Ellen “…and the cowardly lion and his friend the hungry tiger was never satisfied – he wanted to eat Dorothy – sissy!  He wanted to eat fat juicy babies but he didn’t because he knew it was wrong. Then he asked one of the servants to get him 10 or 5 pounds of ice cream and some meat maybe and finally at the end he was satisfied.

Sissy: “What, did he get all the food at the picnic?”

Ellen “No the feast.  Except for 2 pieces of bacon.  And there’s this Nome King and he thought eggs were poisonous and when Bellina laid an egg and the stuffed -”

Sissy “What happened to her first egg?”

Ellen “maybe it hatched, i don’t know.  And then the scarecrow threw the eggs at the King also they were poisonous to them.  And then the royal family of Ev, they were turned into ornaments and Bellinea -

Mom, what is Bellina’s real name?”

Me: “Bill”

Ellen “Yeah, Bill.  And then Bellina saw the Nome King and one of his servant were talking and Belllinas was under his chair and she heard them talking about what the ornaments were -

Mom, how many soldiers of privates were there?”

Me “26″

Ellen “all 26 got turned into orngmanets and so did Queen Ev and Ozma and she got turned into a pretty green grasshopper and then Bellina almost ate her and then she decided that wasn’t very tasty.

And then in the end they got all the princesses and prices back to their land where the napkins and lunchboxes and dinner pails grew on trees

and then in the end they went to Munchkinland and the other land.

and then the hungry tiger lost his appetite and he was finally satisfied.

Oh no, in the end Dorothy – she went back home by magic belt because one of her granpas was sad she was gone.”

And now you know the story of “Ozma from Oz”.  We’re now working on “Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz”.  I’m surprised how much she rememberd.  Each day I’d ask her what had happened in the previous chapters (I always do this with the kids when I read books to them) so that probably kept her memory fresh.

He has been leaving notes for the tooth fairy and not one has been pleasant. “If you don’t leave me 50 pesos, I’ll…” Up til now, the tooth fairy has simply ignored his pleas and threats until last night. The latest note told her not to take it personally, but then he insulted the poor fairy. So she left him 5 pesos. He awoke very unhappy and has now sworn to get even. Notes have been flying about the unfairness and pictures depicting a tooth fairy with horns and and evil look.

I’m really not one to “teach them a lesson” but it might work out that he’ll figure out that you can catch more flies (not comparing the TF to a fly) with honey… Knowing him, probably not. It has also been a real boon to their spelling skills. A month ago, neither boy could even attempt spelling, and now they have improved immeasurably. I was really starting to get worried, wondering WHEN they’d find a need to spell, and here it is. They have also written letters to the masses depicting the torture they’ve experienced due to the chores they had while Jamie et. al. were gone. Some with little red smears (blood?) to prove the torture they were under at the time.

Apparently, Canada ranks pretty high with this 4 year old.

The other day she asked me who would die first. Papa, Tata, her or our family. Golly, what a hard question. She really wanted an answer too; she wouldn’t be swayed with what I’d like or anything. Sorry, Mom. I went with age.

I’ll try to post more frequently, even if it is nothing, but regularly update Flickr even when I don’t post.

Well, I do like legos but I don’t get just one kind. I get all sorts of stuff. Harry potter legos, Star Wars legos and kinda original sets and stuff. We don’t go to Mc Donalds because um, well, (“mom is it just because they treat their animals bad and they don’t treat their treat their workers and pay them well?”) they have created an industry that creates a demand for in-humanely treated animals. My favorite foods are macaroni and cheese or just plain pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, I like salad. Do they have a Chevy’s where you live? Because their burritos there are really good. The bean and cheese ones. And their tortillas. In San Felipe where we were about 3 months ago, they had huge tacos with tortillas maybe a little smaller than a dinner plate. The most of them I ever ate was four. And I also like sweets too, pretty much every kind, except I don’t like chili much. Where you live, is chili a common dish? Because in CA, it isn’t. At least in the Bay Area where we used to live it isn’t. And I don’t really like chilis in candy either [in Mexico, it is very common to have spicy chilis in candy].

I also really like beanie babies. My favorite beanie baby that I ever had was called Mrs. Hunnybear. But that was just what I called her. She had another name on the tag but I forgot what it was but I think I’ll probably remember it sometime soon. I got it on a day I thought I lost a beanie baby from “Winnie the Pooh” called “Piglet”. And there was some women cleaning out the garage and I asked them if they had seen it or found it at all the woman said “no, but I have a large collection of pigs. I know how it is to loose one of my favorite pigs” and she brought out the ones that were most likely, but I liked them but none were the kind that I had so she said her mother had a store called “Remember When” in Fremont (thats where we were at the time). We had seen the store before but never gone inside so we went to the store and we found the Mrs. Hunneybears. We couldn’t find piglet (that’s what the pig was called) so we chose out the 2 yellow bears called Mrs. Hunnybear but at a campgound in Mexico (Ixtapan del Oro) we left them alone for a moment (the Mrs Hunnybears) and we came back and they weren’t there. We looked everywhere but we couldn’t find them, so and we couldn’t find any trace so we assumed they were stolen and we think they probably were.

Our trailer consists of there’s the big um, kitchen/livingroom, and there’s a door leading into our room, mine and Pike’s. We have our own bunkbed each; a top and a bottom bunk each. On each wall there’s a bunk; we use our bottom one for sleeping and our top bunks we play on. I like reading alot; I brought a small collection of Goosebumps books along and some mystery stories.

There are 6 people in our family. Our Dad and Mom, their real names are Jamie and Kitty; actually Jamie and Kathleen but Kitty is Mom’s nickname. And then there’s me and Pike; his real name’s Parker but his nickname’s Pike and my nickname’s Jess, but it’s really Jesse. And then there’s our 5 year old sister. A few days ago she learned to draw pretty good horses. And also she really likes them so she has a small collection of horses and a large one big enough to sit on and a doll named Sally. Sometimes she’s really fun to play with and sometimes she’s really annoying; it has its ups and downs; probably like your 4 year old brother that you mentioned. Me and Pike, just yesterday got a new tape player. But it also has MP3 playing capabilies that’s when you burn a CD on the computer you can play it and on the top it has a CD player. And then there’s the radio. It has two radio wavelengths; AM and FM. And an antenae like most radios have. And we each have a pair of walkman stereos.

I really like capturing their conversations…

From Pikey.

PS I turned nine almost a week ago. And happy birthday!

Mom said it’s really hard for you to read our emails, but I have to tell you some stuff. And if you can please try and write back. Here in PaaMul, we’re in a beautiful trailer park with palm trees which have coconuts on them but it’s illegal to chop them off. [it is a protected turtle sanctuary] But once and a while one will fall and you can pick it off the ground and hammer a nail into it and pull it out and do it a few times and then put it holes-down on the top of a cup and wait. When the milk stops draining out of the coconut you chop it in half, with a machete if you have one, (which we don’t) so we hit it with a hammer. Once it’s cracked open we scoop out the insides. If you’ve ever had coconut, and if you like it, you’ll know that the coconut milk looks just like water but has a very good taste. And the insides are white when it’s not dry; very kind of glassy-white. If it’s dry, it’s kind of a rough white color – like plaster.

Even when it’s wavy out you can go out into the Caribbean Sea, though it is harder to make it out to the coral reef. The coral reef isn’t as I’d imagined it. The coral is at least as thick as your head (most of it is at least) but some of it’s about as thick as your arm.

I don’t know the exact feet, but it’s about 1/2 km out – a bucket on a very thick branch. It’s used to signal the deep channel where the boats can come in and where the coral reef is so the boats don’t hit it. Me, Dad and Pike usually go out to that. We went out with Mom about two times we went to the bucket too. It’s a good place to rest for a little bit. There’s lots of kinds of fishies. Pike just came in. He says he just found a HUGE coconut. [they are now discussing how heavy it is] Me and Pike just agreed (Mom decided for us) it’s about a kilo heavy. It’s two pounds and a half; that’s how heavy a kilo is.

Just a bit ago, Mom read us an email that Jeff sent to her; just the parts that concerned you and stuff and Dad’s feeling fine. Dad’s got this really cool computer program called Limewire. It’s file sharing – it looks for open computers and finds song files and a lot of stuff and takes them to our computer and it can burn CD’s for us that means we decide what songs it burns and copies them onto a disk. Right now Dad’s playing a disc that he made.

Have you seen “A Knight’s Tale”? It has a sport called “jousting” in it. Two contestants ride horses with armour on them; themselves and the horses, and they ride at each other with dull wooden stakes called “lances” and try to knock each other off the horses. One point for breaking a lance between the torso and the neck; thought they don’t usually die in it. Two points for breaking a lance on the head and three for knocking the opponent off his horse (or her).

And anyway, you don’t really have to wait to watch the Star Wars movie if you don’t want to. Cause we’re kinda toying with the idea of buying a palapa here for a few months. [We'd be here MUCH longer than a couple months if we bought a palapa] We’ll tell you when we’re decided.

Well, that’s about all I have to say.

love, from jesse.