Now that we have survived our third child’s birthday party, we now turn to our oldest child. Her birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day, both myself and my wife are equally 50% Irish, but we like to say our oldest is a bit more Irish than we are because of her birthday.

Our oldest is torn between a traditional birthday party, and an adventure to Mexico City. Twenty four kilometers south of Mexico City is an island that has very creepy dolls strung about every where. It is shockingly creepy, and she wants to go there. We’ve already brought them to a museum devoted to non decomposed bodies hundreds of years old, might as well add to their nightmare fuel. We are planning to travel to Mexico City anyways so we are going to go there anyways. I miss California, but I’m glad to be back with the family.

I’m also very grateful to my family that is bringing in our mail. Between both my career and my wife’s including our being alumni at a UC, we get a ton of mail. So a nice shout out to my Aunt Patty, my sister in law Sarah, mother in law Julie, and also my father in law Brian who cleaned up our yard after a wind storm blew down a few dozen branches, the length of a car.

I also want to say happy belated birthday to my oldest child’s teacher back home. I have no clue how old she is, but I doubt she’s older than me and I’m 40. Of all the teachers my kids have had, I think her personality is most like mine, sarcastic, funny, intelligent. I subbed for her class at least once and was impressed by the way her class ran, even when she wasn’t there. My only true regret is not showing up to chaperone a beach field trip dressed exactly like Tom Cruise from the volley ball scene in the movie Top Gun. I needed one more dad to complete the scene.

Who am I kidding, I have three other kids to get my chance for that. *

I flew back home for days 33-37. I was mostly exhausted the entire trip. It was so easy traveling alone instead of with four kids. I had to be in court for multiple cases, then had a ton of work I needed to get done. If you were lucky, I saw you briefly. It’s hard being away from my family, especially my wife. She’s the one that tells me when I need to sleep.

On Day 38 we celebrated our third child’s 7th birthday. We went to that water park and invited his friends from school and our new friends from church. For me it was a little difficult to socialize because I don’t really speak conversational Spanish, and the Spanish I do know is very polite and respectful, the exact opposite of my personality. 😀

It was a wonderful party and I am so blessed to have our third child. He is the child that when I am elderly, and I’m in a nursing home probably being mistreated, he will be assaulting the staff and telling them that he’s taking me home. He’s very assertive and passionate. *

Today was church, and then we went out to eat. Of course as we were about to leave the house, the garage door opener malfunctioned. We need to get that fixed, it’s like two steps forward, three steps back.

After lunch, we went to a store that sells piñatas, and a candy store to fill up the piñatas we purchased. While waiting for Bonnie to help child 3 pick a couple out, a man walked by with a huge platter of churros, we didn’t buy any, still a newish car and churros are notoriously messy. Bonnie will be taking over the blog this week until I get back Friday night. Onward and upward.

It took 31 days, but we finally have a car. We bought a Toyota Avanza from the local Toyota dealership. This dealership doesn’t run like one in the United States. They told us so many things and then contradicted themselves constantly. They wouldn’t take an atm card for payment, then they would, then they wouldn’t. They would take a credit card, they would take American Express, then they wouldn’t take American Express. They could have the car delivered to the closest dealership to our house within a day (this took nearly two weeks). We finally have it, and it’s a stick shift, so along with Spanish, I have to learn that as well. 😀The kids acted very well while at ththe dealership. After we picked up the car, we drove it to a birthday party for a classmate of our third child.

It’s a great sigh of relief to have a car now. If we wanted to go anywhere far we had to take two Uber’s and I didn’t like being separated. We took two Uber’s to the dealership to pick up the car. Our oldest was worried about translating for me, so when me and my oldest got to the dealership first, she wrote me a note and said “dad, just read this to the person when we walk inside”. *

Day 30 was Valentines Day. The night before was busy making sure all of our kids classmates had a valentine. Bonnie double checked that for me. After the kids were dropped off at school we had a gas delivery. A truck drives up and down each street every morning that has a gas tank. What kind of gas I don’t know, but our storage tank was running low so we called them and requested a delivery. The truck parked right in front of the house and a guy climbed up the wall with a hose and pumped gas into the tank. After they left, Bonnie went to yoga and I took an Uber to the city center.

I walked to a florist that is next to the Mariscos (seafood stand) and bought 24 purple roses. Bonnie isn’t a woman that likes flowers, but we all know she loves purple. My translator app was not working so instead of saying “24” I tried to say “two dozen” and they didn’t know what I was saying, so I said 24 and then the guy started talking to me like he thought I talk Spanish at the university. I just nodded, I heard the phrase “Estados Unidos” my response “si”. Let’s hope he only asked where I was from. A phrase I tell people is “soy esposo de correo”. This means I’m a mail order groom I think.

The kids school had a Valentines Day festival at their school, it consisted of lots of food, and drinks, and candy. There was a bicycle race, and a huge amount of candy if I didn’t mention that already. There were also jump houses on the soccer field, our youngest stayed there for an hour, jumping and exhausting himself.

We tried going to our church Valentines Day dinner but an hour after we got there, it was apparent that the kids were exhausted. We left the dinner early and put the kids to bed as soon as we got home. *

Today after the kids went to school, me and Bonnie went out for breakfast. There is a very nice hotel down the street from our house, and we decided to give it a try. It was a basic buffet type breakfast, eggs/ham, refried beans (that were very spicy), cereal, etc… Bonnie ordered the huevos divorceades (spelling is probably wrong) it’s two fried eggs separated by refried beans with red and green sauce on either side. See the photo below.

After breakfast I worked for a while in my office. I volunteered to walk our youngest home from school. When I got there, my third child was hanging outside of his class and ran up to me. He asked me to pick him up later because I speak English to him and he missed being home. How do you say “no” to that???

I picked the youngest one up and out of nowhere my oldest appeared and got down on one knee and told him about a sweet crepe she bought just for him and how he’s going to get to eat it when he gets home. It’s really precious to see them love on each other.

I walked the youngest one home and then a half hour later walked the older kids home.

When we got home, we made the kids favorite, and I am not joking. All four children love baked salmon and asparagus, with corn on the cob.

I spent most of the morning working while Bonnie did yoga after the kids were dropped off at school. We didn’t sleep well the night before so we actually got to take a nap in the middle of the day. It’s strange this trip sometimes feels like a vacation, and today felt like one a little. That was until the kids got home.

Friday is Valentine’s Day, and despite my hope that that holiday was not recognized in this country, it absolutely is recognized and we had to work on them today after school. I hate doing Valentine’s Day cards, luckily almost 3/4 of the kids can do it on their own.

After the kids went to bed I made them cinnamon roll cake. It was a flop, we are 6,000 feet up and that affects baking. Also the ingredients here I’m not used to, the butter is weird, and the gas stove is wonky. Needless to say, the cake was a disaster. 😀 Onward and upwards. Still waiting for the Toyota dealership to let us know our car is in, they had promised to deliver it to the city we live in, instead of one of us taking a taxi or Uber 60 miles. They still haven’t done that, and even though the payment went through on our end, they are saying they have not gotten it deposited into their account. 😡 It could be worse.

This coming Monday I’m flying in for court appearances. Unless you have business with my practice, chances are I’m not going to be visiting with many people. I’m flying in Monday and flying out Friday. I don’t know if I will be keeping up the blog during my work trips back to the States. Bonnie is going to be exhausted on the days she is without my help so I’m not going to lay that burden on her while I’m gone. We will see what happens. *

Today I went on a pilgrimage to the marketplace to get a baking sheet. I took a lot of photos of the streets I hadn’t walked through before, of which there are many.

After I got a baking sheet at the marketplace, I saw a woman around my age selling honey. I walked up to her and asked her how much the honey is, in Spanish and she gave me the weirdest look.

It turns out there is more than one way to say “honey” in Spanish and I used the word that had a romantic translation. “Cariño” is the wrong word to use when asking a woman what her “honey” costs. What I should have said was “miel”. Lesson learned, now I can never walk past that booth ever again.*

This was a day I was looking forward to. All the conversations I had with my children’s teachers back home about enrolling them into a new school, at the forefront of my mind was my children in school uniforms. Every Monday, all students are required to wear the formal uniform. There is also a physical education uniform the kids where on specific days, and a lab coat they need to bring on the day they have lab.

Getting them out of the house after the uniform is on is a different story. The school offers a hot lunch to kids once a week, so we need to bring their lunches. This is very difficult to prepare four lunches every morning, but so far my wife has both prepared lunches and breakfast in the morning while I fight my children, I mean while I dress them and do their hair every morning.

When we arrived at our house, we removed all bowls and plates and cups, and purchased one bowl, one plate, and one cup for each child. Each bowl, plate, and cup is distinctive to each child. So they are responsible for taking them out, using them, washing them, drying them, and putting them away. This is a battle we are waging with our children, we are going to die on this hill. That being said, each morning at least one child forgot to wash their bowl and won’t get breakfast unless it is washed and dried.

The school lunches we prepare for the kids are in Tupperware that they need to wash when they get home or guess what? They don’t get a lunch they want the next day.

We have endured an onslaught of anger and resentment from these kids. My response to them is that I don’t want heir future spouses hating us when they realize the children we raised don’t know how to wash a dish. That argument isn’t persuasive according to my children. As a side note, when my children make an argument to me and it doesn’t work, I tell them it “isn’t persuasive”, so now they are using that against me. 😀

Needless to say, today the kids were adorable getting their uniforms on. The only trouble was our youngest child, I can’t explain why, but he HATES blue pants. He truly hates blue pants, he couldn’t explain why because he is only 4 years old, but I had to bribe him into wearing blue pants. He doesn’t realize that he has about 24 more Mondays of wearing blue pants. 😂😂**

Today after church we went out to eat. It was really adorable, a little girl that is in our third child’s class was also at the restaurant. She ended up playing with him and chased him around for a while.

After lunch we walked up hill about 700 yards to a recreation center. It was very steep, and warm, and desolate. When we finally got up the hill, there was almost no one around. It felt like we were in some post apocalyptic movie.