A Lazy Relaxed Christmas in Queretaro

This has been a great Christmas season for us. Right after Thanksgiving we decorated the house, bought a tree, pulled out the nativity scenes and wreath, bought four poinsettias, and brought on the Christmas music playlist! Ho Ho Ho! Que viva el espiritu Navideno! And best of all, we dealt with no traveling, no lines, no stress… just a take-it-easy, relaxed, drink, eat, and be merry Christmas break at home. It has been wonderful.

I am now heading back to work, but I took some days off just to chill and do projects. Sabina and I have been working on a new scrapbook, we started with our Disney trip in 2008 and have been working forward. It’s been a blast! Her first scrapbook! We also made pecan pie and brownies and chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter jalapenos. Yummmmmyyy.

We wandered the streets of el centro, downtown, the plaza, and laid bets on which of the plazas had outdone themselves in the Christmas splendor annual contest. We laid around and read books. We watched our favorite movies. We took Sabina to watch not one, but TWO dubbed kids movies (princess and the frog and Alvin and the Chipmunks… yes painful even in Spanish). We made orange clove decorated balls and strung marshmallow glitter squares (those made GREAT Christmas decorations… although Posse did try to eat them off the tree all the time!). We let the dogs sit on the furniture and in our laps. It was great.

So, here are a few pictures of the pre-Christmas festivities, the general laziness and Christmas morning.

 

Sabina’s Christmas dress that Bop brought her (Gram picked out) and she loves!

 

Odin/Daddy and Sebastian getting the tree trimmed and lights up

The tree, up and lit, and the front of the house…

oh, if only I can be reincarnated as one of my dogs!!! What a life!

 

The dogs get the sofa, and the humans get the floor, but they share with the cat.

the Posada in our neighborhood, walking house to house and asking for a place to stay (singing it) and the answer (also sung), no, no, no, and finally a Yes, in the barn. And thus Maria had baby Jesus….Posadas are really fun. After arriving at the last “house” or posada/barn, there is food and candy and drinks, tacos, pinata (Sabina is taking a swing).

 

Baking cookies with mom. Having friends over, asado with the rugbiers.

Downtown Queretaro, in the main plaza, with the nativity scene behind us, on Christmas Eve.

 

More pictures on Christmas Eve at the plaza.

Me being blasphemous with my picture taking… What happened with the snake and Eve in that story? I thought it was an apple that involved. Hmm, turns out, Eve just got distracted and Adam is a voyeur.

amazing life sized nativity scene hand woven from the maguey plant. These are the ones I wanted to buy from the artisans we are helping in Villa Progreso. They are amazing!

Family pictures in front of the fountain and large plaza and  tree.  

Back at home, relaxing and playing with friends again, Christmas Eve.

Our Christmas dinner. (yes, I cooked!)

The tradition in Mexico is to not put out the baby Jesus until midnight on the 24th, when he is born. At midnight, he is given kisses from the whole family (and they make a wish with each kiss) and then put in his manger. We didn’t let Sabina stay up that late, but she we did put out the 14 baby Jesus in my collected manger scenes and Sabina kissed each one goodnight (the one above is the one we  have outside in our front yard), and then she put out milk and cookies for Santa, and then she went to bed and Santa came (see below).

and then comes Christmas morning….

 

opening stockings first…

Presents next…

and of course bones and kisses for the pups and Posse

 

Sabina’s Big Present was a new art easel, with paints and big rolls of paper. She spent the day painting and loves it! This is Christmas morning, after Sebastian got it all set up, and her in her new “wedding dress” which she loves and wore all day, as well. (Thank you Goodwill!).

ahhhh…Did I mention how much I LOVE Christmas!?

 

For more pictures, I have two sets on Flickr,

Christmas — http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoness/sets/72157622964456139/

and Pre-Christmas —http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoness/sets/72157622839182123/

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Advice to Remember

Written By Regina Brett, 55 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio. “To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written. “

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

18.. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ”In five years, will this matter?”.

26. Always choose life.

27. Forgive everyone everything.

28. What other people think of you is none of your business.

29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.

30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

31. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

32. Believe in miracles.

33. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

34. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

35. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

36. Your children get only one childhood.

37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

38. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

41. The best is yet to come.

42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

43. Yield.

44. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

Halloween in Mexico “Queremos Halloween”

Yes, Mexico HAS started to celebrate October 31st with Trick or Treating. The influence of the US has slowly but surely reached even our privada (neighborhood) in Queretaro. Only, they sort of decide when to have the “trick or treating” event randomly. So Sabina got to go on Friday night, and on Saturday night (and supposedly this may continue through Tuesday, good thing we ran out of candy to hand out). But we had a blast, invited some friends over, fortunately we doubled it with a Birthday party for Santiago, turning 7, and went as a group through the neighborhood. Great costumes… except for Sabina’s… she  has not yet left the princess stage and therefore she was the only Snow White (Blancanieves) surrounded by witches and warlocks and Harry Potters. But it was fun nevertheless.

One of the fun things here is that people don’t say Trick or Treat. They say “Queremos Halloween” in a sing song voice when they ring the doorbell, and there is a whole song to go with it. And they call it, sometimes, “triki triki” pronounced as “tr –ee-k-ee-tr-ee-kee”. It is very cute.

And to prepare, we OF COURSE carved our traditional pumpkin. This year for the first time Sabina did the whole drawing of the face herself, and we just helped her with the carving.

So here are some picture of events so far, pumpkin carving, Halloween, trick or treating, etc. Dia de los Muertos is yet to come, that will be tomorrow and the next day. I love this time of year!!!

Pumpkin carving

 

                                     Veronica and Sabina

 

Halloween

   

Sabina’s friends, some girls and then Juan Pablo, her best friend

Halloween parade through the neighborhood and then costume contest

Armando, Cynthis, Juan, Luis and Santiago, the Bday boy (turning 7), also dressed as Kiss.

running to get treats. Another friend, Ana Paula, goes to her school

Sebastian, handing out treats while we went around 

Our privada, and gorgeous Queretaro sunset

and ending Halloween, after loads of candy with cake and Santiago’s Bday!

yikes!

Living my life powerfully and living a life I love

We just finished our Advanced Landmark Forum Education workshop. It was definitely amazing and transformative.

I am not the same person I was last week, so Prepare Yourself World!

Last night I made this declaration to the room full of my fellow Landmark friends and I want to share with with the world, my friends and family:

Who I am is the possibility of Courage, Love and Joy.

The “Act” that I am giving up is: “nobody loves me like they should“.

And that is who I am.

I have started living my living my life powerfully and living a life I love.  Hugs to all.

The Path to Love – Deepak Chopra

The Path to Love From “The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing” by Deepak Chopra, Posted by: DailyOM  

Excerpt that I found and liked a lot, and want to share. Now I just need to buy the whole book and read it!

Falling in love feels like an accidental occurrence to many people, but in spiritual terms it is not–it is the entrance point to love’s journey. Romance has several distinct phases of its own for us to explore–attraction, infatuation, courtship, and intimacy–each partaking of a special spiritual significance.

In the dawning of the next stage, falling in love turns into a committed relationship, usually marriage, and the path changes. Falling in love is over; being in love begins. Spiritually, the word being implies a state of the soul; it is this state that a couple learns to nurture through surrender, the key word in every spiritual relationship. Through surrender, the needs of the ego, which can be extremely selfish and unloving, are transformed into the true need of the spirit, which is always the same–the need to grow. As you grow, you exchange shallow, false feelings for deep, true emotions, and thus compassion, trust, devotion, and service become realities. Such a marriage is sacred; it can never falter because it is based on divine essence. Such a marriage is also innocent, because your only motive is to love and serve the other person. Surrender is the door one must pass through to find passion. Without surrender, passion is centered on a person’s craving for pleasure and stimulation.

With surrender, passion is directed toward life itself–in spiritual terms, passion isthe same as letting yourself be swept away on the river of life, which is eternal and neverending in its flow. The final fruit of surrender is ecstasy: when you can let go of all selfish attachments, when you trust that love really is at the core of your nature,you feel complete peace. In this peace there is a seed of sweetness perceived in the very center of the heart, and from this seed, with patience and devotion, you nurture the supreme state of joy known as ecstasy. This, then, is the path to love described in much greater detail in my new book, although it isn’t the only path. Some people do not fall in love and enter into relationships with a beloved.

But this does not mean that there is no path for them, only that the path has been internalized. For such people, the Beloved is entirely within themselves from the very outset. It is their soul or their image of God; it is a vision or a calling; it is a solitariness that blossoms into love for the One. In its own way, such a love story is also about relationship, because the final realizations are the same for all of us. To realize “I am love” is not reserved only for those who marry. It is a universal realization, cherished in every spiritual tradition. Or to put it most simply, all relationships are ultimately a relationship with God.

Excerpted from The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra.

Mexico and Queretaro: good photos and websites

We have some wonderful photos and blogs written by friends and Volunteers here in Mexico.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daninewcomb/sets/72157612577095878/

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/86345154@N00/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecobirch01/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andresjaimes/

There is also an official Queretaro travel site that is good: http://www.flickr.com/photos/queretarotravel/

There are two Queretaro websites worth checking out:

http://www.queretaro.travel/

http://www.asomarte.com/

Sabina is learning to read and write!

Sabina is amazing! She is only 5 1/2, the youngest little girl in her “Prefirst” class (this is the equivalent to Kindergarten in the US), and she is learning to read and write in both Spanish and English. Which is confusing, I can tell you, because things are pronounced differently. But she is doing great. The other day she came over to sit with me and just started writing, to show me what she could do. It is so cute!!!

   

She wrote (on her own, sounding them out, she doesn’t really like to take help, I wonder where that came from!):

Sabina

Mano (spanish for hand)

Ana

Glas (for Glass)

Ana Grabid (grabbed) the Glas (glass)

Sabina

Ana

 

And just as a non sequiter, I wanted to mention that I think our family would fall completely apart without our wonderful live-in nanny/tutor/cook/house-keeper/all around wonder woman, Veronica. Veronica is from a rural area towards the Sierra Gorda, about 4-5 hours away, and she goes home Saturday mornings and returns on Monday mornings. She always returns having spend a freezing cold rainy weekend there, so I think they live in a very cold campo house. Her youngest sister also lives with us so she can go law school in Queretaro. And Veronica takes computer classes in the morning while Sabina goes to school. We LOVE her and can’t imagine life without her, really! We may have to adopt her, even though she is already 24, but still, please  live with us forever and never find a boyfriend and get married. Anyway, in the latest in a string of miracles, we got little tupperwares for mine and Sabina’s “lonche” (i.e. mid morning snacks), and we went environmentally friendly, starting buying large amounts of yoghurt with the idea of NOT buying those little bite sized yoghurts, that are neither filling nor environmentally friendly. So we told Veronica the plan, and I opened the fridge an hour later, and this is what I saw. Wow, right?

Sabina’s new hair cut

Sabina decided she wanted to cut her hair short “like a boy”, and took scissors in hand and started… sooooo I had to finish up the job. I am not the greatest of hair stylers, but I think we salvaged it into something super cute and pixie. She had looong hair and no bangs and now she has short hair, and cute bangs. Now she can brush it by herself and no tangles! yah! She is super excited and loves it and I think it looks great!

Here are few pics:

   

Sabina with one of her best friends, Juan Pablo. They play almost every day!