Just some Old (Mc)News...

Wow, it's been a long time! But y'all already know that, so I'll get right down to business. Brent and I were lucky enough to tag along with my parents and Maddie and Lauren to French Polynesia in April. IT WAS AMAZING. I could stop there. But I know you want to see pictures! (Though you may have already seen a lot of them here).

We started in Moorea, one of many islands that make up "French Polynesia." It's very jungly and really only has people living around the outside of it, the whole middle is pretty mountainous. We stayed in a really cool resort perched up on a hillside, with an amazing infinity pool and somewhat difficult access to the water...but the views were SPECTACULAR.

reception

imitating Maddie's fake "picture smile"

The best part of our time in Moorea was the jet ski tour where we stopped and hopped off to see a plethora of sting rays and sharks!! These are probably my favorite pics of the whole trip! Well...I don't know if I can choose favorites, but they're pretty cool.

So that was pretty cool! Gotta love photogenic reef sharks who are willing to pose! The next day we went out to our resort's "motu" - little private island - to snorkel and lounge around on the beach for a few hours.

super creepy!!

Lauren getting fresh aloe applied to her fresh burns at dinner.

As you can tell from the pictures, our hotel was very much amongst the greenery of Moorea and for that reason we had some issues with bugs in our rooms. The first night Maddie and Lauren slept in a room that was open to the rest of the suite, while the rest of us had closed off rooms (with air-conditioning!) and they got absolutely destroyed by mosquitos! It was kind of funny, but mostly really sad :(

Thereafter, Lauren slept with my parents, and Maddie slept with Brent and I in our queen bed. The last night we were there Brent woke up in the middle of the night feeling something crawling on him. We looked for a minute but didn't see anything and managed to not wake Maddie up. A few minutes later Brent screamed bloody murder, jumped out of bed and flipped on the lights, but the poor guy can't see a thing without his contacts in..."WHAT IS IT?? WHERE IS IT??? IT JUST BIT ME!!!" haha. "It" was a big, nasty, black centipede, which I quickly flicked onto the floor, while trying to reassure Maddie that everything was fine and she should just go back to sleep.

Needless to say she was terrified (as was I) and I don't think any of us got much sleep after that. We were too worried that every itch was something nasty crawling up our legs....ewwwwww.

On a more positive note...the breakfast at our resort was to. die. for. Seriously, it was so good. Freshly baked croissants (with assorted specialty jams such as pineapple-vanilla bean), pain au chocolats, and little pots of hot chocolate. Nommm nommmm...I think I ate at least ten pastries every morning!

Well, that's it for Moorea! It was a gorgeous three days, but just WAIT 'till you see Bora Bora!! Coming to the McNews in the very near future (ie: not 7 months from now).