Grandma Pat and Grandpa John (Bruce's parents) were here! We had a great time relaxing around Zacango for two weeks and putting them to work with various odd jobs, routine jobs, and newly thought-up jobs! We had a great time just being together and I think Grandma and Grandpa got a great feeling of what life is like in Zacango! Thanks for coming Grandma and Grandpa, we miss you already!

One of the projects that Bruce, his dad, and the kids (well, mostly Miguel) undertook was building a playhouse! Bruce had a lot of fun playing with cement (something he's always wanted to try working with) and the finished product is nothing short of fantastic! (More pics of the playhouse to come in the future.)

When we weren't busy putting Grampa John to work, he and Bruce had the chance to go for a lot of nice hikes in and around Zacongo.

Learning about birds and seeing how far we can fly in the kids environmental group.

Celebrating our friend Maria's birthday with cupcakes, stick-bread, and a swim in the barranca.

Bruce celebrated his first Mexican birthday on July 25 and my neighbors helped me prepare mole for his birthday. As I think I've mentioned on the blog before, mole is somewhat of a delicacy usually saved for special occasions (at least in Zacango). We started the mole the day before the party. We started grinding all of the ingredients (chiles(pictured below), peanuts, sesame seeds, onion, garlic, other spices etc.) at around three in the afternoon and by eight o'clock in the evening we had the mole paste completed. The next day we cooked the chickens and added the mole paste to the broth and meat. It was great to learn and be a part of the mole cooking process. I realized why it is such a special meal!

Bardormiana grinding the dried and toasted chiles.

Eating the mole on Bruce's birthday...Hizee giving Bruce a good dose of confetti ...Andie's spectacular birthday hat designed especially for Uncle Bruce...Isaiah giving Bruce a good dose of flour (it's a birthday tradtion to dump just about anything possible on the birthday person's head -- confetti, sand, flour, water, ashes etc.)

We got a Mickey Mouse pinata for Bruce's party (Ziko's current all-time-favorite cartoon character) and did the pinata on the street outside our house. Pinatas are serious business here and the scramble for the candy at the end is intense!

This is the beginning collage of our adventures with Andie, Luke, and Uncle Ivan that never made it on the last time I blogged. It was so beautiful to see them here in Mexico and we shared a very action-packed two weeks together! We hung out in Zacango for about a week and then did some travelling around Acapulco. The cousins really enjoyed just being together again! Thanks for coming you guys!

Hangin' out at the beach with Andie and Luke...and Miguel! We went to some non touristy areas around Acapulco and had an amazing time! One of the highlights was that Zam's best friend Miguel was able to join us.

Hangin' out in Zacongo with Andie and Luke!

Ziko, the Great Mexican Explorer and his trusty burro Taco.

Zam's friend Miguel and I are obsessed with the possibility of baby bunnies. We have two female, and one male rabbit, and the females are always digging caves, as if they are getting ready to have babies, but the babies never appear. One of our techniques for trying to find the babies is to stick a camera in the cave and take pictures. You can imagine our excitment when we detected movement towards the back of the cave! You can then imagine our subsequent to find that it was only Hizee's pigeons! (She has two pigeons now, she got a mate for Compass, his name is El Norte)

Looking at things under the microscope is a big hit at the kids environmental summer program.

It couldn't have been cuter watching these little ones "graduate" from Kindergarten...complete with romantic dance interludes! Below is Hizee with her good friend Aneisa.