Over the past… 8 years we have been struggling with getting our children to do things every morning and every evening. Complicated and intricate things like putting clothes on, brushing teeth, picking up toys, etc…

So now that we are rounding third on ten years of parenting, my wife has enacted a new strategy. We put up a white board upstairs and downstairs to correspond with what each child needs to do every morning. This morning my oldest son started playing the Nintendo switch and Bonnie woke up and pointed to the upstairs white board.

He immediately put the switch down and got dressed in his Sunday best, along with his other brothers. He even wrapped a towel around the youngest and started styling his hair.

After church we went to the seafood place next door, and let the kids run around for a while. Then we went home and did a ton of laundry.

Laundry has been a challenge lately because our dryer makes the laundry really warm and wet. No matter how many cycles we put it through. We have scheduled so many repairmen to come over to try to fix it and about 1/20 times they actually show up. So now we have to put the clothes through the dryer and then hang them up.

Next week we are taking a trip on days 55-60. I will be writing on this blog each day, but when we get back on Day 60, I’ll publish them all. Where we are going is very safe, I’d just rather let you all know where we went after we get back.

Less than 24 hours after we fly back, I fly back to the states. I have court on days 61, 62, and 63. Then I fly out on Day 64. We have a “normal” week and then Bonnie’s best friends family will be visiting us. The Airbnb we are renting has a downstairs “cabin” that sleeps 8 comfortably.

We are going to have family members visit the following week after that, the same week I’ll be flying back to the states for court. Just so you know, if you’re reading this, flights to where we are, are $140 one way. It’s a pretty great deal because we have plenty of space if any of you want to experience this city. Anyways, I am off to go hang some more laundry. Day 53 OUT!!!

Today we went out to breakfast. I have to say that there are certain things the United States does amazingly. Pizza, and breakfast. Mexican breakfasts are probably in second place. When we traveled to Europe, breakfast was usually a hard boiled egg, stale bread and maybe some sort of fruit jelly and terrible tasting tea. I finally had a terrible meal and it was so bad, Bonnie told me to go outside to the restaurant next door to eat, so I did.

After I ate at the better restaurant, we took the kids to get their hair cut at a salon just down the street. Our boys don’t like to get their hair cut, and Bonnie and I get comments from both sides of our family about it. Those comments were never persuasive enough to get their haircut by the way. 😀

Our youngest walked into the salon and saw a man on a motorcycle and immediately said that’s the haircut he wanted. His older brothers rolled their eyes and only wanted a trim. Our oldest got a trim as well.

After the haircut we went back home and did laundry and cleaned up the house. The kids were getting annoying so we took them to a park close by and then we walked to a very fancy restaurant by thats about 150 yards from our house.

I was really excited for dessert because they offered a “choco taco” and I was hoping they’d just bring out the ice cream dessert you’d buy from an ice cream truck in the 1980s, for some reason I was surprised when they didn’t.

Today is Friday. After dropping the kids off of school I took a long time working. Friday’s we have a tradition of letting the kids watch a movie and or play on the Nintendo switch. Around 630pm the restaurant down the street, we can see form our bedroom balcony, opens and we take the kids there for dinner. A taco at this restaurant is roughly $.50, and each child eats at least three or four. I won’t say how many I eat.

The food there is amazing, and we all eat to our hearts content. Afterwards, we come back and finish whatever movie they were watching and then go to bed.

I let the kids take the iPad into their room to finish a movie with less than 10% left in the battery. That would give them 20 more minutes and then they’d go to bed. What I didn’t expect, is all four of them to go into our bedroom as we were sleeping and take an iPad charger without making a sound. Bonnie woke up at 11pm to the kids watching another cartoon, so she took the iPad away and I’ll never do that again. 😀

Today after taking the kids to school, Bonnie went to yoga and I went to the city center. I bought some more honey and used the correct word for it this time. Bonnie ended up meeting me for lunch and afterwards we went to the “Alley of the Kiss”. The alley of the kiss is an alley that gets squeezed very tight by the buildings. It’s tradition to kiss your significant other in order to give 15 years of good luck. I really enjoyed the whole experience there.

After we got done with that tourist trap, we walked around and stumbled into a protest. I didn’t know what they were saying, Bonnie was explaining it to me but I wasn’t really paying attention to her. 😀

We picked up our youngest from school and he made a very adorable pig out of a soda bottle. Bonnie made the kids tuna casserole and then we put them straight to bed with very few threats tonight. (I’m not going to define what constitutes “very few” to you all).

Colds are passing through our house with wreck-less abandon. Sore throats, and congestion has attacked everyone and we are just trying to get through this week. On Monday (Day 47) we kept child 2, and 4 home because their throats were sore. On Tuesday (Day 48) we kept child 1, and 2 home. Child 1 had a sore throat, child 2 was kept home because he got stitches the night before because he decided it would be a good idea to run into his room and he tripped on the trundle bed and his face fell onto a bed frame. He is fine, the bed frame is fine, my poor wife drove him to the hospital to get a couple stitches, for some reason the hospital did not charge us, I’m still confused by this.

Wednesday all children went to school, and I worked all day in my office. Work has been steadily increasing, which is great, but can be stressful. My cell phone sometimes is able to call clients in the states, and sometimes it doesn’t for no apparent reason. We went to a bible study tonight which was actually really nice. It was in a home up the street and our children behaved very well, this culture really enjoys children and seem to be far more patient with children then the culture in the states, just my observation.

This weekend we are not doing much as we have. A big trip is planned and I will get into more details of that another time. It’s 4:51am and I can’t sleep because I have a thousand things on my mind, let’s hope this doesn’t affect me today as I’ve got a lot of work to get done. See you all later. **

Today was a big fundraiser for the kids school. For some odd reason they chose to do a race, an 8k, 4K, and 100m race (for ages 3-6). I told Bonnie that I did NOT want to run a race, and so she signed me up for the 4K. Luckily the younger two kids were signed up for the 100m and someone had to be with them when Bonnie raced with the older two.

Our second child was held back a little by his older sibling, he would run ahead and then run back to his mom and sister. Had we just let him run the race his way, we are positive he could have placed in his age group, or even won.

My wife is under the weather and she still stuck it out by finishing a couple minutes after our second child.

I ran the 100 meters with the third and fourth children. The third child could have easily ran the 4K but he was 6 when we signed him up. The fourth child ran for a meter or two and then stopped and ran into the crowded sidewalk when he realized he was not going to win the race. So I picked him up and ran him to the finish line. I have to say after watching this video, his hair has a lot of bounce.

After the race, our third child won a raffle prize for 350 pesos off a lunch at a local restaurant. We went there for lunch and ate the equivalent of 9 meals. The kids ate very very well, and we didn’t take any extra food home. Then we walked to a shoe store for our oldest, then drove home. We were in traffic on the way home, but it is such a beautiful city, it was a pleasure to be in stop and go traffic.

When we got home, we let the kids watch a movie, and now they are in bed. Thank. God.

Today started off with the kids making us breakfast. Imagine what a 9, 8, 7, and 4 year old would make for breakfast,… I’ll wait.

… You nailed it. Whatever you guessed, it’s probably spot on. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and toast with cashews, with melted cheese on crackers. And to wash it all down, an Oreo milkshake.

After breakfast it took us three hours to clean everything up and get the kids dressed. Then we went to get haircuts but the salon only had us make appointments for the next week. So with the afternoon free we went to a hacienda to take a tour. San Gabriel de Barrera. Get ready, there is going to be a ton of photos.

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My favorite part of the tour was the hacienda owners private altar. It is covered in gold leaf, gold purchased in Europe traced back to the time of the crusades.

After we were done touring the home, we set off to tour the various gardens attached to the estate. This estate was originally built in 1650, the city is riddled with gold and silver mines in the nearby hillside. The mining company would collect pay dirt and then that dirt would be transported to the estate where indentured servants would process the gold and silver and melt it into bars.

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After the tour, we had dinner and people watched. The hacienda is so enormous, it comfortably hosted two very large weddings.

Today I walked the kids to school in the morning to let Bonnie get more rest, she’s been under the weather.

After I dropped the kids off, I did a little exploring of our neighborhood. It’s fascinating how many hidden or off the beaten path stairways there are. I could devote every day just to the stair ways we encounter daily. The roads are so small yet cars still drive down them every day.

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For the past few weeks we have been waking up sore. We realized the mattress we have been sleeping on needed replacing. So we went to a mattress store and bought a new one for 1/20th of what our mattress cost back home. It was delivered today. I went to the market place and saw a 1 kilogram block of butter. I had to buy it. It cost just over $3.

On my way out of the market place there is a tamale stand. I bought a few tamales and ate one when I got home for lunch. It was really good. Most of these tamales are wrapped in what I think are banana leaves and not corn husks.

We picked up the kids and had home made clam chowder for dinner. Our oldest’s favorite meal.

This weekend the school has some fundraiser race thing I’m not participating in. I’m excited to watch my kids run something but I’ll be sitting this out. After dinner our kids made banana and Nutella sandwiches.

The last two days were kind of a blur. There wasn’t much to say about day 41. The longer we are here the fewer new experiences we have. It’s difficult to fill the blog with content lately.

Day 42, we went to a birthday party. A birthday party in the middle of the week, that’s a new one. My second child’s classmate celebrated and all the parents caravanned from class getting out to a house in the middle of nowhere. It was cute, in one of the cars there were about 10 kids crammed in and they were all yelling my second child’s name over and over wanting him to join them. He, like me, is very shy and wanted to drive with his family.

When we got home, as we tucked the kids in bed, our first and second child were whining about missing their home in the United States. I explained to them that the majority of their classmates will probably never visit the United States. They were shocked, I completely blew their minds. Our second child was nearly in tears when I explained to him that most of his classmates will never go to Disneyland. After that talk, they were just silent, I feel a little guilty, but at the same time we didn’t move here to pamper our kids. We want our kids to see and experience another culture. I will try to keep writing posts every day, but I’m not making any promises. 😀*