Sunday street soccer game

Lyle and his friends spend a lot of time playing outside together. Sometimes its skateboarding in our carport (because the street isn’t paved), trying to capture iguanas living in the trees, looking for bugs, chasing chickens, all that fun boy stuff. Most weekends our neighbor’s grandkids are over and at some point there is always a soccer game, unless the ball is flat and no one can find a pump... The game can last for 15 mins to 2 hours depending on how many kids there are and how everyone feels! Short clip of what kids in La Manzanilla do when they have a ball and some time to kill.

Good neighbors

Our neighbor Maria is the matriarch of a very large family, eight living children, 6 of which live here and all have children of their own. She is the best neighbor I’ve ever had. When the fruit truck comes around she makes sure that the guy doesn’t sell me the shlock product, when someone tried to steal our truck she sent her daughter to find the “town law”, when the lady comes around selling the baked candied pumpkin she makes sure to send her over to my house so I don’t miss out, and if I’m not home she buys me a piece!

She is also very generous with her family’s food, we've been treated to posole, tamales, ceviche, enchiladas and other delights. If never fails that when Rick, my husband, leaves for a few days to go to the States, Maria is at my door with a plate of food.

He hasn’t been gone for 24 hours and she marched over with a plate of sopitas and tomatillo salsa. And not just 2, one for Lyle and one for me…no the plate had 6 of the tasty little treats. I scarffed down 3 right away, Lyle wasn’t hungry so I saved his 3 for later…I ended up eating them as well.

She’s a gem, we are very lucky to have her and her family as neighbors and friends!

Holiday vacation with a bang

I have to laugh because we'd probably be thrown in jail if we lived in the US.

Christmas, New Years and really, any other holiday is an excuse for fireworks in Mexico. Not to generalize the whole country but I can tell you from me experience the Mexicans who live and visit La Manzanilla have a thing for fireworks.

We got into the swing of it buy purchasing Lyle various little bags of fireworks with names like, cebollitas- "little onion", busca pies-"looks for feet", chifladors-not sure what this one means but they were loud so we promptly took them away. (Here comes the jail part) And furthermore, we gave Lyle a lighter and let him light them himself. He was in heaven. On Christmas eve the kids started lighting them around 1:00 and it continued until 10:00 that night.

I noticed both the boys and girls like the fireworks but the boys were like crack addicts and couldn't get enough of them!

We limited Lyle to small fireworks that throw off sparks or make a small popping sound...but the other kids had what I would compare to M80's, boys, fire, fireworks- now that is a recipe for disaster.

Luckily all ended well and everyone still has all there fingers, toes and eyes!