Arrived safely!

Thanks for all of your wishes for safe travel. Ellen and I are at our hotel enjoying a Pisco Sour - the national drink of Peru. Thanks for checking in!

You May Remember...

...my dear friend Ellen from this post about the day that Dave and I met.  Ellen and I traveled to Guatemala together after meeting at language school and traveling all over Costa Rica. Well, Ellen sent me an email in February asking if I wanted to go to Peru with her to check out Machu Picchu and travel through Latin America like old times. I wrote back and said, "Yes, I do and thanks for asking. What are the dates?" As it turns out the dates were perfect and I chanced upon a screamin' deal from San Francisco to Lima for $425.  Dave gave me the green light and just like that, I'm going to Peru...leaving the day after tomorrow (Sunday). 

You really just can't pass up that kind of awesome opportunity...right??

This is what I've been trying to convince myself of for the last 3 weeks as I stare at the ceiling, not able to sleep, thinking to myself, "You have four kids! You can't go traipsing haphazardly around South America like you're 19 again! What are you thinking?!" Oh dear. 

We'll be flying on three small planes during the week and the thought of small aircraft in the Andean updrafts of South America has me a little sweaty (to say the least).  I actually came to the cheerful realization that if something happens to me at least Dave will be able to raise the kids. Honestly! Isn't that morbid? But, I was actually able to sleep after that. Uggh. The things we put ourselves through. 

Anyway, please send thoughts of safe travels my way over the next week or so. And maybe you can throw in a couple for Dave as he juggles lunches and laundry and baseball, oh my!

Check back for pics next week. 

Did I tell you...

...that we were taking the kids to see the Grandparents in Miami and cruising across the Gulf Stream to hang in the Bahamas for Spring Break? Well, we're here in Bimini having swam with the rays at Honeymoon Harbor yesterday. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to partake in the Junkanoo festivities before heading back on Sunday. Now before you go getting all envious on me just keep in mind that it's not all sunbathing and pina coladas. Imagine kids barfing across the Gulf Stream, generator on the fritz, flip flops overboard, a dead dinghy motor, oh, and eight people stuffed onto 42'. Don't get me wrong, we cherish every single opportunity we get to hang with the grandparents and to go boating with our kiddos, but just be reasonable before you think that the ocean is always bluer on the other side of the Gulf Stream (although, it really is).  See for yourself...

I could watch this man tie dock lines all day long.  Nothing sexier than a man in his element. Am I right?

Soli "snorkeling". 

"Even though I'm 12, I still love my dad."

"Someday I'm gonna tie dock lines just like my dad." And his wife will adore him for it... (Ugh. That was hard to type. I actually wrote it, deleted it, and then wrote it again. Someday he'll be married?! Alright, that's enough. Next pic...)

My little mermaid.

I'm pretty proud of this shot because, you see, I had to use the manual focus. Whoa! Big step for me! Watch out Flickr (they must have some great pics on that site because they can't spell for crap...).

We couldn't resist playing "Titanic" on this shipwreck off of Bimini's south shore.

Favorite After School Snack

Popcorn is one of our favorite after school snacks lately. And I'm totally into popping my own (you know I'm always striving for that elusive "Mom of the Year" Award - I may not be able to make my own Waldorf toys, but I can at least pop my own popcorn, right??). Besides, haven't you ever wondered what exactly is in those bags of microwaveable popcorn? You know, that greasy part that makes it so yummy? What is that?? I don't know...but, I tell ya, the more I learn to read labels the more of a food snob I'm becoming.

Anyway, popping your own popcorn is way fun and here's how you do it:

*in a skillet heat up 1-2 T of olive oil over med-med/high heat
*add 1/2 C popcorn kernels to hot skillet
*stir kernels coating them with oil and spreading them evenly in pan
*cover the pan with lid (important!) and agitate the pan with back and forth motion
*continue until all popcorn is popped
*season with any of the following: melted butter, sea salt, rosemary, trocomare or herbamare (excellent all natural seasonings with no weird stuff), parmesan, brewer's yeast (that's what my mom used to put on our popcorn when we were kids). Sometimes I use coconut oil instead of olive oil and season with a sugar/cinnamon mixture for a yummy, kettle corn flavor. Anything goes!

P.S. How fun is my new blog background?!

The Best Little Fishing Shack in Montana

For starters, let me just say that I was successful in getting a handle on my laundry. Key word: WAS. Because, the thing about laundry is: IT'S NEVER ENDING! So I had a handle on it, for like, 7...no...8 hours, and now it's totally out of hand again. But, this time it's really not that funny and the kids dumping out the basket to find...who knows what...not that cute. Honestly! If I wasn't so irreplaceable, I'd fire myself.

But enough about that.

Let's talk about our cabin on the Madison River in Montana. It's affectionately known as The Fishing Shack, and it's for rent, you know. Available now. Almost booked up for the busy summer months. Yippee! And for those of you who were with me during the building phase I wanted to post some pictures now that it's totally done. You know you wanna rent it...

A River Runs Through It. Imagine Brad Pitt out there with a fly rod in hand...

Almost all of the furniture (and decor) at the Fishing Shack came from a Craigslist ad out of Bozeman. A family was selling their second home and all of the furnishings that were in it. My darling husband, being the savvy businessman that he is, negotiated a smokin' price for EVERYTHING in the home. And I mean everything. Dining room furniture, bedroom furniture, living room furniture, linens, dishes, pots and pans, toilet paper, bikes, window treatments, washer and dryer, hangers, cleaning supplies, everything. He rented a Uhaul and packed it all up. They were out of state and couldn't have been happier to have the place emptied. Love Craigslist!

Cozy Kitchen

Master bedroom - I did buy all new bedding and towels, just for fun.

One of the two upstairs bedrooms. Dave made the log bunkbeds.

Looking down on the Living Room from the stairs. Check out the barnwood floors from the ceiling of an old Montana brothel - the Choteau House. If ceilings could talk...

Christmas 2008

*My Blog readers get a little discount: rent 6 nights get the 7th night free. Here is the link to the VRBO site:
The Fishing Shack

Laundry Folding Party...Tonight...My House...Be There!

I should be folding laundry, but I thought just to take a picture of said laundry and write about it on my blog. An entirely more proficient use of time, I think so.

So, the repercussions of having been out of town for 3 weeks are mountainous quantities of laundry upon arrival home. Now, I realize that I have been home for a solid week, and, really, I should be entirely caught up. But...you see...well...um...

I guess I really have no excuse, especially since it was almost all clean when we packed it up in Mexico...

Now, you may notice from the picture that our laundry facilities share a room with our two small daughters. You'll perhaps recall that this was not listed as one of the top ten things I love about my small house. And, I daresay, if ever I start to feel sorry for myself about this arrangement (which is almost never, as I scarcely have time for feeling sorry for myself over such frivolity as laundry rooms) I simply send up a "thank you" to the Laundry Gods who make it possible for me to "do" laundry in the comfort of my own home as opposed to the nearest river and scrubbing rock.

I had to chuckle when I saw the state of all our clean laundry looking as if it had been rooted through by a herd of little piggies, looking for clean panties in the barnyard. Ahem.


I hope this picture makes you chuckle and makes you thankful for your washer and dryer (and laundry room), should you be so lucky to have such heavenly pieces of machinery. Amen.

I'm off to fold laundry.

Scratch that.

I'm off to have cocktails with my girlfriends. Laundry can wait, I say.

Continue rooting, my little piggies.





*Addendum: My dear friend Angie asked, quite nicely, if I might explain exactly how the laundry facility came to find itself in the girls' room. So here you are:

When we first bought our house (remember - it's a hundred years old) there was a laundry room attached to the kitchen. This "laundry room" was originally a back porch that had been enclosed at some point (probably in the fifties) to accommodate the washer and dryer. This enclosure made the kitchen very dark as one of the exterior windows and the window in the original back door no longer brought in any light (does that make sense?). So we opted to tear down the wall between kitchen and laundry room making a big, beautiful, bright, sunny kitchen (now there are big windows on both ends of the kitchen). But, this left the question of what to do with the laundry machines. Well, at the time we had only one, very small boy named Coleman who was just two years old. And being that we practically had a mansion, what with three entire bedrooms and all, we thought to put the laundry in the "extra" bedroom with the guest bed and the office, like a utility room. This arrangement worked very nicely until we had our third child of the baby girl variety. So the guest bed and our desk got the boot and the "utility" room became the "pink" room. We have no garage (they didn't have cars a hundred years ago, you know) so we really have no where else for our laundry machines to go until we do a major house remodel. And the truth is, it just doesn't bother us...until Mt. Laundrymore gets out of hand, that is!

Don't you hate it when...

....you accidentally link your blog to a fellow blogger's site before reading the rules of the "contest". Upon reading said rules, you realize that you were supposed to write a clever "don't you hate it when" post on your own blog before posting the link on fellow blogger's blog. Sadly, you're on your way out the door and can't think of a single clever thing to write in 2.5 minutes, and suddenly you find yourself all flushed and sweaty. Oops. That's embarassing...

Home Again, Home Again

Well, I daresay, we miss Sayulita somethin' fierce.

Dave's ready to sell everything and move there full time. I'm ready to rent out our house and spend 6 months there next school year. Either way, we're both feeling the need to shake things up.

It's good to be home, too. Don't get me wrong. What, with all the laundry and the baseball and the dreary, rainy weather. What's not to love? (I really do love it all, even though I feel a bit like I'm drowning in baseball at the moment - whose idea was it to let all three of the older kids play this year?? Honestly.)

The kids went back to school on Friday (I couldn't bear to send them on Thursday even though we got home late Wednesday night - I just wasn't ready).

The good news is that being gone for that length of time makes it clear to me the things that need to be changed in our house. For example, our filing system needs to be completely cleared out and rebooted, if you know what I mean. Do I really need piles of receipts from 10 years ago? I think not... The living room needs a little splash of color, the dvd's need a more permanent home, and I think some flowering branches would be lovely in my Gramma's vase on the buffet in the dining room. Oh, and that magazine rack with all those old magazines that I think someday I'd like to read...the whole thing's gotta go...including the rack. Want it?

On the agenda for tomorrow? Purge, Baby, purge. Wish me luck - it's not easy for me to get rid of STUFF...even if it is all C*R*A*P.

P.S. Check out my refreshed bloglist in the margin. I added some of my new favorite blogs. These women are AMAZING, I tell you. Truly inspiring. As in, "grind-my-own-peanut-butter-and-make-all-my-kids'-toys-Waldorf-style-while-homeschooling-and-running-a-ranch-oh-and-taking-perfect-pictures-of-my-amazingly-beautiful-children-while-grilling-the-perfect-steak-and-keeping-up-my-blog" inspiring. Ya know?? I just wanna get rid of some magazines...

Packing Up

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Ahhh....

We head into Puerto Vallarta tomorrow for a night on the town and then we fly home Wednesday afternoon.

Our time in Sayulita has been simply wonderful. A few of the favorites:

*Breakfast at Rollie's

*Surfing with our kiddos

*Oatmeal

*Sunning at the pool

*Hide and Seek in the Plaza

*Peanut butter crackers "A la Evie"

*The candy man

*Seeing a baby leatherback turtle

*Fresh made doughnuts on the beach - yummy.

*Standing on our property at sunset

*Burritos at the Burrito Revolucion and seeing a picture of Obama painted on the wall above the word "CAMBIO" - CHANGE

*Coronitas con limon y sal

*Letting the kids stay by themselves at the Arcade in the Plaza

*Meeting so many delightful people and running into friends, Claire and Sandy, at Rollie's

*Robert's Bakery (his brownies...oh my.)

*Body Surfing (that was Dave's favorite)

*Pollos Yolanda (you just can't beat a full plate of chicken, rice, and coleslaw for 25 pesos - $1.80)

*The fabulously favorable exchange rate (14.5 pesos / $1.00 U.S.)

*Sketching ideas of the casita that we'd like to build some day on our land

*Visiting the ultra groovy Costa Verde International School (they do yoga every morning, drool...)

*Hearing the kids try out their Spanish on tentative tongues

*Making plans to come back next year...for longer.

Thanks for checking in.
~Heather

Feliz Dia del Amor y Amistad!

In Mexico (and Guatemala and many other Latin American countries) February 14 is called El Dia del Amor y Amistad. This translates to Day of Love and Friendship. When I was 19, I spent Valentine's day in Puerto Vallarta where I was going to an intensive language school. I was entirely single, and I appreciated that I was still included in the holiday. A friend bought me roses and a group of us went out to dinner and dancing to celebrate. I'm all about inclusivity.

Here are some pics of our Dia del Amor y Amistad:

Valentine goodie bags with I-tunes gift cards.

Happy Day.

Pile o' hand made cards from the kiddos. There's pretty much nothin' sweeter.

Emerson's journal

* A guest post from Emerson who was tired of writing in his own journal...

2/11/09

Yesterday I went to a new beach. I had to cross a cemetery to get to the beach. It was cold at the
beach. We got to open a coconut. My mom got us a donut.

a family's mosileum

overlooking the surf break and Sayulita beyond

* A note from Mom: We took a walk to Playa de Los Muertos (Beach of the Dead). The beach gets its name because you have to walk through the cemetery to get there.

Jesus is Dead in Mexico

We have the darlingest little plaza here in Sayulita and it has the darlingest little church you ever did see. I walk by it every day on the way to my morning cup of happiness. Pathetic, I know, but my morning coffee simply makes me smile. But, back to Jesus...

Often, the girls will accompany me on my jaunt around the block, and when we pass the church they will invariably ask, "Mama, can we pleeease go in and see Jesus?" And, as I am usually on a mission for a "cafe Americano con leche, por favor", I will dissuade them by saying, "Maybe on the way back."

So, on the way back, they will again plea for a peak at Jesus. And, if the coast is clear, we'll go in and sit in the stillness for a few minutes on the first pew. The other day as we sat in the church, gazing at the statuette of Jesus on the Cross, I was reminded of a time when Cole had just turned four...

Dave and I had taken the boys (Emerson was 18 months) on a camping trip down Baja. We had stopped in the charming little town of San Ignacio. There is a very beautiful, old mission there, and we had stopped to check it out. When Cole saw Jesus on the Cross above the pulpit he asked:

"Mom, is Jesus dead?"

"Yes, sweetheart. Jesus died a long, long time ago; almost two thousand years ago."

"Oh no. Mom, can I borrow your cell phone? I have to call Kieran* and tell him Jesus is dead in Mexico!"

Poor kid. He was honestly beside himself, and it took quite a while for him to grasp the concept of 2000 years ago. But Dave and I had a good chuckle, and I smiled to myself on the first pew as the memory played out in my mind's eye.

Kids say the darndest things...

What's the funniest thing your kids have said??

*Kieran is our neighbor friend and was the center of Cole's universe when he was four.

Two Years Ago Today...

We touched down in San Francisco and our new baby girl was a U.S. citizen. The kids and I had spent the previous two months in Antigua while we waited for her adoption to be finalized. We had an awesome time in Guatemala; a time that we will always remember with fondness. But, boy, was it great to be home...

Surf's Up, Sayulita

Check us out....

We have access to this sweet, old long board and we've been taking it out every day after "school" to see what all the fuss is about...

Cole, instantly a natural.

We were so excited that Emerson caught a wave. He was so cute on that big, ole board. Click on this pic and check out the dog swimming in the surf.

I got to surf with my kids on my birthday. And I caught my first wave. Sweeeeet.

I don't mean to brag, but this man gets hotter every year...

Happy Birthday to Me

Thanks for borning me, Mom. I love you. ~H

February 1976
(How cute is my mom?? She was 21 when I was born -- at home, by the river, in Carmel Valley, California. Totally groovy.)

Evie boogie boarding with Daddy. Look at the smile on that little face.

Brothers...there's just nothing better. Click to make bigger to fully appreciate the brotherly cuteness.

Dave and Cole returning from a rescue mission - two teenage girls caught in a riptide. He was a life guard in his high school/college years - smokin' hot, if I dare say.

Catchin' a wave - like old times.

Home schooling - at its finest.

Flowers in my hair, curtesy of Evie. One of the many reason I love having daughters.

What can I say?

My beautiful beach comber.

Ahh. I love this picture of Soli. Simply gorgeous.

Oh-oh that smell! Can't you smell that smell?

Well, I should really be finishing the unpacking what with the baby sleeping, homeschooling done for the day, and kiddos playing happily with Daddy in the pool....but, alas, such a perfect atmosphere for blogging. Unpacking can wait, I say!

So many fun things to write about!

First, Cole has made a full recovery. Thanks for all your well wishes on his behalf.

Secondly, have you been to Mexico?? Do you know that smell? That delicious smell that to me says, "Ahhh. Mexico." I've been trying to pay attention and pinpoint exactly what is involved in this fabulous combination of olfactory delights. It's not a floral smell, like Hawaii. It's a much richer, earthier, muskier fragrance that almost has a texture to it. Let me try to describe:

It's a blend of ocean and burning organic material, with a touch of exhaust and leather furniture, carne asada on an open grill, a splash of mildew, and a healthy undercurrent of warm dirt.

"Ahhh. Mexico."

Do you know this smell I speak of?

view of town and ocean from our balcony

Mexico Lindo

We're here! We arrived safely this afternoon and are now cozied into our little apartment on the hill. And is Sayulita ever delightful! The balcony doors are open with waves crashing, babes sleeping, geccos chirping, Daddy snoring softly, Reggae drifting up from the plaza, and the breeze humming along sweetly. Life is good.

On a less delightful note, Cole has the flu with a temperature of 103.2 (pre-advil). He started feeling badly today, about half way to Puerto Vallarta. Evie and Emerson had it over the weekend and missed school yesterday. The good news is that we had a small window of opportunity (about 24 hours), between sick kids, to travel. Evie and Em had made a full recovery by yesterday afternoon, and we got here this afternoon just in time for Cole to crash out. It's one thing to be sick at home (any home), but being sick in the airport and on the airplane...well, that's simply no fun at all. So, I'm feeling rather thankful that he didn't have to deal with that (much).

I'm off the recheck that temp...poor kid.

Thanks for checking in,
Heather

Mine Oldest

Cole turned 12 on Thursday (the 15th of January - he shares a birthday with MLK Jr.) and boy, oh boy is it ever a great age. My mom always says the even years are easier than the odd years. And I think she may just have something there. Currently, our kids are 12, 8, 6, and 2. And let me just say,

Life is awesome.

We leave for Mexico on Tuesday, for three weeks. We have a little lot in a little village just north of Puerto Vallarta, called Sayulita. This was the first purchase that Dave and I made as a married couple (aside from a puppy - but we really didn't pay for her - oh, and our VW Bus - we used to be so cool!). Anywho, one winter we packed up our puppy and our 13 month old baby and headed for the border of Mexico. (Like I said we used to be way cool.) By then we had upgraded to a Ford F150 extra cab pick-up with camper shell (good times, lemme tell ya).

We drove across the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (p.s. Texas is a ridiculously large state. You should know this if you ever find yourself driving across it). We crossed the border into Mexico near Brownsville, TX and proceeded to drive down the east coast of Mexico to the southern most state of Chiapas (which borders Guatemala, f.y.i.). While there, our darling first born contracted a nasty case of E. Coli poisoning. Not pretty. He couldn't keep down breast milk or water and his poop (not diarrhea) was out-of-control-stinky (you should know this in case you ever find yourself with such symptoms). After consulting the pediatric medical encyclopedia that we had lugged all over Mexico for just such an occasion, we proceeded directly to the Chiapas Emergency Hospital...

Let me paint a picture for you of our day at the Chiapas Emergency Hospital:

The waiting room looks like a solitary confinement cell at Alcatraz: all cement cinder blocks with light bulbs dangling precariously from the ceiling. There are about 10 families waiting to be seen, with an old woman crying loudly in the corner and praying to God, while clutching her heart. Her adult son looks ashen as he tries to keep her propped up. Did I mention there are no chairs??? Families are huddled on the floor (the cement floor) while they wait. There is a receptionist sitting (yes, she has a chair) at a card table just inside the entrance. We tell her our woes and she points to an unoccupied corner. We wait for a while and eventually we are ushered into the E.R....

Let me paint a picture for you of the E.R.:

There are little cubicles along one wall, each with its own gurney, a curtain for privacy and two live wires sticky out of the wall at the head of the bed. We assume this is to attach the defib paddles should a patient go into cardiac arrest (like the woman in the hall). But, we don't really know. In the cubicle next to us is one family I recognize from the waiting room whose 15 or 16 year old son is having relentless and uncontrollable seizures. His family is huddled around him praying and keeping him from bouncing off his gurney. A couple cubicles down is the woman with the heart pain, still crying and praying, "Aye, Dios mio! Aye, Dios mio!" I'll probably never forget her voice...haunting really. There is a woman in labor, pacing back and forth, behind a glass-windowed wall (I think that was the Labor and Delivery wing). Around the corner, in another area of cubicles, is a man with a gun shot wound to the leg. We have a picture of that guy (I don't know why) and he's smiling. Hmmm.


And at the nurses station, across from the cubicles, there are two nurses. (Who, by the way, are wearing very traditional nurse uniforms, like from the 50's. You know the ones? Crisp white blouses, knee length skirts, white platform nurse shoes, and the little white origami caps held on with bobby pins. We had one of those costumes in the Halloween box when I was a kid.) You'll simply never believe what the nurses were doing at their station, so I'll just go ahead and tell you. They were blowing up used latex exam gloves (like how you do when you want to make a cow utter) and they were washing them off in the sink and laying them out to dry, so as to be used again. (If you look closely at the above pic you can see one of these gloves drying on the counter.) It made me wonder what else they washed and reused. Needles? Please don't let him need an I.V... Please don't let him need an I.V...

(see the live wires above my head?)

At this point we didn't know that Cole had E. Coli. And that's a good thing because I'd have been freaking out. All we knew was that he was lethargic, wasn't keeping down fluids, and had a low grade temperature (and really stinky poop which didn't seem to concern anyone besides me). The doctors there (one had been trained at Stanford and spoke perfect English) wanted to send us home with some Tylenol to lower his temp. I, however, knew better (having been trained at the groovy school of Trusting My Intuition - thanks, Mom. Oh, and there was that medical enclyclopedia that said there was something seriously wrong with stinky poop and not keeping down breast milk - as in, proceed directly to the E.R., do not pass GO, do not collect $200). So, I insisted that they take my carefully preserved diaper and have it tested. Please. They rolled their collective eyes and were thoroughly irritated that this 22 year old gringa was telling them how to do their business. I didn't care. Take the poop. Go on. Take it. And don't come back without test results.

As we waited for the results, the nurses, when they weren't scrubbing their gloves, tended to Cole and made sure that his temperature didn't get too high (they were concerned about seizures, they told me, and rightfully so, what with the kid in the next cubicle). We had refused the Tylenol, wanting the fever (as long as he was staying hydrated) to do it's job in fighting off whatever was causing our child's infection. (The poor medical establishment - I can be so difficult. Surely, there's nothing more irritating than parents who think for themselves.) So they kept a cool cloth on his head and kept him hydrated with electrolyte water which tasted like sea water but he thought was heavenly. He was so thirsty, poor baby. He wanted to guzzle, but if he drank too much he would throw it all back up. So they gave him little sips at a time. They took very good care of him.

Finally, the test results came back and the doctors were apologetic as they explained that Cole had 6 times the normal level of E. Coli bacteria in his gut. For the first time that day, we were very scared. We remembered the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak of E. Coli earlier that year, and people had died. But they told us not to worry, wrote us a prescription for some antibiotics and sent us down the street to the farmacia under very clear instructions to come back if he couldn't keep down the medicine or showed any signs of dehydration. Later that night he was significantly better, and by the next day he seemed 100%. I've never been so thankful for antibiotics. But that was a close call. We could have lost him. Easily. And I really feel like our angels were watching over us. If our pediatrician hadn't recommended that book, if I hadn't bought it (we were so poor and it was like $23), if we hadn't remembered to pack it, if we hadn't been the neurotic, first time parents that we were, busting out our enclyclopedia to look up "fever" and "vomiting" (I don't even think I'd do that now, as I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on fever and vomiting in children), if we hadn't saved that stinky diaper and insisted that it be tested, etc. You get the idea. Close call. Scary close. But he made a full recovery and two days later we were back on the road to continue our Mexican adventure.

So we left Chiapas (rather glad to leave it behind us) and crossed through Oaxaca to the Pacific Coast. There we headed north along the amazingly beautiful coast roads of Michoacan (like Big Sur amazing). We camped on beautiful sand beaches and in quaint little fishing villages. We played in the surf with our toddler, thankful that he was better (although I don't think we fully understood the magnitude of it all until later). Amazing sunsets. Truly fantastic.

Eventually, we made it to Puerto Vallarta and the little surfing town of Sayulita. We had it in our heads that some day we'd like to live there. We had a little money saved up (we were probably saving for a house - or should have been) and we decided we would try to buy a little piece of paradise that, someday, we could put a little palapa on and grow bananas. (We used to be so groovy.) After a week or so of looking, we finally found that little piece of paradise and for 3200 U.S. dollars, it was ours. That was 11 years ago (almost exactly) and that little piece of paradise is now worth significantly more. And it needs some attention. Hence the reason for this trip. Wow. I think that was the long version of that story. Ahem.

I started this post as a tribute to our darling oldest on his birthday. And I guess in a round about sorta way, it was. We love you, Cole. You are our hero and we are so proud of the awesome young man you are becoming. Thanks for cruisin' Mexico with us, Kiddo...then and now.
xoxo,
Mom

Dave and Cole - 14 months

Cole on the beach in Sayulita - 1998.

It's a Nie Day.

Nie is back!

And she's fabulous.

Read it here.