Away

We've been away.

We had a wonderful Christmas full of family and food and presents and playing and laughing and making huge messes....

...but then we went away.

We went to:

And it was wonderful.

Because how could it not be wonderful to wake up to this each morning? :

[No....we seriously did wake up to that each morning. Well, we woke up and took 10 steps, I guess. And that was waiting for us. Every morning.]

We spent our days eating chips

And drinking beer...and tequila...and vodka. And maybe we didn't spend our days doing that, maybe just our nights. And maybe we didn't do that...maybe Danny and Pat and Josh did that. But I loved it.

Because when and where else can your brother make a margarita at 10:00am and your husband grab a Corona, and it just seems right?

Nowhere else.

And the babies?

The babies were in heaven.

They played in the sand....

...and chased waves....

...and searched for shells...

...and made sand castles...

....and abandoned supplies when they got tired and hungry...

...but jumped right back in soon after...

...and mama was in heaven, too.

If I could bottle up one emotion, one feeling, 3 faces, and save it...

It would be happiness

and love,

and the warm sun

and

it would look like this when I opened it up and spilled it all out:

My smiling babies in Mexico, playing on the beach, laughing and running and getting sandy and then resting and then doing it all over again --- that is the best.

And baby Charlotte loved Mexico, too.

I could sit on the sand and watch this all day long:

And since we were only 20 minutes from some Mayan ruins, we made the trip

Isn't this perfect?

Wait....it's not perfect yet....

...there.

This is perfect.

Thanks to my mom and dad, we had the best vacation of our lives. We can't believe how spoiled we are. Thank you, thank you, thank you!