cabo san lucas, part IV

{this is the last post for cabo san lucas…}

our last day{s} is always a little sad in cabo. we all mentally prepare to go home. do you do that on vacation? the last day or two, do your thoughts return to what-needs-to-be-done-at-home-or-work mode and you start to abandon the carefree spirit of vacation? cabo is so special to us, that none of us want it to end…

for some reason, we usually stay one to three+ days longer than our friends who go with us… so, the day they leave is a total downer.

KJ cheered himself up with three vanilla milkshakes after his buddies left…

then, we have some family time to fill with our favorite last activities. we try to play tennis while in mexico so myla gets a little practice time. more or less, our family tennis time involves myla being e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y patient with us while we make complete fools of ourselves on the court.

correction: big papi is good. the rest of us, not so much. these photos are by kj, he was our sports-photographer for a few minutes…

once a dancer, always a dancer:
{i LOVE this picture}

until next year…

{photos by me, Jane Rhodes and KJ Rhodes}

Posted in cabo mexico, family adventures, friends, husband, jane, kiana, KJ, myla, sela, tennis, travels | No Comments »

cabo san lucas, part III

{making a tribe.}

while in cabo i was reading and looking through the latest edition of kinfolk. i felt an immense connection to the words by rebecca parker payne when she talks about making a tribe.

so…. for this post, i am doing something new – i am going to quote her entire article, with our pictures. they don’t relate. and yet they do relate. she talks about traditional childhood memories in respect to hunting down the perfect christmas tree in the blue ridge mountains. my pictures are from a few of my favorite days in cabo san lucas, one of our holiday traditions. we have been going to mexico for the holidays, or a family vacation at least once a year {sometimes twice} for ten years this year. we have not only come to adore our time south of the border, but this place gives us something to remember our time by, something to look forward to, something to have that is special, something ours. enjoy.

***

Sometime in early December, somewhere within the hollers of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you could find us, wandering and weaving through long lines of pines and evergreens. Four siblings, our faithful dogs, and daring captains: Mom and Dad. Our finest yearly tradition was born from the pinnacle of our mother and father’s parenting career — their discovery of Christmas tree farms deep along the sloping ridges of the mountains. A mere two hours from our home, the hillside farms were light-years from the commercialism and consumerism that we lived among.

So every year we pilgrimaged to the Blue Ridge, to climb a mountainside and bring home the war-won tree. Our father, with verbal encouragement from his brood of children, pulled the tree down the hill, across a tiny creek, and perched it like an arbor trophy on the top of our faithful Suburban. It would be hailed “A Christmas victory!” by my father, despite the frozen, mittened hands, the carsick dogs, and the arduous process.

Traditions peppered our childhood lives, and the holidays meant they were only more salient. Something to remember our time by, something to look forward to, something to have that was special — something ours.

Our holiday season was characterized by these wild expressions of togetherness. In our tree travails, in our trips to Colonial Williamsburg to eat in the fire-lit taverns of yesteryear, in baking our apple-sausage quiches, in our matching Christmas bell necklaces. My siblings and I jingled as we danced through the holiday season.

We grew up unaware that our yearly routines were sowing and tending traditions. The rituals engulfed and enveloped us, and our youthful naiveté told us that this was just life — how our holidays were done. Only with age, and a healthy dose of selflessness, have we seen that this rhythm of delight and anticipation is the careful and thoughtful product of a family or parents that want to experience life together.

Because now, so much of our holidays are only remembering. I remember the food, I remember the traditions, and I remember the traditions revolving around food. I remember a few of the gifts, but with the most clarity I remember caroling on the back of a trolley, and tenderly pressing a cookie cutter into soft dough. I remember the brunches and the dinners, I remember the stillness, and I remember that feeling of warmth, closeness, unbounded joy. We number our memories, rewind and replay the moments that gave our holidays their meaning.

Now that I live independently, away from my childhood home, I find myself expecting the same rhythms, that the ones that comprised my youthful holidays, to be the footprint for this year’s upcoming season. I remember it all, and still I want it to be the same. But things have changed. I haven’t lived with my parents for years, which means they are no longer the leaders they once were of my holiday season. I do not have the abundant free time I did as a child, with which to make snowmen out of laundry detergent, or to hand-dip candles.

And this is where we are now, in this particular age. We are always busy, always moving from this to that, here to there. We are young and filled. We understand why we had traditions, and should be thankful for them. We can even feel a draw to mourn the end of childhood traditions. All is right and expected of our growth and maturation, but we do not stay here. We are adults, and we are, in our best selves, independent, vibrant, thriving, and capable.

Holidays can take us in two directions. We can buy the presents, go to the parties, open the presents, clean the tissue paper from the floor. A dutiful ascension to an idea, a complacency to the expected. A casual nod to the time-honored celebrations, created outside of us. and we drift around each other in this harried time of giving and getting, making and doing.

Or, we can take the traditions into our homes, draw them through the sieve of our personalities, sprinkle them with whimsy, mold them to our own relationships. In doing so, we hold a respectful ownership of the season, where it cannot exist outside of us. Indeed, we are the daring captains of wonder and nearness in this time. And through our efforts, the holidays become intensely intimate, a seasonal experience tailored and defined by us who celebrate — our friends, our families, and our own children.

This is how we measure the depth of our bated breath. This is how we calculate the expectancy of our hearts. This existence of our families and friendships are not entirely dependent on the existence of such activities and traditions, but the sustenance of such rituals is the soil in which we cultivate a deeper sense of commitment, history, and meaning. A group of casual friends becomes a community, a family becomes a tribe.

A few months ago, I started a new family altogether. A small family with tender roots. A family of just me and my man. A man with his own traditions, his own idiosyncratic holiday routines from growing up. He is the grown man that is memorialized in family photos up till about four years ago, sitting on his parents’ stairs with his brothers, each sibling wearing matching pajamas. And although we don’t have the same traditions, we both understand their role in making meaning of the holidays and our lives together. And we want to be a tribe.

In this place of adulthood, as a new family and as one-day future parents, we will cultivate a reason for hope and joy in all of our holidays seasons to come. I think it will involve long tables of food, homemade eggnog, and cranberry pies. It will involve storytelling and song singing. It will involve days of baking, and days of decorating. It will involve quietly lighting advent candles, and loudly spinning records. It will involve our community of friends and family, and it will be extravagant and hilarious and ours. It may even invalid a borrowed tradition, a hauling of a tree down the side of a mountain.

***

cheers to making a tribe.

{all photos by me, Jane Beckner Rhodes}

Posted in cabo mexico, friends, husband, jane, kiana, KJ, myla, sela, travels | 2 Comments »

cabo san lucas, part II

instax vignettes from day three:

sisters in doo-rags {keepin’ it classy!}:

mi familia:

myla was stung by a jelly fish on her hand! {eek!} + sela’s second paddle boarding lesson:

sand creations:

the bland familia + stacey clark, a new favorite friend.

susan’s first time to paddle board:
{so proud of her! not just for paddle boarding, but for getting in the water!!!}

susan & mckenna, cute momma-daughter paddle boarders:

mini senorita:

matching amigos {+one}:

dinner on the beach, under the stars, at our favorite restaurant in cabo san lucas:

feliz navidad:

{photos by me, Jane Beckner Rhodes}

Posted in cabo mexico, friends, kiana, KJ, myla, polaroids, sela, travels | 1 Comment »

paint your own pottery, south of the border…

this is one of my favorite things to do during our trips to mexico. poolside pottery painting with my kiddos. completely therapeutic.

{photos by me, Jane Rhodes}

Posted in cabo mexico, create something, jane, myla, sela, travels | No Comments »

cabo san lucas, part I.

yesterday was a good day.

our favorite:

paddle board napping:

lifeguard on duty:

festive amigos:

sela’s first paddle boarding lesson:

{photos by me, Jane Rhodes}

Posted in cabo mexico, husband, kiana, KJ, myla, sela, travels | 6 Comments »

fedoras in cabo san lucas.

if you are traveling with the rhodes family – specifically, me. there is a good chance i might convince a beach vendor to let us borrow eleven fedoras. then i might line you up, and ask you to march in a straight line across the sand. + a little booty shaking. in front of lots of people.

just so i can play with the pictures and create* something like this:

fedora par-tay!

…we just arrived home from our annual pilgrimage to mexico. ten days of family time, and relaxing – we are now ready to conquer what lies ahead! cheers to good friends, sunshine, and fedoras! do you travel over the holidays? or prefer to stay home?

*i was given the photo-editing-action i used on these photos + learned how to create slide shows like this at blogshop! pretty dang awesome if you ask me!

{photos by moi. this is not a sponsored post.}

Posted in cabo mexico, friends, husband, jane, kiana, KJ, myla, sela, slideshow, travels, Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

cabo submarine

our family has been traveling to mexico, on a regular basis for nine years.  i’m guessing a dozen trips, split between mazatlan and cabo – and, our friends the Blands have gone on almost every one of those trips with us. it’s ideal with our kids all being such good friends. needless to say, mexico is truly a home away from home. for most of those nine years, we have done the same old things, on every trip.  we’re in a south of the border rut.  

however, this past trip we shook things up and tried a couple of new things…  call us wild & crazy!

first, we ventured over to the gorgeous cabo marina, and we took an underwater adventure on the cabo submarine!

check it out:

we were face-to-face with so many fish, starfish, eels, etc – our kids loved it!

and, we had pelicans literally flirting with us. a truly beautiful day to be out on the water.

post-submarine-thoughts: this is my kind of underwater adventure! i’m not a huge fan of being underwater in the ocean with the unknown. when i was in my twenties, i had my share of run-ins with large creatures down there & i’ve reached my limit of post-trauma-nightmares. are you a fan of the underwater world?

***

second, husband and the kiddo’s paddle boarded for days & days! husband and i had first tried paddle boarding in maui with friends a couple of years ago, but we did not have beginner’s luck. it was hard. and this trip was the first time for our kids to try it. in the past ten days, miss thirteen proved to be our best paddle boarder, and she chose to do this almost every day we were at the beach! she would even give her siblings rides around while she did all the work! by the end of our trip, she was seriously getting good at it! and, what an awesome work-out!

check her out:

have you tried paddle boarding? are you a fan of any water sports?

{photos by me, this is not a sponsored post.}

Posted in cabo mexico, family adventures, friends, husband, kiana, KJ, myla, sela, travels, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »