We celebrated Easter today. We stayed up very late and woke up very early. Growing up, my parents would get us Easter baskets and we would wake up with a jelly bean trail from our bed Tom our basket. So we have been doing that with our kids. We couldn’t find jelly beans here and with the shelter in place, didn’t feel like driving all over to find them. So we used chocolate eggs.

The kids woke up at 6am and saw chocolate eggs all over the stairs, so we woke up. I was exhausted most of the day.

After the kids opened their Easter “bags” and ate way too much candy, we made pancakes and bacon, no eggs since we are going to be eating a lot of eggs these next few days. When breakfast was over we went to church.

We logged onto Facebook for our church here in Mexico and the kids made a craft that Bonnie organized. Then right after church here, we logged onto our home church in Castro Valley and watched church there. We then broke out into discussion groups using zoom and were in a group of three other people, the former senior pastor who married us, a woman we had t met yet, and our close friends from home. It was really nice reconnecting with them and telling them what we need prayer for here in Mexico.

My children do not own a “Go fish” card game, so they made their own and I played that with our oldest.

Our lunch and dinner entrees had some kind of symbolism with the death and resurrection of Jesus. While lunch was being eaten, I was failing miserably with the puff pastry I made. The plan was to wrap marshmallows with the puff pastry and bake it to symbolize the empty tomb when the marshmallow melts into the pastry. But the pastry was too warm as it entered the oven and it just melted. 😡

Bonnie organized the Easter egg hunt and I am hoping they found all the eggs.

We got to bed at a decent hour and were sleeping great. Then a loud noise that shook our house woke me and Bonnie up. It was a cow mooing. Thirty minutes before I had some broken sleep and looked outside to see a bull a cow and a calf walking up our street.

Today we swept and mopped the entire house. The kids had a pretty good attitude about it all. The mop water wasn’t as dirty as it was a week ago.

We had pop tarts for breakfast, and after cleaning we had Bonnie’s favorite comfort food. Tomato soup and tuna sandwiches. I did not grow up on tomato soup, so it’s a taste I just am not accustomed to. But it tasted fine to me, and the tuna sandwiches were mediocre at best. I made them.

Bonnie and I have trained the children to clean up after meals, including putting food away, cleaning and drying dishes. Putting the dishes away, clearing the table and sweeping under the table. It only takes the four kids ninety minutes to two hours to do this each meal. We almost never raise our voices.

As tradition, we (Bonnie) dyed Easter eggs with the kids. In her infinite wisdom she moved all the dining room chairs far from the kids splash zones.

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The kids enjoyed dying the eggs, I dyed two eggs, I put one in blue and one in black dye. That’s right, we had black dye. I think I only did this so when my kids asked where my eggs were, I’d play the song “Blue on Black”. After a while they got tired of hearing that song. I played it over and over. I told the kids that I was planning to keep the egg in the black dye all day, and they thought that was the funniest idea. Behold, the black egg.

We started doing laundry upstairs and let the kids watch Harry Potter 4, my favorite. I like Voldemort, and this is the one he comes back in. Bonnie folded while I did dishes, during dinner, the kids created their own type of “go fish” game and played it.

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After dinner the kids finished the movie and I made chocolate dipped strawberries.

After the movie ended, we brought the kids downstairs to do a little traditional Jesus story and his miracles. We set aside 2 fish and 5 crackers and tell them about the miracle with the fish and bread. We leave out water and tell them about Jesus’ first miracle, and we then maim gummy bears eyes and ears, and legs and tell the kids about Jesus healing the blind, the deaf, and the paralyzed. The next morning they wake up and the water is grape juice, the platter is overfilled with fish and crackers and the gummy bears are healed. They know we do this, but they get excited. Tomorrow is Easter, some refer to it as Resurrection Day. This is the day we commemorate Jesus rising from the dead. It’s the most important day in Christendom. We have a lot of friends who aren’t Christians and we don’t bash it over peoples heads, we let our actions do the talking. It’s great if you’re only seeing my wife’s actions. 😀. I’m off to go prepare for tomorrow. Good night.

Happy Good Friday all. That’s it. I’m tired.

Good night. Here’s a picture of a couple steaks I cooked tonight.

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Today we started getting ready for Easter this Sunday. Bonnie brought a small table from the cabin for us to eat around for our own Last Supper we celebrated today. I made puff pastry for the very first time. I plan to make a lot of baked goods on Sunday. Since this is the first time I’ve ever made puff pastry, I don’t have a lot of faith that it will turn out good.

During lunch, one of the kids pressed the “clean” function on the Roomba. I control it with my phone, so I told it to go back to its home while simultaneously pressing the docking button. Now the kids think my voice can control it. I told the kids that I have trained the roomba to attack them if they go near it. The next photos were my youngest child’s response.

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After lunch, I made some steaks, and tortillas while Bonnie got olives, beans, and nuts for our own “last supper”. We drank wine and grape juice and had a little feast while sitting on the ground.

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After dinner we got the kids ready for bed.

Today was the same as the other days. While Bonnie was home schooling the kids downstairs in the “cabin” I set up the Roomba. It did a decent job in the afternoon. Tonight is the real test to see if it wakes the kids up when it’s set to go off at 3am, 1am your time.

We did our prayer time today and it was really sweet. Our second child keeps a prayer journal where he writes down things he wants to pray for. He is very very sweet and his theology is spot on. I’d credit myself and Bonnie with that but to be truthful I have to credit the amazing pastoral staff at our church.

After “school”, Bonnie took the kids to the park to play soccer while I shopped for some things at the store. Afterwards, I walked back to the park and we went home. It was a very beautiful walk during a very warm part of the day.

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Our children have been asking to go out to a sushi place since we got here. They don’t understand geography, so when I said that “we live in a landlocked state and it’s probably a bad idea to eat raw seafood” they just get a blank look on their faces. So Bonnie bought the ingredients herself and the items needed. The sushi that she made tasted good and looked good. The sushi I made legally should not be referred to as sushi.

I didn’t photograph the sushi I made. We made California rolls because that is our kids’ favorite sushi roll. After dinner I also made brownies. 😀

Today while Bonnie homeschooled the kids, I walked up the hill to get my hair cut. The downtown area was vacant and not many businesses were open. Every other corner has something called a papeleria (spelling is probably wrong) it’s basically a place to buy paper and other office supplies. All of those were closed. It was a little shocking to see the area so desolate.

Luckily for me the barber was open. I grew up going to Sal’s barber shop on Bockman Road in San Lorenzo. It was right next door to Hong Kong restaurant. Sal was an older Italian man who would commonly eat food while he cut hair. I vividly remember his scissors being dull because it felt like he pulled my hair. I also remember Sal knowing my dad pretty well (most everywhere I went that was the case). If Sal didn’t cut my hair, my dad cut it using our dogs fur clippers. And when that didn’t happen, my second oldest sister experimented cutting my hair before she started beauty school.

Consequently after she “cut” my hair, I had to go to get it fixed. She begged me not to tell the cosmetologists at the salon that she cut it and I did not tell them. Needless to say, I needed a haircut and I’ve had a spectrum of hair cuts from a huge swath of people. So what could go wrong.

Well I don’t speak Spanish for starters. The barber spoke very fast, and it was the best hair cut I have ever gotten.

Luckily the beard is coming in. I shaved my mustache last week in the dark and of course didn’t notice that my mustache was almost gone the next morning. I looked too Amish and so I finished the job. My children hated it immediately and told me constantly that I should never shave my beard again. Point taken a$$@:!!:s.

After the haircut I had some zoom meetings and then ubered to the nearest Costco for some things. The Costco was only letting one person in per Costco card. They were not allowing children and they were spraying your hands with disinfectant as I walked in. Bonnie was very clear with me to not buy a brownie mix while I was there. I followed her admonition and bought two, just to spite her.

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We own two unopened boxes of this brownie mix and one barely used box. I also bought a roomba because my oldest son was terrified of our roomba when he was little. It was abject terror, and I’ll be doing a science experiment tomorrow night.

After we unloaded from Costco, we took the kids downstairs and colored outside on the kitchen table. It was really nice and relaxing during those 10-15 minutes.

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Then for dinner Bonnie made our third child’s favorite food, breakfast jacks. He won’t shut his mouth about why México doesn’t have any Jack in the Boxes. He was in heaven, but despite his being 7, he still could tell that she didn’t fry the ham first. Maybe he will be a chef. After dinner, our third child removed his second tooth so maybe the tooth fairy will make a house call tonight.

Today I’m pretty sure was Monday. Kids he homeschool while I did a bunch of Zoom meetings. It’s kind of helpful. I’ve picked up some clients these past few days and I’m not hiding the fact that I’m in another country, I did tell them we would not be meeting face to face during the shelter in place and only meeting my notary when he is available. It’s as if I never left Alameda.

The kids were a bit of a handful during their homeschooling and I had to put the fear of God into them when I was delivering their snack. They settled down after that.

Bonnie went to the grocery store at 4pm. I stayed in and chased the kids around. The grocery stores here now will not let kids into their store and only allows one person per family to come in. Bonnie got home at 7, and we unloaded the groceries by 8:45pm, after we disinfected them all.

Tomorrow I Uber to Costco to do some shopping. Hope you are all safe. Please keep the police here in your prayers. With this virus going around, in the state we are in, the police are getting killed every day (I have to mention that they are being killed over one hundred to two hundred miles away). We are very much safe here. It’s hard to explain but with the downturn in the economy, the cartel is losing money and the police are cracking down on them a lot more. It’s a bad equation that is leading to more violence against police. Here is a photo of the police driving by our house, they do NOT screw around here. The officer standing has an M16 cradled in his arms as they drive through the streets here.

Today is Palm Sunday. We celebrated by eating bacon and eggs, with blueberry eggo waffles. Afterwards we watched church on our computer. The first service was the church down the street. The second service we watched was from our home church in Castro Valley.

After breakfast we put a couple loads of laundry away. This took a very long time, and by the time it was done, we had lunch. Pork and steak fajitas, tortillas, and grilled peppers. We are slowly watching the Harry Potter series and the two youngest decided to use markers on their face to look like Harry Potter.

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Bonnie made mole from scratch for dinner. We had chicken, rice, broccoli and mole sauce. It was better than I remember. The idea of chocolate mixed with a savory sauce just doesn’t make any sense to me, but I actually liked it.

I forgot to post the photo of Caleb last night after he fell asleep on our bed.

As bourgeois as this sounds, our housekeeper has not been to our house for three weeks. She would come twice a week and work for hours. We have neglected the house long enough, so we devoted today to cleaning the house. We swept and mopped every room. We cleaned out each child’s room, did a few loads of laundry. Sterilized every inch of all three bathrooms. Windexed all glass and mirrors. It was a lot of work, and the kids didn’t appreciate my rendition of “It’s a Hard Knocks Life”.

I had the middles (child 2, and child 3) and Bonnie had the bookends (child 1, and child 4). We threw away a lot of trash, found a large amount of “missing” toys. Overall it was a great day. We had a good breakfast and homemade chicken soup for lunch.

Bonnie and I were very pleased with the results, and with their attitude during the entire day.

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As a reward we popped popcorn, and ordered Applebee’s. Applebee’s delivers. The food tastes just like Applebee’s food unfortunately. But the kids loved it.

Today my wife decided that instead of doing a regular school day, it was a “fun Friday” as my children’s first grade teacher has every Friday. I ended up working all morning and into the afternoon.

For dinner we have pork fajitas and almost 25% of the kids ate it.