Team fun

Since the girls have two weeks of vacation, we took advantage of the second week to have a little team outing. We went to Ixtapan de la Sal. It is a little town about 4 hours from here. It is famous for its thermal waters, very large water park, and various spas. The hotel pool was heated with thermal waters; although, the girls got pretty cold. Olivia shivered and shivered, but didn't want to come out of the water. We enjoyed the water park, which was rather impressive with big, big slides, a couple of rivers and several wading pools for little ones. The water, however, was not heated and it was pretty cold! Olivia and I stuck to the easy stuff. Sofia was disappointed that she wasn't quite tall enough for some of the rides, and the rest of the gang enjoyed the slides and rides several times. There aren't too many pictures of our time there since the camera was always at the wrong place at the wrong time. That afternoon, Sam and I enjoyed a very nice Roman bath (a large hot tub in a quiet room with no kids)!
The next day we took a little side tour to some caves with stalagmites and stalactites. It was very impressive. Mexico is trying hard to preserve and take care of natural resources, so it was neat to see how they are doing that with these caves. Victoria's statement as we walked into the cave was that she didn't see any point in all the walking to see some dumb rocks! After the trek, she decided that maybe the rocks weren't so dumb after all...(oh the joys of what lies ahead for us). We all did agree that we would have appreciated a little more scientific and historic explanations rather than the guide pointing out Santa Claus, the kissing couples, lions, pitchers and various other figures.
The funniest thing happened on the way home when we stopped in Toluca (very large city outside of Mexico City) to grab lunch. We drove through Burger King, and as we got ready to order, the lady said they didn't have any beef, but would be glad to serve us some chicken sandwiches if we wanted. Huh???!!! How does Burger King run out of beef? I guess they forgot Lent is over.

Sam, Sara, Jeanine, Victoria, Sofia and Olivia ready for the water park.


Sara, me and baby on board waiting for some water fun.



Vicotria, Sara and Sofia waiting for a train ride around the water park


Olivia playing her new favorite game of "Ice, ice" with Sofia. It must be played sitting on the floor, and repeated many times! She's too cute!


Sam and I and Olivia (not cooperating) on the cave expedition


Cool wonders of nature


Sara and Jeanine in the cave


One of the open areas of the cave -- it looks like a temple, and sure enough, the indians used to use it as a temple for the gods