Riviera Maya {10th anniversary adventure}

Dave and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary at the end of December so on New Years Eve we headed down to Riviera Maya, Mexico for a trip alone. We figured out that we haven't done a trip just the two of us (no kids, no friends) since before I was pregnant with Big E (about 7 years ago). It was time. We've done cruises but never an all-inclusive resort so on the recommendation of a friend we decided to stay at Now Jade Riviera Cancun.

The resort was beautiful. Dave read a ton of reviews before we went, some good and some bad. I've come to the conclusion that everyone has a different experience - ours was very good. We went during a busy time of the year but because it was just two of us we hardly ever waited for meals. Our room was beautiful (although our view was obstructed by plants since we were on the first floor). The beach was outstanding and long. There were free water activities to choose from that we participated in. All in all - a wonderful resort choice!

We had a blast just relaxing the whole week. Pretty much every day you could find us laying out, reading from 8am to 5pm when it got dark. I read 4.5 books last week which is insane for me, but I loved it. Dave played beach volleyball (he's the one blocking a spike in the black hat). We did scuba one morning which was fun (I love scuba) and spent plenty of time riding the waves on the boogie boards. Dave also took us out on a Hobie Cat sail boat, SUPER fun!

We walked up and down the beach searching for treasures. I love that Dave's now into finding beach glass too and would get even more excited than me to find pieces that had been worn from the sea. He loves the clear (turned white) pieces and my favorites were the unique colors like turquoise, cobalt blue and even olive green. {{stay tuned tomorrow for a tutorial on one thing I did with some of our found items}}

The one big thing that we did was head to an adventure park called XPLOR. It's kind of like Disney World, but adventurous. You pay one fee for your whole day there including the best lunch that I've ever had at a park like that. There were amphibious vehicles to drive through caves and water, underground rivers to raft on and swim through (the stalactites were beautiful) and 14 zip lines to enjoy. There were two circuits for the zip lines, one had a water slide and two water entries (i.e. freezing cold and soaking wet) and the other circuit just had one water entry. It was a blast. A few of the zip lines we got to go on together and the others were single riders. If you're going to Cancun, I highly recommend XPLOR. It was a fabulous time.

My goal for the vacation update was to not bog you down with pictures, but now it seems that I've bogged you down with text :) We just had such a great time and I wanted to share it with you all. I hope you had a great Christmas break and a wonderful start to 2012. Happy New Year!