>And maybe one more video tomorrow…

The Highlights (until my camera fell in the sand and stopped working):

We had a suite on the first floor and I took this picture from our patio:

From Mexico

The boys were very cute:

From Mexico

From Mexico

Jack really likes to say cheese for the camera now:

From Mexico

We really needed a few days of nothing but sun, beach, pool, food and drinks. You can tell by the smiles:

From Mexico

Now, I mentioned the highlights, and I mentioned the only real challenge we faced, but here are some other interesting tidbits.

Most common types of pizza at the snack bar:
hot dog pizza
salami pizza
tuna fish pizza
hotdog and carrot pizza

And this:
Me: I wish we had just eaten all this fruit so we wouldn’t have to declare it.
Dave: It’s no big deal, you just have to declare it.
Customs Officer: This form is for you, but don’t worry you aren’t in trouble.
Me: You are taking the fruit?
Customes Officer: In the future, don’t bring fruit to Mexico.
Jack: Miiiiiiiiine. BANANA!
Me: (contemplate asking the customs officer for the confiscated banana so I can feed it to Jack right there.)
Jack: Miiiiiiiine!

Note to self: anything included in the section with weapons and explosives, is probably something you should eat before you get off the plane.

>+ 1 Minutes/Cute:

From Mexico

+ 3 Minutes/Politely Dining:

From Mexico

+5 Minutes/Mood is Souring:

From Mexico

+ 7 Minutes/Angry:

From Mexico

+ 12 Minutes/Sleeping:

From Mexico

Some evenings, the tantrums lasted longer. How did we manage to eat all our meals in restaurants for the entire vacation?

From Mexico

And:

From Mexico

And:

From Mexico

>My friend Laura was saying that there is nothing cuter than a running toddler, but a toddler running on the beach has to be the cutest. It was a little windy, and you can see the shadow of the kite that Dave was flying. Just 46 seconds out of our few days of beach, pool, play, food and drinks.

>Kidding!!! But since it’s the topic on everyone’s mind, I might as well give you the scoop on the swine flu first, since who wants to hear all about the beach, and the pools, and the drinks, and the desserts, right? You’d probably feel jealous if all I talked about was how we were upgraded to a suite, and had the best location for our room, near the adults only pool on one side, so it was quiet, and with the miniature golf course right outside our patio. So you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow for all that good stuff. So: Swine Flu.

On Sunday or Monday we noticed about 4 people wearing masks, and one of them was a really, really old lady. It had seemed sort of hazy as we were landing, since Puerto Vallarta is on the pacific side, with the ocean and the mountains and the LA style inversion layer… I thought maybe the masks were asthma/smog related.

Tuesday morning, we turned on what we thought was the news, and it was like this: “Influenza, blah, blah, blah, Influenza, blah, blah, blah, INFLUENZA, blah, blah, blah! INFLUENZA!!!” interspersed with video of people frantically passing out masks. (My Spanish isn’t very good.) I wondered if maybe instead of the news we were watching a Mexican production of The Stand. Dave said, “Huh.” and turned off the TV. We were just trying to get an idea of what the weather was like in Denver.

At the airport we saw random people wearing masks. No one at the United counters had on masks, but some baggage handlers were wearing masks. One Asian family was masked, all Americans were unmasked. Carl’s Jr. workers: Masked. Starbucks: Unmasked. Etc. I asked Dave if he thought we were going to be quarantined when we got off the plane. He said, “No.”

When we got off the plane, we got a piece of paper that listed the symptoms of the swine flu, and it said to call the CDC if we got sick. That was it. You get sick in 2 to 7 days, so I guess we’ll know in 1 to 6 days.

In the meantime, here are some cute greetings from Mexico. Jack was very popular in Mexico, especially once he started saying, “Hola!” (or owa!).

¿Cuántos años tiene su bebé? Mira a los ojos azules! Hola bebé!