I'm falling in love with Mexico

I'm on the plane, heading back to Nashville, after spending a glorious five days relaxing in the sun with a few good friends. One of my best friends in the entire world, Shannon, invited me to visit some of our mutual friends with him at their house/hacienda just about an hour north of Cabo, on the Baja Peninsula. He reminded me how I said that I needed a "break" and an "escape" and told me that I would completely enjoy my time there, love it and never want to leave.

He. Was. Right.

He's staying for the entire month of April so he can work on writing some new songs with his bandmate Jon and performing them while in Mexico.

This part of the world is absolutely beautiful. It reminds me of Aruba, in the sense that it is a very dry climate, with a continuous breeze rolling in off the Pacific Ocean. Many of the homes are situated in an open type format, with a walled in/fenced in area and several small buildings that make up the "hacienda". Dani & Jon's place is much like that. Their common area, that includes the pool area & kitchen overlooks the Pacific at a distance of about two football fields. There is the constant sound of the ocean waves crashing upon the shore. The weather is warm, there was not a cloud in the sky. I truly felt that I had experienced a slice of heaven.

The best part was experiencing all of this with friends. There was no agenda, no timeframe for anything, just the general desire to do whatever you felt like doing. My phone got turned off/forgotten for a few days, even though they had wifi so I made a habit of checking in on life in the morning and in the evenings, but then generally left it alone.

Shannon and I explored new food options, there are tons of restaurants in that area that literally ave the freshest food available. Taco stands, fish stands, little restaurants. I had my first taste of lobster, since the one restaurant we went to advertised it as fresh, then another night I ended up being served a bunch of new foods at Carlito's Place, he just kept some foods coming and all I know is that I ate and enjoyed a ton of seafood over these past few days (which is odd for me, because I generally don't like too much of it).

We celebrated Shannon's song for Big & Rich, "Look at you" breaking the top 40, and getting added to mainstream radio airplay quickly as well as celebrated how much we both have accomplished in the past few years. Sometimes, having a friend on your side that has your back no matter what, makes all the difference in the world.

A lot of people kept asking if I was Shannon's wife. We both laughed loudly and joked about how often we had fielded that question in the past several years. To be clear, we are as close as family, so I tend to "mama hen" him a bit. I joked about creating a t-shirt that said "I'm not his wife" in Spanish to wear when we left the compound. I'm not sure why people can't understand/comprehend our relationship as it is.

Dani and I went out for a girls night one of the evenings, and ended up bringing one of the local gringos/bar owners back to the compound to keep drinking with us and relax in the hot tub. It was great to spend some girly time away from the boys too.

I spent each morning up with the sunrise over the mountains, then each evening staring at the sunset over the Pacific. Later, I would marvel each night at the vast expanse of stars visible and counted multiple falling stars- all of which I made a wish on.

Shannon and I had a great heart to heart one of those evenings about me, my experiences with dating Luke (thankfully he is not in this blog) and life in general. He is one of my very best friends in the whole wide world and I am infinitely grateful to have him in my life.