The Five Beach Trip : Part I

So you know how I said I was over blogging? I’ve decided it’s not so much that I’m over it, it’s more that I’m over not sleeping. How do people find time to blog every day? Even every week? And don’t get snippy about me spending my time elsewhere -- it’s not like I’m cheating on my blog with facebook. Ok, I sort of am.

Facebook is quite the interesting phenom, right? During my second year of law school, a friend of mine went to London for a semester. Back in the day, facebook was super huge in England and only open to college kids. My friend came home raving about how cool this site was, trying to convince the rest of us to sign up. I looked into it . . . and saw a bunch of kids at least ten years younger and considerably hotter than me and decided there was no reason at all for me to be on there. Seriously. I’m old. I use regular email, and occasionally THE PHONE, for contacting my friends. From time to time, I even have a face-to-face conversation. So I missed the “I Was On Facebook Before It Was on CNN So I'm Way Cooler Than You” train. Now I’ve joined up for the lamest reason ever – everyone else is doing it. Well, that and the fact that I’m no longer as likely to be mistaken for a child predator as the only +30 year old on there. Ok, fine . . . +35 year old. Shut it.

Anyhoo . . .

Last month The Five checked off one of our 2009 Family Goals . . . we took a beach vacation as just The Five. My parents go with us on most of our bigger adventures. Not because I can’t travel alone, because OF COURSE I CAN, but because they like us and we like them. But this time, I wanted to go it alone.

So with travel being so cheap right now, I decided, pretty much spur of the moment, to go to Cancun. That’s right – out of the country. Well, technically.

Since I haven’t posted at all for a whole month, I’ve decided to make a multi-part series of our trip adventures, so you’re going to have to come back tomorrow (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Right.) for the next part. This week's installment is below. Coming up next: How That Topless Girl Taught All of Us A Darn Good Lesson About Life. And some pictures. Not necessarily of Topless Girl.

We went to an all-inclusive resort because I’ve always wanted to try it. I’m sold. I don’t care if the food isn’t awesome, because it totally makes up for its lack of awesome with its abundance. Zach and I are positive that we all ate our body weight in French fries the first day alone. We sat by the pool and ordered plate after plate of fries with heart-stopping amounts of grease and peculiarly watery ketchup. Awesome. The guy at the grill was totally our buddy by the end of the trip. He’d see one of us coming and just start slinging fries our way. Double awesome.

Seeing as it's us, we also buddied up to the guy at the swim up bar. It was kind of like our own little Mav, transported to the pool on the Mexican beach. Except for everything was free. You know, I kind of wish I was going to heaven, because I bet it’s a lot like that. I bet it’s exactly like that.

All day long we ordered pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris. Every time one of the kids ordered a drink for themselves, they also ordered one for me. And, since I have four drink-loving kids (where do they get that? I have no idea.), I did not lack for frozen beverages.

We’d all been forewarned about the tendency to find alcohol in basically everything, particularly during the Spring Break season, so the kids were all quite proud to announce every time they brought another round, pointing dramatically to the cups, “Mom, these drinks, these ones right here are NON-ALCOHOLIC. I ordered these WITHOUT ALCOHOL.”

We got plenty of looks during our little vacation – you could see the thought bubbles above everyone’s heads – but we got the most as we swilled our drinks around the pool.

“Is she alone? Are all those kids hers? How much has she had to drink? Is anyone else concerned? Who’s in charge here? We’re going to need to monitor this one. Security?”

For dinner one night, we ate at one of the non-buffet restaurants and ordered even more pina coladas, carefully stressing the NON-ALCOHOLIC part of our order, because we’re all little kids here, obviously. Our drinks came and everyone took sips – little sips because we’d been duly warned about potential alcohol-sneakage. I’d just brushed my teeth so it tasted kind of weird, but then, of course it would, what with the teeth brushing, right?

Except for that Zach’s tasted weird too. And so did Rachel’s. And Abby’s. And none of them had brushed their teeth. Since I have absolutely no experience with alcohol (that’s the truth, I’m not just saying that for my dad’s benefit), I was not exactly well-equipped to deal with this situation. We finally determined that they were, in fact, alcoholic. Luckily, everyone had stopped drinking after that initial tiny sip . . .

Except for Spencer.

I turned to look at him and he’s happily chugging away, paying no attention at all to our drink quandary. Zach and I shrieked, Abby started laughing, Rachel nearly swooned and Spen calmly gazed at me over the rim of his glass.

Thankfully he didn’t actually drink that much, 2 or 3 ounces tops. And it was mostly foam, which couldn't possibly have that much alcohol, right? However, Abby took great delight in loudly congratulating Spen every so often for the rest of the trip, "Look at you, Spen . . . 12 hours sober!" Or 24 hours. Or 36. Not at all awkward on the jetway in Phoenix. Or at baggage claim in Salt Lake.

I take precious little solace in the fact that my kids, all my kids, had their first drink with their mother. What are we, hillbillies?