LONDON

I finally was able to go on my dream vacation to London and it was so much fun. Here are some photos of the highlights of our little trip.

More adventures in Mexico

One of my wedding gifts from Luke was a journal in which we took turns writing down our memories of our wedding day and our honeymoon adventures. I am so glad we wrote the memories down right away because it is so hard to remember everything just from the photos. I've never been good at keeping a journal, but I have always tried to keep a journal when I go on a trip so I can remember things better. Hopefully now with blogging, I will get better at recording memories.

Wednesday in Mexico, we went on The Coba Maya Adventure, which included hiking in the wilderness, a zip line, repelling into a cave to float on inner tubes in the pond inside the cave, canoeing and the Coba ruins which we hiked up. Coba has the only ruins you can climb right now. We have waited about a month to get photos from our tour guide of this day (so that is my excuse for my delay in updating my blog).





We looked like such dorks wearing harnesses and helmets for the zip line. Luke put his helmet on backwards at first, it was funny. They gave us a "Mayan brake" which was a wooden stick with a notch in it to pull on the zip line to brake before one of the Mayan men helped us gracefully land.

We also had a Mayan medicine man give us a blessing (and blew smoke in our faces).

The cave we repelled 50 feet into is referred to as the 7 skeletons. Mayans used to perform human sacrifices and 7 human remains from these sacrifices were found in this cave years ago. We repelled down the cave into a pond and got to float around in inner tubes. We had the option of being pulled back up on that same rope line or climbing a rope ladder. For some reason, we both decided to climb our way out and that was quite a workout. We were connected to a safety line and climbed sideways up the ladder. It was a little scary and I did not want to look down.


Then we went canoeing in a little lagoon which was fun and relaxing. The local Mayans cooked lunch for us which included soup, rice, beans, empanadas and spaghetti in case anyone wanted American food. The also had yummy apple juice for us.




We hopped back in the van to go to the see Mayan ruins. First we had a little tour with an archaeologist who told us the little they knew about the ruins. It's a shame they don't know what they were originally called because the conquerors destroyed all the Mayan records and gave new names to the places while destroying whatever else they wanted. It was cool that they had a ball court with a horizontal hoop and we were told that in the days of human sacrifices, it was the winner that was sacrificed and it was an honor to be sacrificed to the gods. Personally I would be happy to be the loser of that ball game.

We only had 30 minutes after our guided tour to get to the main pyramid to hike up. Our options were to walk, rent bikes or take a bicycle taxi. We opted for the taxi ride because I knew my thighs would be hurting from climbing all the steps and I would not want to be pedaling myself back. I wish we had taken a picture of the taxi. It actually had 3 wheels and the passengers sit in front of the driver and it was a fun ride.

at the bottom of the pyramid

at the top of the pyramid

climbing back down

We climbed Nohuch Muul the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan. It had such steep, narrow steps and there was a rope in the middle. We were so hot and thirsty when we got back down. There was a little drink stand for us tourists and we bought some Mexican soda for our bike taxi ride back. It was a really fun day.

Swimming with Dolphins

Tuesday was another fun day. I got to swim with dolphins and Luke watched from the sidelines. I was the only one in the group, so I got an hour of just me, the trainer and the two dolphins. They have 25 dolphins in their dolphinarium. The two dolphins that I got to play with were the dominant ones of the group. Their names were Squallo and Mercurio, they were 20 and 27 yr old males. It was so much fun to learn about dolphins and learn commands to give them to do tricks like backflips, spin, talk and clap.

Honeymoon Trip Part I

We headed to Cancun, Mexico early Sunday morning, the day after our wedding. It was a direct flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Cancun, Mexico and it was my first trip out of the country. When we arrived, we took a shuttle bus to Akumal, which is an hour south of Cancun, which is where the resort was that we booked. When we arrived at the gate of the resort we ran into a problem. Apparently the resort has been shut down for the past 2 weeks "due to the incidents" aka swine flu. Why wasn't this information given to us or the shuttle service? We had confirmed our flight and hotel information the week before and the shuttle service had even told us the name of the supposed conseirge that was to greet us at the resort in Akumal. It was very frustrating for us tired and hungry travelers, but they arranged for us to stay at the same resort in Cancun.

We ended up staying at the Grand Oasis Cancun which is an all inclusive resort. There was a fountain in the middle of the building and it looked like a little jungle that surrounded it. There were vines hanging from the edges of all the 6 floors. It looked really cool. We did get an ocean view room, but we were on the 1st floor, so we couldn't quite see the ocean from our room, but the shared balcony had an amazing view. The color of the ocean in the Carribean is such a beautiful blue, I loved it.




Somehow we were talked into doing a timeshare-like presentation on Monday morning. We ended up going through 5 different sales people who kept telling us we were ridiculous for passing up this opportunity to invest with them. We just kept telling them we didn't want to commit to anything that day and we would think about it. It wasn't fun getting harassed by all of them, but we did end up with a voucher for 3day/2night stay at the same resort for sitting through all that.

Monday night we became pirates. We sailed on the Caribbean Sea on a pirate ship from 7 to 1030. It was so cool to watch the sunset while we were on the ship. We took a pirate oath to obey the captain and thus became pirates. We ate a yummy lobster dinner and drank pina coladas. An enemy pirate ship sailed up along side us and there was a battle. There were guns and sword fights. The pirates even danced for us. There was a Mexican midget pirate and the captain had a hook. We had so much fun.

























To be continued.....

Wedding Day Bliss

Luke and I got married to each other on Saturday May 16th 2009. It was so fun to have all of our family and so many friends there to celebrate the day with us. The day was such a blur for the two of us. It went by so fast and everything went so smoothly. The wedding ceremony was in the Salt Lake Temple at 2pm and it was such a sweet ceremony that it was impossible for me to hold back my tears.





We were greeted outside by the paparazzi of family and friends cheering for us while snapping photos and shooting videos. It was fun taking pictures with everyone.











The reception was at the Gallivan Center later that evening. We were busy all afternoon with our photo shoot around the temple and rode Trax down to the Gallivan Center. We had a little downtime to rest my feet and eat a little bit before more picture taking began again and the guests arrived. The whole day was more fun than I had imagined.

















I felt like a princess all day and Luke looked so handsome in his tuxedo.
































The cupcake tower was amazing and the cupcakes were so pretty with all the different flowers of icing decorated with glitter dust on them.












The harp was beautiful music to fill the room.I loved the chocolate fountain; it made the whole room smells so yummy.
























I loved the gorgeous monarch butterflies in the centerpieces, and releasing them was so fun with my sweet nieces and nephews. It was also so fun to have my little sister catch my bouquet.


































I couldn't have had the day go any smoother without the great help of Kristin, Haley, Sunny, Bonnie, Eric and Jesse; they were such a wonderful crew that made my wedding day so beautiful and special.





I will post more photos of the wedding day and our adventures in Mexico soon.