Thanksgiving in Plymouth

 Happy Thanksgiving!  We drove up to Plymouth to spend Thanksgiving with Mimi and Tom and all of the cousins. We all had a great time and enjoyed a little Thanksgiving site seeing at Plymouth Plantation. We also ate a lot of seafood and spent our last evening in Boston where we had dinner , bowled and enjoyed the Christmas decorations at Quincy Market.

Declan's Expander

Declan got his palette expander installed today! Two weeks of turning the key and he will have plenty of room in his mouth for all of his teeth to come down. It's hard to talk and eat at first but he'll get the hang of it pretty quickly!

Diving in Mexico

Brendan surprised me with a trip to Tulum, Mexico to learn how to scuba dive! We stayed at Underworld Tulum with our friends, the owners, Claire and Laney Vogel. We started our diving adventure in Tulum in a beautiful cenote just outside of town. It was very shallow and clear - perfect for our first day and introduction to scuba diving!  On day 2 we dove in a mangrove cenote - a little bit deeper and not quite as clear but amazing and very beautiful! By day 2 both of us were pretty tired and thinking that this might be a little bit harder than we had thought it would be!!  

On Day 3 in the morning we dove in the ocean but it was really windy and choppy and Laney was uncomfortable with doing another dive in those conditions so we drove out into the jungle and found a remote cenote that was gorgeous - right out of a movie!  It was even a little deeper and darker and we had the most difficult dives of our training but we made it through!

On Day 4 we drove up to Playa del Carmen and did 2 open water dives on the reef! It was amazing and we saw so many beautiful fish. I only wish that we had more time to dive in those conditions but unfortunately it was time to pack up and head back home to the kids!  I hope that we get to use our new diving skills sometime soon!!

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4:

Coba Ruins, Mexico

Today is our first day in Mexico on our diving trip to Tulum! Because our training doesn't start until tomorrow, we took today to go and visit the Coba Ruins which are the only Mayan Ruins in the Yucatan that you can actually climb on!  It was really cool!  The weather was perfect and there weren't a lot of people there. We got a lot of walking in and culminated with climbing the large pyramid at the end our our visit! It was beautiful!!

Rivalry Challenge at the Naval Academy

Emmy and I headed up to the Naval Academy today for the Rivalry Challenge. We left with plenty of time and I was confident since I had been to the academy over the summer and knew exactly where we were going. What we didn't know is that there was a marathon in Annapolis that morning and once we got about a mile from the field house the roads shut down. We ended up parking and having to walk a little more than a mile with all of Emmy's goalie equipment and with Emmy in her cleats! It was also COLD!!  We made it to the field house in time to have her get a short warm up and get into the game. Phew!
After the first game we ended up walking back to the car which was coincidentally right next to the second location and also in the parking lot of the best bagel place ever! We had a great lunch and headed over to the stadium for the second two games. The girls played great and it was a fun way to finish up the season!

Aoife gets braces - again!

Aoife got her last round of braces on today!!  After being super tough about a palette expander and a couple rounds of earlier braces - this is the final round! All of her adult teeth are in and although it will be a few years until she gets them off, I think she is excited to get the process started!!

Flying Home

We had a great time at Laurie's wedding and, sadly it's time to get back to reality and start the beginning of the holiday season!  Let's have a great flight!