MEH-HEE-CO!

As most of you probably already know, Wes was selected as Employee of the Year for his company last August.  In recognition of his hard work, he was rewarded with a five day, all expenses paid, all-inclusive, adults-only "Champions Trip" to Mexico.  We had been anxiously waiting for this trip, and last weekend, it was finally time to go!

The headquarters of Wes's company is in Minnesota, and there are branches in Colorado, Texas, and a few other places.  Along with Wes, we were joined by the boss, a few managers, and any salesmen that met their quotas for the year.  All in all, there were 24 people there (12 employees and their spouses), 8 from Colorado.

So, Thursday morning, we headed out to DIA to board our plane to Cancun.  

Wes, Dustin, his wife Brenda, and Aubree taking the bridge to Concourse A.

Wes, Bradd, and Dustin.  Bradd and Wes have been friends since elementary school.  Dustin came on board a few years ago, but they have all become good friends.  They especially enjoy late night rounds of Call of Duty on the XBOX!

Ahhh, that's what I'm talking about!

After a four hour flight to Cancun, another few hours through Customs, and an hour bus trip over to Playa Del Carmen, we finally arrived!  (It was a VERY long day of travelling).  

We were staying at the Royal Playa Del Carmen.  It turned out that our room had been given away to someone else for the first night.  So, they offered us either a room with two double beds facing the street, OR the beach front presidential suite at the resort across the street and two 50 minute massages at the spa during our stay.  As you can imagine, we chose option 2 and wheeled our suitcases across the street.

Here is our room for the first night.  This is just the bedroom, there was also the living room, hallway, and gigantic bathroom suite.  It was awesome!

 
The view from one of our three decks :)

That first night, we got settled in and went over to dinner at the Mexican restaurant.  There were about five or six restaurants to choose from...a walk-in buffet and several nicer sit-down restaurants.  After dinner, we took a quick walk on the beach, ordered room service dessert in Bradd and Aubree's presidential suite (they also got bumped the first night), then called it a night.
Before the trip, Wes and I had decided that we wanted to make the most of our vacation and not sleep in.  We never set an alarm or anything, we just woke up by 8:00 most mornings and headed out to the beach.

The first morning, we woke up to a bit of rain.  I was really nervous that it would last all day.  So, we went for a jog on the beach, ate breakfast at the buffet (made to order omelets!), and then checked out of the other hotel and moved into our regular room.

Here is the Royal Playa Del Carmen.  Absolutely AMAZING, and SO much fun!

We settled in to some pool chairs to wait out the rain.

Our first drinks...happy monkeys.  Not our favorite, but a good start!  We were told to bring our own cups from home.  They kept the drinks colder and we didn't have to get quite as many refills. :)

After about an hour or two, the rain moved on and left us with an absolutely amazing day.  I had read online that we could snorkel for free through the resort, so we checked out some gear and headed out to the ocean.

Dustin, CJ (from Minnesota), Wes, and me.

There is nothing coordinated about putting on snorkel gear in the middle of waves.

Brenda stayed on the beach to catch some rays and she snapped a few shots.  For going right of the beach, the snorkeling was actually pretty great.  We saw lots of fish, coral, sea urchins, and more.

After an hour or so of snorkeling, we headed back up to the pool for some volleyball.  Everyone playing and lounging in the background was from Wes's work.

The post-volleyball gang.

Even though we had moved over to our hotel in the morning, our room wasn't ready until later that afternoon.  We finally got checked in, and here's what we saw!

Oooh, la la!  Every night they would turn down our bed with a different animal or rose petal design...

The rest of the room...

 

And of course, the mini bar.  I've never seed this much booze on tap in a room.  We didn't even drink any of it because we had enough down at the pool bar, in the game room, or from one of the fifty servers walking around asking if we wanted drinks!  

We were up on the third floor, so we had an awesome view of the rest of the resort and the ocean.

This was the view from the main lobby underneath our room.  It was a massive open air room with couches and chairs just to chill on, and of course, two bars.  We met here every night with anyone who wanted to go to dinner.  There were also shows here every night at 9:45.

Ready to go to Asiana's, an amazing asian food restaurant (unlimited sushi, california rolls, spring rolls, plus awesome entrees!).

Brent and Paula.  Brent is Bradd's older brother, so Wes has known him forever.

A little fuzzy, but I like it anyways.

Dustin and Brenda.

Bradd and Aubree.

And our new friends from South Dakota, Doug and Emily.  We had a great time playing games with them all weekend...volleyball, pool football, you name it!

And Tim from Minnesota.  His wife wasn't quite ready for dinner, so he posed with some waitresses instead. :)

After dinner, we headed out into the town of Playa.  There is a main strip of shops and restaurants about a block from where we were, so we headed down to find a place to go dancing.  Wes found this lovely man along the way.

At one point, we turned around and Wes and Bradd were nowhere to be found.  We found them tucked down an alley checking out these wild animals.  There was a white tiger, a jaguar, and a monkey!  You could pay money to take pictures with them.  I snuck this one of the jaguar, then Wes paid them five dollars for a shot with the monkey.  We knew Payton would love it!

Shortly after the monkey pic, it started pouring rain.  We tried to duck under awnings for a while, but we finally decided to bag the dancing idea and walk home in the rain.  It was actually quite fun.  When we got back to the hotel absolutely soaked, they were waiting for guests with warm dry towels...
Bradd, Aubree, CJ, and Tim.

The next morning, Saturday, was sunny, but windy and much cooler.  We had made reservations for our complimentary massages.  They were definitely different than the ones we get at home.  Not nearly as modest, and a little frisky! :)

Past massages, we headed back out to enjoy the sun.  They had a ton of these seats that actually sat on a ledge in the pool.  They were awesome!

I didn't document every single detail of the trip, so I'll highlight a few things that happened the rest of each day...
Saturday afternoon we had lunch at a tapas place on the resort.  The fish tacos were great!

Diving catch football was a blast for all the "boys"...Dustin

Doug

And Wes.

I didn't get any pictures of it, but I spent a good portion of time down at the sand courts playing volleyball.  We played 6 v 6 a few times with work people, and I met some guys from South Carolina and we had some great games of 3 v 3.  I loved it!

Sunday morning, we also did some boogie boarding with some local surfers.  We caught a few waves, but we've got a long ways to go to even think about trying surfing!

Before dinner on Sunday night.  Notice I'm wearing long sleeves and jeans.  It was actually quite cool, especially after being in the sun all day.

Because of the cooler weather, we spent some time indoors playing games with Brent and Paula.  We played euchre and back alley bridge before dinner, and Ticket to Ride (yes, we brought our game from home :) at the coffee shop after dinner.

This was our last night, so we went back to our favorite spot, Asiana.

Our last morning.

This picture shows our room.  The middle floor right in between the two sombreros :)

Ordering one last drink, a mud slide...swings at the bar, awesome!

And one last lounge on the beach.

We had an absolutely amazing time.  It was so much fun to just be together and enjoy each other's company. We didn't have laundry, lunches, hw, or anything else to worry about, just being together and playing like kids.  I am so proud of Wes and his award.  The boss from Minnesota was very complimentary of Wes and all of his hard work.  (Let's hope that means we get to go again sometime! :))  

Thanks to my mom and dad, Wes's mom, and Mark and Abby for helping to watch our kids while we were gone.  I know that had a wonderful time with all of you, and we are blessed to know they were in such good hands!