@mattkennedymortgages

Mexico with the Fam Jam!

January 28, 2017

Our kids graciously deal with Matt & I traveling a lot and working many weekends, so usually once a year we like to go somewhere hot and fun! I grew up going to all-inclusive resorts with my family a lot as my mom is a travel agent, and when we don’t have to cook or plan anything, that’s a great vacation! We went to Crown Paradise with the kids 4 years ago and couldn’t believe how perfect it was for the kids. When we arrived this time though, the story changed. It seemed a lot more run down than we remembered, and we had got to the buffet and the food looked less to be desired. I felt bad that the grandparents were spending their vacation here. That night I started looking at other hotels and inquiring with my mom if it would actually work to move resorts. Of course that would make things quite a bit more expensive, so we decided to make the best of it the next day and I’m SO thankful things turned around. We ended up loving our week there! The intimate size was perfect for us! There was a huge waterpark with tons of waterslides, an adult pool and 2 other pools, so there was more than enough to do and the food was much better for the rest of the week!

PS: A big thanks to my dad who snapped a lot of these photos and let us just enjoy the moment! 🙂

We started out the day with the zipline that went over top of the activity pool!

They had a stand at the resort that you could make ceramics. Gracie had her heart set on this turtle, so her and daddy painted it together, complete with pink eyelashes. She did not want to leave her turtle with the staff as she was very concerned about it getting burned in the fire. After a lot of convincing though, she was SO EXCITED about the end result!

My parents took the kids to the Mexican Show, while Matt & I went out for a quiet Mediterranean dinner at one of the a la carte restaurants!

There was a lot of pool fun!

And fun at the beach too!

Suprisingly as photographers, we don’t bring our nice cameras out a lot on vacation, but on one of the nights we took some photos right before dinner!

I can’t believe how spoiled we are to have 4 unbelievable grandparents for our kids!! All of them made the trip extra fun and our kids loved playing with them all week!

In the evenings, the resort had some pretty amazing shows!! Matt was chosen to do a contest before the show, where the mc would call out a direction and the guys had to do the action without messing up!! It was pretty funny! Of course, Matt won!!

What we loved most about this resort is how much there was for the kids!! They had a lot of fun parties at the kids club and we just loved this drink menu that was just for kids! Katie had a checklist and a schedule of which drink she would have when 🙂

Gracie also got her hair braided on the beach! Took the lady less than 10 minutes!

Matt & I wanted to make sure we had some time for just the two of us, so we snuck out during the disney show and walked around the resort and had some colorful, very sugary drinks!

BUCKET ITEM LIST CROSSED OFF!!! There was such a great deal on swimming with the dolphins that we decided to take advantage of it on our last full day there! We took the taxi to the big waterpark. Luckily my dad tagged along to watch with Gracie, so he was able to get some photos of us from the viewing area!

I was super excited, but then they ask you to jump in the big pool with these big animals and it is a bit freaky at first! Kaitlyn was very hesitant the whole time, so she did touch the dolphin, but didn’t swim with them this time.

I was the first of the group to ride on the tummy of the dolphin. It was crazy!!

Zack and Matt swam over to the other side and the 2 dolphins would line up their noses on your feet and push you while you were riding a boogie board!! Zack loved it!

Matt did too!

A video of Zack riding on their tummy!

The other fun thing about this waterpark is you could ride their waterslides as they were included in the package! I’m pretty sure they were a lot faster than our waterslides at home!