Archive for November, 2015

Moon Palace – Cancun, Mexico

November 28, 2015

To celebrate Mimi’s 60th Birthday, we went a few weeks early to Cancun, Mexico – all 12 of us to mark the occasion. We stayed at the Moon Palace and it was such a great resort for kids of varying ages. Lots of stuff for the little kids to do and enough to keep the big kids entertained. The pools were amazing, the boys LOVED the Wired Lounge (a big arcade and video game room), the food was good, and the kids drank their fair share of strawberry daiquiris, no wine! HA! We even went up to Beach Palace, a sister resort to Moon Palace, for the day. That was a nice change of pace. Jillian and Ben LOVED the water slide there. Jillian must have gone down 50+ times. On our last full day there, Owen did a scuba diving lesson in the pool. That was a neat experience for him.

I learned a lot about my kids on this vacation. I learned that all three thrive in an environment like this. They were so well behaved and really liked to be able to pretty much come and go as they pleased. I learned that Owen is a social butterfly. He’s not shy or afraid. If he wanted to do an activity, he just jumped right in. He really made the most of his vacation. And all inclusive resorts are great for Benny because he actually tried new foods. And Jillian is a pool girl. We took her down on the beach but she wasn’t a big fan of the water. She was at home in the pool.

And we were so proud of all the kids. Our connecting flight home was delayed and we sat on the tarmac for 2 HOURS and the kids didn’t complain once. All 6 of them were excellent. We couldn’t have asked for more.

It was a wonderful vacation with family. So many memories were made. We will definitely go back to Moon Palace someday. It’s a resort that is perfect for our family.


October Recap

November 5, 2015

Here is what else we were up to in October.


My little chap stick addict.

We spent weekends watching Owen play fall ball. He had the opportunity to pitch a lot at the end of the season and did fairly well. We were very proud of him.

An impromptu Tuesday night dinner at Applebees and Ben wanted to make the most of his time so he brought his homework with him to finish while we waited for our food.

Mike and I headed up to the Wilkes Barre area for his cousin’s wedding. He was a groomsman.  It was nice to see him all dressed up in a tux.

My furry girl likes to be where I am. While working on the computer, she was snoozing right behind me on the chair.

Jilly was the PATHS kid of the week at school for making good choices and following directions everyday.

To make a long story short… our vehicles had some minor body damage. Some our fault, some not.  We had a claim about 2 years ago and didn’t want to file a new one for fear our rates would go up or we’d get dropped.  I also didn’t want to pay out of pocket for vehicles with 7-8 months left on the lease that I knew I wasn’t going to keep.  So, before we dropped the cash to get them fixed, we thought we’d go see what we’d get to trade them in on brand new vehicles.

See our good little car shopping buddy…

And because the vehicles had little mileage and for the most part were in good shape, they gave us more than the pay off for the trade in so we got 2 new cars…. SOLD!

Good-bye CRV & Odyssey.

Hello to my Salsa Red RAV 4 XLE (can you believe it’s not white!)

And Mike’s new Sienna XLE.

Don’t they look great in the driveway!

And Jillian had her first dentist appointment. She did great!

No cavities!

She even wrote her name on the star for the monthly prize.

Her Halloween parade at school. Her friend, Emmie, was Glinda the Good Witch. Perfect combo.

Some fun projects the kids brought home from school.

The real Maxie Girl cuddling with Jillian’s stuffed Maxie girl.  <3

We went to Jenny and Croce’s for a day and had a a good time spending family QT together.

The kids even played “Beandoozled”… a jelly bean game where you spin a color and it will either taste like something yummy or gross. For example Brown could be chocolate pudding or dog food.

Benny taking his bite to see if he got the bad luck of the draw. I think it ended up being rotten eggs!