The Hawker family has a great tradition to take a family vacation prior to each of the boys leaving on their mission. Three years ago we went on the Caribbean cruise for Adam. This year, we went to Mazatlan Mexico for Sam. The trip was filled with, good food, relaxing, family fun, and several tender mercies. On a Saturday, 5 business days prior to our departure, we were chatting with our neighbor across the street. During the conversation, she made sure that we had Ashley’s passport ready to go. Our response was basically, oh, didn’t know we needed to do that. It turns out that if you travel by land or sea, then a birth certificate is sufficient to leave/enter the country, but if you travel by air, then a passport is required for a person of any age. We began to investigate the different options to get Ashely a passport. Normal time is around 7 weeks. Expedited is 3 weeks. You can apply in person at a regional passport agency and get the passport in around 2 weeks, or even 1 week if you can show exigent need. This of requires you to be there in person to apply and pick up your passport. Upon further investigation, we found that there are some companies that you can pay to basically stand in line for you. With the proper legal documents, and with enough money, you can get your passport in 3 days time from the start of the process to having it in hand. It’s amazing what you can have for money. On our traditional Sunday evening call, I explained our situation to Mom. She indicated that if things didn’t work out with the passport, she would actually be able to watch Ashley for the week. We previously hadn’t considered this and we were planning to take Ashley with us on the trip. However, that night we considered the offer and felt like it would be the right thing to do. We knew it would be hard, especially for mommy to be away from our cute little girl, but it would be better. So we decided to go for it and forego the passport for Ashley. We are very grateful that we didn’t discover the need for Ashley’s passport at the airport Monday morning. This was a tender mercy.

Finally the time came for the trip. It took quite a bit of preparation to get everything ready for work, Ashley, the house, and an 8 day trip. Monday was our flight out to Mazatlan through LA. However, prior to heading out, we needed to drop Ashley off in Idaho with my parents. However, prior to that trip, we needed to go to Stake Conference. Kathryn accompanied the choir on a beautiful number. So, as soon as we were able, we headed out on Sunday and made the drive. We stopped for a couple of hours and visited with my parents before turning around and heading back the other way. We stayed the night in SLC with Kathryn’s parents. Bright and early Monday morning we were at the airport. It was a busy Monday morning and all the lines were long. After some delays getting the passports verified and bags checked, we slipped through security and basically walked on on the plane. Once we hit LA, we encountered another problem. Both Kathryn’s and Marta’s passports were still in their maiden names, but the airline ticket was in their married names. The ticket name must match the ID that you are using to travel. When going international, you must use your passport as the ID, therefore they must match, or you must have a marriage license on hand. We discovered the issue at the gate about 30 minutes prior to boarding. After talking to three people that weren’t able to help us, things were starting to look a little discouraging. Because we had already started the flight and were starting the second leg, they weren’t able to just change the name. I started considering the possibility to taking a day off and visiting Disneyland while things were sorted out and we got on another flight the next day. It turned out that this wasn’t necessary. Marta was inspired to talk to a gate agent for another flight that was still a while out from departure. It turned out that this particular agent was just who we needed. She had a can do attitude and said there’s always a work around. Somehow she was able to print out new boarding passes that had the correct name on them without officially changing things in the system. However she did it, it worked and the girls were able to make it on the plane. This was another tender mercy.

Once we got to Mazatlan things went smoothly. The resort was very nice. We stayed at the Pueblo Bonito Emerald Bay resort in Nuevo Mazatlan. It had awesome swimming pools, a great beach, and beautiful gardens with lots of tropical flowers and plants. It’s supposed to be the beginning of the rainy season, but we had fantastic weather. It only rained once in the night. You can tell that the region is ready for moisture. Off the resort, it was very dry and more brown than green after several months of the dry season. It was very reminiscent of the ABC islands of my mission. Supposedly, it will rain for the next several months and the area will transform into more of a tropical region than the dry one it is now. That’s at least what they say anyway.

We enjoyed lot’s of great food and fun drinks (fresada of course). Eating was definitely one of the main activities of the day. It was never rushed and always took quite a while. Things seemed to run a lot slower and lower pressure than the normal life that we’re accustomed to. It seemed like it was rude for the waiters bring out the checks unless you asked for them. This gave us quite of time to visit after meals until we realized this.

It was a little weird to not have Ashley with us. It was almost like a two year deja vu to our pre Ashley life. One thing that was really nice was that when we were at meals, we could get free wifi. Mom sent us Ashley updates every day and we were able to see pictures of our little girl having a blast with Grandma and Grandpa. Josie even came up and brought her girls for a day. We have the beginnings of a new brat pack.

On one of the days, we took a trip into the Mazatlan city center. It was strangely reminiscent of Puerto Rico to me. The buildings looked the same and the town was hilly, like many of the Puerto Rico towns. Emily studied up on Mazatlan and had several suggestions of things to see. One of them was a little stop on a rocky part of the coast where divers would make a scary 50 foot dive into shallow water. You can see more info here: http://www.mazatlantoday.net/mazatlan_cliff_divers.html. We also stopped at the Catholic Cathedral in the center of town. It was very interesting to see. The resort we stayed at had a sister resort in town. On our way back, we stopped there for dinner. They have a fun open air beach side restaurant. We enjoyed some great food and a fantastic sunset.

We had some great game nights too. One of the highlights was the drawing game similar to telephone. You write a phrase on a card and then pass it to the next person. They proceed to draw the phrase. Then the cards are passed again and the next person guesses the phrase for the drawing. It’s passed again and so on, until it makes it’s way back to you. It was pretty hilarious to see the progression. With 10 people playing, things had plenty of time to diverge pretty far form the original. Sometimes we were laughing so hard we couldn’t even read the cards as we shared the story with the rest of the family.

Ben brought his quadrotor and got some really fun footage of the resort. I’ve got a very similar quadrotor, but I’ve been moving a lot slower with it. I’m still getting comfortable flying it. Ben was zooming all around and going way up high. It was a lot of fun to see everything he’s done with his.

On the last night, we all gathered around under the stars. We all shared some words of advice for Sam as he is preparing to go on his mission here very soon. Hearing what everyone had to offer was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Being at the end of a great vacation, next to the ocean, on a veranda all to ourselves, and under the stars also helped make it special.

All too soon, it was time to come home. The voyage home went well enough. Once we made it back to SLC, we hopped in our car and drove up to Idaho. We wanted to be there in the morning when Ashley woke up. We dropped her off on Sunday night the week before, and we were there to see her on Monday morning the week after. It was probably the most excited we’ve ever been to go in and get her out of her crib in the morning. We enjoyed a nice day being with Mom and Dad and helping them out. Then we all hopped back in the car and drove home. Eight days later we were back.

Thanks to Tim and Suzanne for the great trip! Thanks to Mom and Dad for watching Ashley and making the trip possible!