Mexico Part 11: Fancy Mexican dining, a stray bunny, and the open house

At Santo Coyote with Eva's crown

Well, this last week, I got one year closer to entering into the thirties.  A friend of mine said that thirties are supposed to be good, so while I should enjoy this last year of being in the twenties, at least it won't be the end of the world when I hit thirty.  Isn't that crazy?  When did I get to be so old?  No offense to anyone who is older than me.  I am sure we all feel this at more than one time of our life right?  I remember when we had Eva I thought, that I would be thirty when she was in kindergarten and I can't believe that is almost right around the corner.  Time flies.  I suppose that is why we are here in the first place.  We never wanted eight years to pass and go back and think, man, Matthew could have been a doctor by now.  I know it's nuts to think about life like that but sometimes you just have to in order to take the plunge and do something that might be a little out of the ordinary for you.  So, enough about that, I had a great birthday.  Eva was super cute and wrapped up some of her things to give to me.  Among her "gifts" were a copy of her Book of Mormon, her crown, that she says she doesn't use anymore, and her Hello Kitty watch.  She even wrapped the stuff in homemade wrapping paper that she colored.  Super adorable.  Kids are what make birthdays fun.  I don't know if people remember but back in January I bought myself my early birthday present, a sewing machine, but Matthew surprised me this year by getting me more than that.  He totally shouldn't have but it was nice of him to do that.  He took me shopping at Liverpool, the equivalent to Macy's except way more overpriced, and let me buy some clothes.  I thought that was pretty cool.  The Liverpool that we went to is close to our home in this crazy, nice mall that is right around the corner.  It is called Andares.  People go to the mall here in their super nice clothes hauling around extremely overpriced strollers.  It really is a site to see.  But I digress.  Then, he took the kids and I out to dinner at Santo Coyote.  It is a super nice restaurant here in Gaud.  The atmosphere alone is beautiful.  The service was AWESOME, which is hard to come by here sometimes, and the food was delish.  In fact, I think last week I only cooked dinner two times for the entire week.  The next night we had a babysitter to celebrate a friend's birthday and we went to another nice restaurant, Cocina 88.  It seems like since we got here we get a babysitter more, which for me is crazy since I never trust my children to anybody, but the truth is, since Matthew is busy all the time we do need to spend more time with each other.  And it has been great because we get to really see what Guadalajara has to offer.  Fast forward to Friday and some of my favorite people here and I went to Applebees, no link needed, and had a super fun night, just the girls with no kids.  It took me 50 minutes (which normally only takes 10) to pick up one of my good friends because UAG was having a sporting event backing up the traffic.  That is one of the crazy things around here.  There aren't too many alternative routes for me to get to places, which stinks.  In fact, this morning it took us about 30 minutes, instead of 10, to get to church because they were having a marathon in town and they we running on the busiest street here.  Is that normal?  To do marathons on heavily used streets and block traffic?  Now we know to look for green lines on the street letting us know that a running event is on its way.  But where was I?  Not cooking, right.  Then on Saturday we went with some friends to a taco place for tacos, of course, but what was better was that next door they have this little ice cream place.  Now, for some educating.  Apparently, back home I would always call our American ice cream "nieve."  Well, I guess that would dry Matthew nuts because nieve is a water based ice cream.  Milk based is called helado.  Maybe a little confusing but the nieve here is so good.  It tastes very natural and you can get it in all sorts of flavors.  Their helado, not so much.  In fact, I pay big bucks, at least 10 bucks,  for the kirtland ice cream at Costco, because it tastes so much better than Mexican ice cream that you can buy at the store.  But, their nieve is worth buying.

Cute, little, black bunny

I kept meaning to post about this but about two weeks ago we found a stray bunny.  Kind of strange I know but it was the cutest, little black bunny.  If I wasn't in a right state of mind, we would have kept the little bunny.  At one point Eva even asked me if we could keep it, but I reminded her that we had River and we didn't want River to eat the bunny.  Well, to that she replied, that we could sell River and then keep the bunny, right mom?  Now again, if I wasn't in the right state of mind, I might have gone along with it but of course I couldn't sell our dog.  So, for a couple days, the bunny hung around our yard.  It let us pick it up and pet it.  It was something we all looked forward too, even Matthew, I am not going to lie, every time we opened the door that the little bunny might be there nibbling at our grass.  After a couple days of this, River saw the bunny one day and chased it away, and then that night Matthew said he saw the bunny being chased by a cat.  We never saw the bunny again.  I am hoping that its owner found it because the other thought would be too sad to think about.  Lucky for us, the kids never asked about the bunny after they didn't see it, but man, that was one darling little bunny.  Or maybe, as Elijah is getting older, and looking more and more like a little boy, I am yearning for something cute and cuddly, to hold.  Guess my little Eli will have to do for now.

Speaking of Eli, today after 22 months, the kid finally stayed in nursery, our church's little Sunday school, all my himself.  I was so proud of him.  He cried of course, but I was called to work as the primary music leader and I thought this was a perfect opportunity for me to let him stay by himself in nursery and it worked.  It was about time really.  It was just that when we first got to Mexico we put him in nursery early.  He was only 15 months so I stayed with him.  He couldn't even walk at that point.  But then, it was easier to stay with him once he was 18 months and walking when I should have left.  More time passed and then it was my calling in January to be the nursery helper.  That was kind of hard because that was when I had just decided that I wanted to leave him their alone, but now I couldn't.  And finally, fast forward to March, and I can say that he went by himself.  I know sometimes I baby my kids, but only because it is so hard at times to let go of the fact, that they are growing up.  Does that happen to anyone ever?

Elijah decided to sit on the money statues outside of Santo Coyote

Last week as well, Eva's school had an open house.  She was so excited for me to go.  My favorite part was when we went home and she told me over and over how happy she was that I was able to go to her school.  I was one of the few mom's who didn't have my paparazzi camera and I was kicking myself for it because it would have made for some great pics and video.  I teared up when I saw her at school being so good.  She really made me proud.  They fast forwarded through all their morning routines and I could see Eva keep up.  We spent part of the morning in her Spanish class, then the other in her English class.  The English part was strange for me.  I am not going to lie, but I am pretty hard on the English teacher because I myself am an educator.  The only thing that I could criticize was her accent.  I know, I am horrible.  I think this because it is too bad, in my mind, that she is teaching all these little kids English and they are exposed to English with an accent.  In reality these kids could have the opportunity to English without an accent.  But since they are learning from their teacher who has one, they have a harder time.  Does that make sense?  I mean, it's pretty bad when I have to correct Eva on her pronunciation of the word August, to come and find out at this open house, all the kids are saying August wrong.  And what is more annoying for me is that Eva gets mad at ME when I try to help her say things right.  Oh well.  Something else that was funny was kids dancing a routine to a Shakira song and Michael Jackson's thriller. That was a part of their English class routine.  Isn't that funny?  These kids are so little but here they are exposed to pop culture at a very young age.  But more importantly, I loved seeing my baby in school.  She is a respectable student that works so hard at school being as good as she can be.  No wonder she comes home and breaks apart.  You would think there would be some balance for Eva, but that's just the way she is.

Sorry about the long post.  At this rate, I will have enough material to turn this blog into a book.  And the links, I went a little crazy with, but since I forget to carry the big ol' camera, I thought you might want to see what some of these places that I am talking about are like.  Anyone ready to come and see me yet?