Monthly Archives: April 2009

Cleansing of the mind and… well, colon

Posted on by
1
Photo: ms.Tea on Flickr

Photo: ms.Tea on Flickr

So I’ve embarked on a journey of sorts… a journey to improve my health and mindset.

I’ve been a fan of regular cleansing for some years now, but have only been inclined to do a very gentle one-week cleanse, during which you still get to eat food. I’ve never fasted more than 24 hours either, but I’ve decided to dive into the Master Cleanse.

The Master Cleanse, also known as the Lemon Cleanse and the Maple Syrup Diet, is a dieting program created by Stanley Burroughs in 1941 and made popular by Peter Glickman through his book Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days, which promotes Burroughs’ regimen to a modern audience. Burroughs states that it is a detoxification program that aids in the removal of harmful toxins from within the body, as well as a reducing diet for loss of weight, and a cure for ulcers and “every kind of disease,” resulting in “the correction of all disorders [wikipedia]

I’ve had stomach problems for years now and have never been able to get to the root of the problem, nor put a name to my symptoms and discomfort. So my own analysis? I’ve just done damage by years of poor nutrition.

I’ve decided to start the Master Cleanse on Monday, May 4th.

Leading up to that time, I’m doing the gentler Re-Cleanse for one week. On the Re-Cleanse regimen, I eat a very simple diet and, ultimately, the same thing every day. This isn’t necessary, but it makes it easier for many reasons:

  1. I only have to cook twice during the week
  2. It prepares my head for going days and days without eating anything at all
  3. It reminds me how blessed I am to have a variety of foods to eat every day

So my meal plan on the Re-Cleanse program consists of the following:

  • Breakfast: 1/2 cup oatmeal with a few chopped up pecans and a chopped banana
  • Snack: 1 apple
  • Lunch: mixture of 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup lentils, veggies with a hard boiled egg
  • Snack: cuccumber, tomato, pecans & a couple of prunes
  • Dinner: same as lunch

I also have to drink a minimum 10 cups of water per day – but I’ve been averaging about 12-13 plus 2-4 cups of herbal tea.

Today is day 5.

So far, in 4 days I’ve lost about 5 lbs and my moods are very stable from the lack of sugar and the associated ups and downs. I love the feeling – it’s almost like being sedated, but with mental clarity. Last night I was really tired before dinner, though… but as soon as I ate dinner I perked back up.

It’s sort of shocking to realize the extent of the emotions we tie to food or drinks. The biggest one for me, so far, has been coffee. I’ve written before about my coffee addiction and this experience has brought to light just how much it has come to mean to me.

On the Re-Cleanse you can still have coffee, but only one cup a day and no sugar or cream… so black it is. But, because I’m starting the Master Cleanse next week and can’t consume any coffee at all during that time, I’ve decided to just wean myself this week so that I can (hopefully) avoid the awful caffeine withdrawal headaches. Yesterday I poured less than a full cup of coffee and it actually made me sad. It’s like I was mourning my coffee.

… now if only I can get so excited about downing a litre of salt water each morning, I’ll be all set.

This weekend will be a transition period – my Re-Cleanse ends Saturday and I am going to a party that evening and will end it beforehand so I can enjoy a little bit of food and drink. Sunday will be an ease-in day to the Master Cleanse – I’ll only be consuming orange juice while I try and get my head around a purely liquid diet for 2 weeks.

I’m excited to see how my body and mind cope with the Master Cleanse. I’ve planned to take Monday and Tuesday off work just to ease myself into this. While I am going to try and do 14 days, I won’t limit myself to that if it’s going well. Then again, I may not make it through day 1. We’ll have to see.

If you’re interested in trying this, you should pick up either Peter Glickman’s book Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days or Tom Woloshyn’s book The Complete Master Cleanse: a step-by-step guide to maximizing the benefits of the Lemonade Diet (this is the one I have, only  because Glickman’s book wasn’t available at Indigo when I went).

The Respectable Way to Gain Twitter Followers

Posted on by
3
Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Recently I have noticed more and more people playing the twitter follow game: a rude, strategy-driven ploy to gain thousands of twitter followers in a matter of days.

Here’s the thing: you’re not fooling anyone.

If you have thousands of followers and only a couple hundred tweets, you’re either playing the twitter follow game or you’re REALLY interesting. If you’re that interesting, you can stop reading now. Thanks for coming out; I’m honoured.

If you’re mostly normal, it will take you some time to build up an authentic, conversational twitter community.

Here’s the respectable way to gain twitter followers:

Either a) I see something you said or found something in your bio and think you’re interesting, so I follow you. You then choose to follow me back or not, or b) you see something I said and think I’m interesting and so you follow me; I may then choose to follow you back. The more you tweet, the more likely I am to find something you say interesting; the reverse is also true.

Over time, as we both tweet interesting things, we grow the number of people who follow us and the number of people we follow.

Here’s the obnoxious follow game I’m talking about:

You follow me, usually as part of a batch follow of hundreds or even thousands of people at once with very little regard to relevance. I get an email in my inbox saying you followed so I check out your profile. You are at least slightly interesting if still a little new to Twitter (you’re not fooling anyone – we can tell by the absence of thousands of tweets) so out of politeness I follow back.

Sounds the same as above, right? WRONG! Here’s the rest of it…

I then get ANOTHER email saying you’re following me.

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

The thing I didn’t know when I followed you back was that after following ME, YOU then unfollowed, so I would get the email notification but you wouldn’t actually have to count me as one of the (limited) people you follow… then you auto-follow-back only those who followed you back.

It’s EXHAUSTING just thinking about it, and I’m now taking a hard stand against it. If you follow me twice I will deem you totally uninteresting and unfollow whether we have anything in common or not.

Those who want to connect with thousands of irrelevant people just to look important and justify the Social Media Guru titles they are giving themselves are the same people who send auto-responses with craptastic click-my-junk messages that aren’t worth the email they’re sent on. (Thank you Amber Naslund for coining the phrase – very relevant here).

That is not interesting; and it’s not community.

If you really want to build an authentic Twitter community:

  • Have a photo on your Twitter Profile.
  • Include a bio on your Twitter Profile that actually says something about you – what you do, hobbies, interests.
  • If you’re at all inclined with Photoshop or some other such graphic program, build yourself a Twitter background. If you’re not, upload a lifestyle-type photo as a repeating background shot so the rest of Twitter can get a sense of who you are.
  • Be yourself; if you try and be someone else it will show. Besides, the coolest thing about Twitter is the fact that the guy who works in insurance, loves dogs and model trains. Passionate about space photography can find other people who share those very same interests or attributes… or at least one or two of them.
  • Share things that are interesting to you; if they’re interesting to you, they’ll be interesting to the people who have opted to connect with you (remember you’re being yourself).
  • Be choosy about linking to your own stuff. If you must link to each blog entry, please do it without a bot i.e. introduce it to your followers with a note of interest and then for heaven’s sake, don’t tweet it out again. If it is interesting enough, people will RT it for you.
  • Reply and Re-Tweet. Please. If I look at your profile and it shows that all you’re doing is musing about life in an endless stream of deep thoughts worthy of SNL circa 1990 without ever responding to anything anyone else says or posts ever, I have zero incentive to follow you back. We all know people who are that self-involved in real life; there’s no need to look for more.
  • Grow your network authentically. Watch for good #followfriday listings that share a reason to follow someone – these will usually be from your own network and, therefore, you’ve got a good chance of sharing something in common anyway. Use tools like Twellow or Twitter Grader and find interesting people who share commonalities with you.
  • Don’t get hung up on the numbers – friendorfollow.com is evil and doesn’t even deserve a link. There will be people you’ll want to follow who just won’t want to follow you back and that’s okay. Keep following them – don’t let your pride rob you of that information they may be sharing if you want it. Alternatively, some people may want to follow you and you look at their profile and can’t find a single thing to relate to. It’s okay not to follow back. Don’t let your ego be bruised if others feel that way about you – you are most definitely an interesting and unique person and God loves you

twitter-profileI love Twitter. I use it a lot. It’s a very valuable source of information for me and I also use it from a corporate perspective (that’s another post for another day). I want to keep using it and I really do want to connect with other people who share my interests.

I want to connect with corporate marketers (not self-proclaimed social media gurus), moms, adventurous women, snowboarders, runners, Christians, musicians, people living with hemophilia or any combination thereof – the more the better… all these things are in my twitter profile.

If you really have no interest in any of those things, please don’t follow me – that’s what I tweet about.

Lastly, if you are reading this and you haven’t yet joined twitter… try it. Here are some things to consider when selecting a twitter username.

Music for a Hurting World

Posted on by
2
Photo: bigoneep on Flickr

Photo: bigoneep on Flickr

Music is slowly taking over a larger and larger portion of my life… and I couldn’t be happier. It does leave me less time to blog and share my thoughts, but it’s helping me to put things in a more natural order in my life.

I’ve shared before about my thoughts on music – the serenity it brings – so I’m absolutely thrilled to be a part of a new R&B/Soul Gospel band that is going to be doing some super fun music. I’ll share more about it once it’s a little more public I think, but it is an absolute pleasure to be able to spend 3+ hours once a week making music with this talented bunch… this in addition to my time spent with the Lynn Valley Black Bear Band and my monthly weekend for leading worship at my church.

I’m also really excited to be going to some great events in the near future:

Third Day – May 9th

Multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-winning Third Day will be at the Abbotsford Centre at 7pm on May 9th.

Here’s the video from their latest release “Revelation”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPniMv6te64

I have been a fan for almost as long as I’ve been a fan of Jesus.

Unite In Worship Conference – May 22/23

On May 22nd and 23rd, I’ll be at Willingdon Church for the Unite In Worship Vancouver 2009 conference to hear some amazing speakers and worship leaders and learn more about worship ministry. Brian Doerksen and Bluetree will be highlights for me, but sessions I plan to attend include:

  • Vocal Skills – Speaker TBA
  • Creating a Culture of Invitation – Ian Campbell
  • Corporate Worship: God and Us – Donna Dinsmore
  • Becoming a Songwriter who Serves the Church – Brian Doerksen
  • Eggshells No More – Paddy Ducklow

The conference opens up with Bluetree – a band that came to my attention thanks to my friend Andrew. Here, Aaron Boyd of Bluetree explains the story behind their hit song God of This City:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXh_tgjnYJw

This song is touching, but the story of how it came about is even more so.

Creation Northwest – July 22-25

Creation Northwest ’09 takes place July 22nd to 25th at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington. I have wanted to go to Creation Fest since I became a Christian 4 years ago. It’s a multi-day outdoor music festival featuring the best Christian artists in the world plus speaker sessions and, of course, camping.

I’m still waiting to hear back from some friends about who may wish to join me, but I’ll be going regardless.

Music for a Hurting World

I’ve had a lot of really deep conversations with people lately. I guess that’s another reason I haven’t taken much time to blog. The truth of the matter is there are people out there who are hurting… I have been hurting. Things are not always easy. In fact, they’re usually NOT easy. People have such misconceptions about what it is to have faith in Jesus Christ… to be a Christian. It doesn’t make you perfect and it doesn’t make things easy. Sometimes, it actually makes things harder.

I have friends – Christian and non-Christian – who suffer or have suffered through some horrible situations: addictions, infidelity, suicidal thoughts, divorce, depression, abuse, even coming out as gay to a wave of condemnation from those who claim to love them… to all my friends who have ever put their faith in God. Here’s a song that hits right to the heart of it:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BkN-4NYQj0

I hope you have a listen; the message is for you.

Business Card Draws

Posted on by
2
Photo: Krishna De on Flickr

Photo: Krishna De on Flickr

Business events are great and they can be a really great place to network and learn more about other people, find leads, make connections etc.

I have one large pet peeve, though…

Business card draws.

I love them. I mean, I’m enticed by free stuff like anyone else. I always hold out a little hope that I’ll be the grand prize winner, and so I rifle through my purse and pull out a card and drop it in your draw bin. I know it’s in there now; I put it there.

But you know what? I never intended for you to add me to your email marketing list.

Trust me when I say if I want your email newsletters I will, indeed, sign up for them. I subscribe to several – I get them from WOMMA, IIMA, BCAMA, Tourism Vancouver and other DMOs, Marketing Sherpa and several more I can’t recall off the top of my head. I also subscribe to a lot of things via RSS. In fact, I have over 500 items waiting for my eyes at this very moment… and I will get to them.

However, if you send me your email that I know I did not sign up for, I will unsubscribe. Not only will I unsubscribe, but I will very likely not do business with you in future out of principle (yes I can be moody that way).

Let me say this a different way: Do not spam me. Please. Just don’t.

It is poor form to sign someone up for your email list without their permission.

  • Business card draws are not permission
  • A prior phone conversation is not permission
  • A prior business transaction is not permission
  • A connection on LinkedIn is not permission
  • A relationship on Twitter is not permission

I understand the drive to want to send your info to as many people as is humanly possible; I really do. I want to make my sales targets as much as you do. I manage a decent sized database of double-opt in subscribers all wanting different types of information and I take a lot of care to send only relevant information. Even then I still get spam reports from people who went through the double opt-in process and chose to sign up.

Now that I’ve been (I think) very clear about what not to do with my business card, here’s what I think you should do: show me you care about my business and sell me something of value.

Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I need to redesign my business card; after all, if mine looked like this business card, I’d be less inclined to toss it in the draw bin in the first place. But then maybe I’d be less inclined to share them at all.

Did I Just Say What I Think I Said?

Posted on by
2

teeth-brushing“No, son, you can’t have any broccoli, you just had chips.”

“No. You can’t brush your teeth, I’ve already done it.”

I’m sorry… pardon?

Sometimes I hear myself as if I’m on the outside looking in and when I opened my mouth to speak it made so much more sense than it did once the words actually left my mouth.

Why on earth would I not want to encourage my son’s excitement about brushing his teeth himself? What would possess me to say no to a second helping of broccoli under any circumstances?

I sometimes have to take a step back as a parent and re-evaluate my reasons for saying no to everything. Every so often I feel like life has been an endless stream of barking and no’s without as much joy as parenthood is supposed to bring.

Usually those are the times when I’m focused on my own wants.

I can’t be bothered to clean up after letting a 3 year old get his own milk from a 4L jug. I don’t want to put all my stuff down just so I can pick him up to press the elevator button himself and then try and scoop my stuff back up before the door opens. I don’t always offer the grace to wait while he puts his own shoes on or the patience to wait while he looks for whatever toy he’s fixated on. There is no shortage of similar scenarios when parenting a pre-schooler.

I can see why he gets frustrated sometimes… it must be tough to have no control over your life.

Mom needs to loosen the reigns sometimes.

Resort Marketing: A Day In The Life

Posted on by
5

grouse-view-from-peakIt has been suggested I write more about my day. As the Marketing Services Manager for a mountain/ski area/attraction (sometimes I hate putting a title to it – it seems so limiting), I know many people are curious about how I spend my time. The truth is, it depends on the day and it depends on the season.

In reality, though, it’s not all resort marketing I guess; I do marketing for Grouse Mountain, but also for Whistler Water and Polaris Water ever since the owners purchased them in 2004.

Mondays I work at Whistler Water, so I’m not actually at the mountain today. It doesn’t much matter, though, because I could really work from anywhere and get the same stuff done – ah the beauty of the interwebs! Well, except that I’m most efficient while connected to the Grouse Mountain network for my email, files and FTP setup etc. I work on Grouse Mountain stuff from Whistler Water and Whistler Water stuff from Grouse Mountain; I also work on both from home when required.

Spring is a time of planning for me, so in amidst the regular marketing execution stuff are some larger projects, proposals, reports etc. to prepare for the year ahead, starting with the summer season. To make things more interesting, my colleague – the Marketing Specialist I work VERY closely with – is on a well-deserved vacation for over 3 weeks (two more to go) and I am doing a little more of the stuff she usually does while she’s gone: website edits, graphic layouts for ads and collateral materials, fulfilling logo and photo requests etc. so this is just today… tomorrow will be entirely different.

So here’s how today went down:

Work started around 8:30. I checked my email. I start with Twitter follow-backs because each adds an email to my inbox. As soon as they’re taken care of I can get the emails out of my inbox so I can see the actionable items facing me that day. I then check my Facebook fan pages for new wall posts or messages for Grouse Mountain, Grouse Mountain Terrain Parks and the Grouse Grind. Found the cutest posting from a guy who obviously developed a little crush on someone last time he came to the mountain. I love those kinds of messages :) I’ve seen so many proposal stories, wedding stories, relationships starting, first dates… my second date with my husband was on the Grouse Grind, incidentally.

grousemountain-facebook-takeshi-mekaru

After deleting the new Twitter follows I’m down to 11 emails in my inbox. I’m a little neurotic about filing emails.

I find an email from Google letting me know I need to renew my site search so I process the renewal but the credit card doesn’t go through… I re-process on another card. Now I’m hoping it doesn’t go through twice in the end. I file the emails for when Accounts payable wants to know what I bought before paying my credit card bill and then send an email to AP as a pre-emptive measure anyway.

I find an email that was sent to me Thursday evening asking for an ad to be prepared and submitted by first thing Monday morning; originally when I read it (from home on Good Friday) I read that it needed to be done ON Monday morning, not BY Monday morning… such a small but important detail. So I prepared the ad in InDesign (I use CS3) and submit it by about 10am.

I then checked my voicemail and realized there was something I should have called back about on Thursday. Oops. I have no idea how I could have missed a voicemail or left the office with one still on my phone, but such is life. Honestly, the phone is my least favourite communication tool; sometimes forget it exists. I like email; and I respond faster that way. I also get a running record of everything I’ve discussed, assigned or agreed to.

Next on the day’s agenda was updating the new Whistler Water community site with info about the Adopt An Athlete program and have the navigation updated throughout Whistler Water’s corporate website to take visitors to the new site.

I then make a quick update to the Grouse Mountain website with a message about the main Red Skyride maintenance beginning tomorrow.

While I’m doing web edits, I remember the next item on my outstanding to-do list: rebuilding a web page I built last Monday for the Polaris Water site. It is a little improvement to the private label water pages. I managed to lose almost 2 hours of work without saving… this time I CTRL+S’d in Dreamweaver a few times during the process. As an aside, if anyone is interested in ordering their own private label water, just let me know…

Sidetracked: Discussion with co-workers about Jian Ghomeshi’s interview with Billy Bob.

Finally I finished the Polaris Water website updates and moved all the updated files to the live site, then ate lunch at my desk while working. Lunch was way too small. Booked a yoga class online for tonight.

Had another conversation with my colleagues about art and music – one of my colleagues is a fairly well established singer/songwriter.

Stopped to check twitter and found the latest post from VanCityAllie on her surfing trip to Tofino for the Easter weekend – couldn’t help but indulge in a little read…

That was followed up by a long conversation with my colleagues about the differences in promotional needs for selling bottled water vs. selling a resort lifestyle experience. Definitely deep and definitely interesting, but not fodder for my blog.

It’s now coming up on 3pm.

After getting side tracked checking Twitter and Facebook and then checking the GrousePark admin for new posts and stats while I was in there, and then reading How to Make Money with SEO from Seth Godin, I am now working on an e-commerce requirements report. I would like to get it finished and sent out for estimating soon. I’ve finished most of how I want the e-commerce stuff to work, but I’m working on writing out the CRM elements I’d like to include.

Now it’s 3:10pm and while the E-Commerce report is begging to be worked on, I think I’ll go get a cup of tea before I start… Can you tell I’m stalling? Why is that?

Oh yeah, and I returned a call to someone from a large resort not to far from here who will be involved in a major world-scale winter event in the not too distant future in our general locale, who wanted to look at cross-promotional ideas. Now my brain is pondering hiking and wind turbines and all sorts of upcoming stuff rather than e-commerce and CRM. But I digress…

Before I start adding to my report, I read through a bunch of info on CRM Trends to make sure what I want is actually what I want. And, woah, now it’s 4:30. Lots of good info there interspersed with some comical conversation with my boss about ears on posts, mobile payment solutions and bathing cats (thanks to Jess Sloss for the cats link).

I almost don’t have any time left to actually finish writing the CRM portion of my report, but I sure do have more things to think about and include.

Tomorrow will be an entirely different day. Here’s the agenda:

  • Morning meeting about Tourism Vancouver’s new online advertising
  • Vancouver Restaurant Awards in the afternoon
  • Conclusion of staff day on the mountain after the restaurant awards
  • Try and finish my e-commerce/CRM report
  • Work on my social media report (that’s a whole new blog entry on its own)
  • Process a bunch of outstanding invoices before my accounting department freaks out

I’m not sure if it’s interesting or not. I do know, though, that the variety of different areas my job touches on keeps me excited. There’s a great variety between quick and easy check-them-off-my-list types of tasks and bigger projects that require a lot of deep thought. It also allows me to use my love of communicating with people as well as my technology-prone curiosities to solve probems… I consider creative problem solving one of my biggest strengths to be honest.

So there you have it. Hope it was interesting to you.

I’d love to see some track backs to a day in the life at your job…

Giving Up Our Vices

Posted on by
4

Vice:

a practice or habit considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a defect, an infirmity or merely a bad habit. Synonyms for vice include fault, depravity, sin, iniquity, wickedness and corruption. The modern English term that best captures its original meaning is the word vicious, which means “full of vice”. In this sense, the word vice comes from the Latin word vitium, meaning “failing or defect”. Vice is the opposite of virtue. [Wikipedia]

Okay, well… maybe drinking excessive amounts of coffee is not a vice. I mean, drinking coffee is part of the fabric of Vancouver society, so it’s most certainly not “degrading in the associated society”. But it’s not particularly beneficial to one’s physiology is it?

Photo: g-monkey on Flickr

Photo: g-monkey on Flickr

Do you ever stop and take stock in the things you rely on to feel good? That glass of wine at dinner that has slowly evolved into a half bottle? That 3pm chocolate fix? Those cigarettes you hate but love all at the same time? I think it’s important to look at all those things we rely on and try and think of what we stand to gain from them? Is there a way to get that ‘thing’ from something healthier? Is there another way to deal with the state of mind that made us want that ‘thing’ in the first place?

I have come to a place where each morning I make a very strong cup of coffee in my French press. Then, when I get to work, I drink a quad-shot Americano from Starbucks. It started as a harmless few-times-a-week Grande (3-shot) but slowly evolved over time into a daily ritual. Then Starbucks started making espresso shots in twos and the 4th shot came to me free…  that’s how these things tend to go. But not only does that cost me nearly $50/month, it’s just become a habit that serves no real benefit.

Today is my first day without the Americano in a long time… and I’m fuzzy-headed and easily distracted. Now, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I worked a good chunk over the weekend, but I’m really less productive today than I usually am. I’m craving a coffee so bad I’m irritable and I have a mild headache from the lack of caffeine. If that alone isn’t indication I should consider dealing with this relatively newfound addiction I don’t know what is.

Besides, I take my coffee with half and half cream and sugar, so the calories also pack a bit of a punch out of my day. I estimate my daily Americano to be about 150 calories. If I have one 300 days of each year, that’s about 12 lbs worth of calories right there… another good reason to favour green tea instead.

What are your bad habits? Are you ready to give them up?

The New Grouse Park Sessions Blog

Posted on by
2

Well, here’s how I’ve been spending my time as of late…

grousepark-screen-shot

I wrote in November about a project I was working on regarding youth in the snow industry. Well I’ve just taken my favourite project – the Grouse Park Sessions Blog – and moved it to its own server. In the process, I’ve given it a whole new look – a  new theme, some new plugins and some extra Google juice.

The blog is written mostly by 6 great young guys, all under the age of 24, who have made me really proud. They love the parks, and the culture and are able to bring that to all the other young shredders out there in a way that is so full of passion and authenticity. There are two guys in particular that I know are giving this shot all they have to work their way into the industry… and no doubt they’ll do it too.

I got all excited when the blog launched at the end of November; it got 500 views in the first 24 hours. I couldn’t be more excited that in March the blog got over 10,000 views… and it’s still in its first winter season.

It’s funny how when you’re really passionate about something, you don’t mind spending your free time giving it your love and attention. This is certainly one of those things for me. If only I could spend as much time on the snow…

Dreaming of Warmer Climates

Posted on by
1

Given our recent Vancouver weather, and a request to see the photos from my vacation to Cancun this past January, I thought a little reminiscing wouldn’t be out of order.

Everyone knows I love my job, but honestly if I could figure out how to move to some tropical destination and do resort marketing while my husband works as a divemaster/scuba instructor I’d be all packed. Without thinking twice. That said, we face a bit of an added challenge in that wherever life takes us, we need to stay connected to Canada and our awesome medical system here. Our son has hemophilia, and while his condition is mild, we’re super blessed to have all his treatment costs covered without added insurance.

Here are some of my favourite photos.

We stayed at the Crown Paradise Club Resort because they have a baby club for kids 18 months to 3 years; most resorts’ kids clubs are for kids 4 & up.

The weather was a little stormy the first few days, but it was still warm and mostly dry. Well, except for in the ocean… here is my son’s first trip into the surf with my husband; he’s not quite 3 in this pic. What you can’t see is that immediately after that, mini-man fell off of daddy’s back and tumbled through the surf. After that he said quite calmly as water still dripped off his eyelashes, “I don’t like the waves.” Yeah, I don’t blame you, kid. Little rough.

He did thoroughly enjoy the sand, though…

One of the days we were there we took a day trip on the Lupita Trimaran to Isla Mujeres:

This is what the water looks like between Cancun and Isla Mujeres:

We enjoyed a beer at a little cantina; we sat just to the right in this photo – at the end of the dock I stood on to get this pic:

… while mini-man had a nap.

After his nap, we went to a private beach where we had a buffet lunch (mediocre at best) and I took the opportunity to take mini-man out for a little paddle.

It’s really hard to give a two year old a ‘time-out’ in Cancun. I sat him on a ledge for misbehaving. Within seconds he was saying, “Look mommy, I found a shell!”

This was our second trip to Cancun; next time we go I think I’d like to spend the whole vacation on Isla Mujeres. It’s just beautiful there.

If you’d like you can see more photos on my Flickr stream.