I was very flattered, since according to my great-grandmother (who bought the shirt below), I am one of these... 
Somehow I knew it was going to be a great trip!!!Ok, so this was our room - 2nd floor through the palm fronds. It overlooked one of several pools. We quickly realized on day 1 that this was the "loud" pool during the day because they had games and social stuff going on most of the time.
So we walked around and found...Happy Place #1. 
This was the view from inside our little cabana thing. The bar was just to the right and it had swings instead of chairs. The water was awesome, there was a great breeze, and even when it rained for a few minutes, we were cozy under our cabana. But of course, we had plenty of real estate to explore, so on day 2, we discovered Happy Place #2, which was actually our favorite. 
This beach is on the ocean, which was on the far end of the resort from our room. But even that wasn't a long walk. Our favorite part was the pelicans. They were so cool and they weren't bothered by people at all. Some of you know that I have a ridiculous fear of birds. For some reason I can't explain, pelicans don't freak me out. I think they are just too cool, and Kinsey calls them Nigels (from Nemo) which is precious. So we were very excited to just watch these guys fish and float all day.
We spent a lot of time in these chairs over the next few days.
What's happier than being in your happy place??? Napping in your happy place of course!
You might notice the red "Bubba Keg" in some of the pics. We read some great reviews of the resort online that helped us with so many ideas. Several people suggested to bring one of these classy cups because the resort is all-inclusive so the bars will fill it for you over and over. We mostly had Pepsi (gah!) but this cup kept it so cold all day! We borrowed it from our buds the Kedroskis and then when our friends the Shocks came to this resort in January, we sent it with them.So another cool thing about Happy Place #2 was the Ocean Pool and as you can tell from the back right, water comes in from the ocean to fill the pool in waves.
Consequently, it is full of salt water and fish and the pelicans dive for dinner in the pool. It's kind of hard to tell in this video, but here's the action:One day while we were there, a pelican dove in and caught a fish right in front of a lady who was FREAKING out that he was following her around the pool. So the pic above is a view on a normal day...but this is what it looked like the day we arrived, with rough waves. Needless to say, it was not open for swimming.
So we actually discovered this place several years ago while on a cruise to Cozumel with some friends, Rob and Paula Corbello. They had been here before and so we took a day excurision on a ferry across from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen and spent the day at the Xcaret Eco-Park, which is adjacent to the Xcaret resort. With our stay this time, we got a day pass to the Park. It's kind of hard to describe. It's like an aquarium and a beach resort and a garden and a low-rent Sea World all put together. There are dolphins and giant turtles and a butterfly atrium and an orchid nursery and just all kinds of amazing things to do. The first thing we did was go up in a space needle kind of thing that gave us awesome views of the resort and the park. I just looooove heights so this was my favorite (how do you say 'sarcasm' in Spanish???)
here we are on the rotating tuna can in the sky. am i having fun yet??
There were a few walk-thru aquariums and this fish was so cute I wanted to take him home.
These are baby turtles and it's hard to tell how small they were, but they would easily fit in the palm of my hand, maybe even in Kinsey's. They had them at all different ages in different tubs.
This was a giant turtle - probably the biggest I've ever seen, nearly the size of my husband. 
The butterfly atrium was huge and so cool. It's virtually impossible to take good pictures of butterflies, so please take my word for it. This was a blue morpho, but it never would open it's wings. I learned on Go, Diego, Go, that they prefer to drink the juice from nearly rotten fruit on the ground because it's so sweet. Thank you Nick Jr.!
So this was the original Happy Place - a hammock near the beach - from our first visit to the park years ago. I was only too happy to enjoy it again.
We hiked through the rainforest to get to this cool boat ride. Here are some shots - so hard to capture the beauty on camera, but these are pretty close.
So that night the Park put on this incredible show of the history of Mexico and the various regions and peoples and customs. It was amazing - the highlight was this guy. I cannot begin to imagine what this headdress must weigh or cost. He was right up next to us and I was terrified. Very cool show and very informative.
None of the pics from the show came out very well, but they played this sort of hockey game with a ball that they lit on FIRE and hit around the stage area. Crazy.We had an amazing vacation trip and hope to return someday. Again, we highly recommend this place - they have great deals and it was such a great way to celebrate 10 awesome years of marriage.
