Day One

I woke up with the roosters on our first day in Miguel, even though we had gone to bed around 3 a.m. After catching up on some email I pried everyone else out of bed and we checked out the house more thoroughly. We LOVE the house and the location. It’s close enough to the main square (el Jardin) that we can pop home if someone needs the bathroom, but far enough away that we don’t hear the noise of the crowds. There’s plenty of other noise but it doesn’t bother me – neighbor dogs and kids, church bells, car noise and the occasional horn or radio, birds – including the aforementioned roosters, and police radios. We almost always see police patrols on our street when we go out, which freaked the kids out a little but I think it’s normal. I’m happy to have them here.

The house is perfect for us. You enter off the street into a small foyer. On the right is Adlani’s bedroom, with a connecting bathroom. Straight ahead is a small fountain, which Annie jumped right into when we arrived the first night (she was so thirsty she couldn’t help herself, but we’re trying to keep her from drinking out of it). When you’re in front of the fountain, there is no roof above you – the house is truly a mix of indoor/outdoor living, with a large terrace that has an umbrella table, a small terrace outside the girls’ room with a smaller table, and a roof terrace above their room. After going through the foyer and past the fountain, you enter the living area which has a kitchen with a counter and bar stools, a sitting area with a loveseat, chairs, a fireplace, and TV, and a dining room which has a door to Adlani’s bathroom.

The terrace is up a set of stairs, and our bedroom is up a few more stairs from the terrace. There is a washer and dryer outside of our bedroom, and plenty of closet space in the bedroom along with a gas fireplace and a bathroom. Up some more stairs is the girls’ bedroom, which also has a bathroom. There are A LOT of stairs and sometimes they’re in unexpected places and of random heights. There are tons of plants and the gardener comes on Thursdays to take care of them. The housekeeper comes on Mondays and Thursdays so hopefully that will motivate everyone to keep things neat (a girl can dream).  We’ll eventually post a video tour of the house and some more photos.

Once I finally got everyone up and into semi-clean clothes, we headed to the bakery we’ve been dreaming about for 2 years. About a block from our house, we ran into our Framinghamian friends – Don Taggart and his son Andrew, who arrived the same day we did. After chatting for a couple of blocks, they moseyed along to the wine store and we turned toward the bakery. The price for 7 pastries and 4 bottles of soda (yes, for breakfast) was 79 pesos – $5. We went to el Jardin to eat and get the weekly newspaper – Attencion, and then stopped by Solutions to pay for our mailbox. Our mail will be forwarded from Framingham, or you can send mail directly to us at 5802 Bob Bullock Loop, Suite C1#84-168, Laredo, TX 78041. The kids would LOVE to get some letters or postcards but packages are really expensive for us to receive and they take a long time to arrive.

We went to see my ice cream guy on the way home (who turned out to be a different ice cream guy but still had my favorite ice cream – piñon (pine nut)), and then had an ice cream party with the Taggarts at our house. After a nap, we got pizza from a pizza place we found on our last visit – La Grotta, and had pizza at the Taggarts’ house, which is actually our friends’ John & Carolyn’s home that we rented on our last visit. It was so much fun to see the new pieces of art they have added, and the amazing garden they created. By 9:30 we were home and in bed. We did a lot of walking – over 20,000 steps, and the kids slept for about 12 hours. A great first day!

Cool things we saw today:  A quinceañera, a beautiful serpiente mosaic on the wall beside our mailbox, and una tourista wearing a sombrero and holding a sword while sitting on a donkey’s back.  We also met our neighbor, Miguel.

I was trying to take a photo of the tourista/donkey but I wasn’t quick enough…you can just make her out with the green shirt.  It’s like a Mexican “Where’s Waldo?”