MEXICO...in pictures

Our family adventure to Mexico was incredible. My parents rented a 3 bedroom condo outside of Zihuatanejo (a less-touristy fishing village on the Pacific Coast, pretty far south near Acapulco) and flew all of us kids and spouses down south for vacation. The agreement was that we were responsible for paying for our own food and for one of the two rental cars required to seat the 8 of us (which my dad had reserved through Orbitz for a mere $99 each for the entire trip). Well, that's where the drama began. Unfortunately the term "reserved" must not be in the Spanish vocabulary because we arrived at the Dollar rental counter only to find that they only had one car left-a 7 passenger van. This would have been fine and we could have all squeezed in except for one problem: they wanted to charge us $700!!!! No thank you! After close to 2 hours of haggling, we finally worked out a deal (but there's only so much haggling you can do when all the rental counters are out of cars!)

Finally, we headed off to our condo. The drive there was a little sketchy because the road was not paved (which made me nervous at first). Playa Blanca (our condo) was definitely off the beaten path which turned out to be for the better as we tend to like to avoid tourist traps. The condo, grounds, pool and beach were beautiful!

The pool with "Playa Larga" (the beach) in the background

Our room (with view of the ocean)

Mom, Graham & Dad, walking along our beach

We did a lot of relaxing, swimming, wave bobbing, sunbathing and reading on the trip (I almost completed 2 novels!) but also kept busy with numerous other activites.

We hired a boat to take us to a coral reef, only accessible by boat were we were able to snorkle. I wasn't sure I was going to do it as I didn't have the greatest of experiences the last time I tried (I got stung by a jelly fish and the snorkle instructor came swimming at me holding a giant inflated puffer fish--seriously, who does that!) Anyway, over time I've discovered that I am quite frightened of fish. I hate knowing they are down there and would rather just pretend that they only live in the deep sea. So snorkling seems kind of crazy to me--why would I want to go in search of the fish? But I did it anyway and actually had a good time for the most part. I had a couple scares but really enjoyed seeing some GORGEOUS black fish with neon blue spots.

A snorkling Lani

Speaking of fish, they were everywhere in Mexico! We had some pretty large waves on the beach outside our condo that were great for body boarding. However, they were pretty powerful and so you had to hit them just right, dive through them or be completed pounded to shore by them. One afternoon, Josh and Ben were out in the ocean playing when a huge wave came crashing upon them. Ben dove through it and popped up on the other side with something in his hand (he thought it was his swimshorts because it was slippery). Then Josh yells, "Hey Ben! Is that a fish in your hand?" Sure enough, Ben had caught a 12-incher with his bare hand! Not a lot of people can do that, especially when they're not trying!

We also hired a boat to take us out fishing (mostly for the sake of the boys but us girls went along for the ride). My Dad caught a Spanish Mackeral in the first 20 minutes and then things were pretty quiet for a couple hours. The boys were getting pretty tired of manning the poles without any bites so I decided to take my turn babysitting. I had this feeling something was going to happen. My brother-in-law Michael had the other pole when all of a sudden we see this a ways out from the boat:

(Yes, that is a very large fish jumping). The best part about it was that he had this fish hooked on his line and it was jumping to try and get away. Before I knew what was happening, our guide, Arturo, grabbed my pole to reel in the line and get it out of the way so it wouldn't get tangle with Michael's fighting fish. It was then he realized that I had one too!! He handed the pole back to me and said "Be strong" by which I think he actually meant "You weak girl! It'll be just my luck that this thing'll pull you overboard!" (but of course his limited English left him with "Be strong" as the only option). HOLY COW! I started to reel in the line but this fish was STRONG! Once it got close enough to the boat and I realized how big it was, I was freaking out. It was a large sailfish (one of those fish with the long, sharp nose). It was thrashing against the outside of the boat and I thought for sure it was going to puncture a hole. Don't ask me how he did it but Arturo somehow heaved it into the boat and in an almost-smooth motion, wacked it hard over the head.

Here I am bravely viewing my catch:

Okay, so I may not have been super brave about it. I might be shrieking and trying to jump in the back of the boat to get away, but it's really difficult for one to tell from the picture. :o) Poor Arturo was probably wondering why girls were even allowed to fish. Arturo estimated my fish weighed about 30 kilos (66 #)!!!! I couldn't even lift it without help. Here are a few photos taken when we arrived back at shore to give you a better picture of the size.

Our 3 keepers (My sailfish was bigger than Michael's but his was prettier-we think we caught a husband and wife. Dad's fish is being held in the foreground by Ben).We didn't know what on earth we were going to do with over 100#s of fish so we brought the 2 sailfish to a restaurant and in trade for one fish, had them cook us the other one. They prepared it 3 ways for us--ceviche, fillets and almost like a fish version of shrimp cocktail. Here's my fish in it's dead form:
Oh yeah, and since this shouldn't all be about me, I should probably mention that a couple other people caught fish. Here's Graham's Needlefish (we didn't keep him because he wasn't good for eating): Oh wait, did Ben catch something too?

No, I think that's just his bait (but we had to give the poor guy at least one photo op with a fish!)As if catching gigantic fish weren't thrill enough, we also had a number of animal spottings while out on the fishing boat. We saw numerous unique birds and turtles and before we knew it, it felt like we'd entered Seaworld.....

Yes, that really is a dolphin swimming RIGHT next to our boat.

Oh wait, there was actually an entire SCHOOL of dolphins that swam with our boat! What a cool experience. It's crazy how friendly they are with humans. Before they came up next to us, we watched them from a distance, jumping out of the water and doing flips (JUST LIKE SEAWORLD but maybe with a little less grace).

The rest of our trip included wonderful things like a date night out on New Year's Eve:

Parasailing for $17

Sister time

Bad sunburns requiring the ultimate skin coverage techniques

Family meals w/ friendly stray dogs (Michael made the mistake of petting this one so it laid under our table through dinner and then walked with us for our 45 minute after-dinner walk. Poor puppy! We didn't even feed him and he still wanted to be with us...)

Our trip was absolutely fabulous and I came away from it so incredibly grateful for my wonderful family. Some people get tired with too much family time but I actually found that with each passing day with them, I grew increasingly more overwhelmed with how good I have it.

Oh yeah, the adventures definitely did not end here. There was that one last piece about the 8 of us missing our flight due to it getting changed without notifying us. Graham and I made it home much later that evening on a completely different airline (because we had to work in the morning) but the rest of the family was stranded for another night--the excitement never ends!

Adios mis amigos.

Brief Christmas Recap

We had a very fabulous Christmas. My only complaint was that the day passed far too quickly. You would think with the month-long preparations we invest that the day would last a bit longer...

We spent our morning with the Crozier's for Christmas #2 (minus John and Tash who were in Germany). I was honored to receive a complete china set that belonged to Grandma Crozier who passed away just before Graham and I started dating. It is a beautiful pearly white set with gold rims-gorgeous! I had been regretting my decision not to register for china for our wedding and so was thrilled to receive a set anyway, especially this set with so much sentimental value.

The plan was to head back to our plan in the afternoon to host my family for dinner and gifts (they were coming down to spend the night since our flight to Mexico left at 7 AM the next morning). Unfortunately, Graham and I both got stuck in the snow, thankfully within blocks of our place. My car high centered halfway in our driveway, halfway out in the road. I tried to dig it out but didn't get very far. Thankfully, my Dad and brothers arrived shortly thereafter and I handed them the keys, a shovel and wished them a Merry Christmas and sent them out the door. I was SO happy when they were able to move my car and get it parked in a more appropriate location so that we could leave it and head out of town without worrying it would be towed once the snow melted.

We had a lovely Christmas dinner (with homemade spinach pasta!), opened presents and were in bed by 8:30 PM for our early 4 AM wake up call...

Merry Christmas John and Tash!

Here a few pictures for John and Tash who are in Germany with Tash's family....we missed you at the annual Crozier Family Christmas Eve party. Here are a couple classis moments:

Snack

Today Graham frosted a graham cracker with mayo.

I can't stop laughing!!!!

We had some mayo in a tupperware container which apparently looked very similar to cream cheese frosting.

HAHAHAHA!

Grandma Wilson

I have found myself thinking a lot about my Grandma Wilson this Christmas season and thought I'd blog a few of my thoughts about her to pay tribute. She passed away back in the spring of 2005 due to breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs.

I'm thinking of her in particular this morning because I just mixed up a batch of her famous Cinnamon Roll dough for us to enjoy on Christmas. She and my Grandpa did not own a house for the majority of my lifetime. Rather than stay in one spot and have people come to them, they made it their mission to go out and help others. They had a white Toyota pickup truck with a big trailer attached (I guess like an RV) that they would travel in. They took many trips around the US in that thing as well as a number of trips to AZ and Mexico where they served at various mission sites. When they weren't serving at a mission, they would rotate between their 6 kids' houses, visiting each for ~3 weeks to a month. My Grandpa would expect a list of projects to work on once he arrived. For our family, I remember him helping build our fence, cementing the back patio, painting the exterior of our house, building cabinets, remodeling the downstairs to create a bedroom for Lani, and building book shelves for us kids.

Meanwhile, my Grandma would keep herself busy inside the house, cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and playing with us kids. My mom admitted recently that it bothered her at first, that her mother-in-law was doing all the housework because she thought it meant my mom was not a good enough house keeper. But she soon realized it was my Grandma's love language to serve and she always wanted to keep her hands busy helping others.

I think Grandma really wanted to make sure her granddaughters knew the basic skills of cooking and sewings so she would frequently bring projects for us to work on. She taught me to sew a couple of different stitches by hand and to cook. Her specialties were homemade cinnamon rolls and pies. I now credit her as playing a huge role in developing my love of cooking.

We would always ask Grandma for her top secret cinnamon roll recipe. She would tell us that she didn't follow a recipe, she just would put a "scoop full of this and a spoonful of that." We never knew how big of a scoop or spoon to use so finally we had her measure out the ingredients so her famous recipe could be passed on. I've made the cinnamon roll recipe that she wrote out a number of times, but they are never quite as good as hers. She was always so cute because she knew that I liked the gooey middle rolls so she would use a huge pan for my batch (the bigger the pan, the more middle rolls!) But my Grandpa loved his cinnamon rolls crusty so she would make a special small pan for him that were all crusty.

At Christmastime, Grandma would use her same cinnamon roll dough recipe to make "Christmas Tree Bread." She would create strips of dough (each on a bit shorter than the other) and then line the strips up into the shape of a Christmas tree. She would frost them with green frosting and sprinkles and then use red hots for ornaments. I had my first attempt at making Christmas Tree Bread without her last year and hope to try it again this year for Graham and I to bring to work on Christmas Eve. I hope I can keep this tradition going in my family.

Grandma Wilson died a couple years before Graham proposed but I am so thankful that we were dating at the time and she was able to meet him. He was in nursing school during the time as she grew sicker (in addition to the cancer, she had a stroke that compromised her right side) and so I think he was able to be a comfort for my Dad's family as he was able to explain what a lot of the medical terms meant.

Recently, I came across a card that my Grandma wrote (in her very best left-handed penmanship)to me not too long before she died. In it, she commented about Graham, that he was a "very special boy" and that she was glad to know him. I think she knew deep down that he was right for me and that we would get married. Even though I really wish she could have been at our wedding, I am so thankful that I have this card to cherish. I know she approved of him.

SNOW!!!

I love how the city practically shuts down when it snows here. The grocery store has been packed with families "stocking up" for the storm and the streets are lined with three times as many people walking than usual (if snow is what it takes to get them exercising than I'm all for it!) So many people have spent the week at home rather than at work or school. Except for us of course. We never seem to get that lucky. I worked the past 6 of 7 days so spent a lot of my time driving on the roads of Snohomish County which was quite exciting to say the least. My little civic was a little trooper throughout the week....up until today (which, speaking of, since all the news stations spent so much time promoting the coming snow/wind on Saturday night, wouldn't you think they would have had the plowers ready and working through the night for all the people who had to get up and drive in the AM!!!??? Of course not! How could I be so silly to think things might work that logically!) Anyway, the freeway was absolutely horrid yesterday on my drive to work--I have never in my life seen so much snow on a main interstate. I mean, no plow had even touched it! My car kept bottoming out on the snow. Then there was the time I almost slid head on into the cement divider as I was taking my exit. Oh and the time I almost didn't make it up the unplowed major road uphill to my hospital (once I got going, I made the decision to continue on through all the stoplights, even if they weren't the right color--it was that bad.) Then there was the time I got stuck in the parking garage trying to leave my hospital. No one had thought to shovel the incline out of the garage (maybe that was their way of keeping their employees there to make up for all those that didn't show up). Oh and then once I finally got on the road home, I almost hit a line of about 5 stopped cars. Needless to say, it was an exciting day and I somehow made it home in one piece. I have to admit, I squeeled aloud with delight a couple time while driving because it felt sort of like an amusement park ride, sliding and swirving all over with no control (of course, the times I actually enjoyed the sliding were only when no other cars were around me.)

After arriving home, Graham and I decided to WALK to our desired destinations rather than drive. Graham really enjoyed watching all the other cars spin out and get stuck (we helped push one guys out of his driveway). We went for a nice long walk to Starbucks where we read the paper which was super relaxing. Then we had an early dinner and watched a movie. I was in bed by 8:45 since I had to wake up so early to drive through the snow to work throughout the week!

Hope the rest of you are enjoying the snow and staying SAFE! And hopefully basking in the fact that a lot of you don't have to go to work when it snows.... :o)

Frozen Shut

So one of my favorite nurse practitioner coworkers had another story for me today that I felt was worth sharing (the funniest things always seem to happen to her). This one is pretty incredible!

She and her 16 year old twins (a boy and girl) were out at a friends house on Sunday night for dinner. It was dark when they headed for home (for you Seattlites, keep in mind that it was SUPER cold this weekend). Anyway, this nurse practitioner tried to unlock the car and realized, alas, the lock was frozen in place and would not budge. She tossed the keys over to her daughter to attempt the lock on the passenger side. Darn! It was also frozen and not to be unlocked. After spending a long time trying to get the lock open (which included blowing on the lock to try and "melt" it and almost dumping warm water over it), the lock finally clicked. Of course then the door was frozen shut but with lots of force, it opened.

This nurse practitioner was able to unlock the other locks from the inside so that her kids could also climb in. It wasn't until they were seated and about ready to leave that she looked up and saw a crucifix hanging from the rear view mirror that she did not recognize. Wham. All of a sudden, it hit her and she yelled out "Kids, this isn't our car!!!!!!!!!!"

They quickly got out and noticed that there were 2 silver Toyota Camrys parked one in front of the other on the street and they'd accidentally entered the wrong one! Funny thing was, the key worked perfectly in their own car....oops! I guess the doors weren't frozen shut after all.

Isn't that just too funny? So this nurse practitioner kept mentioning throughout the day that she is such a bad mother, teaching her kids to break into cars and all. She said that teaching them to hot wire will be next! :o) By the way, she is black and that is an important preface for this last part. She said (and these are her words, not mine) "Once I realized what happened, I was just waiting for whoever might have been watching us through the window to call the cops to tell them that three black people are breaking into my car! I'm sure it didn't look good."

Anyway, she said they quickly exited the car and relocked the doors before heading on their merry little way.