America's Birthday---Vermont Style (part one)

Each year our cute little town of Williston hosts a series of fun events to celebrate America's birthday. It's a chance to hang out with friends and neighbors and we always enjoy it. This year it has been pretty much raining every day since summer arrived, but the weather hardly ever dampens people's spirits in Vermont. It's one of the reasons that I love living here!

We started July 3rd at the town's ice cream social and ended up at our friend's Burlington home on Lake Champlain to watch the fireworks...in the rain.
Here are some of my favorite images from the day....

I love that our town is going green!!
My friend Mariana was the recycling police and made sure that folks were putting their bowls and spoons in the recycling bin. Don't you love her necklace?
The sign says it all.
Getting ice cream is serious business apparently.
Yummy!!
Here are a few fun pairs....



The scene.
Before...
After...
Making s'mores on the rocks.

So I know this isn't the best fireworks shot, but it beat out the others because the sky was so pretty!

Tulum, Mexico--part tres

We had planned to spend part of our last full day on vacation in Tulum, but after learning, the night before, the shocking news that Summer's teacher had died, we didn't really know what to do. We all decided to honor Mr. Al Myers by going to the ancient Mayan ruins because he was a big history buff. It was such an emotional day, but we were so happy that we went because it was so interesting and so beautiful! We don't have photos of it, but we finished our visit with a swim in the warm, sparkling, turquoise ocean just below the ruins.



As we were touring around the ruins, Andy suddenly said, "Look up!" and so we all did and saw this amazing sight! We're pretty sure it was a gift from Mr. Myers.





Andy snapped this photo out the bus window on our way back to the resort. The highway had a very strong military presence with several check points along the route.


Next up: Michelle + Greg's fabulous wedding at the Stowe Mountain Lodge!

Xcaret in Mexico--part dos

Before traveling to Mexico everyone warned us not to get sucked into a timeshare sales pitch and so we were totally prepared to say no if approached. It happened so quickly we didn't even see it coming...right after we collected our luggage in the Cancun airport!! We were headed out the airport door and this very official tourist guide was so generously helping us with where to go and what to do and the next thing we knew we had signed up for a timeshare presentation. Can you believe it?!? But the prize for sitting through it was too good of an offer to refuse....4 tickets to Xcaret for the family including transportation, valued at over $400. So we sat through the 2 hour presentation with an uber friendly woman named June. Interestingly, our daughter observed that her eyes were as cold as steel and we all noticed that she suddenly wasn't so friendly after we declined the timeshare offer. However, we did get our tickets and we were all thrilled to spend the day at Xcaret!! Here are some of my favorite images from the day...

How could you not smile when looking at this logo? I shot it through the window of the van on the way to the park.
The wildlife at the park was beautiful!!
Andy + Summer.

There were 2 cave swimming opportunities at the park. Our family did one, which was very fun, but a little chilly.

The park had a wonderful butterfly enclosure, but we had to rush through it to get to my extra special date!!
Swimming with dolphins was A DREAM COME TRUE!! Andy was able to take some photos through the fence, but I ended up buying a cd of photos, so I'll have to do a separate post from that magical experience.
Baxter makes friends every where he goes.
The next several photos are from a building I was a little obsessed with. It housed the check-in area for our cave swim and bathrooms/showers.
Such a cool way to wash hands!!
The showers were outside and the bathroom stalls were above.
Here's the building from farther away....oh, and Baxter too! : )

We ate dinner at a buffet with an abundance of delicious Mexican food and suddenly had front row seats to a big colorful show. Such a treat!

This guy had some serious talent with the lasso!



We finished off our evening with a spectacular show that ended with live parrots flying overhead and party streamers cascading down from the ceilings.