We made it! Just shy of twelve hours of travel and we made it! Sorry to dangle this in front of you … but it is HOT! Hot, hot, hot! We’re renting a beautiful house in Tambor. Right on the beach … the sand is the dark, crystal, glittery kind … and, well … it’s just great!

As I may have mentioned {just once or twice or many times!}, we left the house at 5 am for O’Hare. The kids were so excited about the trip that they popped right up and got going. Everyone fell asleep in the car except CJ and Wynter … she’s a girl after dad’s own heart … not much sleep needed for that one! She stopped napping when she was two and most mornings wakes up by 5:30-6:00!

Anyway. Made it to the airport in an hour and proceeded through the crazy checkout process with our crazy, whirlwind family. I SO wanted to pack lightly … we didn’t do too bad, considering we’re a family of six. But man I’m envious of Me Ra … taking a two month trip to Thailand, a family of four, homeschool material and photo equipment and they didn’t check a single bag! I digress …

We checked seven bags and had seven carry-ons …

But can I just say that my girls {especially Huntie} couldn’t be cuter totting through the airport pulling their bags behind them. They get looks of “awwww” as they’re walking by. Mom pride at it’s finest … I even caught Curt taking it in.

Alrighty then … on to the photos. That is afterall why I got this large format blog! :) So this is us checking in. For some reason the process took forever and the girls ended up on the floor going through their bags.

Here’s Piper playing with ‘stingy’ … I tried to get her to name him ‘ray-ray’ but she wasn’t having it. Wynter has a ‘stingy’ too and they kept them comfy during the flight.

Wynter with a fruit rollup in her mouth and thoroughly bored with this whole process.

Hunt decides to entertain herself with a little light reading.

We left so early, we skipped breakfast … so it was a quick stop at Aunt Annie’s for a greasy pretzel fix. Lovely!

It was a fiveish hour flight, not including the hour we sat on the plane before takeoff. The girls all did great though. Miss teenager slept most of the flight and Hunter {can I please call her ‘the baby’?} slept for a bit too. But man-oh-man … when we landed and got off the plane into the BRIGHT sunlight and HOT humidity … I had a full-on crankfest on my hands! It didn’t help that we picked the absolute slowest line ever for customs. Seriously.

Look at these tired, cranky children!

This is while we are waiting for our pilot to get us to the next plane for our next flight. I thought it would be twoish hours, but ended up being just one. The only thing that got them through it was my promise of Sprite as soon as we got to the house. They pretty much never get soda … so this was a huge incentive!

We finally arrived at the beautiful house … explored it like crazy, picked out our swimsuits and headed to the pool.

Sprite never tasted better!

Does this child not look like she’s in heaven?

My beautiful Tay-Tay …

And yeah, we’re already finding creatures to love! This is a little crab. The rocks out at the beach are covered with them!!

And … lastly, here’s a little sweetness for you … Hunter is fascinated with howler monkey’s … fascinated! Too much Dora maybe? So we’re in the car on the way to the house and she’s asking when {not if} we’re going to see howler monkey’s. Because she’s going to hold them, cuz they’re so cuddly {you know, saying this all in her sweet little baby voice}. We start talking about it and that we might not see any, and maybe if we do they would be afraid of us and not come close enough for us to touch them.

She goes into a long explanation of how it would go down. We would see them and we definitely would hold them. Because they are so friendly. And they would say “hello Hunter, how are you?” “We like you Hunter.”

I love this baby!

Oh! And the coolest part? We have howler monkey’s that hang out in our drive way! Oh! And that reminds me of another thing … there are a couple of cats that hang out in the driveway and the girls were trying to entice them to come closer yesterday. Piper and Wynter are meowing at them trying to get them to come close. Hunter declares one of them is named ‘wild’ and charges after it saying “come here wild cat!”

Yeah .. I love this baby!