Vacation: Part 2

One of the other days of our vacation, we took the ferry from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel to go snorkeling. It was definitely an ordeal to actually get to the fish, between trying to find a place to park, trying to find some person at the dock who had our tickets, going from ferry to boat to other boat to other boat, sitting on the top deck of one of those boats for well over half an hour with the sun very much showing its face while we waited for some lazy, slow people to come out of their resort and join us, and putting on a life jacket that went over your head and instead of having arm holes had a strap that gave you a *ehem* wedgie...

However, once we finally got in the water, it was great ;) I was really glad that we had bought a waterproof digital camera before our vacation. Read: the night before we left... great planning on my part, right? In reality, I had already bought the disposable ones to take, but when I paid for them and realized how much it was to get an entire roll of film developed (haven't done that in years!) with no guarantee of liking any of the pictures and no way to zoom or crop pictures, I started wondering about digital cameras.

As it turned out, they weren't that expensive and I'm so glad we bought it! We just had to be careful to not drop it, but the little guy survived zip-lines and snorkeling and waves. Anyway, there's my little commercial...

And once again, I regress. It was fun seeing so many fish up close, and to not just see them in a tank. Here are some of the pictures we took, and yes, I did try to pick the best ones. There were just so many fish, and knowing that every single one of them is different once again makes me in awe of our awesome Creator God. Who else could come up with a way to make every single one just a little bit different?

This is the coast of Playa del Carmen as we were leaving on the ferry:

And here are some fish pictures:

And here's one of David being awesome and diving deeper into the water:

Happy Fall!

I like fall. I like the weather getting a little bit cooler, but not so cold that I'm miserable and want my space heater.

On a side note, I really think I might just have to get rid of my space heater. I used it a lot last winter because I was freezing (yes, I would probably turn blue and actually freeze if I lived where it got *really* cold), and we finally discovered that the space heater was the reason our electric bill was so high. oops...

But it's too tempting to keep. And I think I would be more miserable if I allotted myself just a couple of minutes with the space heater on. It might be better if I was just always cold than to have the reminder of how warm and cozy I could be.

And I regress... Today is the first official day of autumn. Granted, I wanted summer to be over so I reverted to my early elementary lessons on seasons where fall is September, October, and November. :P

But fall starts today according to calendars, and I'm excited. I like sweaters, not sweating, leaves changing, actually getting to use our hammocks in the backyard without dripping with sweat and slapping mosquitoes, and candy corn.

Speaking of candy corn, here's what I made for our front door:

I got the idea here and had so much fun making these super easy and cute candy corn. The only change I made from Sew Totally Smitten was that I added a layer of Mod Podge to the top and sides so that the canvas might not get as dirty and the sides wouldn't fray.

Happy Autumn!

Vacation: Part 1

David and I went on vacation during the beginning of Septmeber to Riviera Maya, Mexico. We flew into Cancun and drove about an hour south to our resort. Can I just say that driving in Mexico is interesting? The highway didn't have a set speed limit. Maybe they wanted to keep you really alert because it seemed like every few feet (or meters) there was a new sign announcing a new speed limit. Granted, I think we were the only ones who were very concerned by this...

We stayed at an all-inclusive resort along the beach of the Caribbean Sea, so we tried to make good use of the fact that we'd already paid for all of our food. This meant that we actually drank something other than water at dinner and ordered dessert at almost every single lunch and dinner. :)

One of the days we were there, we left the resort to go to Xplor, a park where we rode zip-lines, swam and rafted in underground caves, and saw a coatimundi. I'm not sure why exactly the coatimundi was such a highlight, but he was really cute.

See, how can that not be a highlight? We were taking a break after the zip-lines to grab a snack when this guy came wandering up. I'm sure he has a pretty permanent home around there because just while we were there he got lots of handouts! I think all he got was pieces of cookies, so we had a good laugh about how the lemur was going to eventually get fat!

Here are some of our zip-line pictures. David was especially talented with some of these (one he took with the camera behind him without looking!). A lot of the zip-lines had 2 cables, so we could go at the same time and attempt to take pictures of the other.

Here are some of the picture from swimming in the underground caves. We took SOOO many pictures of stalactite and stalagmite, but there was always another awesome spot just around the corner and every area looked different.

So there was part of our vacation. I'm guessing I should split this up into multiple posts...

Summer Stories: Mailbox

One of the best stories from this summer has to do with our mailbox. That's right. The mailbox.

We were awakened one night shortly after we had gone to sleep by a knock on our door. We had no idea who would be at our door at almost midnight, so David headed to the front door with the baseball bat. I followed a couple of minutes later to find out what was going on and was greeted with 2 or 3 police cars, a fire engine, an ambulance, and all of our neighbors.

After the shock of all the lights and people (you'd think we were movie stars except the lights were red and blue, not camera flashes, and the people weren't as interested in us as the fire engine), we found out that our mailbox had been blown up. Someone had heard the big explosion, thought they had seen smoke coming from our front door, and called 911.

This was a couple of weeks after July 4th, so we're guessing that some kids had some leftover fireworks. Or our mailman got tired of trying, and not succeeding, to shut the door of our pathetic old mailbox. But hey, we're renting right now and we weren't that invested in this house to buy a new mailbox (we did, however, buy a flag to put on the mailbox after we moved in. Yeah, it didn't have a flag...).

You know, there are lots of reasons you want to talk to and see your neighbors, but it's usually not at almost midnight when all the emergency vehicles are in front of your house...

On the upside, we got a new mailbox that actually closes :)