Friday, March 15, 2024

7 Quick Takes about Easter Decor, Having It All Together at the Dentist's Office, and Just Being Yourself

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something using these links, I may receive a referral commission at no extra cost to you.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

1


Ever since this talk in general conference last year, I have been thinking that I'd like to revamp the way our family looks forward to and celebrates Easter. 

I spend at least a month gearing up for Christmas talking about Jesus with my kids, but usually Easter sneaks up on us and we're lucky to have a few days. I have three big tubs of Christmas decorations, a lot of them nativity-themed in some way, but a grand total of zero Easter decorations. Seems backward, since Easter is the whole point of Christianity, doesn't it? So this week I've been intentionally trying to take baby steps toward celebrating Easter with as much as (if not more) anticipation and enthusiasm as Christmas in a meaningful way.

The first thing I did was go online and get a few inexpensive Easter decorations for around the house that will help us remember what we're celebrating.


I hung this 8x8" wooden pallet sign in our powder room, and I know it's working because several times a day, I hear people exiting the bathroom humming the Easter hymn "He is Risen." I just cackle and continue writing my screenplay Inception: An Easter Story.

I also hung this wreath on the living room wall next to a picture of Jesus that was already there.

Amazon sells this as a door wreath but unless you live in a hobbit hole it will be too small for that, better as part of a wall collage of some sort.

This small tabletop empty tomb decoration may not get here until after Easter, but that's fine. I'll have it for next year:

Higher-quality ones were available on Etsy but they were also more expensive and I didn't want to go crazy.

Lastly, I found a high-resolution image of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, the place popularly shown to tourists as the tomb where Jesus was buried (probably not really, but it's the symbolism we're after here,) and got it printed as a 16x20 (with a coupon!) on Snapfish. I've been to Michael's to scope out 16x20 frames, and I think I found a beautiful one that I can order online with a coupon. I'm really excited to put it together and display it on the mantel when everything gets here.

And this is not really related... but it sort of is. When I was poking around Amazon looking for Easter decor, I came across this super-cute shirt that made me smile.

2


Apparently I'm not the only one who's been thinking this way, because when I went to this month's Relief Society (the women's organization of my church) activity, we made an Easter "advent calendar" to help our families focus on Easter. 

We filled 12 plastic eggs with Christ-focused Easter activities, scriptures, and QR codes leading to Easter-themed videos or songs. Yes, some of them also have chocolates. 

We put the filled eggs in egg cartons, but for next year I plan to do what the woman teaching does with hers. She displays them on the wall in an empty picture frame with wire strung across it horizontally, the eggs hanging from the wires on ornament hooks. I wish I'd taken a picture but I didn't think of it until after I'd already gone home.

3


While I've been getting my act together in one department, it's been falling apart in others. I was running around trying to get out of the house for a 10AM dentist appointment (my kids helped by missing the bus so I had to give them rides to school as well as get myself ready.)

I dashed up to the front desk at the dentist's office just a few minutes after 10 and said I was there for my appointment, which the receptionist informed me had actually been at 9.

"Well, can I reschedule right now?" I asked.

"Have you filled out your paperwork?"

"Huh?" I asked, clearly on top of everything that is going on in my life.

"We sent you some paperwork and it needs to be filled out before we can book your next appointment. Do you have your insurance card?"

Well, NO because I'd left my purse at home in my hurry to get out the door an hour late to my appointment but THANKS FOR ASKING

In my defense, we discovered that she'd sent the forms to the wrong email address so it wasn't completely my fault that I looked like an idiot. It was only mostly my fault that I looked like an idiot.

4


My 10-year-old celebrated a birthday with some friends, and wow. The only thing louder than a 10 year old girl is a 10-year-old boy. And the only thing louder than a 10-year-old boy is a group of 10-year-old boys. I know it's not how it works, but I think we broke the sound barrier.

And my son was given a ton of candy.


5


I've been using a fun website called lyricstraining.com. It's a game where you listen to foreign-language music videos and type in the missing lyrics, helping you to "hear" them better. I use it for Spanish but I think they have all kinds of languages.

The amazing little girl in the video "Soy Yo" was killing me, and I don't think you even need to understand Spanish to find her hilarious. (Here is a translation of the lyrics, but the gist of the song is that haters gonna hate and it's okay if no one gets you, just be yourself and who cares what anyone else thinks?) "Soy yo" means "it's me."


6


I have an autoimmune disease called discoid lupus, and there are a few different medications you can take to manage it. 

For a while, I was on the immunosuppressants that organ transplant patients take to keep their bodies from rejecting their new organ, and while it worked for the lupus it meant I was constantly feeling crappy from the 8 billion germs that my 6 kids brought home from school every day that my immune system couldn't fight off.

So I begged my rheumatologist to put me on something else, and he prescribed an anti-malarial drug. The problem is that my dosage is too high, permanent eye damage is a side effect (especially on a high dose), and it's not working as well to manage the lupus. So as of this week I'm back on the immunosuppressants.

It's been four days, and one of my kids is home sick from school already so I'm certainly going to be next. I'm not sure I can do this.

7


We aren't a tennis-playing family, but we do have rackets and balls and go out once or twice a year to act like we know what we're doing. 

One nice afternoon I loaded the kids in the van with the promise of playing tennis and this is what we saw when we got there:

The tennis courts were literally being demolished with excavators before our eyes.

Pretty ironic, but it gets better. There's another court not too faraway that is definitely in poor shape (cracked pavement, etc) but the kids really wanted to play tennis, so we drove there... and THAT one was torn out, too! After that we just gave up and went for a walk.

There is one other tennis court in town that I know of and I'm willing to go there next time, but if that one is also bulldozed then I'm hanging up my racket and considering our tennis days over.

Click to Share:
Unremarkable Files
Read More »

Friday, March 8, 2024

7 Quick Takes about Moose Safety, Shades of White, and Worship Songs about the House Burning Down

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

1


I said to Phillip one morning, "You know what's ironic?"

Like any reasonable person who was a teenager in the 90s, he replied, "10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife?"

"No," I said. "I finally decided it was time to clean my dirty phone. I couldn't find the cleaner so I had to go get some from the upstairs bathroom. Then there were no paper towels so I had to go down to the basement to get another roll. I cleaned off the phone, put everything away, and then set it down on the counter in a big glob of peanut butter."

"Well, at least you have paper towels now," was his response.

2


My 15-year-old learned in his driver's ed class what to do if a moose "jumps out" in front of your car. (I've never seen a moose jump, but that's how my son described it to me.)

Apparently, they covered all sorts of scenarios and if you can't avoid the moose altogether, you should try to swerve so the corner of your car takes the impact and the moose doesn't go through the windshield.

I don't remember ever talking about anything like that in driver's ed and wondered if this was a routine thing or if maybe my son just got the rogue driving instructor who was obsessed with moose safety. I decided to text his older sister to ask:


Har, har. Look who got their dad's sense of humor.


3


Since I got back from my Mexico trip I've been more determined to practice my Spanish conversational skills (they're even worse than my English conversational skills, and that's saying something). So I've been back on my language exchange app, meeting Spanish speakers who are trying to learn English so we can help each other.

I always realize things about English when I'm talking to them. One guy was asking me about the difference between "I will" and "I'm going to." We talked about it and then I told him that most English speakers pronounce "I'm going to" like "I'm gunna" in case he ever hears that in conversation.

Then I realized we actually only do that before verbs, but never nouns. Like, we would say "I'm gunna eat" but we wouldn't say "I'm gunna the store." What in the actual heck? 

It's almost as bad as when another Spanish-speaker asked me to explain the difference between see, look, and watch. Just try to do it. You can't. Every time you think you've found a rule to explain when to use each one, you think of a sentence that proves your rule wrong.

4


After washing a load of white laundry, I was hanging some clothes on the backs of our dining room chairs to dry. My teenage son was there and I commented on how all the shades of white looked hanging next to each other. 

He just gave me a blank stare until I remembered that he's a male, and males only register like 8 distinct colors. Within any given letter of ROY G. BIV it's pretty much all the same to them, and even that's being generous because if you go ask the average man on the street the difference between "indigo" and "violet" he'll have exactly zero idea.



5


This week Phillip brought home a free fire blanket from work (much more useful than the whiskey glasses last week), so we thought it was a good time to do a general overview of fire safety for the kids. 

We took them on a room-by-room tour of all the fire hazards, showed them how to use the fire blanket to put out a stovetop fire, then set off the fire alarm and had everyone practice running out of the house to our agreed-upon meeting place in case of a fire.

This was actually part of a weekly devotional called Family Home Evening that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do. A typical Family Home Evening consists of: 
  • an opening song/hymn
  • a prayer
  • a lesson (usually we pick a spiritual topic, but emergency preparedness is important, too)  
At the beginning of FHE this week, we told the kids the lesson topic and asked for suggestions on the opening song. This is what the 7-year-old said we should sing (I'll give you 10 seconds to guess why):

    6


    My three youngest kids were discussing the differences between basses, tenors, altos, and sopranos. I listened to their conversation and asked if they'd ever heard of a contralto.

    The first I'd ever heard of or seen one was when Phillip and I went to see Handel's Messiah performed professionally. I typed 'contralto' into YouTube and this video came up:


    My 12-year-old's reaction? "That was infinitely better than Fergie."

    7


    Phillip laughed one morning while checking his work emails at the breakfast table so I asked him what it was.

    Apparently there was a meeting invite sent to 400 people, and someone had accidentally hit "Reply All" with the message "Nub hub bb bbbbbb."

    Some people might think that was an unfortunate and embarrassing butt dial (or child playing with their phone), but I see it another way. That guy made 400 other people start their morning with a chuckle. How cool is that? 

    That's why I try to see my own stupid moments as a public service. Because they usually are! It takes the pressure off everyone else to be perfect all the time, and maybe it even makes them laugh a little, too.

    Click to Share:
    Unremarkable Files
    Read More »

    Friday, March 1, 2024

    7 Quick Takes about Blueberry Cobbler, Toilet Paper Roll Holders, and High Standards for the Drivers of Tomorrow

    It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

    1


    Yay, we got this really cool gift from Phillip's work!


    Just kidding, it's a set of matching whiskey glasses which are completely useless to us. I appreciate the presentation, though. Really nice box.

    2


    My 7-year-old's gymnastics practice ends at 8 PM, so it's always a real rush to get him fed (he's always starving after practice), home, and in bed at a decent hour. So I bring him dinner in the car and have him eat on the way home to expedite the process.

    One night while I was driving him home he paused and asked out of nowhere, "Mom, what even is  life?"

    How do you begin to address that kind of a question? I mean, what I happened to say on that particular night was "I don't know, eat your dinner" because I was exhausted. But honestly. 

    3


    On Tuesday I took a friend out to lunch for her birthday, and my 12-year-old made her a blueberry cobbler. 

    For the rest of the week, my daughter was craving cobbler so she made a second one just for us last night. It looked great coming out of the oven, but when we cut into it, we discovered that it was not baked through on the inside, not even a little bit. We ended up having to put it back in the oven for more than twice the time the recipe called for, so I'm pretty sure we gave my friend a raw cobbler goulash for her birthday and I feel pretty bad about that.

    I'll have to call her to apologize this weekend. It's the thought that counts, right?

    4


    A while ago we replaced our toilet paper and instead of the old spring-loaded kind, I opted for the sort that is just a bar sticking out of the wall. Changing the roll now is a simple slide-off, slide-on operation you can do with one hand. It's super-easy to do, and yet:

    I'm so confused.

    What the heck is even going on here? At first glance, this appears to be the laziest display of laziness I've ever seen. They couldn't even slide off the old roll, they just plunked a new one down on top of it.

    But then I looked at it a second time and got confused. If a person was truly lazy, why wouldn't they have used up all the toilet paper on the old roll first instead of going all the way across the room to the cabinet to get a new one?

    The ways of people living in my house mystify me.

    5


    It was nearing 5 pm, so I asked the kids "What should we have for dinner?" 

    I saw my 16-year-old open his mouth and then close it, so I asked what he was going to say.

    Turns out he was going to sarcastically answer "Food," but stopped because he knew that if anyone in the house does that THEY GET THE HONOR OF COOKING DINNER THAT NIGHT. I have trained him well.

    But anyway, my 17-year-old suggested grilled cheese but we'd just had it recently, so I asked if maybe there was some way we could spice it up. She Googled recipe ideas and this is what Google predicted she was going to ask:


    One  of these things is not like the other.

    6


    Sometimes I just don't think I'm equipped to handle the level of bizarre things on the Internet. So there we were, looking up recipe ideas for ways to fancy up your grilled cheese, and an article claimed that "out-of-the-box ingredients like peanut butter can spice up your grilled cheese sandwich." 

    Okay, but you do know that some things are out of the box because they just don't belong in the box, right? I then Googled "peanut butter grilled cheese" to see if that was a real thing multiple people did or just one serial killer on Reddit, and apparently it is a thing. I even saw one guy claiming to like grilled cheese with peanut butter and Granny Smith apple slices (but that really was on Reddit so you be the judge.)

    Then again, I did come across an article called 50 Insanely Good Grilled Cheese Recipes that made me want to try almost every one of them, so what do I know?
     

    7

    My 16-year-old is taking online driver's ed next week, and I got this email from his auto school outlining the class rules: 


    When I showed it to his older sister, she said that when she took online drivers' ed she used to play the piano during class with the microphone off and the webcam trained on just her face. Which it doesn't say is against the rules exactly, but somehow I think it's not what they meant.

    Click to Share:
    Unremarkable Files

    Read More »

    Friday, February 23, 2024

    7 Quick Takes about the Value of Presidential History, Clean Up on Aisle Seven, and Choosing a Dentist from the Very Bottom of the Barrel

    It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

    1


    At church last Friday night, there was a Valentine's Day weekend dinner-and-a-show for the adults, and I was asked to "write something funny" for the 90s-themed variety show.

    Now, most people don't know this since I am a humor blogger, but I only like to be funny from behind the safety of my keyboard. Being on stage doing anything might actually be my least-favorite thing in the world, and I say that as someone who just cleaned up a barf-saturated rug before sitting down to write this.

    I included a slideshow of fun pictures from the 90s (probably so people would be looking at that instead of me) and it actually was fun to write, but I'm glad it's over because performing in front of people is the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable for a few days, both beforehand and afterward.

    However, some people seemed to actually enjoy performing in front of people for some reason, and I thoroughly loved watching their acts.

    2


    My mom is here visiting for the week and on Monday we took the kids to a presidential history museum not too far from us. 

    Big flag hanging in the lobby.

    Because it was Presidents' Day, they had some family-friendly events and kids got in free, which was the exact right price of admission for how engaged an elementary-schooler is in reading informational plaques about some dead guy he'd never heard of until 30 seconds ago.

    3


    The next day my mom and I took the kids to open skate at a local rink. I grew up in the Midwest and used to ice skate all the time, but somehow I've failed to ever take my own kids skating. 

    I guess I just kind of forgot about it: my skates were in a closet at my mom's house 1,000 miles away, and I don't think Phillip even knows how to ice skate, so our go-to family thing became hiking when the kids were little and we just never did it. 

    After a few tears from frustrated children and one direct head collision with the ice that was definitely a mild concussion, we all managed to have fun. Even the child who hit his head (he's doing fine but needed a nap for the next few days to recover.)

    I did see kids on the ice wearing bike helmets, which I'd never thought of having grown up before safety was a thing. Seems like a good idea for my beginning learners if we decide to try skating a second time.

    4


    Leaving the kids with my mom, I stepped out to get a birthday card for someone. I was gone for less than 15 minutes, and in that time my 7-year-old threw up.

    I apologized to my mom when I got back and asked "Did he at least make it to the bathroom?"

    "Well.. he was on the carpet, and he caught it in his hands, then moved off the carpet and dropped it on the hardwood floor. So it could have been worse."

    My son seemed to feel fine afterward (as people often do after throwing up), so I popped out again to deliver the card. I was on my way home when my daughter called to report that he'd thrown up again. She spared me the graphic details but told me that it was "a lot," that he was in the shower, and that my mom was mopping it up.

    For the rest of the day, she eagerly volunteered to run any necessary errands in my place, although I can't figure out why.

    5


    Phillip's work switched insurance providers, so we have to find a new dentist. I hate picking a new dentist. How do you evaluate the quality of a dental care provider when you know nothing about dental care, but you also don't want someone who rips you off by recommending work you don't actually need?

    Anyway, our new insurance is making it even harder. The nearby dentists in our new network are not plentiful, and the ones I've checked out so far look SKETCHY. 

    If I click 'find a provider' on our insurance's website and filter by distance from our house, the first provider has a Yahoo email address for their office. Yahoo.

    The second provider has an unfinished website. Literally, the front page of their professional presence on the Internet is an unfinished template that says "write something about your office here for your clients to read." 

    A few weeks ago, I decided to make an appointment at the third provider on the list for my 7-year-old, and while there I didn't have negative feedback about the dentist per se, the "office" was in a building so old and dilapidated it should be condemned. I was worried the ceiling was going to collapse on us while we were in there.

    I'm coming to the conclusion that Delta Dental is the Temu of insurance providers.

    6


    Luckily, we have enough children that I can use them to "shop around" until we find a dentist I trust. This week my 17-year-old had an appointment at a different office where everything seemed okay, until the dentist called me in after her cleaning and said, "She has cavities in her molars."

    My 17-year-old has never had a cavity before, and six months ago at her last cleaning our old office hadn't seen anything of concern, so I was a little surprised. "Which ones?" I asked.

    "All of them."

    "Excuse me?" I said, wondering to myself How could she have four cavities? 

    Well, remember how I told you I don't know anything about dental care? I learned that people don't actually have four molars when the dentist nodded and said, "All eight."

    Eight?!? I politely made an appointment for my daughter's next cleaning on our way out that I fully intend to cancel and find a dentist who I can trust farther than I can throw.

    Next month I'm due for a cleaning, so I made an appointment for myself at Office #5 on our insurance's list... wish me luck. The way this is going, we may end up back at the condemned building. And it will be the best option.

    7


    I just watched a Netflix movie called Leo with the kids. It was so cute! Adam Sandler voiced the main character, a class pet who helps the fifth graders in his classroom with their problems. 

    The script was also written by Adam Sandler, which is extremely obvious if you listen to this song from Leo being all familiar with Sandler's work in the 90s:


    When my kids are bickering, I sometimes interrupt them by singing, "Let's all fight about dumb stuff" to the tune of the song "We are looking for Blue's Clues..." Needless to say, this song might just make its way into my repertoire when I've got a melodramatic pouting child on my hands and I need to make him/her laugh.

    Click to Share:
    Unremarkable Files
    Read More »

    Friday, February 16, 2024

    7 Quick Takes about Finishing Our Trip, Foolish Resolutions to Make When You Have Kids, and the Sweetest Love Letter I'll Ever Receive

    It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

    1


    Phillip and I wrapped up our fantastic Mexico vacation. We drove back to Valladolid to stay for our final two days.

    This picture was taken by a helpful passerby after he saw us struggling to DIY a shot that included the whole sign and both of us (see below.)


    Failed selfie attempt #1.

    Just behind this sign, do you see the building with all the archways? Using that old convent as a projector screen, the city puts on a free light-and-sound show illustrating Valladolid's history every night. 

    We first went to the Spanish show and only understood about two words of it, so we went back the next night for the English narration and were relieved that our Spanish wasn't as bad as we thought, it was just hard to hear.

    2


    Earlier this week during our first stay in Valladolid, we'd actually walked by this cenote on the way back to our hotel from church. 

    I know it looks from the pictures like it's in the middle of the Garden of Eden, but it's actually just kind of tucked between two city blocks and you could walk past it without even knowing if you weren't paying attention.


    For 60 pesos (about $3.50), you can go down and swim in it, so we did. 


    It was cold, but beautiful and a lot of fun. Phillip jumped into the water off a really high ledge that you definitely would not have been allowed to do in the U.S.

    3


    On Saturday we packed up and drove back to Cancun, stopping at the beach for a few hours before our flight back home.

    Looks just like a postcard.

    It was a beautiful beach, but if you ask me truthfully I'll tell you that I enjoy looking at this picture more than I enjoyed actually being there. I've been trying to withhold judgment, but I've visited ocean beaches enough times in my life now that I think it's time to say something out loud: I don't like the ocean. It's windy, the water is too cold, and I don't like the way the salt feels (in the water or in the air.) Lakes are fine, and I don't see what all the fuss is about the ocean. 

    In any case, Phillip enjoyed himself and the trip overall had been a fantastic one.

    4


    I ended our vacation feeling well-rested and having seriously convinced myself that I was going to make sleep more of a priority once I got home. There was no reason not to, I just had to commit to a regular early bedtime, that's all! 

    We weren't even out of Mexico yet when my 15-year-old called us at the airport to ask if we could pick him up from his friend's house that night at midnight.

    So that brought me back to reality in a hurry.

    We got home, celebrated a birthday, went to a child's orchestra concert, had a snow day, helped the 2nd grader write a bazillion class Valentines, and tried to catch up on a week's worth of tasks that had been accumulating for us while we were gone. 

    I always spend the week after a vacation going, "Ohhhh... so this is why I'm crazy..." so that's where I'm at right now.

    5



    I've been open with my kids about the miscarriages that I've had in the past, and every now and then they will randomly bring them up and ask a question or say something about them.

    Out of nowhere one night, my 7-year-old son said, "It's weird that there are people in our family that we don't know."

    Since our family believes in heaven, I told him "We'll get to meet them someday." 

    "But not for a really long time." Then, hesitating, he added, "Well, not as long for you."

    I laughed, thinking Well, that escalated quickly. But my son wasn't done yet.

    "Most likely, anyway." He said, "Not for sure, because I could die right now..."

    I laughed again, hardly believing that a conversation could go so morbidly sideways in so many unexpected directions in less than 5 seconds.

    "...but definitely if we just die of oldness," he finished.

    6


    In other deep thoughts, my 15-year-old asked me "Why do they call a watch a 'watch?' Why don't they call a TV a 'watch'?"

    I had no answer for that one.

    7


    I'm a sucker for cute papers that the kids bring home from school but this Valentine's Day love letter from my 2nd grader tops them all. 

    He insists on addressing us by our first names in writing, I don't know why. He calls us 'mom' and 'dad' when he talks to us.

    I just don't know which is my favorite sentiment: "Thank you for getting all the food I need and most of the food I want" or "thank you for even just giving us birth" or "I would be in big trouble if I did not have you at all in my intire life I every live."

    I've read it about 10 times and it's just so cute I can hardly stand it.

    Click to Share:
    Unremarkable Files


    Read More »

    Friday, February 9, 2024

    7 Quick Takes about Mexican Getaways, Being a Tourist (Or Not), and How to Climb a Maya Temple in a Decidedly Undignified Way

    It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! This 7QT is coming to you from Mexico, where Phillip and I are taking a belated 20th anniversary trip.

    We've stayed in 5 different hotels somce Saturday and have driven all over the Yucatán Peninsula (not really, but we have gone through a few tanks of gas.) And it is everything I hoped it would be.

    1


    We flew into Cancun on Saturday, and I was surprised at how many people with babies were in line at customs. Who brings a baby to Cancun? 

    But who am I to say what's normal, because who flies into Cancun and immediately drives away from it like we did? 

    Yucatan is so flat that even the sky looks bigger out here.
     

    2


    Our first stop was Valladolid, about an hour and a half drive from Cancun. It is an utterly magical city.

    First of all, we arrived by complete coincidence during the last two days of La Candelaria, which happens all over Mexico but is a really big deal here because it's celebrating the patron saint of Valladolid.  

    There was non-stop singing coming from this church, right next to our hotel. Beautiful.

    There was dancing in the square the first night, and on the second night they sent off floating lanterns and fireworks (we thought it was ironic that they aren't even legal in our state, but here a guy was lighting them off from his bare hands while a police officer watched him.)

    The second great thing about Valladolid was that everywhere we went, 95% of the people were locals. We were, for example, the only white people dancing in the square (Phillip, who is at least a foot taller than all the locals, was painfully aware that we didn't exactly blend in). Everything was in Spanish, and most everyone spoke Spanish to us. I didn't want to be stuck in a resort being a tourist, so this was exactly what I wanted. 

    I loved the narrow sidewalks, the cobblestone streets in various stages of upkeep, the motorcycles zipping between the cars (a common arrangement was dad driving with mom in the back and a baby/toddler sandwiched between them), the colorful charming buildings nestled between crumbling shacks that are also somehow charming, and all the wrought iron gates. Between the pretty town square and the white-costumed dancers in the street and the yummy food, I could come here again and again. And I rarely repeat a vacation.

    Such a perfect snapshot of Valladolid, right down to the stray dog wandering across the street.


    Like every hotel we stayed at on this trip, our Valladolid hotel had an open courtyard in the center. In this climate just about everything can be open to the air, doors and ceiling optional.

    One of the nicest places I've ever stayed, costs less than a night at the Super8 back home.

    3


    After a few days soaking up Valladolid, we took off for the Maya ruins of Ek- Balam. 

    The ruins were great, but being a tourist here isn't my favorite. Ticket sellers and tour guides will straight-up lie to you to get your money ("Oh, that museum? It's closed, come see ours instead") and others will just say anything they think you want to hear, so you really can't believe a word anyone says. 

    Once we got inside, though, Ek-Balam was great. It's definitely on the smaller side, but you can climb on and touch everything.

    At the top of the smaller temple (forgive my hair, it was windy up there), with the larger temple behind us to the right.

    I underestimated how scary it would be to climb the temple's narow, slippery stone steps. When I was a kid I had brain surgery, and because of that I sometimes have trouble with my balance even going down a flight of stairs in my own house. Unfortunately, the ancient Maya did not believe in railings.

    A third of the way up the larger temple and as scared as I have been in a while.

    I literally crawled up the larger temple and scooted down on my butt like a toddler, but I made it.

    Afterward we cooled off at the Hubiku Cenote. Cenotes are giant limestone sinkholes filled with fresh water, and Yucatán has a ton of them. For a fee you can swim in a lot of them.

    This cenote was in a cave, the picture taken inside and looking up.


    It was cold but wonderfully peaceful floating around and watching the water trickle down from the hole in the ceiling (although I've got a sneaking suspicion they were piping the water up to the top to make a "waterfall," again, just to give the tourists whatever fake experience they wanted.)

    4


    We headed north next to the coastal town of Rio Legartos for a beach day, which turned out to be a disaster.

    Strong winds had blown the ocean into the streets, quite literally. 

    It was so weird to see an unbroken flow of water going from the curb right out to the horizon.

    We'd driven over an hour to get to Rio Lagartos, and there was nowhere else to stay unless we wanted to turn around and go right back to where we came from, so we took our suitcases and waded to the hotel holding them over our heads as a Mexican family laughed at us from their balcony across the street. 

    The government had shut off the electricity, but at least the hotel staff gave us free chips and guacamole and put on some live music in the dark.

    These guys were amazing, it was all local music.

    In the morning I was surprised to see that almost all the water was gone, and now that it was light and dry we looked around. The hotel was absolutely gorgeous, even with the seaweed and debris from the night before all over the ground. It's too bad we couldn't stay, but the weather still wasn't great and we had other things to see so it was time to move on.

    Restoring the power as we left town. No cherry pickers for the work crew here!

    On our way out, we saw a cemetary and had to pull over and take a look. (When the kids were little I often took them on walks through the stroller-friendly paths of the large cemetary across the street, which made Phillip start teasing me about how I loved cemetaries, which made me think about how interesting they teally are, so now I kind of do love cemetaries, which is part of the reason we had to pull over.) 


    You guys, I have never been inside of a Mexican cemetary before. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.

    All the graves were colorfully tiled above-ground structures with built-in curio cabinets on top for arrangements and decorations.

    So I guess it wasn't a wasted trip up to Rio Legartos, after all.

    5

    The next place we drove was to Izamal, also called The Yellow City. I'll let you guess why.

    Hint: everything is yellow.

    This monastery was really interesting. When the Spanish came and Christianized everyone they built it right on top of a Maya temple! The ramps leading up to it are actually Maya stones.

    Phillip and I walked around, ate some delicious tacos, and moved on to Mérida.

    At first, I wasn't that impressed with Mérida. In contrast to the other Mexican towns we'd visited so far, it felt kind of generic. Like it could have been any big city anywhere. But it grew on me.

    Mexican history monument in the center of a big roundabout in Mérida.

    The owner of this shop was every bit as interesting to talk to as you would guess.

    There are a ton of museums in Mérida, so we checked out a few of them before making our way to Pisté.

    6


    Our hotel in Pisté was cute, but there were way too many stray dogs in town and the place where we ate gave us a dish of salsa that we saw them take from another table who had just left, so I could take or leave Pisté, to be honest.

    We weren't staying there long anyway, just basically sleeping and having breakfast before going to Chichén Itzá.

    This amazing photo was taken by our tour guide.

    The tour guide was helpful, but we actually knew a lot of it already because I'd checked out a book on Chichén Itzá from the kids' section of the library. 

    (Phillip gives me a hard time for reading children's nonfiction, but come on: it's the perfect level of information. I don't need 400 pages with every fact ever recorded about a subject, I just want a general overview I can read in 15 minutes and get on with life.)

    Something I didn't know, though, is how HUGE Chichén Itzá is. It just keeps going and going and going. It took us four and a half hours and Phillip's watch said he met his steps goal by 1:30. And the sad part is that it's so amazing but by the end you're like "hey look, another ruin, I'm hot, let's go." 

    But after you've run the A/C in your car for a bit afterward and gotten some water, it really does make you think about civilizations and life.

    7

    As I write this, we are back in Valladolid, which is our last stop before driving back to Cancun tomorrow to fly home. (Maybe we'll even try to squeeze in some beach time at acancun first since our excursion to Rio Legartos didn't exactly work out.)

    I love this city.

    Overall, this has been the most amazing trip with the best traveling companion I could possibly ask for. And I'm not just saying that because Phillip's Spanish is better than mine. (Although it has helped tremendously when ordering tacos and figuring out where to park.)

    Click to Share:
    Unremarkable Files
    Read More »