Some tropical adventure and a little R&R with the family

The time was fast approaching for Lolly and Dane's visit (Jade's mom and brother). Jade and I looked forward to it all summer. And they were excited to get in some much needed tropical adventure and R&R.

We had some awesome plans and everything was falling into place perfectly.

Dane had exactly 9 days in between summer and fall semester. He had been working his butt off every day this summer to master O-Chem to get him one step closer to med school. 

Since Lolly had quit her job she wanted to stay longer than the 9 days that Dane would be here. By some stroke of luck we somehow found an opportunity for her to house-sit for another friend of hers here in Chacala! So she decided to stay about a month. 

When the day finally came, we picked them up from the airport in the early afternoon and headed immediately to do the first thing on Dane's list, to get some dirty street tacos. 

We found a random place in Bucerias and even though they couldn't get our order straight and ended up bringing us a few extra shrimp tacos and ceviche tostadas, the awesome food was the perfect kick-off for our amazing week. 

We ended our first day having more tacos right on the beach in Chacala watching the sunset. 

Our plan was to only spend a couple days in Chacala and then head down to Lolly's timeshare in Nuevo Vallarta. We made good use of our time and made some fun memories in the rural jungle. 

We ate at some of the great places here in the village. Our pizza took an hour to make and we saw that the young guy running the place had to run next door and buy all the fresh ingredients for the veggie pizza we just ordered. 

We took them to Tortugas beach.The conditions were really unusual from what I've seen there before but it was actually perfect. The water was extremely low and we could walk out to the surf break, saving our arms for paddling into waves. 

Lolly is overcoming her fear of water and she was so comfortable and confident in the water I taught her how to duck dive under waves and she body boarded a wave on Lupe! Check out her boys being helpful and taking good care of her. 

They got to attend our branch on Sunday in Las Varas and meet the Branch President and his family. I think that was one of Lolly's favorite parts of the whole visit. 

We were all ready and excited to check in to the Flamingos. This is where Jade and I spent our honeymoon three and a half years ago! It was so fun to be back and make some great memories with his family. 

When we asked Dane what he wanted to do he said he would be most happy if we could surf every day. So that's what we did. And when we got back to the resort and hauled our boards all the way up to our room from the underground parking lot... we'd sit by the pool or on the balcony and play cards. 

We had an amazing view from our room of the pool and the beach. We surfed 6 our of the 7 full days they were here at 4 different surf spots. We got some sun, some great street food (my favorite was the tacos al pastor and chocolate filled churros), got a little bit of a break from the mosquitoes and got to enjoy air conditioning! 

When it wasn't street tacos it was healthy home-cooked meals in our room and green smoothies. Lolly added some piña colada mix a smoothie one day and invented the "Greeña Colada," (patent pending) the most delicious thing ever. 

We all got minor surfing injuries but we saw some amazing beaches. We slept in our car when we woke up too early for surfing, skim boarded, and Lolly got hit on by a disgusting old white man with a giant hole in the butt of his shorts that he called "air conditioning."

Jade and Dane both bought ipads from Mexico Craigslist and Lolly paid $3 for a little bag of M&Ms (resort prices, yuk!)

Dane found out he aced his O-Chem class, got the news that he got a job he had really wanted, caught the best and longest wave of his life, and kicked some butt at cards. He was having a pretty lucky week. We made a quick trip to the Mega for some celebration Tres Leches and Sangria. What we should have done is buy a lottery ticket. 

There were some terrible crowded waves and there were some amazing waves that we had all to ourselves. Looking back, my favorite memories will be the waves and the evenings on the patio as the sun went down and it started to rain playing the card game Hand & Foot. 

We had a really incredible time and the time flew by far too quickly. We took Dane to the airport and enjoyed one more day at the timeshare before heading back to Chacala with Lolly with more adventures in the works.