First week in junio

Audrey and Elliot discovered a few cactus on their way down.

This is a shy little sand mermaid that we found on the beach.

The kids stuck in a big wave- all you can see of Audrey is her hair....

Mom in pool with kids in the hotel in Manzanillo.

Audrey and Elliot making their way through the desert.

This is the net that the fishermen dragged in on the shore where we were playing. If you look carefully, you can see the blowfish in the net, slowly deflating.

Where pharmacists go when they die....

Family resting in hot muggy Manzanillo.

Elliot swinging kids in Queseria.

Elliot climbing a cactus on the way down.

Elliot looking and acting the part of a fish.

Dad on the boogie board, riding a wave.

Dad helping with the inventory in the Project Amigo literacy project.

This was Cecily's favorite game- to have us help her jump over the waves and then just let herself be washed around in the surf.

Cecily's makeshift bathtub.

Cecily presents....the beach! In the background, you can see the men bringing in the dragnet.

Cecily modeling her floatie swimming suit- outside of her pajamas! That's the way they're wearing them now in Paris.....

Cec gets her first surfing lesson.

Dad's Mexican paint job- he didn't help pick the colors, Grandpa...

Dad caught in a wave

These parrots lived at the hotel we stayed at in Manzanillo

We got a shot of this famous little beach babe....

Audrey pushing the kids in Queseria on swings

Audrey's wondering if even the shallow water is too much for her!

Audrey riding the boogie board in to the beach.

THis is Audrey seeing if she can jump over the incoming wave

You can almost see the ash from the volcano on the leaf of this palm outside our house.

This is the Manzanillo airport where Dad flew out and where Dad and Mom and Cecily flew in.

Dear Family,

We had a very busy week. On Monday and Tuesday, James and I started to take inventory of the books that Project Amigo has warehoused at the town library. The library is really something. It looks like it used to be a processing plant and was converted to a library by doing nothing more than adding some steel shelves and putting books on them. Project Amigo uses a back room for storing their books, and apparently we also share that back room with a family of mice (reason for dings in book covers, because they are thrown in moments of panic….). The library is only open in the evenings, and by then it is warm enough that you can smell the pigeons that live on the roof of the building, so we really like to do our work in the mornings. In the public schools here, there aren’t huge well-stocked libraries like we have. Most schools don’t even have libraries, so Project Amigo is working to put mini-libraries into the schools in this state. So far they have about 50 such libraries. These libraries consist of about 200 books. The project that we’re working on this summer is to deliver about 100 new books as supplements to the libraries that have already been donated. We’re taking inventory and evaluating the books, taking the new books to the school, and trying to ask some questions and do some paperwork to see if what’s being done is effective and if there is anything else that we could do better.

On Wednesday, Audrey and Elliot and Grandma and Grandpa arrived. We were so excited that we got Cecily up from her nap! They have had a lot of fun settling in and the kids promptly named three of our four cats (two of the cats I can’t tell apart, so we really have named all four, but two of them have the same name). They named the grey and white striped one Swiper because he likes to take swipes at people, especially Cecily (Swiper’s twin is also called Swiper…). The black and orange one they named BedBug because he likes to sneak in and sleep with Cecily on her bed, even though he won’t go near people during the day. And the caramel and white one is called Dulce because he’s the color of dulce de leche.

The next morning we had hung out some laundry from the kids’ trip and a very fine ash was raining from the sky so we had to gather it up. After visiting the Hacienda, we found out that there had been a 5.2 earthquake at about 5 that morning and that it had made the volcano “hiccup”. That’s where the fine ash was coming from. There was another one the next night at about 5, but only Mom and Dad felt it because they were at the hacienda. It felt like someone had taken our couch and shaken it a little. More of a rolling than the shaking I expected. There was a big push in Relief Society for everyone to have their “earthquake bags” ready (sounds like our 72 hour kits, but much smaller)!

The mosquitoes got to Cecily again. Only on her face and hands, because those are the only things exposed during the night. The rest of us really only have two or three bites. She’s just sweeter than the rest of us.

Jorge took Audrey and Elliot and Dad up to Queseria to see the kids up there. They got to push them in swings. We’re going up this coming week to hand out all of the clothes that we collected from neighbors and family and friends. Jorge is giving priority to the moms that have been helping their kids at school- he’s going to let them in first according to who has been doing the most help. He’s a great guy who knows that the kids up there need help and need clothes, but that their families need to be trained in the social skills that they will need, and need to learn something more than just to show up and receive clothes from strangers. Everyone in this organization is amazing. We’re just so impressed with all of them. Friday afternoon Dad went to the Cybercafe in Suchitlan (We’re in Cofradia de Suchitlan) and painted with Beto and Diego. He said that it was a really good thing that Grandma couldn’t see the rickety old ladder that he was standing on to paint. They had to borrow it from the police there in Suchitlan. Because, just like Mom, Diego and Beto made Dad do all of the high stuff.

Saturday we all packed up and went to the beach in Manzanillo. We were really hoping to find a beach where we could snorkel, but instead we found a beach with really good waves. When we first got there, there were some men pulling a dragnet out of the ocean. When they were done, we could see a bunch of fish caught in the net and some blowfish! They were slowly deflating themselves and water was squirting out of them while they did. The fishermen sorted out the fish into plastic sacks and then went and played in the waves for a few minutes before taking their fish and nets and leaving. The water on this beach was perfect. It was just the right temperature, and it was so clean- there wasn’t any seaweed or gross floaties in it. And the sand was really nice too- a combination of regular brown beach sand and black volcanic beach sand, so that whenever a wave left, there was almost a streaky look to the sand. We had to keep hold of Cecily’s hand, but the waves were just right for Audrey and Elliot and Dad to ride. We got some great pictures of them out in the break. Toward the end, as the afternoon wore on, the waves got more violent and one of them knocked Audrey’s mask right off of her face. Cecily really liked to get in about waist high on her, hold on to our hands, and try to jump over the waves as they came in. They she would just let herself be swept around by the water until the next wave came in. Fun for her, but a little hard on Mom and Dad’s backs. Cecily ended up faring the best when it came to sunburns. She looked just great. We figure we were in the water and at the beach for about 6 hours. We also figure that all of the people in the water should have applied sunscreen a little more often than we did, because with the water breaking so hard, and with all of the sand in the waves, the water was probably scrubbing off the sunscreen more quickly than usual. Anyway, mom’s shoulders are burned in a little line right around her swimsuit, because she applied right up to the line of her swimsuit, but there was a little ribbon all the way around that got sun anyway. Elliot only really has sun in a couple of places, including a ribbon on the back of one of his knees. Audrey is really burned on her shoulders and on her chest and on her scalp. And Dad is also burned on his shoulders (but we told him that if he didn’t return with a sunburn, no one would believe that he was in Mexico).

We went to church today in Manzanillo. The branch was smaller than our branch in Colima. Mom was going to go to YW with Audrey and Dad was going to go to Primary with Elliot, but a sister came and whisked Audrey away to YW. So mom and Cecily went to Primary with Elliot. There were only 7 kids in Primary, and their ages were from 9 (Elliot) to 18 months- they just had everyone in there. Mom took Cecily out to the bathroom and when she came back, one of the missionaries was in helping Elliot. Both Audrey and Elliot said the closing prayers in their classes, even though their teachers let them do it in English.

Then we went and saw Dad off at the airport. It was sad. We’re going to miss Dad so much.