Today our second oldest child wanted to make colorful pancakes, so we blew off the morning video school instruction and Bonnie mixed a bunch of pancake batter into ziplock bags with different food coloring.
The kids loved it, and it was a nice break from the monotony of video school, assigned homework, and uploading work into the teachers google account.
Our youngest especially loved it and all the kids had great attitudes when they saw their pancakes weren’t going to look perfect.
One of the pancakes made for me looked a lot like the Covid 19 virus under a microscope.
The state we are living in has a public health website that updates the pandemic numbers more than once a day. Sadly, the website said schools will be closed until June 1. We are going to drastically change our philosophy on schooling the rest of the time we are here. The curve hasn’t flattened yet in Mexico, it absolutely has in the state we are in, but not nationally. I think we will take a driving tour of the city tomorrow to get the kids out of the house. Can’t believe we are almost at 100 days here. *
On Sunday, while we were at church, the parents in our third child’s first grade class voted to have the first graders class room video instruction between 5pm to 630pm. We would not have voted on that, and if we had made the vote, we still would have lost.
All day, from 9am to 630 Bonnie is doing some form of school. The WhatsApp app blows up all day long with literally hundreds of messages per day just in the first grade class alone, and nearly a hundred in the other classes as well. We would just throw our hands in the air and dismiss it all if one of the reasons for this trip wasn’t to help the kids become more fluent. We do have some breaks during the day, but it’s still very tiring. Not only do the kids have assigned work, but when they finish it, it needs to be scanned and uploaded to the corresponding teachers google classroom. Today was exhausting, and below you will see a photo of the kids classroom schedules we put up on the wall.
Our kids aren’t too thrilled with this either. They have breaks through the day, but we can tell they are wearing thin and this is only the first day back at school. They plan on reopening school May 1, but I’m skeptical that’s going to happen.
In the morning I had a 90 minute “town hall” type video chat with the entire probate bar. The two judges were the only ones talking about how we are going to do court on a very limited basis and how we will be handling video appearances. I’m still planning on flying back in May and June. We need to take things home and I need to bring some items back.
Below are photos of our children who aren’t pleased with school work today.
I think if we could just get our kids to zoom chat with other kids and have them only speak Spanish, I’d do my beat to convince Bonnie to totally ignore the “requirements” this private school is having on us.
Our youngest woke me up just now (4am our time) and said he needed a drink of water. I got it for him and he drank it and then walked to Bonnie’s side of the bed and hugged her.
When I have broken sleep I always get up and check on the kids, just a habit of mine. Our oldest has been caught red handed playing on the chrome book, which is totally against the rules. Now we have to lock up the chrome books every night.
Today is Sunday. We had a great breakfast in the morning. The store across the street makes beans and rice and we cooked the beans in a pan and then mashed them. The kids can’t get enough of that.
Bonnie made chiliquiles, fried eggs, rice, beans and fried tortillas. I will not be coming home having lost weight.
When breakfast was over we went upstairs for church. Church here streams at 11am our time and church in Castro Valley streams online thirty minutes after the first service ends.
For lunch we had the left overs from Carl’s Jr. Our oldest braided her hair and then took it out. She’s getting prettier every day, and I’ve already told her that I don’t like her future husband. I love my future daughters in laws, they are saints.
This afternoon Bonnie spent hours trying to figure out the kids online school schedule. Of course it isn’t simple, it’s exactly what an LSAT word problem is. I did terrible in the LSAT, and was of no help to her.
I made spaghetti for the kids. They eat it like it’s candy. Our youngest had a lot to eat, he wanted me to take photos of him.
The kids clean up every meal and whoever (and they aren’t saying who) put the food away, put the perishable food in the pantry. Luckily I got to the food in time.
This morning we ate pancakes and bacon. We cleaned the house, did a few loads of laundry and we let the kids watch too many movies.
After lunch I may have fallen asleep for an hour. I have not been sleeping well, it’s been a little stressful over here being cooped up. I think about a scene from the tv show Parks and Rec.
When I woke up from my nap, we went on a walk. The city is full of tunnels and walk ways, the first few photos are of us at a tunnel pedestrians use to avoid crossing the highway.
Further up the road you could see a shrine on the top of the hill that I have no clue how to get to.
A few hundred feet past the tunnels above is a huge building with supports, built in the 16th century. It once held an enormous water wheel that connected to a river. It was built before our country was founded. It’s amazing that there are buildings all over the place this old and this unprotected.
The city we live in has various neighborhoods, the neighborhood where we live is named from this enormous building. Translated from Spanish it literally means “high Ferris wheel”.
Here is a photo of the historical plaque that explains what it means. I apologize for writing my tag on it beforehand, I should have put it on after I took the photo.
We walked a little further and took photos of this building.
We walked a few more feet and I took a photo of the family with a mining statue in the middle of a turn about. **
Today was a really fun day. The kids did home school in the morning while I worked for a few hours. I usually have a documentary on or a tv show I’ve seen before in the back ground playing. Writing wills and trusts isn’t criminal defense work, it can be… boring. Today my documentary of the day was called Paradise Lost. If you ever get the chance to watch it, DONT!!
The premise alone is haunting, the first two minutes of the film you see the crime scene video tape that includes all the victims totally uncensored, where they were found. The only highlight was seeing my old college professor testifying as an expert at the trial.
I had to turn it off, as a former criminal defense attorney, I have seen and consulted on hundreds of crime scene photos, and I have seen photos that would make a normal person throw up. But now that I’m a dad, I just do t have the stomach to see those things any more. I went downstairs to the cabin where the kids were and we discussed the rest of our day in a family meeting.
Throughout the week, we require the kids to do certain chores, and if they do them, they get a check mark on a big dry erase board that tracks their check marks through the week. This last week our second child was the only one who made enough check marks to have a vote. He hates Harry Potter, and even though we ended it on a huge cliffhanger (Snape killed Dumbledore) he decided to watch Trolls World Tour. So we rented that on google play and drove to Carl’s Jr. to get take out.
After dinner, our kids played with a keyboard we bought a few weeks ago and stumbled upon one of the songs from The Nutcracker. So all four decided to create their own type of Nutcracker play for me and Bonnie. See the video below of their explanation of what it will be.
After the play, we went upstairs and watched the Trolls movie. I tried to stay awake but I just couldn’t, I fell asleep before the ending of the first song. Luckily most of the kids forgot I was asleep and used our bed as if they were competing in the Olympic trampoline event. They eventually went to bed and I just turned the Roomba on. Good night.
Today was a great day. Kids home schooled for a while. I got a lot of work done. We did not watch Harry Potter because we are a little tired of watching so much tv. But lo and behold, here are my two youngest kids with Death Eater tattoos on their left forearms.
What it’s supposed to look like is this.
Our third child was very proud of a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich he made himself for breakfast, and he wanted me to take a photo of it.
I made dinner, salmon, and asparagus. Our kids favorite vegetable is asparagus, they eat it like its candy. Consequently, I instituted a new rule for my three boys, they need to sit when they go to the bathroom. Their aim is awful. After dinner I went to the store and bought some cans of chi earth coke, and took the panoramic photo from the viewpoint of stepping out of our front door.
I also took a photo of the mountains in the distance.
We took the time to clean out the kids rooms and the amount of garbage they collect makes me think they are all hoarders. I’m tempted to make them watch a few episodes of the show. Bonnie ended up reading to the kids upstairs and I unleashed the Roomba while the kids got ready for bed.
Our youngest kept making excuses to go downstairs, what he wanted to do is play with the Roomba and after the eighth or ninth time I said no, and I video’d our interaction.
We spent all day today lounging around. In the morning, Bonnie showed me a video of a reporter explaining that the schools will be shut down for the remainder of the school year in the state we are living in. We aren’t surprised that they made that decision. It’s a little frustrating that we are going to be sheltering in place in this home for the remainder of this trip.
We are getting daily e mails from the embassy and or State Dept that really say nothing. Mexico has been doing wide range testing since February, and the numbers are very small. I hate blogging about this virus instead of our adventures. Of which there have been none for the last four weeks. If travel restrictions are loosened, we plan to be constantly traveling until we fly home.
We watched the Half Blood Prince today. The kids did NOT like this movie, they didn’t enjoy seeing Dumbledore get killed. I enjoyed the surprise on their faces as it happened. After the movie ended, I told them we have to now wait two years before watching the next film. So we will he watching the next film sometime tomorrow.
The youngest child drew a death eater tattoo on his left forearm in hopes to join Voldemort’s team. Makes sense.
This week and last week is the kids spring break from school. Of course they don’t go back to school until May, but still, we are trying to homeschool them. Bonnie is doing a great job trying to keep a schedule going.
The courts are expecting to be closed until June, I was planning to fly back in May, because Mexico is loosening their travel restrictions after April 30. They might be allowing video conferencing for court, which is going to be terrible for me since my most formal outfit is a long sleeve t shirt with Darth Vader’s mask decorated with Aztec markings.
The kids did an art project after lunch. It was a family tree, and it was hilarious seeing them try to understand both my side and Bonnie’s side of the family. It’s funny to see their reactions when I tell them that I became an uncle at age 12. They also ask about how many kids my sisters have and a couple of my sisters have three kids. My oldest sister has four kids, and we have four kids. It’s always hilarious to me because she had the terrible job of babysitting me as I was growing up, and she always would say to me “I’m never having kids” because of something I did.
Lately the kids have been using the phrase “this is the worst day of my life” over trivial matters. After hearing it so many times, I broke and told one of the kids after they complained about eating lunch “me making you eat your lunch is the worst day of your life? My worst day was the day my mom died in front of me a few days before getting my letter of acceptance to my dream school. Not such a bad day you’re having after all!” I said that to my oldest a year ago over some trivial nonsense she was inconsolable about and she immediately started crying, and was sad the rest of the day. I probably shouldn’t bring that out again for a few more years or it might lose its potency. 😀
I happened to tell my kids that we are more than half way done with this trip, and the two oldest kids did not take it well. My son brought out all the notes his classmates wrote him and has been really down. He misses his friends so terribly, I offered to have him FaceTime or zoom them, but like me, he’s very shy. He just wants to be home and with his friends. My oldest does too. I won’t be sharing milestones of how much longer we have before we move back, until we pass through airport security.
Today is our youngest nieces birthday. She is 3 years old, and we had a zoom birthday party for her. It was nice seeing Bonnie’s family but I was trying without success to keep our two younger kids from screaming into the computer. I ended up giving up and went downstairs to clean up and do laundry.
Our celebratory brownie/cookie dish to celebrate our niece’s 3rd birthday.
Just woke up to rustling outside our window. The noise was coming from the street. There is a cow eating some brush just below our balcony. What I can only describe as creeks, or maybe drainage ditches, are where the wild cows of this city live. They are starting to pass by us every night around midnight.
Today we are officially half way done with our trip. I know, the blog is called six months abroad, we always planned to fly back on Day 178. As much as I’d love to be home right now, I’m actually kinda sad that we are half way done.
For the last three weeks, we have sheltered in place with our kids. It has been very challenging, especially since we are sheltering in place in a foreign country. The kids have had pretty good spirits about it, and I am sure I’m going to miss them when they go back to school in a couple weeks.
To pass the time, we have been having a lot of dance parties, and I let the kids watch music videos on YouTube. They love Michael Jackson music videos and our oldest is determined to learn the moonwalk. She was frustrated with not mastering it immediately and I sat her down and told her how long it took me to learn how to juggle a soccer ball. My mom called it my stupid human trick, a nod to David Letterman. I told her that I would juggle a soccer ball after school for hours every day, and I’d juggle all day during the summer, I was obsessed and it sadly didn’t get me anywhere save for kids calling me a show off, 😫.
She ended up watching videos about how to moonwalk and the boys joined in for a solid 90 seconds.
The kids wrote nice messages in chalk in front of our house, did some reading and journaling and then we went upstairs to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Then we sent them to bed. 😀**
Our Family Adventure 