Back before the Richardson's moved, we got this text:
We decided we could swing going for 5 nights, definitely on the back end of the trip because I knew I wouldn't be able to stomach leaving our friends in Cancun to continue having fun without us while we flew home early! It helped immeasurably to soften the blow of the Richardson's move to know we would get to spend a week with them in May, and we looked forward to the trip with joyful anticipation all through the winter and spring. The day before we flew out we drove the kids up to Utah, passing the time with our elegant in-car entertainment options...
...and delivered them to the wonderful family who made the trip possible. Tia Kate and Grandma Paula switched off tending for us while we were away. Bless them a thousand times!
We left early Saturday morning. My neck has been super touchy lately, I think from all the butterfly stroke-work I've been doing with Masters. The muscles that were already tight from napping awkwardly in the car on the way from ABQ did not lend themselves to aerial rest...
...so I passed the time reading "The Life and Times of Mexico," and when I felt too bad about being a rich, white, American tourist to keep reading anymore, I enjoyed the view out the window.
It was interesting to fly over the jungle. There are many roads leading to what looked like they might have been places at one point.
Meanwhile, Joel and Mckenzie, Joel's cousin Dave and his wife Klysta, and Joel's mother's cousin Amanda and her husband Brad were exploring places cleared from the jungle many years ago that are still places.
They shared their pictures from Tulum in our Google photos album after the trip and I was amused to see this very familiar carving.
We met up with the Morgans for the last leg of our journey from Houston to Cancun, made our way through customs and the hordes of tour guides waiting with unnerving eagerness at the airport exit, and found our shuttle to the hotel. It was a relief to have Spencer with us--Hillary told us that on one of their international trips they had met up with a couple who had just been winging it through the country not knowing any of the language, and they had been similarly happy to have "Spanish Boy" around to handle all the logistical conversations. I felt kind of like I was letting Drew down the whole trip because he was definitely saddled with the worst of the Spanish speakers of our group, but he told me he felt like he had as much reason to know Spanish as I did, so he didn't think less of me. He's nice.
We finally made it to the hotel and were reunited with the Richardsons!
Apparently we had booked our trip as an anniversary getaway, because we had loving towel swans waiting for us in our room...
...and a platter of celebratory chocolates. We sampled, left the alcohol alone, and went down for some quick tacos before we hit up...
...the beach! You see that tropical blue in pictures and it's beautiful, but it just does something to you in person. Notice Dave in the water diving for conch shells. He was very good at finding them.
This was probably the day with the gentlest waves.
But I still ended up with a whole lot of sand in my suit after getting tumbled a couple times.
That night was "Hamburger Night" at the resort. You could choose between a "chicken, beef, or fish hamburger." They meant sandwiches. It was on ok dinner, but the company was the best of all. We called it a somewhat early night after our long travels, then got to wake up in the morning to another day in paradise.
We had breakfast at the buffet restaurant, La Paloma.
Then we went back up to our room to...RELAX!
It was Sunday, so in the mid-morning we had a lovely group Come Follow Me discussion in the shade of some big trees by the basketball court. The iguanas joined in.
Possibly this was the day we hung out at the sushi bar for lunch? I don't remember. I do remember that we definitely utilized the beach. We brought Kubb down with us.
We had purchased our own set after playing with Marcus and Melanie in Virginia and really wanted to bring it with us, but it is quite heavy, so I decided to take it as my carry-on. The security guy in SLC pulled us aside, opened it up, held up one of the batons, and looked at us with deep suspicion. You are not allowed to bring clubs on a flight.
We hastily explained what it was and he let it slide. The Mexican customs agent was similarly skeptical but we managed to hang onto it. I'm glad we did, or how else were we to know how awesome Dave is at throwing sticks at blocks?
Though Joel certainly impressed with the best opening throw I have ever seen to date. It's supposed to be as close to the King as possible without touching it. Muy impresionante.
Then there was more relaxing...
...and watching the Magnificent Frigate Birds riding the breeze.
Andrew came down and went for a swim because he hadn't had a chance to the day before (they had gotten in later). That was all the excuse I needed to get in the water again; I wanted to swim out to the line where the blues change from light to dark. I didn't read the sign at the beach entrance about the flag system and how you weren't supposed to swim on red flag days, so I was greeted on the way back in by a stern looking lifeguard on a jet ski. Drew got to tell everyone about the possibility of a life as a single father he has to confront on a regular basis due to my antics, and I had flashbacks to all the times I've heard Mom say she's planned Dad's funeral.
That night we had reservations for the fancy Italian restaurant, Da Vinci. You had to make the reservations for dinner in the hotel's restaurants on their app every morning, and you had about a 10 second window to get a reservation before everything filled up. It was a little bit stressful. But once you were at the restaurant, it was the opposite of stressful.
7-course meal with no prices on the menu, best friends, and a gorgeous sunset out the window? Yes, please.
After dinner we all sat in the lobby and visited for awhile.
Joel must always give me a hard time for taking pictures. But he is glad to have them afterwards! Most of the time.
On Monday morning we woke up early to go for a run on the beach.
I was going to try to keep up with Spencer and Drew, but running in sand is really hard. I dropped to a pace where I felt like I was going to die slightly less and watched them slowly recede into the distance...
...stopping occasionally to admire the sea life...
...and the view.
It reminded me of one of Drew's great-grandpa's paintings that his parents have.
I was monitoring Drew's frequency on FindMy, so when they turned around wayyyy over there...
...I was more than happy to turn around myself.
Running on the beach feels about like this sign looks.
But we all managed a smile at the end!
Here's one more view of that beautiful morning.
Joel had set up a snorkeling tour through a guide named Lemuel who belongs to the church. I'm pretty sure their company is called LDS Tours or something iffy like that. They came and picked us up at our hotel in a big van and dropped us off at the docks where we were met at the yacht by our excursion guides.
They navigated us through the lagoon...
...and out to the open sea!
There was a lot of joking beforehand about the most prized feature of the yacht--a bluetooth connection! Spencer and Hillary kept everyone's requests pumping through the speakers as long as the Spotify connection would allow...
...Dave took a turn at the wheel...
...and the rest of us basked in the glorious sunshine...
...and enjoyed the gentle breeze. (Rebecca, Andrew, Amanda, and Brad had opted for a Chichen Itza/cenote trip this day instead so I have no pictures of them with this glorious blue backdrop).
The area that usually has good snorkeling was closed because of the wind, so the guides drove us to the northern point of Isla Mujeres to have a look around. We saw mostly bubbles. The waves were intense. Spencer had the unique opportunity of vomiting through a snorkel a couple times. It was a bit of a relief for everyone to get back in the boat and head to calmer waters.
We stopped in a bay to settle everyone's stomachs and get something to eat. Lemuel's wife had made us a delicious lunch that came with the biggest bowl of lime wedges I have ever seen. There were also some cookies for dessert. Whenever anyone passed Joel a cookie, they took a bite out of it first.
Perhaps you think we pick on Joel too much. Do not be troubled for him. He is dishing all of it back out to us and more.
And he has McKenzie to turn to for solace.
There was a small wreck in the bay that Joel and Dave and I swam out to that actually had a bunch of really cool fish hanging out around it, so that kind of made up for the bubble fest that morning.
The best part of the day by far was the journey back. We all went up to the front again, but this time the pilot abandoned the lazy pace of our outward journey and took us flying over waves and plowing into troughs for a wild roller coaster ride all the way home. It felt like whitewater rafting. I planted myself right on the nose of the boat like a figurehead and threw my weight into every wave, laughing and screaming like a child. That night I think we played pool games with Joel and McKenzie for a little while...
...we probably ate dinner someplace, but I don't remember where. Google photos is telling me that this was one of the nights Drew and I took a long, romantic walk on the beach in the evening--a privilege we do not take for granted after having babies.
I think later that night we ordered some room service treats and tried to watch Eurovision (Andrew came and laughed heartily), but we were too sleepy to finish it and eventually all crawled off to our own beds.
The next day was an "Enjoy the Resort and Get COVID Tests" day. Andrew joined us for a very orange breakfast.
The beach in front of our hotel had eroded away completely by this point...
...so we migrated down to another hotel's beach, and they were kind enough to share their shade...
....and sand for our games.
They were very interested in Kubb...
...so we taught them to play.
Then they invited us to play volleyball with them. Drew rocked his overhand serves. I tried not to make a fool of myself.
Did you need a little closeup of my wind-proofed sun prevention strategy? Hood on over the hat = sun bonnet!
There was of course some swimming as well, but it involved a lot of currents parallel to the beach.
We went to get our COVID tests done at the hotel in the middle of the day. We were both negative. Whew!
On our way back from the tests we passed the Goodsells and Richardsons embroiled in a fearsome game of pool basketball.
We passed on joining the fray, opting instead for a late lunch at the beachside restaurant with the Morgans...
...and the grackles.
This is a "peach pie." Translating is hard.
When the basketball game was over we all met down at the beach for one more group swim before people started having to go home. We played this game for a long time where you have to stand knee deep in the waves and try not to get knocked over or sucked in by the waves. Andrew was the photographer--he is gentle with his knees after his surgery.
We didn't get a dinner reservation at the hotel that night, so we decided to go out. We met in the lobby...
...and chatted while we assembled...
...and walked down to the street...
...to catch a bus.
The restaurant was called Porfirio's. It was an experience. They sat us all down at a giant square table right on the lagoon. I tried to get a panorama, but my skills were not equal to the task this time. This is the only one where everyone's heads are about the right shape.
Most of the others look like this:
Here's just a normal picture.
Everyone's food came out in fancy dishes or themed plates or their tacos were pinned to a line. Our churros arrived in miniature churro carts. And right before we left there was this great excitement:
Amanda came out of the bathroom and ran smack into the tall purple lady, which would have been enough to startle anyone, but through the fabric on the figure's chest she could see the phantom face of the dancer beneath, which necessitated a scream! We walked back from the restaurant and passed a pond full of lilly pads that had little tiny wading birds walking across the tops. There were also what sounded like a million frogs, but we could never spot any of them, even though Drew and I stayed back and spent a good 10 minutes looking. We got nothing for our trouble but sweaty.
For our last day we spent the morning on the beach. Not our beach, because it looked like this:
Our friends from the other hotel had us back for another game of volleyball. This time, Drew and his impressive serves was on the other team, but he's always fun to square off with because then I get a kiss through the net!
A group photo of the gamers.
That afternoon Drew and I went for my favorite excursion of the whole trip--a dive through the underwater museum of art (MUSA).
Our boat was a couple hours late--it was involved in a rescue mission for another dive boat.
But that just gave us the opportunity to sit and get to know the other delightful couple in our dive group while we waited. They were lots of fun!
Our dive instructor was Pepe. He spoke very little English. I spoke the most Spanish, so it was my job to translate his instructions to the group. Luckily we were all pretty good at charades and had dived before so no one was relying on me too much.
Here is an excited Drew on the boat!
We headed back out the way we had gone for our snorkeling adventure.
There were a couple other groups on the boat with us.
One of the girls in another group stood at the back of the boat crying "I'm so scared! I'm so scared! I don't want to drown!" for a couple minutes before she got in. Not Drew though. He's a master. Just look at his technique!
I was definitely feeling a little bit nervous myself before we got in the water (it's been quite a few years since my last dive)...
...but once we were in, it all came back.
I don't love diving in cold water because the constriction of the wetsuits takes away all the joy of being underwater for me, but THIS! I could spend a lot of money doing this!
I don't have flying dreams very often. Usually when I do they are stressful and involve a lot of flapping and my flying abilities are irritatingly inconsistent. My version of elated flying dreams are finding myself underwater suddenly able to breathe. We passed by a sea turtle at one point on our dive, and I glided along above it, like it was my shadow, for a minute or two. "Is there any felicity in the world compared to this?"
Our first dive was through the art museum.
Please admire Drew's legs in his short swimming suit:
After the museum, we went up and got back in the boat for about 10 minutes to drive to some reefs. I didn't vomit, but it was a near thing. Such a relief to get back under the waves. Pepe took us through some cool natural tunnels.
And the fish were just amazing. We swam right through the middle of huge schools of fish (my favorite were some electric blue ones) that parted around us with ease. Oh, it was so cool!
I spent most of our ride back breathing deeply trying to keep my nausea under control. It was fine unless the photographers started showing us a slideshow of their pictures. Too much motion!
That night we all had one more dinner together at the beachside restaurant (except Amanda and Brad, who had already had to go). We had the waiter take a picture of us, but he took one of himself first. "These are funny guys!"
I like the one I took of us better anyway.
After dinner we wandered up to the pool deck and answered deep questions from Andrew...
...and shared some of our talents, both impressive (Hillary and Spencer wowed with continuous kicks from their folk dance days)...
...and unique (Dave knows all the words to We Will Rock You).
It was weird going to bed, knowing that we don't really have any legitimate excuses to get together with Joel's relatives again, except that we really like all of them, and want to see them! Here is our last sunrise in Cancun:
Here is a packing Drew (all the sandy things!).
Here is a balcony smooch.
We checked out not a day too soon. I don't think we would've enjoyed sharing a wall with the neighbors who checked in that afternoon.
