Life is good...

especially when they love each other!

Birthdays

For Ethan's birthday this summer, we went to a friend's house to celebrate the birthday of Ella's classmate and friend who shares the same birthday!

It was a pool party!

It was 4th of July, and "too cold to swim" for half of the Mexican kids there. After all, it wasn't a completely sunny clear day (Ahem. It was probably 75 degrees, still).

Faces were made...

Fun was had by all...

Graduation from Kinder

I recently posted about Ella's graduation from Kindergarten (yeah...I told you I was months and months behind)! You can find the post on my other blog!

Meanwhile, here are a few photos I didn't share there...

Here are the girls sitting on a ledge at the school. That is a gigantic moth on the wall between them!

Here is Ella's Spanish Kinder teacher:

Here are Maiya's teachers for her "Maternal" class (a.k.a. preschool)

And here are the girls with their friend, Pablo. Behind them is a gigantic, AMAZING cake that Pablo's mother made. She is an up-and-coming cake baker, and is quite the artist in soooo many ways (weaving, painting, drawing, etc). Cakes are her new thing, and she made this Alice in Wonderland cake at a special class in Guadalajara with a visiting specialist. Pretty cool cake, huh?

Father's Day

If I'm talking about Father's Day, you can see how behind I am on posting!!

The girls came home from school with adorable gifts for Jared on Father's Day!

They each made a picture that the school then had printed on mugs, along with their photo on the other side.



Ella's picture is of her and her Daddy (I love Ella's red hair photos...they always make me smile!)

And since Maiya's a little young to draw her own pictures, her teachers had her make fingerprints with paint, and then they made the fingerprints into little mini-Daddy's (see Jared working on the computer, working out, listening to music, etc). What a cute idea!

These are definitely a keepsake!

Our serious student...

Ella is a very serious student. She has to have everything PERFECT, which can make for some rough homework sessions, at times. Overall, she's better better at not throwing fits!!

In Mexico, the children write in cursive, not print. I tried to write a note to the teacher in pure cursive (you know, the "correct" way...so I didn't feel dumb), and realized I just couldn't do it very well. I generally use a sloppy mix of print/cursive/whatever.

Ella's cursive is officially better than mine (oh yeah, and 100% better than Jared's...because he doesn't write curisve)!

This is how they sleep...

At our old house, Ella & Maiya shared a queen sized bed. We were a bit fearful Maiya might fall off the side, so we put up a portable bed rail. Maiya used it well (see below).

It was not unusual to sneak a peak at the kids sleeping like this...



And yes, during the hot season it was NOT unusual to find Ella stripping off all of her clothes, and sleeping on top of the sheets.

In our new home, the girls now have bunk beds which they LOVE. Luckly, their sleeping habits seem to be much more normal when they are not side by side!

A new blog

Introducing our new blog: "Living Outside of the Box"

Yeah, you read that right. I have a new blog I've kinda been working on here and there (hence the lack of activity here). It's hosted on my own domain, and designed through Wordpress (which has a high learning curve, I might add)! It will be a more generic blog...for example, I probably won't talk about some of the personal church experiences and post a billion kid photos on it.

So, why another blog?

The truth is that I long to also share my thoughts & experiences with people that can relate to me. People that don't read it and think, "Oh...they're just showing off or bragging." There are many people out there, like us, who are expats...and as a whole we like to see what different opportunities and experiences that are available when living in different areas of the world.

The new blog will be my means of sharing our travel and day-to-day adventures living South of the Border! I would also like to share more of my personal feelings about what it means to me to be an expat, share the different "tools" we find especially helpful to maintain some of our comforts, and so on. I know I will post things that my family and some friends won't agree with...which is why my family and many of my friends still live in the US.

Some people have taken personal offense from things I have already written on my blog, when there is absolutely no reason to (why take offense when it isn't intended?!). I feel like I always have to edit what I want to write, to be certain not to "offend" people. But, I want to be honest with myself!! So, please be aware that if you don't like what I write...you don't have to read it!

You'll probably still see me pop up with updates here, as well...when I just can't help but share some random kid photos, etc. But I wouldn't bet on it too often.

So...please add this new blog to your feed: http://livingoutsideofthebox.com

I have about 4 months to catch up on bloggin...so if I can whoop myself into shape, there are many adventures I will be sharing soon!

If you care to know what we're up to, you can also follow our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Living-Outside-of-the-Box/173448679399838?sk=wall

Finally, I can share things that we're doing from day-to-day, within the context that we live in Mexico and enjoy each and every day!

Love,

Alisa