Magnificent Mexico
On October 30th, 2012, shortly after I'd woke up, I received an email from my old friend Jess (of Jess and Lili's Legendary Wedding). Its subject: "Wanna go to Mexico?"
We are taking a trip to Mexico Feb 16-24 with some friends from here and have one spot that just came open in the house we are all renting together. It's a sweet spot, 1 hour north of Puerto Vallarta. It has seven bedrooms each with own bathroom, a cook, private beach and nice pool, link below. Works out to about $1100 per week per couple.
...
http://www.laspalapas.tv/home.html
As you can imagine, I was immediately enticed by the opportunity. I checked my schedule, verified they had high-speed internet and responded We're IN! a couple hours later.
A couple weeks ago, we embarked on this journey and had a great time. The house was awesome, the company was fantastic and the views were spectacular. Not only that, but the town we stayed in (Chacala) was very authentic. No resorts, hardly any paved roads and nary a tourist in sight.
We didn't take our kids, but a few families did, resulting in 19 people total. Everyone got along swimmingly, the home-cooked meals were wonderful and the weather was beautiful.
For the most part, we didn't do much throughout the week. I had to work, so I spent my days on the computer with an occasional break to play a game of volleyball. I experienced the same issue I did in Maui and Kauai last year, where my MacBook Pro couldn't find my hard drive. Yeah, it's a first-world problem: my laptop tries to stop me from working when I'm on a beach. 
Luckily, I had a backup (external) hard drive that I could plugin and work from.
We did a whale watching and snorkeling trip on a Catamaran one afternoon. We didn't get any good whale pictures, but we had many sightings.
I only ventured into Chacala once, but found it to have a lovely beach, good music, and tasty restaurants.
Thanks to Jess and everyone else for inviting us to this magnificent place in Mexico. We had a great time, made a lot of new friends and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
For more photos, see my Mexico 2013 Album or Trish's Mexico Trip 2013!