Another day we spent at home.While working in my office, I felt a small splash on me and looked up. The ceiling is leaking. I’m guessing it’s from a leaky pipe. Thankful that I’m only renting.
Bonnie said the kids did great at school. We ordered out from a restaurant we had been wanting to visit for a while save for the pandemic. Bonnie had the brilliant idea to drive the car out of the garage and use the garage for recess.
The older kids played wall ball while our youngest conducted a personal training session with us. Eventually someone turned the hose on, in the garage and we had to leave. But after that the younger two children helped me make chocolate chip cookies.
We watched Look Who’s Talking after dinner, and the kids loved it. I really hope we can travel in a couple weeks. There is talk that they are just going to cancel the remainder of the school year which makes little sense. The city we are in doesn’t have any confirmed cases anymore, we had 10 and 8 recovered, 2 died. They update the tracking website daily. I really hope the kids can go back to school at least for a few weeks.
At the end of the night, our youngest spun himself around many times and claimed that he can’t get dizzy. When we shut the movie off and had them go to bed, he walked up to me with no color in his face and said “please don’t spin me”.
Today is Monday, we woke up earlier today to start the kids with their school work sooner. Bonnie made french toast, and I skipped breakfast like I have for the past few years. It’s too early to eat at 7am for me. I can’t really eat until 9am or 10am. When Bonnie lived in Spain back in college, the Spanish people didn’t eat much in the morning either, they would use the phrase that translates into English “my stomach isn’t open yet.”
After school, Bonnie took the kids to a local park. I stayed back to do work, I am appearing in court two times this week, the first will most likely be dropped as something we call a “pregrant” meaning all paperwork and notices are complete and the judge will grant my request. The other case I need to appear on, because a continuance is needed. When I felt like I could do all I could do at work, I Ubered to the park my family was at.
By the time I got there, the kids were pretty much done with playing. They found a cluster of assassin bugs on a bush. Thanks to reddit’s page “whatisthisbug” I was able to figure out they are assassin bugs and not a beetle or a cockroach.
We drove around after the park, and looked for a place for Chinese takeout. Bonnie parked and walked to a takeout place, and I looked back to talk to my third child and was awestruck at the view outside his window. There are beautiful churches like this all over this city.
Since the take out place was closed, we decided to take the kids to Pollo Feliz, again. Our youngest fell asleep while in the car, and he has never, EVER, woken up in a good mood. We pulled into the parking lot and he woke up and lit up, smiled a huge smile and said “YAAAAAAYYYY!” That was a first, we ate roughly the same food the last time we were there. The only thing different was I ordered a flan for dessert, Bonnie had cheesecake, and they were both terrible.
Happy Mother’s Day. Today I woke up and made my wife her favorite breakfast, eggs Benedict. Making hollandaise sauce wasn’t as hard as it was before. I still find it disgusting.
After breakfast, we hung out and played with the kids most of the day. After dinner we went on a very nice walk in the hills where we live. We walked to the top of the hill and saw downtown. It was a great walk, despite our kids complaining the entire time.
The gifts we gave Bonnie the typical Mother’s Day gifts. Our oldest though stole the show. All week she has been working on a book for her mom.
She wrote a fairy tale about how her mom “Mrs. Purple” met and fell in love with “George Blue”. She dedicated the book to her mom and her maternal grandmother. It was a very long and cute story. She put a lot of effort in to this.
In the distance, we could see Templo de Valenciana on the top of a hill. See the below photos.*
Today is our youngest child’s birthday. He turns 5 years old today. He has been talking about his birthday for the past few weeks. Sadly we had to remind him that we could not go to the water park today. We told him every day for the last couple weeks, but it didn’t sink in until today.
We scheduled 4 zoom birthday parties today. The first was with my side of the family. We had pancakes during that party. Multicolored.
Between that party and the next one, we went to Applebee’s and had lunch. Then sped home and made it back within a minute. The second party was with his preschool class here in Mexico. We ate cookies for that party.
An hour after that party, we had a party with friends from home. It was nice to see those friends. After that we drove to a place called Pollo Feliz. The restaurant was empty and the kids enjoyed an inside playground and a children’s theatre. They still wore masks and washed their hands constantly, and I squirted rubbing alcohol mixture in their hands as well. The kids loved that place, our next birthday is our oldest son. He wants to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. Hopefully they relax the shelter in place by then.
Posing with his birthday gift, the bandage is covering his two stitches he got at the hospital early this morning around 130am.
Today is Friday. It rained most of the day. I’ll post a video of it at the end. For lunch my oldest son ate pickles right out of the jar. And Bonnie took most of the kids for a walk in the rain to pick up a cake for our youngest birthday on Day 115.
This made me dry heave.
After their walk, the kids that went with Bonnie got back and quickly got out of their wet clothes and into their dry bath robes and all cuddled in one of their beds to stay warm.
After dinner, the kids watched a terrible cartoon movie while I made cookies downstairs. Bonnie played monopoly with them. The night would not be complete unless we had some drama. And a minute before we were about to send the kids to bed, our youngest slipped and fell on his chin.
When it was obvious to the other kids that their youngest brother needed stitches, they mobilized and helped out socks and shoes on him, and a jacket. They were really worried, and our oldest was crying because she knew what he was about to go through. As I strapped him in to the car seat he reassured me that he’d be ok.
We stayed in all day today. Bonnie went on a couple errands in the morning, and I supervised my children going on google classroom to participate in their classes. Now picture me trying to connect my children into Spanish speaking classrooms under google passwords I was ignorant of, while at the same time, policing the children from paying attention to their classes. If you pictured me failing miserably, that’s hurtful, and 100% correct.
School ended, we had lunch, and I did a few loads of laundry. Bonnie and I were exhausted and decided to let the kids watch a couple movies. We watched Twins, and Kindergarten Cop. Bonnie folded the laundry I washed, while I may have fallen asleep during one of the movies. For dinner we had cold cuts and cheese, and popcorn. I made chocolate chip cookies from the bucket of cookie dough. I tried teaching my oldest how to make cookies, she was not interested. I’ll eventually teach my boys how to bake.
After the last movie ended, we put the kids in bed. Child 1 and 3 are rooming together this month, because Child 4’s birthday month is this month. We give them their choice on whether they want to have a room to themselves or have a sibling to room with them, and child 4 chose child 2. I wasn’t surprised at that.
I want child 3 to talk to me constantly. With his missing teeth, he has a lisp and hasn’t caught on that’s why I’m usually giggling when he talks to me.
In a few weeks I’m traveling back to California to bring things back home to alleviate the final transition home. I’m also having to bring back some items. We have dishes that we broke here in Mexico, and luckily I found replacements that I shipped home. I will be also buying some more luggage. On the way home in July, I purchases two checked baggages per person on the way home, = 12 checked bags, and 2 carry ons per person, and a personal item.
The transition here to Mexico went amazingly, we attribute this to literally every person we encountered, the airport security, Mexican immigration workers, flight attendants, even the passengers were so warm. The people really love and adore children, so I imagine when they see a family of white people struggling with four kids, they seem to adore us. I’m actually writing this on Day 114. I should get back to work, hope you have a good day. *
Today the kids learned about the battle of Puebla, unlike America who celebrates Cinco de Mayo, they really don’t care too much about it here. The kids were especially challenging today with school, but I am happy to report we still have four children.
Lately these blog posts have been about what we ate during the day and I won’t bore you with any of that. Our third child for the second day in a row lost another tooth. I promise he is not on meth, he’s just 7. He has lost four teeth over the course of the last three weeks.
Bonnie uploaded two weeks of the kids homework to their google classroom. Can you guess how long it took? If you guessed two and a half hours, you’d be correct.
I made a couple dozen chocolate chip cookies from the bucket of cookie dough. I’m very critical of my baking, and the elevation here fouls it up half of the time, the other half of the time is translating Spanish metric measurements into America imperial. I can safely say that tonight I baked perfect cookies. This Saturday is our youngest child’s 5th birthday.
If you know him and would like to record a video message, that would be great. If you don’t have my private email address, feel free to comment down below and I’ll e mail you from the email address I get from you. Good nite all.
Today Bonnie did some schooling with the kids while I worked almost all day. I am starting to miss appearing in court almost.
Our oldest son is a picky eater but he loves Indian food. So we tried very hard to make tandoori chicken and tiki masala sauce. They don’t have the right ingredients at the store so we tried our best, but it just wasn’t able to compare to a restaurant in Alameda called India Palace. Our kids lately have been saying which restaurant and foods they are really missing. Our oldest wants to go to La Penca Azul (American Mexican food). Our second child wants either pho, or Indian food, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Our third child is a man after my own heart, he has been craving a breakfast jack from Jack in the Box for the last 111 days, and our fourth child wants Olive Garden.
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I don’t know if that’s nerves or if I’m having cabin fever. I am grateful for Netflix and google play. I’ve been watching through the tv show Narcos: Mexico and its fascinating. I’ve gotten a lot of inquiries about the dog and I’ll let you all know that the dog was quite old. It looked as though it had just given birth within the last few weeks. The back legs did not work and that’s why the store owner thinks it got hit by a car. People don’t own dogs here like they do in America, it’s rare to see people walking a dog in public. This was one of the countless strays that run wild in the streets all day long. Below are photos of the culmination of over 4 hours of work Bonnie put in trying to get our second oldest child to eat.
During lunch, our third child lost another tooth. And what’s hilarious is he doesn’t know if he dropped it, or are it. He’s our best eater of the fourth children by a mile, and I love his smile more than anything. He looks like a small hockey player. His other front tooth is very loose as well, so within the next couple days he’ll lose his fourth tooth since hers been here in Mexico.
To pass the time, the boys designed their own t shirts as you can see above what our third child is wearing. Here is a photo of what our fourth child designed with the help of his oldest brother.
Today we took another field trip. It wasn’t as thrilling as the field trip we took to the city center. We were planning to go to a neighboring town, San Miguel de Allende. Instead, we drove to Valenciana. Valenciana is a residential district of the city we are living in.
Looking at the silver mine in Valenciana.
It is at the top of a hill. We had to drive through a poorer neighborhood to get there, it was reminiscent of driving through Oakland, to get to Piedmont. Valenciana is beautiful, and it comes out of nowhere. Bonnie says all the vendors has closed shop and was a ghost town. It’s sad, we went to a small store to buy candy for the kids, the kids chose potato chips and candy, the price ended up being 40 pesos, essentially a little over two dollars, the man was looking for change, and I just told him to keep it. I can’t imagine the worry those store owners go through every day, wondering where the next money is going to come from. Mexico doesn’t have the infrastructure we have in America. I doubt they have any type of bail out for these small business owners. I really doubt my extra 60 pesos is really going to help, but I will keep those people in my prayers. I will say, when this shelter is lifted, I plan to spend serious amounts of money on these vendors before we move back.
The next few photos are from our journey to Valenciana. The mine has a museum, but it is closed, we did take some photos from the outside. It’s still a working mine, they are mining silver. We also visited a church, I believe it’s called Templo de Valenciana. But I might be wrong.
The dog was taken out of the ravine by the police. We were not the only people calling them about it. Sadly, the dog did not survive, the store owner across the street told me. It’s sad, we did everything we could, one of the urgent care veterinarians told us to bring the dog into our home and try to care for it, then call us. If I had been able to bring the dog from the ravine to our house, it probably would not have survived the trip. I would have never brought an animal into our house here looking the way it looked.
The night ended with a thunder storm, we have had thunder storms almost every day this week. It was nice sitting on the couch upstairs watching the lightning flash. I was going to go to sleep, then realized I had to write this blog.
We have less than 70 days left of this adventure. I’m excited to get back home, I wish we were able to travel within the country more. If they lift the shelter in place in June, we will be traveling the remainder of our adventure. I think I’m going to try to find a company to turn this blog into a book. Now that I’ve been militant about blogging every day, I don’t think I’m going to stop blogging when we move back. I will end this blog a week or so after we move back, so I can add more information about our trip. I’ve tried to be careful not to say exactly where we are, and who we are. Between now and the end of this, I will try to figure out what I’l be blogging about when this is over.
I’m leaning towards writing a blog that is totally private, and only let my children read it when I get to a certain age. We will see.
Today we made smoothies for breakfast. We had leftovers for lunch, and leftovers for dinner. I think I blog about food because it’s the most interesting part of our day. Aside from that, there has been some drama.
Yesterday we heard what sounded like a dog whimpering all evening and night. The whimpering went on all morning until we could spot the animal that was in distress. It is a little dog that is at the bottom of the ravine behind our house. I decided to hike down there with some dog food and water in order to feed it. The dog appeared to not be able to move its two back legs.
It is not easy getting back there, I have to peel chain link fence away and slide through broken glass and cockroaches. Not my two favorite things in the world. When I got down there, the dog did not take her eyes off me. She didn’t wag her tail, she just stares me down. I tried to get close enough with the small plastic trays for it to drag itself to drink and eat, but still far enough away that it couldn’t lunge at me or bite me. After I poured it water and food, I took some photos of it and the surrounding area and hiked back. It wasn’t until I got back into our house that it started drinking the water I poured for it. I don’t think it ever tried the dry dog food I left for it.
After lunch, we thought it passed away after a few minutes of crying. It laid in the same position for at least two hours, and was silent. Then it started whimpering again while we were watching a movie with the kids. Bonnie called all sorts of police and fire and animal control. The police said they would be willing to come to our house for us to file a report, the fire dept told us to call animal control, and animal control said to call the fire dept. I can’t haul this dog out of there because I don’t know what kind of diseases it might have. So now we most likely will be hearing this dog slowly die for the next few days. I pray the animal goes quickly and isn’t in any pain. I imagine if the police did show, they would probably put it out of its misery.
Before we went to bed, Bonnie and I got into a fight about the amount of chocolate chip cookie dough I make. She says that I make too much, and I think she’s out of her mind. *
I make cookie dough by the bucket. Of course our refrigerator is very small and I had to rearrange items to make it fit. As I was cleaning out the fridge, a bunch of salsa exploded all over my legs. My wife exclaimed “praise Jesus, God is real”. The cookie dough fit in the fridge no problem by the way.
Our Family Adventure 