Last week was mayhem! With work and Relay for Life the Arnold's were here, there and everywhere! During busy times I like to be able to look forward to something even if it's just a dinner out after work. Lately though I have been focusing on something more substantial to get me through the long days...we're going to Mexico for our first anniversary! I know right, it's going to be amazing. How did we make this decision/afford this trip? Well we had originally planned to visit our nations capital, going so far as to price everything down to public transportation and asking advice from friends who lived there. It was pretty much set that we would be going to DC until I came home on a Friday and said that I thought we should go to Mexico...you can imagine Mike promptly exclaimed "what?" This was not the first time I brought up Mexico though as when we were planning our Christmas vacation we looked into MX first before deciding to go with Vegas as it is more expensive to visit the Caribbean in the winter than in the spring/summer. 

So I started with the hard sell on a vacay to Mexico, it went like this... we need a relaxing trip and not a pounding the pavement type of vacation, we can see Mayan ruins, you can scuba dive, all you can drink. It didn't take Mike long to go along with it and I actually sold him on it before I could decide to actually pull the trigger. Of course I needed to research EVERYTHING that I could in a short period of time as flights had already increased in price from that very morning when I began looking. Of course I started on TripAdvisor.com and from there we made the decision to book the resort as it had stellar reviews and so did the area we are visiting. We also needed to decide on a budget and I had a plan to use money that I saved up while working part time as a Pilates instructor which paid for about 35% of the trip, which was nice since it did not take that money out of our pocket. We decided to charge the trip on our credit card(but pay it off immediately) so we could get the points and just like that the Arnold's were booked for Akumal, Mexico! Akumal is located in Riviera Maya in between the towns of Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Akumal means 'place of the turtles' so we are hoping to see some while there. 

While there we plan to be a bit more active than we were on our honeymoon and visit Playa del Carmen and the ruins of Tulum while Mike plans to scuba dive in a cenote. We are so looking forward to all of it and cannot wait to report back and review all of the activities so future travelers can make educated decisions about what to do while visiting!

We will have tons of pictures and advice to share upon our return! Happy vacation planning!