Mexico

This month we took a week long vacation to Mexico!  For awhile we've been wanting to visit a Spanish speaking country so the kids could show off their skillz, so this was it.  We flew from Dalls to Cancun, rented a car there, and spent most of the week in Tulum, a town about 90 miles south of Cancun.  The trip was not exactly what we'd hoped or expected, but it was still fun.

The unexpected and not so great:
1.  Sargassum.  Sargassum is a sea grass that grows out in the Atlantic and occasionally washes ashore in the Caribbean.  In the last few years, it's been increasing quite a bit.  Unfortunately, we got to the Yucatan Peninsula in the middle of a big wave of Sargassum, which meant that every beach was covered in it (piled 3 feet high, 8 feet wide, stretching from Cancun down to Belize), and the Caribbean was thick with it.  When it gets on the beach it rots and stinks, and it turns the water brown.  So, we spent no time on the beach at all.  This was a pretty big disappointment, especially for me.
2.  Issues with authority figures.  One day we decided to go see some ruins and visit a lagoon (since it would be free from sargassum).  When we got there, there were three men standing in the parking lot telling us that the place was closed because of a fire.  They weren't wearing uniforms or anything identifying themselves.  They just wouldn't let us in.  Maybe there was a fire, maybe there wasn't.  We don't know.  But we didn't see the ruins or the lagoon.  At the grocery store one day Nathan laid a 500 peso note on the cashier's counter.  When he looked away she exchanged it for a 100 peso note and pretended like it had always been 100.  And on the last evening we were there we ate at a restaurant by the beach, parking on the street (along with hundreds of other cars).  Near the end of the meal the server told us the police were doing something with our car.  When Nathan got out there, they had our rental car hooked up to a tow truck and said that unless we paid 2500 pesos, they'd tow it.  The manager of the restaurant came out and helped translate, even telling Nathan that usually the police checked with her first to make sure the car didn't belong to a customer.  Oh well, at least we didn't get our car towed.

The unexpected and pretty cool:
1.  Cenotes.  Cenotes are big sink holes that have filled with water that's been filtered through limestone.  The water is crystal clear and the cenotes are gorgeous.  There are about 6000 in Mexico, all different and all gorgeous.  Some of them include underground/underwater caves in which people scuba dive, but we didn't go to any of those.  But when we realized the beaches wouldn't work, cenotes became our go-to entertainment.  They were great fun!
2.  The lagoon.  When we couldn't go to the planned lagoon, we ended up finding a smaller one.  It was gorgeous (I finally got my blue water).  The sand was so fine it was like mud, which was a little weird, and it smelled like sulpher, but it was so pretty.  I loved it.
3.  The pool at our condo.  Our condo was very nice and pretty much as it had been pictured on Airbnb, and the best thing about it was the pool.  Although it was for everyone in the condo complex, we always had it all to ourselves.  We swam every day (sometimes twice or three times) and the kids had tons of fun there.
4.  Family movie night every night.  Every night we watched a movie together and it was tons of fun.  We had some winners (Back to the Future, Fantastic Mr. Fox) and some losers (Back to the Future II, Ghostbusters), and some in between, but always a good time.
5.  The fruit.  Oh my goodness, it was delicious.
6.  Z's Birthday.  The boy turned 12 while we were there.  We had gelato for his birthday treat and he got a sombrero for his present (which is exactly what he wanted!).
7.  Animal sightings.  We saw many beautiful and unique animals including a capybara(!), something we called a Mexican raccoon (we need to look that one up), iguanas, turtles, fish, etc.
8.  The kids speaking Spanish.  The kids were our translators and they were terrific!  It was so much fun to watch them use their Spanish and use it so well.  It was great for them to experience Spanish as a regular language for regular people, instead of something they just do at school.  It all made me wish I'd gone to a Spanish immersion school!

The "Mexican raccoons"

The first cenote we visited.  It was pretty small but lots of fun.  You could jump from two different places or take the zip wire and jump from it.

Eden was a champion jumper!

Another cenote.  This one was bigger and had more little creatures in it, but the kids didn't think the jumps were as good.

This was a little local taco place we found.  The tacos were excellent!

We found a little clean section of beach one night.  The water was still brown and a little stinky, but we got in a little sand time, which was nice.

The lagoon.

Another cenote.

Little fish swam all around you and would nibble on your feet if you sat still enough.

This may sound a little prejudiced, but Mexico has the grossest flavors for their chips!  Z is eating some horribly flavored chips.  Bleh.

Z's birthday.

Our dinner on the beach (before our encounter with the police and the tow truck)

A sand castle made with sargassum.

The pool at our condo.

Summer

We've got a new set of baby bunnies this year!  They were born on June 16 and are doing great.

Their names, from left to right, are Mad-Eye, Hagrid, Arthur, Molly, Sirius, and Tonks.

Eden had her birthday party.  Her birthday is in March, but the weather was so cold and dismal that we decided to postpone having friends over until June.  They had a great time!  Eden asked everyone to dress up as a magical creature.

We took care of a neighbor's animals while they were on vacation, including a bottle-fed calf!

And of course we've got ducks!  They're all big and grown-up now, but they started out looking like this:

The kids had their grandkid trip with Yaya and Papu.  They came up here with Faith and Katy and took all four of the kids to a state park in Minnesota for four days.  Nathan and I took advantage of the opportunity and had a little getaway ourselves to Sleepy Eye, MN.  A wonderful time was had by all!

We Love De Smet!

We had another great visit to De Smet this week.  Unfortunately, there were no kittens, but there was a one week old miniature horse and a one week old calf.  And a pump.

Coming soon, to a bookstore near you...

The big news in the Hitchcock family this month is that Eden won a book publishing contest on April 4 and she is going to have her book, called La Casa, published by a real publishing company!  Here's the backstory.

Last December a group called Books4Kids came to Eden's school to tell the kids about a contest they have each year.  They invite all South Dakota elementary and middle school kids to write a book and submit it to the contest.  One book will be picked as the winner, and the author of that book will receive $250 and a publishing contract.  The book will be published, the author will receive royalties, and the Books4Kids program will promote the book and will bring the author (either in person or through skype) into South Dakota schools to talk about reading and writing and to encourage kids to participate in the contest.

As soon as Eden heard about it she was super excited.  We right away went to work trying to decide which one of her books she should enter.  She writes book and poems all the time just for fun, so we took a good look at the 5-6 books we could find lying around in her room and decided to submit La Casa.  This is a book she wrote and illustrated which is about the different kinds of houses people can live in and what they do in those houses.  She wrote it last summer, and the very first time I read it I thought, "This is a real children's book!  It's got all the right cadences and hooks, and it's a complete, finished work."  Plus the drawings were super cute.

So we talked to the Soto librarian about it, and she suggested including an English translation so that it would be bilingual, giving it a better chance to win.  So Eden translated the book as well.  She is the author, illustrator, and translator.

Then we sent it in the third week of December and waited.  About three weeks ago we found out she was a finalist, which was super exciting!  But we didn't know how many finalists there were, and we did now that a lot of the other finalists were older kids (like 5th graders).  I was hopeful, but not optimistic about her winning.

At the end of March I got a phone call from the Books4Kids program and they told me that Eden had been chosen as the winner!  They were going to announce this at her school right after the annual 2nd grade music concert (which Eden is in because she's in 2nd grade).  They wanted to let us know so that we would be sure to be there.  We were sworn to secrecy.

April 4 was the 2nd grade concert.  Yaya and Papu came up for the big event, although Eden thought they were just coming for the concert.  A very kind friend recorded the award ceremony for us, and it was absolutely delightful.  Eden is so happy and so excited, not just about having her book published, but about the idea of talking to other kids to encourage them to read and write more.  Nathan and I are practically bursting with pride and feel so fortunate that we and Eden get to have this great experience.  Below are pictures and a video.  The announcement of Eden begins around the 5 minute mark, if you want to skip right to that.  It's too bad the video doesn't show her while all the pre-talking is going on.  She looked like a nervous wreck -- a pained look on her face, her hands clasped, and kind of rocking back and forth. :-)

And about a week ago, Eden was interviewed by the local news station.  To see that, follow this link.