The Jennings Times: Nuevo Vallarta!

Just two days back and we are already missing the warm weather, sandy beaches, sweet baby turtles and nice people of Mexico! We stayed at a fantastic resort called Dreams Villamagna in Nuevo Vallarta. We met some friends (two fams from AK). We pretty much spent every day playing at the beach and swimming in the pool which was just the kind of vacation we needed and was just perfect for our two little beach bums. We knew they were getting spoiled when after a couple days Theo picked up the phone in our room and placed an order for room service, "Hello, I want some two chicken nuggets pease, bye" and Brock was giving knuckles to the concierge and ordered a dirty monkey (virgin of course) from the bar. We got them home just before they became fully spoiled by hotel life :) Here are some pictures of our Vallarta adventures.

The view from our room and the resort from the beach.

We logged many hours at the pool! This pool had a gradual entrance and was great for the kids.

Fun in our room. Lounging in bed, admiring the towel elephant, and swimming in the balcony hot tub...what a life!

The sea turtles were the absolute highlight of the trip! On the second night we were there we were walking along the beach at night. My friend Kathleen and I were in the middle of talking about sea turtles and I told her I didn't think we would see any - two seconds later we spot a HUGE mama sea turtle coming up the beach (shows what I know!). It turns out our beach is a huge nesting area and that night was just the beginning of our sea turtle adventures! Each morning Cory and I would spot babies or freshly hatched eggs on our runs, then one morning we were at the beach with the boys and a baby sea turtle practically walks under our chair - we found the nest and intiated the discovery of 16 babies! They have a large conservation effort for these creatures on this beach and they try to relocate nests and babies to protected areas. So the 'officials' collected our baby turtles out of Brocks bucket (ahhhh, could this get any more exciting) and we met them later that night to release them at dusk (nope, doesn't get any more exciting than that). My pictures weren't great once the sun went down - no flash photo - it confuses the little cuties! The biologist drew a line in the sand and after everyone caked there hands in sand they placed a turtle in everyone's hand - Brock and Theo! Then on the count of three everyone put them down and off they went! SO AWESOME!

We also logged a trillion hours at the beach. The water and waves were perfect for playing and boogie boarding. The surf was full of creatures ...sand crabs, sand dollars, crabs, starfish and little surfing fish. The kids all got along beautifully! Talon, was so sweet with Theo and even carried him around a bit...it was the sweetest! Brock, to my great delight, loved playing volleyball with the big folks. He would run around like he was ready for a big play and was annoyed that he never got the ball. He got hit with the ball pretty good once, but he just shook it off and said, 'good thing I blocked it, huh mom?" Love my little guy!