Happy New Year everyone! And I just realized now that I never did wish all of you a Merry Christmas via the blog. So with this I will say that I hope all of you had a beautiful Christmas and that it was so nice talking to some of you over the holiday!
Sorry we haven't posted in a while. I won't promise any deep or profound insights about the last few weeks, much less any lengthy descriptions about the pictures, but I will post a few pictures to show what we've been up to and will try to give a few brief descriptions.

Shortlyafter New Year's we went to Nicaragua for an MCC retreat. It was a spiritual retreat and was quite refreshing overall. The kids had a blast swimming in the pool of the hotel we stayed at everyday with their friends Isaiah and Micah. The top picture shows Zam and Isaiah preping for the MCC talent show that they never ended up participating in. They chickened out when the MC announced their comedy act (they were going to tell knock, knock jokes). Oh well, most of the fun to be had was in the planning of the jokes anyway. Ziko, Hizee, and Micah, however, pulled out all the stops as they sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells. It was absolutely priceless (I will post the video when we have more time in town).

We didn't really do anything touristy in Nic. as there wasn't much free time during the retreat. We did go with the group on a short boat ride and saw this monkey (who was obviously used to posing for food) and saw this amazing yellow church that the kids thought Grandma Pat would like (because her favourite colour is yellow). It was nice to have a holiday but it was sure nice to come back home to Zacongo after our first extended time away from our new home. It felt so nice to have a home to come back to.

On our way back from our retreat we stopped in Cuernavaca to adopt a few new family members. Two rabbits and two guinea pigs (the other two pigs in the last photo are for Isaiah and Micah, MCC kids here). The two rabbits belong to Ziko and Hizee. Ziko named his Green and Hizee named her's cutie. Zam chose a g.pig and named it Chocolate and Bananas. And Bruce and I got our very own g.pig and named in Pablo. We are all pretty happy about getting more pets...a dream come true for a bunch of animal lovers!

On our way to Nicaragua we had the chance to do a few touristy things in Mexico City, like check out the Zocolo (town center) and cruize on some delightfully colourful boats through the city's old canal system.
Ziko and his friend Isabel (fellow MCC kid).

Zam and his buddies Miguel and Enrique playing cards on New Year's Eve.
We had stepped out to a neighbor's house for a few minutes and came back to find them deeply engaged in their game like a group of hard-core poker players.

We spent New Year's Eve in Las Juntas with our neighbor's Luis and Cleofas and family. Luis and Cleofas are originally from Las Juntas. We had a great time visiting and hiking the hills and were fed crazy amounts of food as usual.

Edger and Ziko in Las Juntas

While we were visiting in Las Juntas we ventured down to the barranca (stream) for a swim and on the way there our friends Augustine and Herminio found an armadillo. Not a happy New Year's Day for the armadillo. They really put this poor little guy through the paces before (thankfully) releasing him back into the forest. I guess things could have been worse for the armadillo, they were talking about taking him back to Zacongo where one of the community members knew how to prepare the meat for eating. (Click on "older posts" below for more new pics).

Hangin' out in a hammock with your friend (Lupe) on a sunny afternoon...life doesn't get much better than this!

There was a wedding in Zacongo shortly after Christmas. It was a HUGE event...lots of food, a band complete with stage and lights, and dancing into the wee hours of the morning. Zam, Hizee, and Ziko had a blast running around with their friends and dancing.

We got the kids boxing gloves for Christmas and they are a huge "hit" (hee,hee)!
The kids have been "friendly" with them, no major injuries, only laughs so far!