We discovered recently that a family "vacation" is indeed a departure from real life, but not necessarily a relaxing one.
We spent that last week of October visiting my uncle and his son in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. They have a gorgeous condo on the beach with three beautiful pools.
When we first arrived we spent a lot of time at the pool which was nice, but Adam and I couldn't help thinking that we were missing out on something. Shouldn't we be seeing the sights? Practicing our Spanish? Getting local with the locals? Hmmm... shouldn't we be seeing some Mexican people on our trip?
So we ventured forth on two different occasions. First we explored the streets of San Jose del Cabo with our two kids and our 4 year old cousin, Dawson. One local remarked: "Hmm...three kids and you're still on your honeymoon!" A couple of hours of that and we were all tired so we caught a taxi home.
The next outing we took was to Cabo San Lucas which is about a 1/2 hour bus ride. We just had Evan and Oliver that time. The ride there was great, but it seems we picked the hottest day of our trip to tour the streets of Cabo. We decided after a couple of hours of dodging the sun and keeping Evan away from the breakables (everything, that is) in the stores, that we would take the bus back to the condo. In the meantime, Evan and Adam did get local haircuts which gave us a break in the air conditioning and much needed trims for those two.
After that outing, we looked at each other and said, "What are we thinking, trying to get local with two small children in tow?" We quite enjoyed spending most of the rest of our trip by the pool and on the beach!
Thanks to my uncle Adam also had the chance to golf what he says is the most beautiful golf
course he's ever been at. The picture is taken from the tee box and the green is the space in the distance. The cacti in between are out of bounds!
The moral of the story is that we plan to keep our "vacations" pretty simple until both kids are quite independant. Then we'll get back into the adventure travel we love so much.
This year's Halloween was a lot of fun for Evan.We thought that he'd be into it, but we didn't realize to what extent!We took 
him out trick-or-treating to a few houses on our street and then to a few friends' houses. He didn't want us to come up to any of the the doors with him. He would command us, "Mom and Dad, you stay back there!" indicating the sidewalk. Then he'd tromp right up to the door and yell in his loudest voice, "Trick or Treat!" When the door opened he'd let the person know that he wanted "Candy please" in case there was any chance they had misinterpreted him. It was neat to see how independent he can be. He was also very enthusiastic about the candy!
