Snippets on the Carribean

You know it is Semana Santa in Quintana Roo (that is the state of Mexico we’re in) when you see placas (license plates) from Yucatan, Oaxaca (my FIRST ever sighting!), Campeche, Jalisco, Michoacan, DF (about every other placa is from DF), Tabasco, Veracruz and one solitary truck from Belize (the country) that I helped with a battery jump (the mighty diesel ROARED!) all in the parking lot of Chedraui, a local supermercado. PaaMul is in a state that I have never seen before. Many many tents and screen kitchens and so very many kids running around and the beach FULL all day, this time with Mexicans instead of 2-3 hours of the bussed-in cruise ship hordes.

Jamie and I are so seriously considering a life in Mexico that on Tuesday, we’re off to see a colonial ruin in Merida that we’d consider fixing up and either using as a base in winter or flipping. But we still would need the beach and can’t give up turquoise seas, so we’re also considering a palapa here in PaaMul. Apparently, we’ve discovered that money does, in fact, grow on trees. Mango trees.

Life has been so incredibly blissful lately that I look around at the kids frolicking in the sea on a deserted beach or playing in the sand under deep shade of coconut trees while turquiose waves crash in the distance or the entire family enjoying a well narrated Harry Potter or one of the Chronicles of Narnia whilesitting under the shade of the awning and watching the jungle. I purposedly imprint these sights and sounds and memories on my brain for the unknown future.

Jamie and I have been very successful with our exercising. I wish I’d weighed myself before we started but we both have seen our middles melting away and while yesterday, I spent almost all day in recovery and have been working through a blister that is finally on the mend, we so enjoy our morning walks that we’ve begun to pay the boys for their babysitting.

We had a long conversation with the boys about their computer usage. It had begun to look like addiction or something and we were quickly becoming a family of four. They both decided to try a month break from the computer and already it feels like we’ve rediscovered each other. How ironic that we would take this trip to spend more time with the kids and then find we’d lost them to the computer… Jesse is putting a lot of energy (for him) into learning Spanish and cursive. Two items he decided he wanted to pursue formally.

Jamie and I found the easiest meal in the world, especially on hot days. Get a chicken asado, Sinaloa-style or rotisserie or whatever and take all the meat off the bones. Make a salad and add the chicken. Dinner in one bowl. House stays cool from no cooking and the meal is so filling. Yesterday, however, I made lasagne and beef stew and the kids loved it. Ellen has been begging for beef stew and irregardless of the heat, I made it.

I can’t believe a month has almost passed; we are so lazy with life here that a summer’s worth of months could pass and we’d barely notice.