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!

In the middle is the kid's yearly Christmas photo in front of the tree, together with some photos of Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve night was a blast with meals at our neigbor's, a gift exchange with our neighbor's, fire crackers, and more pinatas than you could shake a stick at (ha, ha!) The kids had a great and very late night!

Here in Mexico people do not exchange gifts on Christmas morning. Instead, gifts are exchanged on King's Day ( January 6). We decided to keep the Canadian tradition this year and we exchanged gifts on Christmas morning. We gave the kids some traditional crafts from this area as well as some not-so-traditional toys. It was fun!

The perfect ending to Christmas day! We went hiking with our friends, found all sorts of treasures (such as a shed snake skin, a cow jaw, and antler shaped branches), and had a hot dog roast complete with Heinz ketchup and French's mustard. What more could you ask for in a Christmas dinner!

The other day we went for a hike around the ourskirts of Zacongo. There was loud Mexican music playing and I thought that it would serve as a good sound track for a short movie. So here's a little tour of the outskirts of Zacongo complete with soundtrack.

Hizee standing by the pointsetta tree at her school on the last day before Christmas break. She thought that her Grandmas might like this picture.
Zam relaxing on the fence in our back yard and enjoying the great view.

We went fishing with our neighbors a couple of days ago and had a pretty good catch thanks to their net.

Making Christmas cookies!
I'm in super collage making mode right now because I haven't posted in a while and we have an abundance of pictures! A couple of weeks ago fellow MCCers Kiara and Meridith came over for an afternoon of cookie baking together with the kids. It was a hoot and a touch exhausting (sugar cookies seem to take a lot of energy as the dough never seems to disappear no matter how much of it you eat along the way)! The "icing the cookie" process seemed to take on a life of it's own as it became "one dab of icing for the cookie, one for the mouth." I think that the bowls of left over icing were probably about 90% saliva at the end of the whole event! Sugar cookies anyone?
(Click "older posts" to see more new photos and video)

All about Burros!
The kids have been doing a lot of donkey riding lately. The other day Hizee went with her friend Maria to get water and rode all by herself for the first time. Zam and I had our own donkey riding adventure when we traveled back to Zacongo on donkey after helping our neighbors collect wood about an hour out of town. Not the most comfortable of rides but certainly a fun adventure to say the least!

Three goofballs (Lalo, Hizee, and Zam) riding back from our fishing trip. The theme song: "Otra vez con sin manos" meaning "another time, with no hands." They couldn't get enough of singing their goofy little made-up mantra and sang it all the way home (about a 20 min. trip)!

Ziko with his buddies David and Lalo.
A friendly game of UNO on top of our water cistern in our back yard.

With a view like this even laundry is fun!
Hizee loves caring for her chickens! She feeds and waters them and sits with them in their cage. Here she is with "Chocolate" teaching her how to fly.
This is how Ziko looks at the end of most days. On this day I had just left the room and was going to come back to read him a story and put on his pajamas. When I came back into the room he was already flaked out!