Happy Happy Birthday Rachel, Dear

Princess Rachel celebrated her 4th birthday! We invited several of her other princess friends to join us for the festivities. We began by making fairy princess wands...

Then we played "Pin the Crown on the Princess." The girls thought up this idea and made it on their own. Unfortunately, I had to step in with last minute crowns, as we couldn't find the beautiful ones Sarah had drawn jewels all over (of course we found them after the party).

The princesses had the futures foretold by Jake, the Fortune-Telling Magician. He kept all of their attention for several minutes...

The princesses searched for pink jewels that some fairies had left throughout the living room. What princess doesn't love pink jewels? Here's what they found...

Before the princesses could have their feast, we had to determine if they were really princesses. So, we made them sit on three different pillows and figure out which one had the "pea" (a green ball) underneath it. Not to anyone's surprise, every princess guessed the correct pillow. Time to eat! This is Princess Rachel's castle cake...Thanks to my creative friends for the idea!

These dainty little princess do love cake and ice cream!

Opening presents...
After all of the planned activities were finished, the princesses decided to enjoy the warm weather by jumping on the trampoline and playing on the playground!
Happy Birthday to Rachel! We love you!

Happy New Year 2009!

Here are the kids trying to destroy our pinata. It is a traditional star with 7 points that symbolize the 7 mortal sins(I haven't counted or figured them all out yet). A Mexican mom at one of the kids' class Christmas parties explained this to me. As we smash the pinata to pieces, we are also resolving never to commit those sins. I had bought it for Christmas, but we never got to it. Saving it for New Year's Eve was great, because it gave us something to do besides watch movies. We had to count down to 2009 by my watch, because the only TV countdown shows were an hour behind us...we get the Colorado networks, but we are on central time. Even the local Mexican networks were off for some reason. When the second hand on my wristwatch finally reached 12, we celebrated with some Martinelli's (after a kiss from my hunk husband) and banging pots and pans on our front porch. It was raining, so we didn't run into the street.
I'm glad Grace was awake, because she was my Martinelli drinking, pot-banging partner. Nobody else really got into it, even though everyone stayed up for the new year(well, Sarah fell asleep like two minutes before). After all this excitement we headed to bed, lulled to sleep by the peaceful sound of fireworks exploding just outside our window(it continued for a few hours, too!). Happy New Year!

Grace the Volleyball Champion

Grace's volleyball league had an awards ceremony for last semester(here, everyone plays one sport for an entire semester, and usually for the entire year). Grace's school team, ASFM, won third place in the league, so everyone got a bronze medal. I don't think she's ever won a medal or a trophy or anything like that before, so she was really excited. She even decided to continue playing volleyball for this semester. I think she's got some of Papa Patrick's volleyball skills. Good job Grace!

Grandma & Grandpa Ricketts in Mexico!

Grandma and Grandpa Ricketts came to visit us a few days after Christmas. It was so fun! We brought them to Bioparque Estrella on their first day with us. We had beautiful weather, and almost had the park entirely to ourselves!



This is the restaurant we found on the way back from the Bioparque. I think it was called Don Tono's. We, well the kids especially, were excited to eat in a restaurant with a giant sombrero on top. I just remember they served chips with beans with some sort of meat grease on top, which sounds really gross, but it was sooooo good!
We visited La Huasteca, another of the mountains that surround our valley, and which is very close to Jake's school. This was a first for us as well. The sediments in the rock are pretty much vertical instead of horizontal, and very jagged. Pretty amazing.
Cuentos que no son Cuento (Bedtime Stories) was showing at the theater here in English, so we had to go see it. Once a new movie comes out, it is shown in English for a few days, then only in Spanish. We do love to go to the movies. It is pretty inexpensive and we get to relax in these leather recliners!

Andy brought us to Las Lechugitas for lunch one day, and it was so good we had to go back for a second visit!
Here, we are visiting Cascada Cola de Caballo. The waterfall is beautiful, but the churros and fried potatoes-on-a-stick are just as enjoyable!


We visited this old church in a little town called Santiago.
This is the view of San Pedro from near the top of Chipinque, a mountain overlooking our town. I love this picture of Larry and Vicki!
Grandpa, Andy, Jake and Grace all go-kart raced... Grandpa won!

We had such a great visit with Grandma and Grandpa Ricketts! We are so glad they came to visit!

Sarah Really Lost 2 Teeth?

Sarah had 2 wiggly teeth--the 2 bottom middle--for over a month. She never wanted to wiggle them out, because she was afraid of the blood(obviously, these are her first wiggly teeth). Well, soon we knew they needed to come out because her new teeth were already coming in(but further behind)! Yikes. No matter how much we tried to encourage her to wiggle the teeth out, she would move them around but not try to get them out. One morning before school, she was brushing her teeth and the first just came out. Then the other came out in the car while coming home from a restaurant. Sarah was so excited, and kept looking at herself smile in the mirror. She loves her smile with a little gap. I just look at her and think "Sarah really lost 2 teeth?" The other teeth are in place already!

6:23am Christmas Morning

Andy is very serious about our 6:30am wake-up time on Christmas morning. The kids came into our room exactly when our clock said 6:30, but unfortunately for them, our alarm clock is several minutes fast. So we waited. Well the kids waited/jumped all over Andy on the bed, while I brushed my teeth and hair. 6:30am finally arrived, and we headed downstairs(the kids were so excited that we finally live in a house with stairs so they can actually go downstairs to see their presents on Christmas morning...I guess they've seen that in movies and figured that you're supposed to have stairs on Christmas morning). So here's what Santa left for us...


Rachel was so excited to discover that Santa had been there(though she really did not want to have to see him) and the cookies and carrots had been eaten.
Jake received a bazillion different Bionicle sets. I'm sure Santa had a hard time figuring out what to get for the boy who himself didn't know what he wanted. The regular sized ones were assembled in no time, but the big one is more difficult. Jake tells us he needs one of his friends to help him put it together.
Grace received a Yamaha acoustic guitar that needed a little tuning, but still awesome nonetheless. Later on she showed us how she can make notes slide.
Sarah found an American Girl doll, Julie, waiting to meet her new "mom". Sarah keeps calling me grandma now.
Rachel got a princess vanity, and got right to work blow drying her hair and primping.
This is the first gift to be unwrapped Christmas morning... NintenDogs for the DS from our Wilkins cousins! Since it was just us on Christmas morning, we took our time opening presents one by one. The kids were so sweet and cute, talking about each one and saying thank-you to each other. It was really nice.
The kids and I got Andy one of those cool waffle makers that you flip over to cook. In addition to being the grill-master, he is also the waffle-king(he's got his grandma Woodward's secret recipe)! He then worked his magic and treated us to waffles doubly fast!
This is what we were left with after all the presents had been opened. We didn't even mind leaving the mess and just played around with the kids(well, I think Andy did clean it up a couple of hours later).

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

We stayed here in Mexico for Christmas, and while we really missed being with our family, we did enjoy a nice, relaxing holiday!On Christmas eve, we ate our "shepherds dinner" of rolls, chicken, cheese and crackers, grapes and apples, by candlelight, while thinking about that night when shepherds saw a new star appear.
We are showing off our new PJs...don't new jammies on Christmas feel great?
Mom and her boy
Dad and his girls
Jake read the Christmas story from Luke to us, we watched the DVD Joy to the World and Mr. Krueger's Christmas, and then we sang some of our favorite Christmas hymns.No more waiting...0 days left until Christmas!
Frosted sugar cookies for Santa, and of course, some carrots for the reindeer!
Finally, the kids got to set out their stockings for Santa to fill! Then it was off to bed! Andy kindly reminded the kids that they couldn't wake us up before 6:30am, and they ran upstairs. I love that we never hear any complaining from the kids about their bedtime on Christmas Eve!

Eagle-ette of the Month

Sarah was chosen as the Eagle-ette of the Month for December! She explained that it was because she was so good at behaving in the "Eagle Way". Congratulations to our little ASFM eagle!