The Mother’s Day trip took place at O’Dark 30. You think I’m kidding… I believe we were up around 3:30 to be at the airport by 4:30 for our 6:50 departure time or something like that. See, we were awake at O’Dark 30! After we made it through check in and airport security, it was time to find the coffee. I’m pretty sure some of us had our coffee before we got to that point. Wow! It was early. Our youngest passenger on this trip was 2. She was the brightest, sunshineyest, most awakest person of us all (yes, yes, I was an English Major… I did that all on purpose to prove a point….). The thing is, you didn’t hear any complaints from anyone because we were on vacation.
Good Bye Tulsa. See you in a few days! Now fun story. When we got to Dallas/Ft. Worth, Addison had fallen asleep on the decent into the airport. We had to wake her up and talk her in to exiting the airplane. She wanted to go with both of her grandmother’s. Once we got out of the plane I put her on my shoulders so she didn’t have to walk. She started SCREAMING like a banchee through the airport. People were looking at me (the blogger) like I had stolen a kid and was running. It was quite embarrassing. What happened to that awake little girl that greeted us in Tulsa?!?!
Hello Cozumel. Send me to the Beach until my attitude changes!!
Once we landed in Cozumel we had to go through customs. Customs took about an hour, not bad. Then we were off to our final destination for the week, Hotel Cozumel!
When we arrived at the hotel, we grabbed lunch, and then went out for a couple shore dives. Then it was time for dinner. Now dinner has been moved across the street to where lunch is, which made the perfect opportunity for sunset pictures. Hey, I love a good sunset!! I refused to eat until after I got my sunset pictures!
This little guy kept me company while I was searching out my sunset photos! We should name him… Fred? haha.
Sunday
Sunday morning we set the boat to pick us up at 8:30am. As in true fashion, they were there at 7:45am. Gotta love the guys at Cozumel Marine World. Either they really like us or they know not to be late… haha.
As we entered the boat, Deb started Grady off right with a Snickers :).
Nicole Willoughby, the blogger. Your blogger should have been named Nicole Grace, I swear. The first day there, Saturday, after we did some shore dives fell and sprained her ankle. (story: at the end of the diving I had to pee. I didn’t want my wet suit to smell the next day so I went to pee in the ocean while rinsing the sand off my wet suit and slipped and fell. Then as I hollered for help I thought I’d try peeing on my side. Didn’t work plus Grady fell as he, Mark, Glenn, Kim, and Mike came to help me. Grady told Mark, I’ll talk to her while I’m down here. And sadly, I still had to pee when all this was over and done with. ha! The take away message from this is, Pee in the darn wet suit.)
Mark Willoughby. Fun stories on Mark (and sadly me…)… So Mark got in his wet suit on Sunday and the zipper was broken. We couldn’t figure out why, but eventually decided it was because some teeth were missing on the zipper. Then they picked on him that his suit was a little snug, while commenting that mine was a little big. If you guessed it… he had on my wet suit and I had on his. The funny thing is we didn’t totally figure this out until 3 days in to diving or something like that. We figured it out because of the coloring on the outside of the wetsuit.
Our boat captain (off to the left) and our boat hand, José, driving the boat.
This wild and crazy group!! (l-r top: Nicole Willoughby, Ed Brewer, Shirley Mann, Kristi Weston, Justin Weston, Mark Willoughby, Tucker Eads, Glenn Crosswhite, Deb Weston, Grady Weston.
l-r bottom: Ben Lord, Deanna Lord, Doug Lord, Mike Goldsworthy, Jan Goldsworthy, Sharon Brungard, Kim Brungard, Margaret Maynard, Addison Willoughby, Julia Johannes, Jennifer Crosswhite)
Now this was called the Mother’s Day trip but could have easily been called the Birthday Trip… Deb‘s birthday is May 24.
Kristi’s birthday is May 29.
Shirley‘s birthday is May 29.
Jan‘s birthday is May 1st.
See, this trip could have easily been called the birthday trip! So Deb had a birthday cake ordered for a birthday dinner on Sunday night. This cake was chocolate and kind of tasted like a tres leche cake but I’m not really sure. What I can tell you is it was super rich and super good!
Glenn had the honor of cutting the cake since he was sitting kind of in the center of the table and that’s where they laid the cake down. They came out and sang Happy Birthday to the birthday girls as well as banging pan lids together to help make noise.
Monday
A beautiful look into paradise!
Now we’ve talked about the Hydros BC and the fact that you can get all your gear into 1 dive bag. Here is proof!
And of course we had to represent. We put the flag up on Sunday and it stayed the entire week we were in Cozumel!
Mike Goldsworthy. So a fun story on poor Mike… Sunday as we were getting our gear assembled on the boat for our first dive, Mike started hollering for Grady and Mark because his air 2 just wasn’t working. Well, the reason it wasn’t working was because he hadn’t hooked it up yet. Whoops :).
Glenn Crosswhite
Dive Master Clemente Cuevas
Lemon Ray
Dive Master Gustavo
Tuesday
Serious conversations
Dive Master Candidate Gerardo Aguilar
Boat Deck hand José
We were having ice cream Grady style, 2 bowls.
I’m just going to let these next 3 pictures speak for themselves to keep the innocent innocent and the guilty innocent as well… haha… because sometimes what happens in Cozumel, stays in Cozumel. The story behind the bottle though, it was an added thank you to Grady and Mark for servicing the dive master’s regulators.
Wednesday
SHARK!! Everyone off the boat!!
Turtle! These dudes are so cool. I think they know that you can’t touch them so they play the “I’m not touching you” game just to mess with you.
So in May 2016 I didn’t see this in the brick garden until after we got home and I was looking at pictures, so one of my goals was to see this so of course I had to have my picture taken with it. No, this trip wasn’t all about the blogger, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
During our Columbia Shallows dive, Doug‘s dad, Ben and Kim‘s mom, Sharon, went out and snorkeled with us while we were diving.
At one point we decided to go do shore dives off the shore at Cozumel Marine World. These guys… are there words? Deb says this is the perfect picture of them. No, these guys are great!
During shore dives from Cozumel Marine World’s shore, Deb and I went to the North looking for the statues that have been placed in the water. This is one of the things we found on our way… is someone missing teeth? We found them for you….
Deb knew that there were statues and that one was Jacques Cousteau. She knew that these were there, but the question was why? There were also 2 other statues down with him and we couldn’t figure out who they were. One was a male and the other was a female. After we got back here to the states we went to our friend Google. We found out that every year at Cozumel Scuba Fest they put a statue of a diver who has contributed much to the world of diving. Now, the timeline doesn’t totally fit because this has been going on for 5-7 years now and there are only 3 statues. We’re not sure if there are more statues elsewhere and we just missed them or they only have the 3 statues so far.
Anyway, The female is Sylvia Earle and the man is Ramón Bravo. It took quite a bit of searching to figure out who the other two statues were.
Then we stumbled across this. We weren’t sure what it was, maybe a UFO. ha! No, again, after coming back to the states we found out that it is a camera. Not exactly sure what it monitors and we can’t find where we found our information so if someone knows, please by all means tell us! 
Thursday
When Jorge Marin heard we were in town, he made it a point to come out diving with us. I guess we have that big of a reputation?
Grady with his signature pose.
Our wonderful videographer, Cezar, chasing after all the sealife to get us some dynamic videos.
And you know, between dives, he needed to sun a little :).
Clemente, Jorge, Gustavo, Cezar, Gerardo. The wonderful men who helped make sure we had an enjoyable week AND made sure we all came back safe and sound. I’m sure they didn’t want to have to fill out paperwork….
Friday
Okay, so I couldn’t help but giggle every time we crossed the road after I read the English version of this sign….
Our last day of diving. Sad day!!
Scott Peters. But hey, Scott got his lionfish.
Okay, one of the reasons it was called the Mother’s Day Trip was because we had a lot of Mother’s going with us. It was in May which is Mother’s Day month. We were all there during Mexican Mother’s Day which falls on May 10 (a set day). Lastly, half the group stayed through American Mother’s Day. Perfect reasons, right? Well, on Wednesday the 10th the guys on the boat wished us all a Happy Mother’s Day and joked that they left our flowers at the dive shop, not knowing we were going there that afternoon to do our shore dives. So on Friday, our last dive day, they surprised us with this cake. It tasted a lot like chocolate flan but we aren’t really sure what it was. It was a Chocolate Mexican custardy type dessert with a chocolate ganache on top. What more could you ask for? These guys are great, I’m telling you.
After our surface interval we dropped in on a shark that was rolling over and scratching his back on the ocean floor. It was kind of like watching a dog who just got out of the bathtub. You know how they run and roll and rub… that’s what this shark was doing. It was amazing. Sadly Cezar wasn’t off the boat yet so he didn’t catch it on film and none of us thought to switch our cameras to video mode. No one wanted to take their eyes off the shark.
When we headed to Cozumel, the blogger (that’s me) needed 21 more dives to hit 100 dives. I dove my butt off and made sure that I hit 100 dives on our last boat dive in Cozumel.
On this particular dive they were chasing a turtle and he ran back into a hole. Glenn went in after him only to realize there was a Moray Eel in that hole and I guess watching him back pedal to get out of that hole was quite comical.
Our last few days of diving we saw more sealife than we had on the entire trip. It was amazing!
Now there at the hotel in the locker area there are all the stickers from all the different dive locations throughout the country and quite possibly the world, but one was missing… ours. We made sure that ours was added this trip!