Our neighbour Marcela will be having her baby in late December and her sister-in-laws are expert event planners...they held an amazing baby shower for her the other day, action-packed with games and activites. It was great to see all the Zacango women out for a "night on the town" as they work so hard in their homes every day!
Here is little Cirilo and his big brother Edgar with his new cuyo (guinea pig). Cirilo melts my heart each and every day with his precious, inquisitive outlook on life. He has been asking for a guinea pig for the last few months (basically every single day) and finally there was one ready for him to take home in time for his fifth birthday. 
Earlier this month we had some team-buiding meetings in Mexcio City. Here we are creating a printing press out of our team, each of us physically representing a piece of the machine according to the gifts we bring to the team. And below, a game of Dutch Blitz with the SALTers.
We had some free time during the team meetings and finally had a chance to visit Fida Kahlo's "Blue House" here in Mexico City. As you may know, Frida Kahlo is Mexico's most famous (and eccentric) female artist (I won't go into detail about her life but you can google her if you like). We have quite a few children's books about Frida (and her equally famous artist husband, Diego Rivera) and Hizee really loves her art and the story of her life. She had been waiting to visit her actual home, which has been turned into a museum. La Casa Azul ("The Blue House" as Frida's house is called) did not disappoint!
The Mexican "Tooth Mouse" has visited Hizee TWICE this month as she has hit the jackpot with loosing her two big front chompers! She lost the first one in early December and the second a few days later bringing her to a total of four lost teeth. She is quite proud of the fact that she has lost these teeth and feels like she is "pretty old" now.
Hizee studied bears this month and celebrated the end of her study by hosting a teddy bear picnic. She was very serious about the preperations and especially enjoyed making "bear claws." The pictures also show a bit of a glimpse of Hizee's classroom. Hizee loves having school!
As I've briefly blogged about in the past, we have a kids English class this year and we just recently had a little program for the parents. It was great fun putting it together and the kids were beyond-eager particpants and performers! Zam and Hizee also come to English class. Here are the kids getting a sign ready for the program at our new classroom in the primary school...and below, a little pre-program wrestling match between Zam and Lalo. Unfortunately, our battery ran out in our camera and we didn't get very many good pics or video of the actual program.
We started celebrating advent a bit early this year because we'll be travelling to Manitoba for Christmas and the kids didn't want to miss all of their advent traditions. Unfortunately, Ziko was sick during the first Sunday we celebrated.
It's custom to have a big mole meal once you have harvested your corn and to feed all the people who have helped you with your harvest. It was perfect timing for our chickens whom we had had for over a year and had never taken to "setting" (all except one). So we "sacraficed" three of our hens and had our big harvest celebration meal! I couldn't actually kill the chickens so Enrique and Blance caught them and their mom, Cleofas, killed them to make the broth for the mole...yum! 
Zam had to make cookies as part of his measurment study in math...so here are the two bakers (Zam and Miguel) hard at work! Miguel often joins us when we have homeschool, much to the excitment of Zam.
Everyone in Zacango has been crazy-busy this past month harvesting their corn. Last week Elizabeth (introducing...Elizabeth, our new co-worker and friend who arrived in September) and I helped Elvira harvest her corn.
We were super excited to harvest our mini-plot of maize last week!!! We planted red maize and it is astoundingly beautiful! Here is Hizee displaying two beautiful cobs; Ziko demonstrating the harvesting technique (ripping the top open and pulling out the cob); Miguel, Enrique, and Ziko leaving our field with the sacks filled with the maize cobs; and finally, the maize put out to dry on our roof. Once the corn has had more time to dry we will rub the kernals off (probably in February or so).
