#tbt

We miss you and hope you had a good day.  🙂

What do we do for fun?

This spring we had zumba on a rooftop in playa del carmen.  How cool does that sound to you?  It was a kickin’ fun time.

Must mention the “warm-up” climb up the stairs to the top of this 5 story building to the roof.  whew!

Every Monday and Thursday at 6pm you could find India, myself and a bunch of other chicas zumba-ing our little selves into a full workout.

But, alas, our instructor has moved on and we are missing our zumba.  There are gyms down here but it just isn’t the same.  I’m still hopeful that one of the awesome chicas might pick up the class and be our new instructor.  😉

For now we are finding other ways to keep up with our workout -but not as much fun as zumba.  Even in the rain.

#tbt

Popocatepetl -is the active volcano outside Mexico City.  We took these pictures from the roof of a house in Tlaxcala, Puebla.

po-po-ka-tep-i-til

Pretty cool to watch the smokey plum billowing out of the cone.

Betcha didn’t know there was snow in Mexico.

Before the *hot* HOT *hot* of the summer came, Mikee and I would enjoy walking each morning.  Then we kinda sorta fell out of the habit.  You have to be crazy to be out walking when it’s 87 degrees at 7 in the morning.

The temps are comfortable again.

Sunny.  Pleasant.  Breezes.

We started our morning walks again -plus, there is the motivation of the “4 Week Shape Up” group that my girlfriend, Valerie started.

This morning we saw this sign as we walked past the dolphins.  🙂  There are no railings around this area and we are so close that we can talk and interact with the dolphins here.  How many people get to walk by dolphins daily?  I love it!

#tbt

The picture is never random and the thoughts behind it are always intentional.

The kiddos have Instagram and it took me a long time to figure out #tbt.

Now that I am up-to-date, we’ll try to follow that trend here -quick photo w/o a lot of text.

Since this past weekend was such an epic event for so many of our blog readers, here is a photo that is from one of our many visits to Wallkill.

Austin was 6 and India was 2 years old.

(this is one of my most all-time-mostest-favoritest pictures of the kiddos ever!!!)

…and while we are on the topic of the Renaissance, here is a pizza place in Playa

What do you think?

One thing I never imagined doing was home-schooling our children.

It had come up in conversation that at some time our kiddos might reach a point where they were interested in finishing high school at home to have more freedom in their schedule.

But, the actual day-to-day teaching of all 3 kiddos and possessing the sole responsibility for their education.  Whew!  That was not on the radar.

We have lots of reasons we decided to make this choice after moving to Mexico.  Each family has their own ideals and priorities regarding education and so that choice is different from family to family.  If you have specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.  But I try to keep this blog from turning into a forum for my personal opinion and keep it informative and just share our experiences.

Is it working?

Yep.

One thing I do miss, though, is the group learning from the classroom environment.  There are benefits to a group of 20 kiddos all reading a certain piece of literature and discussing what it meant to them.  Or a fun science project that has kids in teams to see who can come up with the most interesting way to prove a hypothesis.  Or the sharing of comments and experiences of life.

Please do not misunderstand, our kiddos have a great amount of time spent in social settings.  And they are so at home with people of all different ages and races and backgrounds.

I just miss the momentum of working on a project in a group setting.  The joy of exploring a topic and learning something new is contagious.

So…

…I came up with an idea.

We are going to have a project we all work on for each month.  It’s not for a grade.  Just for fun.  And each person can study it from their own unique perspective -since we have a high school student, a middle school student, and a little school student.

Each school day the kiddos will spend a minimum of 15 minutes pursuing the topic of the month.  It can be working on a power-point, finding something on pinterest.com, reading a biography about a person relating to the topic, finding an interesting video.  Pretty much anything.

It gives us something to share at the dinner table or in the car while riding.  It gives the kiddos interesting material for conversation with others.  It keeps their horizons broad.  It nourishes the life long love of learning and exploring we are working to inculcate.

This month we chose the…

RENAISSANCE

• artists abound
• math and science flourish
• there are many familiar things today that originate from that time
• a lot was happening socially, religiously & politically
• plus, it’s just an era of beauty -who doesn’t enjoy the benefit of adding some beauty to the day

The reason for sharing this via the blog is that there are other families that might like to join in the fun.  If you find something interesting, please share.  Then, maybe we can accomplish the “group learning” thing.

What did you find about the Renaissance that you did not previously know?

What is your favorite thing about the Renaissance that you would like to share?

Do you have any recommendations for the kiddos to check out?

Any ideas for future topics?

We had to go up to Cancun a couple days ago.

A trip to Cancun for any reason always includes a run into Costco for the regular items (real butter, tp, paper towels, fruit and peanut butter)  We also ended up in Home Depot looking for a “deshumidificador” –a surprisingly difficult item to find here.

Home Depot is one store that makes me a little homesick.  So much of my previous life was spent in Home Depot between work and building our own home and getting deals for the local RBC -it’s just full of good memories.  Plus, I love the smell of sawdust and wood.  But, it also makes me feel ‘not content.’  We don’t have the time or money or energy to spend fixing things in our home to be “just so” and I am ok with that.  Until we walk the isles of beautiful light fixtures or garden shop full of tropical and exotic plants or fabulous kitchen cabinets and spectacular array of paint colors.  You get the idea.  But, honestly, that is not what our life here is about and it’s ok.  Just keep me away from HD.  😉

Anyway, we have been everywhere looking for dehumidifiers.  We did see one at Home Depot today but decided to pass on it -low quality, no name brand, made here in this country, and still nearly $400.  That has “make more hassle for you when it refuses to work” written all over.

Why is it that several stores sell humidifiers?  Seriously, who would purchase those?  It’s been 120% humidity here for months.

Excuse my rambling.  The reason for this post is that Mikee had a special treat for us on the ride home.

We know there is one in Guadalajara -because we used to treat ourselves when we went to the airport.  Not sure if there are any others in Mexico.  Maybe Mexico City.

Krispy Kreme is so popular here (they must ship the ingredients in from the states because the donuts taste just right and that doesn’t happen often) that for our recent pioneer school, the Cancun friends brought in like 12 dozen and everyone went nuts.

Yum-mo… 🙂