We are 24 hours without running water. The water pipe in the garage broke. Even though we turned off the water, the pipe was still leaking with water and I came up with the brilliant idea to use a wine cork to plug the pipe.

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I took it upon myself to not let the bottle of wine go to waste, so I decided to drink the entire bottle in 30 minutes. I’m proud to report that I DID drink that wine, AND proceeded to forget the rest of the day. I may have had a few shots of 90 proof scotch. The last time I drank a bottle of wine by myself, I did so at my wife’s best friends wedding rehearsal dinner.

That day I drove from Stockton to San Francisco. That drive took 2 1/2 hours in traffic. My wife gave me directions and then her phones battery died. I had to drive into the part of San Francisco where the street signs aren’t in English. I was a little stressed, but I did finally find the restaurant.

When I showed up, the food was amazing. Chinese food is probably the greatest food in the world. And there was also wine. So I proceeded to drink 2 bottles of wine I think. I can’t remember the rest of the dinner. But the next day at the wedding everyone (literally everyone) came up to me to see if I was feeling alright. I was really fine, and the fact that I felt fine worried me. So I have avoided wine for a long time, my drink is scotch, and at most I drink a couple shots a week.

The plumber did finally arrive and fix the pipe. He was genuinely impressed with my solution according to Bonnie. School went alright, and ended in a high note when the kids did a science lab that studied whether food coloring dissolves better in cold or hot water.

We had chicken and waffles for dinner I’m told. We put the kids to bed, and by the time we laid down in bed I was wide awake. My oldest son, while I was putting him to bed, asked about how many pyramids I’ve visited, I said 7. I showed him the photo below of me and his mom at the great pyramids of Giza. I also showed him our trip to the Amazon rain forest. He doesn’t want to go to either. 😀

Today I did some work and then took a walk to the bank. After getting money out, I walked to the grocery store. The below photos are of the neighborhood I walked through. It was very pretty and serene. But I wish I would walk through a neighborhood that didn’t have so many hills.

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I noticed this pretty mural on my way into the grocery store. I have no clue what it is, but here is a photo of it.

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When I got home I worked a little more and enjoyed cookies made by our third child. He cooked them with his class over zoom, they are bananas smashed with chocolate chips and a few other ingredients. They tasted great and he was so proud of himself.

For dinner we are steaks and Mac and cheese. Nothing says you are a parent of small kids when you serve Mac and cheese, with steak.

It is very hot here and we bought a small blow up pool to be out in the garage. We moved the car out and cleaned the garage floor. One of our kids accidentally hit the water nozzle with a bouncy ball and the pipe broke. See the below area that is circled. It completely cracked off.

We had to turn our water off because that little pipe was gushing water from it. We had a plumber out here last week and he said he fixed it. He did not. He also said he would come back “tomorrow”. He did not. He told our landlord that he did come back the next day, and he lied.

My wife explained to me that people are more laid back here in Mexico. She calls it a “mañana culture”. When our dryer was not drying clothes, it took us a couple weeks to get an alliance repairman out to our house. Everyone we called said they’d come “tomorrow” and never did. We ended up pleading with our landlord to bring someone out and they came out. They looked at the dryer, said they reset it and charged me 400 pesos ($20) for their work. They did nothing, and the dryer was still broken. I ended up fixing our dryer. I cannot fix this.

This is where I think American culture is superior. If I call a plumber and they say they will be at our house at a certain time, they will, but not here. So now we have no running water until Saturday. Because that is when this man told our landlord he would be here. If I were a betting man, I would bet he does not show up. 😤😤😤😤😤😤😤 These are still first world problems, we will be fine in the end, I just wish we got better and quicker responses from people here.

We finally put the kids to bed, and I had to take this photo. It’s children 1&3 sleeping next to their pile of books.

On the night of Day 125, the kids put on a play for us. It lasted 12 minutes and seemed to be a rehashing or a new episode of PJ Mask. I loathe that cartoon and since we’ve been in Mexico we haven’t watched one episode. But all the kids have matching sweatshirts from the tv show, so it was entertaining to watch. Our oldest son was the director and also played the bad guy, Dr. Romeo.

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So today we had work and school and then drove to Mexico Lindo. A great restaurant here. My good friend Juan’s moms favorite restaurant. The cheeseburgers are actually amazing, the view is great and they have a kids playground. They always bring me an ice cold can of Coke. Most restaurants here do not do that.

As we walked into the restaurant they told us it was closed. A government official came in a few minutes before us and said they cannot serve food in the dining room for the time being, because of Covid 19. But the manager welcomed us in after we tried corralling our children out of the restaurant.

If you’ve been following this blog from the beginning, you’ll notice this was the first restaurant we went to on Day 1. They will still deliver food, they just won’t be open for dine in.

When we got home, I logged into a video web service called “blue jeans” it’s what the local court is using for appearances. I logged in and waited for the case to be called. I waited for 45 minutes and then re-checked the court docket. Minutes before I logged on, the court continued the matter of their own motion to late June. 😀

We ended the night showing the kids Schindler’s List. Just kidding, they watched some movie called “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and Bonnie and I watched Schindlers List on her iPhone. It’s getting hotter by the day here. I have a feeling Bonnie might want to come home earlier. But we already bought our tickets home for mid July. So pray for me. Pray for me every moment you think of me. When the temperature goes above 80, my wife transforms into another person who might murder me. Please, use this blog in her murder trial, as evidence of her culpability. 😀

Last night I was writing, and close to midnight a very loud alarm turned on, and stayed on for at least 5 minutes. I looked outside from our locked screen iron screen door and saw police speeding down the street.

The police blocked both sides of the street. Some were using their spotlights to look into the ravine behind our house and a few police officers ran into the building. About ten minutes later they came out with their suspect.

I didn’t see the suspects face, but he was handcuffed with his arms behind his back. Before the suspect reached the police car, the arresting officer punched him very hard in his stomach and the guy fell down. After a couple minutes, the guy got back up and the officer punched him a couple more times in the stomach. They had to carry him into the police car and they sped off.

This morning the police came back to look at security video from all the neighbors from the night before. It is the culture here to have security cameras all on every side of every residence. I was impressed with their thoroughness, but disappointed in how they treated the thief.

I worked most of the day today and the kids had a great day in school. We let the kids have screen time but only in Spanish. They seemed to enjoy that. Bonnie and I made dinner and finished the TV show Mindhunter. This was my second time watching it. I’m gonna try and get her interested in True Detective next, but only the first season. Tomorrow I appear in court. I’m starting to enjoy my court appearances online.

Sadly today my favorite preacher passed away. His name is Ravi Zacharias. If you ever get the chance, look him up on YouTube. Probably the greatest expositor in the 21st century. My favorite video is his talk to an enormous group of evangelical preachers, Billy Graham asked him to give that talk. I’ll post the video down below. It’s worth a watch. Whether you believe or not. He’s a captivating, thoughtful and intelligent preacher. **

I forgot to mention that yesterday morning I heard a car drive very fast down our street. We have a speed bump in the street perpendicular to our home so when cars drive by, they always slow down almost to a stop. Well this turned out to be a high speed police chase. The car lost control thirty yard from our house and was fishtailing and almost crashed into our home but avoided it to only crash into our next door neighbors office. It’s a law office, so I don’t really care. 😀

The police were on the guy immediately. They really do NOT screw around here. Most police cars are actually pick up trucks with a mounted machine gun. It was an exciting morning. Even if the car would have hit our home, we were all upstairs not getting ready for our eventual hike.

Today is Monday. Kids were back in school while I worked upstairs. After school, I had the kids organize their closets. I looked in my daughters drawer and found a carefully folded paper. I opened it and it had our iPad passcode on it. It’s since been changed.

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For dinner we had breakfast for dinner. I made blackberry muffins from scratch for dessert (they were bland so I whipped up some honey butter).

We participated in a video parent training for the private school our kids go to. I caught a word here and there, and my bride translated it for me. Adding in parts where she disagreed. It was a talk about recognizing addiction. I think my wife knows far more than the presenters did. *

For breakfast this morning, we made breakfast jacks for our children. Of all the things our third child misses the most from the states, it isn’t friends, or family, it is Jack in the Box’s breakfast Jack. So we bought hamburger buns at the local grocery store, fried ham, eggs and put a slice of cheese on the buns. Our third child noticed the last time when we didn’t fry the ham.

After breakfast, we got in the car and drove to meet out housekeeper and her husband to go on a hike. The following are photos of the hike. We hiked up a large hill, overlooking the city center. There were two crosses, one on top of one hill, and one on top of another a couple hundred yards away. I took a really great photo of our kids next to the other cross that was a couple hundred yards away from the first one, and that will be the final photo down below.

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There is a story about the first cross, a couple guys hiked up the hill many years ago and were accosted by robbers. Both men had their stomachs slit open. One of the men hiked down the hill while holding his intestines and somehow survived. He made a promise to God to build a cross, he also planted trees in the ground. The ground is so hard up there, it’s essentially concrete. The entire hill and mountain range is almost all quartz crystal.

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With the area covered in quartz crystal, when I noticed all the quartz, I was trying to see where the mine was. I know that with quartz veins, comes gold. It’s called a lode, and with enough quartz veins running through a mountain, they call it a “mother lode”.

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After our hike, we got home and watched the movie Short Circuit. The kids kind of liked it. It’s 2020, and PG movies from the 1980s are NOT PG movies in 2020. Lots of swearing, and adult themed innuendos. Luckily it went right over the kids heads.

Today was an amazing day. We slept in kind of. Had a great breakfast and relaxed with the family. Our youngest child got his stitches out. A pediatric surgeon with nearly 20 years experience took the stitches out for $35. This country’s medical system still confounds me.

Between 11am and 12ish Bonnie and I left the kids unattended while we “folded laundry” upstairs. Our children do not understand that the iPad is connected through the cloud to my iPhone. So while Bonnie and I were “folding laundry” our children decided then was a good time to steal Oreos and open toys. Towards the end of this video, it was our oldest sons idea to even hide the wrapper they opened because they knew mom and dad would recognize the wrapper in the garbage. They (unfortunately for them) filmed their crimes, we only saw the videos as we laid down to go to sleep. We will think of a creative punishment for them on the morning.

At 10pm our time, we did a zoom party for our children’s elementary school. We donate what we can to keep programs running. It was nice to see some of the teachers and parents from back home. I took a photo of the screen, it’s blurry enough not to be able to pick out anyone’s face or name. But this is what we did at the end of the night.

Last year our oldest sons teacher and a parent, created an amazing piece of artwork that was each students self made silhouette sculpted with wire, mounted on a frame. When we walked into the auction, Bonnie said “we are going home with that, and I immediately logged onto my chase app to say goodbye to whatever was in my bank account. We had a pesky parent try to outbid us on it and we went home with the art and left the school $3,700. Tonight we were bidding on a night for the school principal to come over and watch the kids so we could have a date night. I would have loved that, but noticed one parents bid kept outbidding ours. So I am glad to announce that I was able to push that parent into winning that auction to the tune of $4,000. Congrats Catherine. Of course our principal watching kids for a date night would be priceless.

Our teachers lounge does need updating so I have decided to fully fund a project of my own. I have pledged to fund an installation of an exercise pole inside the teachers lounge. It would make a great addition to help spark camaraderie, and help people stay in shape. Maybe even a great conversation starter as well.

It’s an exercise pole, it’s very classy. *

Thank God it’s Friday. We woke up late this morning and Bonnie checked her phone and saw a bunch of alerts. There was no school today. Oddly today is Teacher Appreciation Day, you’d think there would be school. As a substitute teacher, it makes perfect sense to have no school today.

I still worked for a while, and the kids did some chores. My daughter got a hold of my phone and took a thousand photos of a teddy bear.

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I’ve been a little stir crazy and I got to go to the grocery store and shop. It was great getting out of the house. I can’t remember the last time I left The house on my own.

We had Carl’s Jr. for dinner and enjoyed the ice cream pizza at dinner. For a brief 5 minutes, child 3, and child 4 were getting a long very well. They are usually at each other’s throats.

I just realized that child’s 3 and 4 in my house growing up couldn’t stand each other also. My older sister who is the third child and myself hated each other growing up. She’s amazing now, and my kids love her, and my child’s 1st grade teacher loves her because she showed the class over zoom, her farm with cows and goats and alpacas (thanks to me). My kids will randomly talk about how amazing she is, and I always have to point out, she wasn’t always like that! She’s great now though and I’m hoping my 3rd and 4th children gets along very well later in life.

We have completed more than 2/3 of this adventure. I look back on Day 1 and what I felt when my head hit the pillow after traveling with hundreds of pounds of luggage and 4 children 1700 miles by plane. I’m a little sad it’s gone by so fast, and worried we won’t see much else before our time ends here.

We talked about the next place we plan to spend her sabbatical, we were hoping to live in Ireland for her next six month sabbatical (in 7 years). The way things have gone with this pandemic, I think we may come back to Mexico. Maybe for a couple months and then relocate to Ireland for the remainder. I don’t know just yet, but that’s what I’d prefer.

The kids had a good school day and I was productive at the office. Bonnie showed the kids how we used to wrap them up to put them to sleep at night and they had fun trying to do that to each other.

I made quesadilla for dinner. After dinner we let the kids watch Look Who’s Talking Too. I cooked the remaining cookie dough in a pizza pan, when it cooled, Bonnie and the kids put ice cream on it and other treats to make their own ice cream cookie pizza. They’ll have that tomorrow night for dessert.

Bleh. SSDD. If you read Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, you’ll understand the acronym.