I hope I don’t keep this habit of blogging the next day about the day previously. Yesterday was Day 24. After breakfast, we took the kids to the historical center to do a bunch of things. Our oldest needed shoes, we needed to find an appliance repair business, pick up a package from. Bonnie’s mom (mail here is really hit or miss and it takes a loooooong time to get here), sat lunch, and go up to Pipilla again using the people mover off the side of the cliff.

We did all those things except finding an appliance repair shop. Our dryer blows kind of warm air and makes our laundry warm and damp. Th is wouldn’t be a problem if it was just me and Bonnie, but we have four kids and do at least two loads of laundry a day. We’ve been hanging up our laundry outside but it’s been raining a lot. Luckily by providence we ran into our landlord while walking around the downtown. Bonnie explained our plight and the landlord said it will get taken care of this next week, she was upset that the repairmen she recommended kept not showing up. Below are photos from the day and a video of us going up the people mover.

Today after Bonnie took the kids to school she ran some errands and I worked for a while in my office. We took an Uber to go sightseeing later that morning. It was odd not having four kids around us and we really enjoyed the freedom to go where we pleased on a moments notice.

Above we are posing in front of the Basílica colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato. It is the most iconic structure in all of Guanajuato, built between 1671-1676, one hundred years before we declared our independence from England.

After visiting the basilica, we walked to the market place in the center of the city. We bought tilapia and cactus to make fish tacos for dinner. We also bought freshly made flour tortillas. See the video below.

This would be a great time to end the blog, but something happened on the way home from walking the older three home from school that I had to document. Our middle boys (ages 6, and 8) held hands all the way home from school. The walk is about a mile, and at the start of the walk I snuck a photo of them holding hands, it was all very nonchalant how they were acting, as if it is just normal practice. It isn’t. During the walk home Lydia and I were talking and I kept stealing glances behind me and low and behold they held hands the entire way home even as they walked into the house. It was really touching to see that because these two sometimes don’t get along, and that is an understatement. 😀

Today I have decided to post a video of the house we are renting. It’s almost 4 minutes long. I apologize about the quality of the video and my moving it too fast.

Today I worked in the morning after getting the kids ready and off to school. Then I set out to tour around the city center. I walked all over the downtown. I ate breakfast at a restaurant called Calle Trunco 7. It was really good, but I ordered something really spicy. I knew it was spicy because after my first bite, before my body could register the heat, I started hiccuping. Other than that, the rest of the food was amazing.

After breakfast I walked to the marketplace. The marketplace sells all sorts of odds and ends. There are many little sandwich restaurants, produce stands, and butchers. I tried asking if they had linguiça, because my second child has been wanting it, but no one had it. I wasn’t surprised.

After the marketplace I walked around the city and headed home. It was a fun little adventure, I spoke Spanish the entire time. I didn’t realize that until I got back home.

Today The kids got to walk to school in a rain storm. 😀 I was grateful that Bonnie walked them to school while I stayed home. We have been here close to 3 weeks, and I have been wanting to explore the city center.

I took an Uber to the downtown area. I spent 7 amazing minutes in the city center before Bonnie called me to tell me she needed to get into the house. You see we only have one set of keys to our front door, and one set to open our garage door.

Luckily I was able to snap a few photos before I got the call to come back home and unlock the door for Bonnie. She tried to stop me from cutting my adventure short, but it was raining and she had a lot of groceries with her.

The rest of the day I worked in my office. After the kids got home from school they made a mess, Bonnie and I yelled at them. We made dinner, then put the kids to bed.

I found a bakery on my way to get a taxi. I bought a large amount of baked goods for less than $2. Ninety percent of the baked sweets in this country are absolutely terrible, and that ratio stayed true with what I bought today. Tomorrow I’m going to try to head to city center again and maybe stay longer than a few minutes. Every street is so ornate, and colorful, and old. I see myself missing this city when we move back home.

Today was a school holiday for the kids. I had a court appearance at 930 (1130am) my time. I was unable to use the phone number assigned, and ended up having to call the court to explain why I’m not coming through. It cost $96 to sign up for a courtcall appearance that didn’t work. So the court placed me on hold for an hour and then called the case. I wasn’t too pleased with the outcome, but it’s better than a judge scheduling a hearing called “an Order to Show Cause” basically a hearing where a judge needs you to explain why you did something wrong.

Getting the kids out of the house is very tough. We now don’t have a car until the one we are buying is ready for us to pick up. We were supposed to pick it up today, but they never called. The kids haven’t gone to a park in a few days, and just when we were about to leave, the sky tore open with torrential rain.

The next best thing is to take an Uber to a restaurant close by that has an indoor kids playground. The restaurant is pretty good, ok seafood, and the staff are getting to know us pretty well. I’m also getting down conversational restaurant speak, so I can order food in Spanish, and I am great at yelling at my kids in English.

The kids were really taken aback about all the stray dogs that were outside of the restaurant trying to keep dry. *

I’m writing this on Day 19. Day 18 was a very nice and quiet day. We slept in a little, made breakfast (Bonnie made pancakes), I fired eggs. We had beans and rice of course. Fried tortillas and fried ham. I’m starting to really enjoy salsa at every meal.

Every restaurant I have been to here does not have black pepper. We had to drive an hour to Costco to find black pepper. But salsa is everywhere, and I’m no where near getting used to I’m the salsa here, it’s what I would call “authentic” or pica!!!

We had left overs all day then relaxed by watching a movie on the iPad. The kids watched Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

We had a lot of fun on Ancestry.com. I have thoroughly tracked my Irish side back to my great great great great grandmother, “Annie” from County Sligo. Mother of James Derieg who was my ancestor who immigratEd to New Brunswick Canada. His son James Derieg was the first to come to America, I believe he started in Iowa and ended up in Nebraska.

We tracked Bonnies great great great grandmother to Jalisco Mexico. But we found so many cool records, like birth certificates, baptismal records, death certificates, etc… If I wasn’t trying to run my law practice from 1700 miles way, I could enjoy tracking our family back as far as Ireland, Croatia, Greece, Scotland, and Mexico.

I’m writing this from a restaurant, gonna eat and relax until later when I write Day 19. See you later.

Today was the most exciting day in this trip. But before we get to it, a little background.

Before we started dating, Bonnie went on a trip to Mexico with her maternal grandparents, when she was 16. They showed her all over Guadalajara, and they ended up visiting her grandfathers home town, Zepotlenejo. Zepotenajo is a small town in the state of Jalisco, it is adjacent to the state we are living in. They visited a church her grandfather went to with his family, and they also went to a shop that sold leather goods, that was owned by her grandfathers mothers side of his family. This is how Bonnie was able to confirm the church we went to yesterday was the same church her grandfather went to as a child, he confirmed it with her when she visited this town 24 years prior.

This past Thursday, on a whim we rented a car and drove to Zepotlenejo. You can read the jist of that story in the last post. Toward the end of the day, Bonnie was able to get a copy of her grandfathers birth certificate, and was able to decipher that he was born near a place called Asoleadera. We were given vague directions on where it was, but it was only a 20 minute drive outside of Zepotlenejo, so we took off around twighlight. We ended up at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and asked the attendant about Asoleadera. We thought it was a large ranch, but later on that night during my insomnia, I found out it was an abandoned township on the outskirts of Zepotlenejo.

The gas attendant called his friend who lived close, and was also a police officer, who he said would know where to find Asoleadera. I was a little skeptical since it was dark, and I don’t know who was coming to show us where to go, and there are no street lights, so we end up following this guy in his truck. He eventually pulls off the road, and tells us to keep driving up a dirt road a ways, and that would end up being Asoleadera.

We drove up for at least another 15-20 minutes and now it is pitch dark. We being married, had a “discussion” about whether or not we should pull into any drive ways with homes that have lights on, if you know me, you know where I stand. If you know Bonnie, you know she wanted to pull in and knock on peoples doors. We ended up not doing that, and one of us went home not happy. 😀

The next morning (this morning), we got the kids out of the hotel by 7am and drove back to Asoleadera in the hopes we might run into someone who might know Bonnie’s Grandfather’s family, there is his maternal side and paternal side. We drove for a while and did not find anyone, so Bonnie turned the car around and started driving back down the hill, when we end up seeing a man standing on the side of the road. She spoke to him for a while, and found out that (and I apologize if this sounds confusing) Bonnie’s great grandmother’s family name still exists in the very spot we were looking for them. For the sake of anonymity, I’m not going to use either family name. But we located them about 20 minutes later.

They run a small back country store out of their home, and the older woman who helps run the store pointed to a home in the distance that was most likely Bonnie’s great great grandparents home. We stayed there a while and took ALOT of photos. On our way out, the woman who ran the store pointed to a small house across the field, and said that was the house Bonnie’s grandfather was born in, we would have gotten up close photos of it, but it is located on church property and it was gated.

I still can’t believe we found basically her ancestor’s home(s), today was amazing.

On another note, thank you for reading these blogs so far. A secondary purpose for writing these blog entries is to let our family see what we are doing and make sure we are safe. Being that our children are so young, I’m sure they won’t remember many details of this trip years from now, so I hope to collect these posts and put them into a self published book for them later on in life, the primary reason I write this…

Below are photos from Asoleadera, Zepotlenejo. *

Last night we drove close to three hours, to get to my wife’s grandfathers hometown.
We got in late last night, and noticed where we parked, the street was lined with what appeared to be where house type roll up doors. I didn’t realize we pretty much got a hotel in the middle of the garment district. When we woke up and went for breakfast, the stores were open selling every type of clothing. There are easily hundreds of small shops. The center of town is inundated with clothing stores, and restaurants. Occasionally a man rides a bike up and down the street selling fresh fruit with chili and lime.

Thanks to Bonnie’s aunt, we were able to get a copy of her grandpa’s birth certificate over text. We may be able to pinpoint his birthplace. The above photo is the area we drove to that is very close. We will try to find it tomorrow morning.

Bonnie’s grandpa literally walked from this town to Oakland when he was a young man. In a car it would take 31 hours of driving to get there, by foot, I could only imagine it would take a few months.

Today was a great success. Bonnie has been here before when she was 16, when she came with her grandparents. We are going to head home tomorrow afternoon. Good night all. *

The kids had their second day of school today. When we dropped them off we found out that Friday and Monday there is no school so on a whim, we decided to rent a car, and drive them 3 hours to my wife’s grandfathers home town. I would have blogged last night but we were exhausted when we arrived at our hotel.

Expect a lot of photos for Day 16. I consider day 15 awash. *