The Riviera Maya Yao-cation!

We just got back from a family vacation with my parents and my sisters and their families.  There were 13 of us and we had a blast in Riviera Maya, Mexico for 5 days.  Lots of fun and lots of great memories!  J and V even designed family vacay t-shirts for our group!  This was called the "Yao-cation" since that's my family's last name.  All the shirts were color-coordinated by families.  So dorky, but so great!

Besides hanging out at the pool and beach, we also had an all-day excursion our second day.  There are definitely too many pics and videos to post here (check out all our pics on our smugmug page 1 and page 2), so here's a rundown of what we did--

*POOL TIME: There were lots of pools at the resort, but the kiddie pool was definitely the place to find our kids.  Lots of fun slides!  What a blast!  (Although to B's dismay, adults were NOT allowed on the slides!)

*BEACH TIME: The beach was beautiful.

It was rocky, but that's what made it so different.  The kids found lots of critters in the tide pools...sea urchins, a sea slug, a sea worm-looking thing, tons of hermit crabs, and tons of fish.

B and V also took Eli out snorkeling to a reef right by our beach.  The guys had a great time out there!  I love that Eli can be "one of the guys" now...and he loves it too.

We also rented a jet ski and everyone took turns on it.  This definitely isn't Eli's thing.  After a few minutes, he wanted to go back to shore.  He's not a thrill ride kinda guy.  Elina, on the other hand, was in heaven!  She wanted the ride to be faster.  She's my roller coaster girl now!

*TULUM: This was the first part of our excursion.  We spent about an hour walking around the ruins.  There were so many iguanas walking around that Elina ended up taking more pictures of the iguanas rather than the ruins!  It was crazy!  I'm not even sure she noticed the ruins...

...but we sure did!  Beautiful, right?

*DOS OJOS CENOTE: This cave was just amazing!  The water was so cold and crystal clear.

We all had to wear wetsuits and Eulee really rocked hers!

The babies floated around us while the rest of us snorkeled.

We even went through this really narrow area that opened up into another cave that had an opening on the ceiling.  It looked like something out of National Geographic.

*YAL-KU LAGOON: It's a lagoon with a mix of freshwater and saltwater and is just filled with beautiful fish.  The water is so calm...and it's so relaxing snorkeling through there.  Lots of damselfish, sergeant majors, parrotfish, blue tangs, and queen triggerfish.  Awesome! It was hard to take good pictures of all the moving fish though.

*AKUMAL BAY: We snorkeled in the bay to check out sea turtles and we were lucky to see a few up-close.  It was breathtaking to see the turtles so close.  They're just eating sea grass and chillin'.  Just beautiful.  It was hard work to swim out to the turtles because of the currents, but it was worth it!

B even let out the air in his life jacket so he could get down closer to the turtle for a picture.

And Eli was such a strong swimmer the entire day.  He fell in love with snorkeling after this day.  He says he wants all the snorkeling gear so that he can swim fast all the time.  Elina, on the other hand, was not a fan of snorkeling.  She just didn't feel comfortable and always got water in her mouth.  So, she likes the thrill rides and Eli enjoys the water sports.  Ha!  But the kid who deserved a real A for effort was Evie.  She just hung on the life preserver ring and fought the current with the guide and kept putting her face in to look at everything we looked at.  She loved every minute of it!

We have video footage of all the underwater stuff on V's GoPro, but we have to wait to get it.  Maybe I'll have to make another post with the videos just so you can see how amazing everything was!

*EULEE'S BIRTHDAY: We did an early celebration with my family while we were away.  Eulee was in heaven!

Besides all the activities, we did some shopping and ate lots of food at the buffet and restaurants.  It was our first time at an all-inclusive resort and it was definitely fun!

The flights were pretty uneventful, which is always a good thing.  This trip was easier than past trips because almost all the kids could carry/pull their own carry-on bags!  It was awesome!  We were thankful we decided to travel through Austin because it helped TREMENDOUSLY to have 2 extra sets of hands (J and V) going through airports and going through customs.  We would have been SOOOOO slow without them...and there probably would have been some yelling and crying.  Thank you two so much!

The kids all miss Mexico and so do we!  When all the kids are old enough, we're going to go back so we can swim with the whale sharks!  But for now, adios, Mexico!