La Casa en La Purificación

The entrance from where we will park our car:

The inside of the dome:
The foyer/sunroom:
The kitchen:
Death trap stairs:
The back corner of the yard:
The orchard:
The secret plant room:


The back patio:

The avocado tree, it has fruit the size of limes now:

Falling Into Place

It just seems to work that way for us. Just as I'm getting annoyed with this "minimalist" lifestyle everything is falling into place. Last week we got our official visas and our "get out of jail free cards." The day after we had them in hand Esten booked a flight home. We just returned from that very short trip to Texas and were able to bring back several things that I was missing. Spices, soaps, candles, baby essentials, Mason pecans, etc.. We got the "red" light at customs but they very briefly searched our bags and let us through without a problem. We got our diplomatic license plates for our car so we can say goodbye to our expired paper plates now. We're looking at a big house with a big yard to rent in a small village just about 10 minutes up the mountain from where we are now. We went to meet the gardener this morning and checked it out. It's old and there are some things I don't like but the yard is fabulous. It's probably close to an acre completely surrounded by a brick wall covered in ivy. There is an avocado tree, peach trees, a guava tree, several citrus trees, apple trees, fennel, and who knows what else that isn't blooming yet. Our dogs will love it. CIMMYT gives us a stipend to do some work on any home off campus so with that and a little love, this place might just be our new home. Just in time too, because our shipment with all of our belongings that has been sitting somewhere in Texas since December should be heading south this week. We'll be waiting here to accept the shipment, move it under a roof somewhere and packing up the car to drive to Obregón for a few months. We have an apartment there that Esten rented when he was there a few weeks ago. He left me and Rowan here to go scope it out and I was lucky enough to have my mom come and stay. The highlight of her trip this time was a visit to the Pyramids. It was a first for all of us and they are amazing. Come visit and we'll take you too. That's a quick synopsis of what we've been doing and here are some pictures taken recently.

The two snow covered peaks in the background are the volcanoes that we live really close to. The half finished building in the foreground is very a typical sight in Mexico.

Here are my boys with their new sombreros we bought at the pyramids. We should have bought them in the morning instead of just before we left.

The pyramid of the Sun in the background is the one that Esten and I climbed. We'll climb the Moon next.
Rowan and I bought sunglasses at a market in Texcoco. He loves putting them on by himself and will wear them for a long time before throwing them off.
My mom and Esten with their Coca-cola sweetened with real sugar, imagine that. I've noticed that a lot of foods that are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup in the US are sweetened with sugar instead here.
Ro still likes to climb stairs, especially in the nude. These are the very hard stairs in our current house.
I love this photo of Esten and Ro because of the eyes. Esten may or may not have been drinking at the Rincón that night :)