St. Augustine

Our goal was to miss as much of January as possible this year (it is the worst month). So the week after we got back from Mexico we headed to Florida to visit Kurt's sister, Allison, and her family.

Charles and Thomas are 8 and 6 and the twins, Nicholas and Caroline, are 2. They are all so stinkin cute.

The first morning we were there we drove to downtown St. Augustine and went to breakfast at La Herencia. We saw it featured on PBS a couple months back. It was the yummiest Cuban breakfast!

Thomas cracks me up.

Then we headed over to the old fort in town, Castillo de San Marcos, which was originally built in 1672.

Here are the guards firing off some cannons.


We had to plug our ears.



This is basically the only picture I got of Allison and the twins.



Kurt, Charles, & Thomas.


I love Thomas's shark eye.

As I am sure you can already tell, the boys could not get enough of their Uncle Kurt. "Uncle Kurt, even though you are a grown up, I still like hanging out with you." ~Thomas


We brought the boys some Nacho Libre masks from Mexico. Here is Thomas showing his off.








We had such a blast catching up with Aaron and Allison and the kids. We miss them already.

Próspero Año Nuevo

We spent the first week of January in Mexico, and it was amazing. Mid 80's the whole time. When we got back into SLC it was 17... we are not happy about it.

We flew into Cancun and rented a car for the first couple of days so that we could quickly see as many ruins as possible. First stop:

CHICHEN ITZA:

We found a hotel near Chichen Itza so that we could get there right when it opened (before all the tour buses arrived). It was great, there was hardly anyone there.

After we left Chichen, we drove into a nearby town, Valladolid, and hung out there for a while. -- We also went swimming in some cenotes.


Valladolid


Cenote Dzitnup




Cenote Samula






Kurt driving our little tiny rental car.

The next morning we woke up early and headed to some more ruins.

COBA:

Coba might have been our favorite. It was the least touristy, and all the ruins are right in the middle of the forest. It felt a lot like Tikal.

TULUM:

We didn't get to Tulum until the afternoon, so it was kind of packed. But these ruins are right on the ocean... pretty awesome.

After Tulum, we drove back to Cancun, returned the rental car and spent the next three days relaxing. This was the view from our fancy beach hotel:

All the good authentic food was in cuidad Cancun, and out of the hotel zone, so we took the city bus into town all the time.


This was the best breakfast ever! -- it didn't hurt that we were STARVING. Best horchata I've ever had.

We spent plenty of time on the beach, and we took a ferry to Isla Mujeres one day.

We went on a snorkle trip while on Isla Mujeres. We saw tons of cool fish, barracuda, and under water statues. Then we dropped our camera on the dock and broke it.

It was a wonderful (and much needed) vacation.