Katie and Peter's Blog: Cancun!

Last month we were lucky enough to go to Cancun with my company, Definitive Logic. In the five and a half years I've been there, the Winter trip has grown from about 15 people (mostly employees) to 100 this year (about half of which were employees, the other half were significant others and kids). It's always a lot of fun and a nice break from the cold weather but always ends way too soon.

Our trip started out great with the kids behaving very well on the flight and we got to the beach in the late afternoon. We ran around the beach, swam in the pool (and enjoyed the pool bar), and then had a nice dinner outside. It was hard to believe that just 12 hours earlier we were shivering in our winter coats in DC. After dinner we watched a puppet show outside which was fun.

The next day we hopped on a shuttle to check out the kids pool (it was a huge resort). They had fun playing on the slides for a while and then it was time to swim with dolphins! We walked out to a pier where several huge holding tanks had about a half dozen dolphins. We stepped down onto a wobbly grate that was partially submerged in the water and then the trainer proceeded to let us play with Carlos the dolphin. Carlos kissed all of us, danced with us, and played ball. He also jumped really high in the air and splashed us. It was a lot of fun but the wind and cold water made it cold standing there and we felt a little bad for Carlos being stuck in the tank while his friends probably swam in the ocean nearby. Afterwards we absorbed a hard sell to buy all 100 photos the photographer took of us playing with the dolphin for a ridiculous price. We managed to whittle it down to a lower price for the photos we liked the best.

Afterwards, Peter and I went back to our room to play in the hot tub (with bubbles and water jets!). Katie and Nancy played some more in the pool. Then we had a nice dinner with James, Liz, and Mischa at the resort's Brazilian steak house. One of the highlights was watching the preparation for Mayan coffee -- it involved lots of fire including pouring the flaming coffee into the glasses. Very cool. Then Katie wanted to play with Mischa at the kid's club so we took Peter (who was sleeping) and headed for the bar with some of my co-workers. We picked Katie up shortly afterwards, watched the tail end of a swimming show, and called it a night.

On the third day Katie got her hair braided while Peter and I played at the pool with his little friends Mischa, Kieran, and Jane. Then Katie and Nancy joined us and we spent most of the day by the pool. I did a bad job applying Peter's sunscreen and he had bright red rings around his eyes for about a week afterwards. Katie had some sunburn on her face too and my shoulders and nose got really burned. That was not smart. For dinner we ate with some of my co-workers at the fancy Mexican place. Peter slept through it and Katie ended up falling asleep at the table.

The next day we sadly had to hop on our plane to go back home. It was a fun trip but was over all too soon. This was our 4th DL trip as a family (Playa del Carmen, Mexico; Jamaica; St Maarten; and Cancun). The resort was nice but the water was a little too cold and everyone was too spread out. It was hard to bump into other people we knew and we went the entire trip without seeing some of the people. But those were minor quibbles. It was a lot of fun watching the kids play together and they made the trip a lot of fun.