An honest to goodness Escape from real life.

Jeff and I agreed that, when we sold our White Rock house, we would use some of the money for a family holiday.  And not one of those holidays where I am still cooking and cleaning and packing and planning and organizing each day.  A real holiday. For 2 weeks.

And that, I can now confidently say, is what Club Med in Ixtapa Mexico can put out!  (And no, I am not getting paid for advertising the resort on my blog!)... 

I won't go into detail, but let some pictures give a taste of our wonderful trip.

We did miss our connection in Los Angeles and had to stay the night in a not-so-great airport hotel, so we got to Club Med a day later than planned.  A small snag in an otherwise uneventful trip there.  The boys got their "wings" and visited the cockpit.

Our first taste of many beautiful sunsets.

The restaurant was quite satisfying and, well, let's just say that nobody went hungry.

Callum was the only one interested in boogie boarding.  Relatively speaking, we didn't spend a lot of time at the beach - Jeff and I would sometimes read our books down there while the boys were at Kids Club, but otherwise we were doing yoga or a cross-training workout, paddle boarding, playing tennis, and a lot of time playing at the pools.  Simon LOVED playing at the pool, and he significantly improved his skills while there!

The Kids Club was super great - A typical day would be archery followed by tennis followed by trapeze, then a swim in the pool before lunch, then some games in the fitness palapa, then ping pong and playing at the beach until some activity like donkey races, a pirate treasure hunt, a piñata party or a 'Super Mario' dance show.  Even Simon tried the trapeze twice, although I never got a picture of him doing it! Doh!

We took a boat over the the nearby island for a few hours of snorkelling.

We were super lucky to be there one evening to witness over 100 turtle hatchlings make their way to the sea - too cute.

And, of course, we had to do the most touristy swimming with the dolphins (though Simon wanted no part of it!).

Since we were there for 2 weeks, the boys got 2 chances to perform in the Super Mario show, where Simon was Mario, Max was Luigi and Callum was Donkey  Kong.  It was hilarious!

Good times, good times!  Wonderful, really.  Oh ya, and Jeff will laugh when he sees that I put this one on the blog:

Then it was a bit weird to come home, actually.  Not because we wanted to stay in Mexico forever - no, Jeff and I felt good about getting back to real-life - but because our "home" doesn't quite feel like home yet.  We've only been living in the house for about 3 weeks, the boys and I haven't made any friends in the neighbourhood or school yet, and I still can't even figure out where to find a decent grocery store around here.  So, here's to a new year and to what feels like a true new start for our family.