Mexico June 2008

In June 2008 we went to Cancun Mexico with our great friends Bob and Holly Foote. We had a great time and did a ton. Here are some of the picture highlights. (The captions are for the photo above it.)

This is McKay and Bob on a bull outside of the restaurant we ate called La Parrilla during our last night in Cancun.

McKay, Danielle and Holly enjoying the music inside La Parrilla


All 4 of us at La Parrilla

We toke a little ferry to a small island called Isle Mujeres and we rented a golf cart together to ride around the island.

Isle Mujeres

Eating Elote in Playa Del Carmen. This is the corn that venders sell on the street and they put cream and cheese and some seasonings on it and then put it on a stick. It's very good and I felt like I was just like Nacho Libre eating it.

Us at the base of Chichen Itza

Looking at some of the other ruins around Chichen Itza

At a nice little restaurant in Playa Del Carmen calld Ajua. They had decent food, good drinks and great music, entertainment and service.

Floating down the river at Xel Ha. This is a natural water park down there.

Us Kyaking at Xel Ha

In a water cave at Xel Ha.

At one of the Coba Ruins

At the base of the Coba Ruins. This was cool because it's the only one they let you climb.

At the top of Coba

Danielle, Bob and Holly riding bikes to the Coba Ruins

Kayaking somewhere near the Coba Ruins

McKay and Danielle getting ready to repel into a cenote

Hiking to that same cenote

Danielle repeling into the cenote

McKay zip linning over that same cenote

The 4 of us at a restaurant call El Fogón. This was a really good restaurant.
McKay, Bob and Holly outside El Fogón.
We visited the island Cozumel and rented scooters to ride around the island. This is us on our scooter with my trusty ninja turtles back pack.
Looking for sea shells at Cozumel. Bob, Danielle and Mckay
The pools at our Hilton hotel in Cancun
The 4 of us at Tulum
In front of the Tulum Ruins

The beach at Tulum

Family Reunion

Okay so I don't think it really counts as a vacation because we were still very very close to home...but we didn't sleep in our own bed so I am counting our family reunion this time. Sorry that there are no pictures now, they will be coming once I gather them from other family members, but I wanted to get the written stuff on here while it is still fresh in my memory.
We went up the the Heber Valley Camp in Heber Utah on Friday June 13. This place was so clean and so comfortable I felt more like we were at a motel 6 rather than camping. Friday night was pretty chill we just had tin foil dinners (which were great...thanks Marianne and James!) and then we hung out and had S'mores and roasted Starbursts over the fire. We laughed and talked and all got caught up on what people where up too and who was new to the family. On Saturday morning the fam decided to go on a hike, McKay, his brother Merrill and I were running a little late so we told them to go ahead an we would catch up to them. We figured we would catch up in no time since there were little kids and parents with babies and stuff. We ended up on a completely different trail than they did and we never caught up to them. Our hike was pretty nice, ended up on top of a mountain overlooking a few lakes, it was very nice. After the hiking we had lunch and then headed out to the lake for some canoe and paddle boat adventures. it was and refreshing and fun to get out there and be outside and playing. After that we kind of split up and some went to the camp some played volley ball and some played horse shoes. We then went to clean up our camp and passed the rigorous inspection Heber Valley Camp makes you go through before you can leave. We left around 5 and headed to Granny's on the way out. After enjoying a granny's shake we were approached by a man who asked us all to do him a big favor. He said that he was with a crew that was shooting a commercial for some water company that was local. He told us that they had lost a bunch of extras and they just needed bodies. He offered to pay us $50 each and told us it wouldn't last more than about 2 hours. We all thought that $25 an hour just to be a body in the background was a pretty good deal, so we piled in his van and he toke us to a meadow. We probably doubled the size of the group they had. He said that the commercial would run in about a month but that we would probably wouldn't be recognizable, which I'm actually pretty grateful for since we were all yucky and burned from camping. Saturday night we did sleep in our own bed and then Sunday we had many more family members join in. We all attended sacrament meeting together at our Aunt Merriley ( sorry I don't know how to spell it) and Uncle Greg's ward for their Mission farewell talks. We had pictures out side of the church and then headed to My in laws for food and games. We had some awesome Hawaiian haystacks for lunch (thanks Jonson's), watched some old videos and had some pretty crazy games of pounce...I came in last place with an outstanding score of -90 something...looks like I need some more practice. The rest of the fam is actually having lunch and playing games at a park in Provo right now while McKay and I have to work. :( Anyway all in all it's super fun. I think I even have all the names down of everyone who was in attendance!

Places Danielle Has Been

Countries:Australia
Canada
Dominican Republic
England
France
Germany
Mexico
New Zealand
Switerland
United States
States:Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New HampshireNew Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode IslandSouth Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
VermontVirginia
Washington
Washington DC
West Virginia
Wyoming

Places McKay Has Been

Countries:Austria
Belize
Canada
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
England
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Guatemala
Honduras
Hungry
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Scotland
Slovakia
Spain
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
States:
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North DakotaOhio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington DC
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Hawaii

This last December we had the chance to go to Hawaii to visit McKay's parents while they were living there on sabbatical. We had the experience of a lifetime while we were there. Here is a list of the top ten favorite things about our visit.

10: Shopping. On the south side of the island next to Waikiki was a shopping mall called the Ala Moana shopping center. It was huge, and had almost any kind of store you you think of. One of the things that I loved is that the hallways had no ceiling to them so you could look up from bottom floor and see the sky, and they had the biggest food court I have ever seen.
We also made a couple of trips to the swap meet. If you want to buy something in Hawaii this is the place to go. You pay a small fee to get in, but everything is so cheap that it would be dumb to buy it someplace else. Basically it's just a bunch of little shops set up all around a big football stadium. Great place to get sandals, t-shirts, jewelry, luggage, purses, and souvenirs of every kind, but it's only open on certain days of the week for a few hours so if you plan on going to the swap meets you have to find out when they are having it.
The other place to shop where everything is cheap is at the Wal-mart. Sounds crazy but they had so many Hawaii souvenirs and the most inexpensive macadamia nuts. This was the biggest Wal-mart I've ever seen.

9: Community and Ward. Since McKay's parents were living there they got to see Hawaii from a locals perspective. We got to experience a little of that with them. We went to a ward Christmas party, a party for the ladies that work in the costume shop at the PCC (which McKay's mother Marlene worked at), and other things thrown by the locals. I can tell you that Hawaiians know how to party. They are so nice and accepting and they always have great food.

8: Temple. One of our goals is to visit over 50 temples together so every time we travel, if there is a temple there we make time to go to it. It is really beautiful temple. Kind of small but still very pretty.

7: Pearl Harbor. It was nice to learn about the events of Pearl Harbor and to see the actual place where it happened. We were able to take a boat ride out to the memorial which is right on top of the SS Arizona. You can still see oil coming from the boat surfacing to the top of the water. There was also a small museum of things that were found there after it was over.

6: Dole Plantation. This was the first things we did after getting off the plane. We learned about Pineapple Fields and how it take over a year to grow one pineapple plant. We learned how to slice a pineapple the Hawaiian way, and had the yummiest pineapple ice cream.

5: Poli Lookout. This is a lookout that over looks the whole Southeast corner of the island. It was so pretty see all the green of the island next to the blue of the ocean. It was so so beautiful.

4: Diamond Head. This is an old volcano that the US military used as a lookout during world war 2, next to it is a crater that they used to store military supplies. It was about a half hour hike up.

3: Food. We ate really good in Hawaii, we had multiple shave ices, which are like a snow cone where the ice is shaved really fine and it has ice cream in the middle and sweetened condensed milk on top. We also fell in love with the Chocolate Houpia (coconut) pie from Ted's Bakery, one of the favorites to all the locals there. We had dinner at the PCC twice, the second time was the best, it was a buffet of sea food, we are big lovers of sea food. All you can eat shrimp and crab legs... so so yummy. Another place we really liked was Pizza Bob's in Hale'iwa.

2: PCC. During the day we walked around all the little villages that they have and learned about all the different Island cultures that live there in Hawaii. The ones I remember are the Samoan Village, the Tahitian Village, the Fiji Village, the Hawaiian Village, the New Zealand Village and the Tongan Village. In the evening we watched the show, which is a conglomeration of the different kinds of dances they have from the different islands.

1: The Beach. Almost every morning we went to swim in the ocean water. The water was so nice and warm and it was so beautiful. It was the perfect way to start out your day. There was one day that we woke up really early to watch the sunrise on the beach. We didn't actually see the sun because it ended up being pretty cloudy but we could see the sun turning the clouds beautiful colors and it was still so wonderful to see.