Mexican Vacation Highlights (Part 3)

I am finally getting back to the travelogue of our family dream vacation to Zihuatanejo, Mexico which we took in June.  Goodness, it's been a while!  If this is new to you, you may want to view Part 1 and Part 2 first.

I've already blogged through our accomodations at the beautiful Club Intrawest, and the Land itself.  Today I'll share some of our experiences with Zihuatanejo's local culture.

When you stay at a place like Club Intrawest, you're pretty "insulated" and isolated.  They do, however, encourage their guests to go out and explore with a local guide, which is what we did.  Our guide for the day was a delightful man by the name of "Oscar."

Hi picked us up in an air conditioned van (very important to have AC!), and began our tour in "El Centro" (downtown Zihua).

Zihua is, of course, a draw for vacationers,

but it is not well-known like the major Mexican tourist-traps (we like that), so it retains its quality of being a quaint, sleepy, Mexican fishing village. 

Statues with facts and tidbits of the area's history decorate the streets...

From El Centro, we climbed back into the van and Oscar drove us to a coconut plantation:

There were actually a number of fruits growing here, and Oscar introduced us to the new and delightful tastes of tamarind and guanabana (pictured)...

We purchased some macaroons and tamarind treats from the family's "shop," (the woman in yellow is the plantation owner's mother...she was the only one there that morning),

finished drinking our refreshing coconut water, and then Oscar had us back in the van for our next adventure to a brick-and-tile-maker's operation.

All over Zihua, and much of Mexico, I suppose, you see roofs made of clay tiles:

Beautiful, aren't they?  This is where they begin, and one of the families who make them:

First, we watched the pro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrPMVP1pEDE

(If it won't play here for some reason, you can also watch the video at YouTube by clicking the above link )

Then it was our turn!  I went first...

Nathan was next...

Bryan's up!

And last, but not least, "Papa"...

The finished products:

They had us sign our tiles...

...so some rooftop in Mexico now has tiles that say "Lori de Chicago" and so forth on it!

Our next trip was to an ecology farm where they are trying to raise awareness (to tourists and also to their own population via school field trips) of native flora and fauna.

Our guide at the ecology center was a sweet, redheaded gal from Canada who was interning in Mexico for the summer...and I think she was one of the most sunburned persons I have ever seen! If you look just at the inside of her elbow, you'll see what her original skin looks like...just a hint of the sunburn!

Our next stop was to the area called Barro de Potosi.  It is a beautiful coastal region with fantastic restaurants tucked into the vegetation...it is not built up at all, in fact as we drove in on the dirt road, it looked kind of run down and/or abandoned.  But when you get off the road and walk to the beach, wow, does it get beautiful fast!  Around 2pm, we stopped at a restaurant and had fish tacos (oh, YUM), and the vendors, who are always on the beaches where tourists visit, were allowed to approach the table after we had eaten.  This woman was one of the indiginous Mexican Indians (the people we typically think of as "Mexican" are of Spanish descent) whose tribes live up in the mountains, and come to the coast to sell their wares.  They speak their own native dialect, but in order to sell to tourists they learn just enough Spanish to barter price.  She spoke no English.  Oscar translated for us, and we were delighted to do what we could to support her work.

The necklace that I am modeling is made of coconuts. I bought it and gave it to my sister for her birthday...it looks so much nicer on her, I think!

We also fell in love with the beautiful hand-painted pottery that another indiginous artisan showed us, and some of it came home with us as well:

All of us, Oscar included, were beat-tired after this day-long excursion...he was all talked-out, and we were happily sleepy, so there was little conversation on the drive back to the resort!  But he got us safely back, and we bid one another a very fond farewell.  I am so grateful that we had Oscar to show us around this area which he knows and obviously loves so well!

My next and final installment will cover one more area of beauty that I have not yet shared...stay tuned!

When Our Kids Take Care of Us...What a Blessing!

The Big Picture

Cough-cough...hack-hack...sputter-sputter...pass the menthol ointment...do you want some hot tea, too?...honey, can you buy more kleenex???

The Details

House Happenings...
My house, mostly cleared of the summer's window-replacement dust and debris, sat still this week while we all suffered through the season's first flu virus.  It was a whopper. So I have nothing much to report here. I did buy some fall mums - 2 orange, one pink and one yellow - but have yet to get them planted.  Fortunately there's been enough rain here that they didn't die of the neglect!

Taking About Teenagers...
I am soooooo proud of my boys!  And so grateful to them, also.  Bryan got hit with this flu virus first...and I think he got it the mildest (I thought it was just a cold virus, with how he felt).  It hit him early in the week, so he just gutted it out with Dayquil capsules and menthol cough drops and drove off to school each day. He's fine now.  Nathan came down with it that same week, but...THANK GOD...it hit on a Friday for him.  Poor kid, he had a pre-calculus test that day at the community college, so he went in for it, kleenex stuck to his face the entire time!  He was really sick by Friday night, and Saturday had a fever, and by Sunday he was feeling good enough to get all his homework done, though still congested.  He was able to make it to his classes all week this week until I got it on Wednesday, and on thursday I had such a bad fever I was in bed, mostly unconscious, the entire day.  My sweet mom drove Nathan to the college to meet with his German professor whose class he just missed.  So Nathan was able to get what he needed, and he's good.

Thursday afternoon when Bryan got back from classes, and it's an hour drive for him, he sweetly drove his brother 45 minutes to Math Team, and stayed there for 2 hours, then drove him back home.  On the way they thought to stop by our local Jamba Juice and get me a health-building fresh carrot juice.  It was the only nourishment I'd had the entire day, and I really felt better after I drank it! Thank God for these emerging adults...I've got a lot of gray hairs on this parenthood job, but they've all been worth it!

Both of the boys are doing really well in their studies.  Bryan has been holding his own at college without "calling in" any of the accomodations that he is eligible for.  He knows he can use them, but hasn't felt the need to, and his grades are good so far.  I pray often!  We've FINALLY found the combination of math curricula for an "Informal Geometry" course (meaning it is NOT proof-based geometry...very hard to find) that is working really well for him, and I give glory to God for this.  I've blogged on this before, it was a source of fear and anxiety for me, until I released, once again, my hold on the outcome.  Bryan has been in His hands for a while now, and He does just fine without my help! Anyway, Google search and I worked hard together and the Lord finally led me to a curriculum which I had never seen before, though I sure had looked!   It's called "Power Basics" and it's just perfect for Bryan and what we needed.  He's halfway through a different curriculum, but it's a proof-based geometry course, and isn't going well.  We've been trying to modify it, but it doesn't always work.  Plus there were other problems with it.  However, it's given him a great basis to now go to a more "just give me the facts and let me apply them to actual problems rather than theory" type of course, which we've found in Power Basics.  Praise the Lord!

My Creative Side...
Oooooooh, yesssssss!  I've so been waiting for hte day that I would actually have something to write about in this section!  The knitting has begun, and the first hexi is complete!

Kitchen Happenings...
Nothing this week other than that Nathan and I wisely went to the grocery store on the way home from classes Wednesday, when I first got hit with this bug, and stocked up on frozen, microwavable dinners. We've lived off of them since, and I am sooo sick of that junk.  Yuck. I think we'll order Chinese tonight (I want the chicken broth in the wonton soup!), and then Sunday I should be up to cooking again!

In the Garden...
I'm still finding raspberries, but less and less each week.  I plucked about 6 jalapenos today, and even one sweet pepper, though it is very small.  Lots of small green tomatoes are on the vine.  Christine has a recipe for salsa verde...I'll have to get that from her!

Where the Lord and I Walked This Week...
I've been into prophecy this week, when I've been conscious enough to read!  I'm reading a book on my Kindle about the US and end-times events (see my sidebar booklist).  Fascinating, and I have this gut feeling that the author is spot-on. It's not a pretty picture, but my citizenship isn't here, so what care I? 

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior,

the Lord Jesus Christ." (Phil.3:20)

Soooo sick, and the knitting begins...

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Wow, yesterday was a doozey of a day.  My kids have been sick with a lousy cold virus (I thought it was a cold virus) for the last week, and on Wednesday it finally hit me full force (I thought it was full force). I made it through the afternoon until about 3pm when I finally had to have a tissue continuously stuffed up my nose because of the sneezing and non-stop dripping (yuck, I know).  Dayquil and Nyquil to the rescue, and I slept pretty well, in spite of it all.

Then it was Thursday.  Oh, my.

The sneezing and dripping were gone, but the fever...wow, it had to be high.  I couldn't really even sit up for more than a minute, I'd get so dizzy.  Hot and cold, shaking then drenched with sweat.  And it went on all day long.  I know that virus had gotten into my joints, everything ached horribly.  My dear mom (we call her "Oma" which is German for "Grandma") called to see if she could do anything for me...and it turned out to be  the only way Nathan got to the college to see his professor (I couldn't even sit up, much less drive) to get the assignments for the weekend since he missed his class on account of me (no, he doesn't have a drivers' license yet).  Then when Bryan got home, he drove Nathan out to Math Team practice.  On their way home at 5pm, those sweet boys stopped at Jamba Juice and got me a carrot juice!  When they brought it to me (I had been in bed all day, and hadn't eaten anything), it was perfect...food had not looked good and I had no appetite, but that carrot juice was nectar from Heaven, I'll tell you! 

Now it is Friday, and I think the fever is pretty much gone...I'm feeling very weak and achy, but I am up and dressed and at least feel like I'm back with the living again.  All I have to do today is take Nathan to the college for his math class.  I'll just stay in the car and try to knit while he's there for the hour.  And I'll go to Jamba Juice for another carrot juice!

Speaking of knitting: I did it!  I got to Hobby Lobby earlier this week and bought yarn!  So the knitting is on.  I'm going to start knitting hexagons for a hexagon afghan that Mary (aka CanadaGirl) got me excited about.

Here's the afghan style:

(Source: http://btchwstix.blogspot.com/2009/03/hexagon-knitting.html )

And here are my colors to make it:

My house lives for autumn in terms of its colors, so I think these will work nicely.  I'll do the hexis in the 5 deep colors (mustard, russet orange, olive, chocolate, and evergreen), and then plan to join them all with the light taupe in the upper left.  By my calculations, I'll be making  28 hexis in each color to end up with an approximately 50"X70" afghan (we want it long enough to cover cold toes on my tall sons!).

As I was perusing knitting sites online, I came across the Lion Yarn free patterns and fell in love with this winter afghan:

So I got the yarn for that one, too!

I'll post updates on how many hexis I've knitted with each FFG, and if I get enough to make a decent photo, I'll put that up, too.  That's it for today, I know I haven't accomplished much, but I've been a very sick farmgirl this week!

Here's how to join the fun:

1) Grab an FFG (Friday FarmGirls) Button for your blog and post it in your sidebar so others can join with you. I have 3 styles you can choose from, and you can get code HERE.

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3) Add your name and the URL of your post to the "Mister Linky" provided at the end of my post each week.

4) Leave me a comment, and visit the blogs of the other participants listed and leave them comments as well. If you visit and leave comments, you'll be visited and receive comments...it's as simple as that!

Tackle-It Tuesday with CelticMom

Welcome to Tackle-It Tuesday with CelticMom!

This post represents a momentous victory that the Lord has allowed me to experience!  I have a bit of a story to introduce it.

Since the two party days last week, we've managed to keep things neat and tidy on the first floor.  So if you visited my home, you would feel a sense of warmth and peace. 

But I don't feel it.  I feel anxious and disarray.

I was going to clean up the dust and piles of stored "stuff" from the guest bedroom this week.  That was my stated goal.  But I didn't do it.  I changed my mind.

Life has been changing for me the last couple of weeks with the advent of my parents needing more help managing things (mainly w/their finances), so I have a newfound need of getting really organized, rapidly. 
About a year ago, we got wireless internet, and my computer was the "main line."  But the boys couldn't get an internet signal at their computers on their desks upstairs while my computer was downstairs on the far end of the house in the lovely, big room that I used as my office (we call it "the Library") and where we used to do homeschool when they were younger.  So, last winter, I moved my computer (and thus my homeschool "office") up to the spare bedroom which I called my "craft room."   My dh used to have all the bills and his paperwork piled up in the dining room, but this last week he decided to move into the Library and set up his office there. (*SNIFF SNIFF...I loved that room!) 

Anyway, when I moved my office upstairs, slowly over the months all the paperwork that I did and the files that I kept in my old "Library" space moved upstairs into that little room with me. I never really set up a "system" up there, and stuff just piled up. On the desk, on the shelves, on the window sill.  I knew where it all was, you know...just had to "dig" for things when I needed to find them!  I have tried to clean up and organize this stuff a couple times before, but never really committed to the task, so it never got done; by the time my parents financial files came home with me these last 2 weeks, and added themselves to this small room, it was no longer a "little organization job," and I hit a wall.

No matter how clean the rest of my house appeared, the "heart" of my work now as a daughter and as a homeschooling mother was concentrated up in that little craft room...and it was an explosion of disorganized mess!

I decided to...clean up the craft room???  NO!  I decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy yarn so I could start knitting!!!  YES!  I thought, "no matter how much work there is to do, it'll never be done, and I need an outlet, a break-place, and I want to start knitting!"  So I planned a Thursday afternoon outing to the grocery store and then Hobby Lobby...and then the phone rang. 

I don't really remember what the call was about, but it sent me to the computer.  The computer reminded me of some Geometry stuff I had to check on for Bryan, and then it hit me...MATH TEAM!  TODAY!  NOW!  WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOW TO MAKE IT FOR THE REQUIRED FIRST MEETING THAT STARTS IN 30 MINUTES!!! I hollared for Nathan, who grabbed his backpack and we jumped in the car for the 45 minute trip to where the team meets and "trains."  So much for Hobby Lobby! The next day Nathan got hit with a whopper of a cold virus, and I had a full calendar plus I wasn't feeling too good either, so there was no time to go yarn-shopping. 

And the feelings of anxious disarray continued in my heart.

OK, Lord, I'm listening.  I'll stop hiding.  It's, time to get to the HEART of my lack of peace and my anxiousness...I need to get to this mess and take care of it, once and for all.  I think He "blessed" us with this cold virus, which unfortunately kept me and Nathan home from a very sweet young lady-friend's wedding on Saturday...but fortunately was not severe enough to keep me sick in bed.  I spent hours and hours on Saturday in that little room, going through paper after paper, setting up more online accounts to handle my parents' needs, filing and logging high school work for both boys, recycling and shredding and pitching, and digging out. 

I worked in here on Sunday.  I worked in here today (Monday). It is now Monday evening at 7:45pm, and...PRAISE THE LORD...it is done.  And thank you to Shani for the Tackle-It Tuesday push!

OK, friends...you've read the story.  Now, up to the craft room we go:

BEFORE:

What you see, above, is about 12 years worth of photos that I have to go through.

This silly file cabinet's drawers will not stay closed!  Every time I open the closet door, they pop open.  Guess the room is tilted. 

This was where I've been struggling to manage the paperwork for a homeschool high school, plus taking over my parents' financial matters to help them.  The cause of many feelings of disarray and anxiousness. 

  DURING:

(At times it looked worse "during," but it's because things were no longer in bundles and piles...the layers of those onions were being "peeled back," revealing the mountains of stuff...but again, when I tackle-it, I don't just shift piles.  I want it either put in its permanent place, or out of the house entirely...like, in the trash/recycling or given away.)

Each son has two of these 5-inch binders FILLED with "proof" of their homeschool high school credits!

The other small binders have the paperwork (taxes) for their home-based sharpening business.

Yaaaaaah, I help run two home-based business out of this little room, too!!!

Once everything was decluttered, picked up, dusted, and filed away, I began to vacuum away all of the dust (yes, my old friend from the window replacement job...that dust was still in this room, so all those pieces of clutter had to be dusted, too) from the walls, baseboards, and furniture, and from the sewing machine. Then the carpet was vacuumed, and then the boys helped me with a little furniture rearranging. 

OK, Christine, my organizational-genius-friend, get ready to get goosebumps (she does that with before and after pictures):

AFTER:

File cabinet came out of the closet!  It's drawers stay shut, and it holds my modem, wireless router, tissues, parents' and business checkbooks, and computer ink cartriges on top, and sewing/knitting patterns in the drawers.  I plan to buy some hanging file folders that fit the big drawer so I can organize current school assignments and store them in there while they await grading or filing at the end of the semester. The red Trader Joe's bag has folders from my Dad's file cabinet that I still have to go through and put up online. By the end of the month I hope to have that task done, and the bag will be gone.

 The teakwood trunk was buried under the 12 years of photos before!  Now it holds sewing projects in progress on one side, and projects I need to start next on the other.  Eventually it will probably hold all my fabrics on one side. The photos all got carried down to a long craft table in my basement, along with all the empty photo albums that were up on the top shelf above my desk. (Thanks, Bryan and Nathan, for hauling that load!)  I'll get to them, eventually!

Closet (minus the file cabinet!)

On the closet floor here are framed pictures that will eventually be hung up, and the gold thing is the window treatment that needs different hardware before we can put it up on the new window...the frame is different, so it can't hang the way it was before.  I sure hope we can reuse it, it wasn't cheap.
Next Week's Goal

It seems like each week I say I'll do the guest bedroom next.  This time, I think I might just say that my next goal will be something less physically exhausting...like getting my folks' needs met.  There's a lot going on right now, with some new "layers" added just today, and I think I just need to focus on them and make sure that they are going to be okay, and that I have everything taken care of for them here.  I also want to maintain what I've gotten cleaned up (the downstairs is already filled with dust and dog hair which is floating around all over everywhere...nothing like a labrador retriever and hardwood floors).  It's not a small house, and it takes me about 45 minutes to dust and vacuum the first floor if I do it myself w/o help.

So that's what I'm gonna do.  Oh yes...I also plan to make it to Hobby Lobby for that yarn...LORD willing!

Do you have a project to tackle that could use the encouragement of others who are also taking on things that overwhelm?  Visit our lovely hostess, CelticMom, and learn how to join us in 
Tackle It Tuesday!