Lisa n Tom (n James n Joseph)

There's this big pink mansion downtown that I've been curious about, so today the boys and I went on a tour. "El Pinar" was built 120 years ago with henequin money. It passed through three families and ended up with a family with tourism money. They had 12 kids, but bought the house in their 60s so only the youngest ever lived there. The house now belongs to the kids have an organization run it as a tourist / event space. It's sort of trapped in a 1980s new money bubble with Jacobian replica furniture, Lladro figurines, and family portraits of ladies with Aqua Net hairdos. And these tired candles. Also! We got a Christmas card! The one and only. Two months late. :)  

 Driving home from school this after, I ran across a crew filming and advertisement on the Monumento de la Patria. I don't now what they're selling, but would you buy it?

The Catholic church within walking distance is Nuestra Señora de la Paz. This week is the annual celebration of their patron saint that the church is named after. They have a novena, which is special prayers (and parties) for nine days, culminating in the biggest party on the last night. Here's the deal, though, I don't know if all of the churches do this, but they celebrate at 5 a.m. every morning with mariachis and bottle rockets .  Guys. Seriously. So after assuming the neighborhood was being invaded a couple of mornings ago, we went down to join the party tonight.

James has soccer practice twice a week and soccer conditioning twice a week at the city stadium. Joseph and I tag along to walk around the track. There's a permanent setup of exercise machines on the route and Joseph has adopted these as his person playground. He's getting very good a backflips.

School pics came home today.  James, 6th grade. Joseph, 3rd grade.

The Merida English Library organizes tours a couple of times a month. Today, we went on their guided art gallery tour in the Santa Ana neighborhood. There are at least a dozen galleries in about a three block radius. The boys are still on winter break (three weeks!) so this was one way to get them out of the house and walking around. This first one is actually a house where the artist family lives. There's a mom, dad, and two daughters they are all professional artists. The whole front of the house and the patio/pool area are full of their art: paintings, bronze sculptures, charcoal drawings. All kind of modern and weird and very Mexican. Here's a random selection of other things I liked from other galleries: The kids said, "Star Wars!" Old buildings in Merida usually have famously high ceilings. Like, 18 feet high. but this particular one was barely above 6 feet: notice Tom's head against the beam. Duck!  

It's the 12th day of Christmas, Three Kings Days or Día de Reyes Magos.  The Kings brought us Lego sets, chocolate, fruit, and some local toys, include a wooden top, a super loud and annoying wooden noisemaker (thanks, guys), and that toy where there's a stick tied to a cup with a string and you hold the stick and try to swing the cup up and catch it on the stick. Is there a name for that? I don't know what to call it in Spanish or English. This morning, we signed up for a home tour to benefit the Merida English Library.* (* For Lisa, any excuse to poke through strangers' homes.) We got a little lesson about the history of the Santiago neighborhood. Here's the restaurant featured on Netflix's "Salt Fat Acid Heat" episode 3 . Here's the ice cream store where the owner invented the now ubiquitous  marquesitas . The cool thing about house tours is how completely unassuming the houses are from outside and how completely cool they are inside. Lots of ar...

Tomorrow is Día de Reyes Magos. Tonight we'll leave our shoes out and the tomorrow morning there will be little presents in them. After soccer practice tonight the team split a rosca de reyes. It's a King Cake, but it looks different here than the green, gold, and purple ones you'll see in New Orleans. The ones here are made with a sort of sour-dough, but sweetened. I confess, I don't like them as much as the  panes de muerto  back in October. The sugar stuff is the same as you'd get on a  concha  bread and the colorful things are fruit leather. They're supposed to represent the jewels that would be on a king's crown. There's a little plastic or ceramic baby in the cake or, in the really jumbo-sized ones, multiple babies.  James got the piece with the baby in it! Also, James desperately needs a haircut! The Kings arrived after the kids went to bed.   

You know how in Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" the two title characters wander all the way through Hamlet without having any idea of the plot of the play or what their roles are supposed to be? That's sort of us with James' soccer league. We signed up and all we know is what we get on the group WhatsApp chat. Where to show up for practice, where to show up for games (usually with less than 12 hours notice), what color uniform to bring or -- more often -- just a note to bring both colors and they'll figure it out when they get there. There's no schedule published anywhere I can find. I don't know when the seasons starts or ends. I don't think we even know the name of the league or how it fits into the other leagues and the rest of the many teams in town. Anyway, tonight was some sort of game, but it didn't seem to count for anything? But they won, so that was good.  

 Joseph has moved up to the Advanced class at parkour and his goal in life is to learn to do front and backflips. The trampoline is a good place to start. It's the last week of the three-week winter vacation and I confess I am all out of ideas for entertaining these kids, so we sent a message to James' buddy, Santiago, and asked what he wanted to do which is how we ended up at an indoor trampoline park. From the first frame, you can predict pretty much exactly how this clip will end.

I went to take a shower in my bathroom tonight and sent James to take one, too, in the boys' bathroom. As I got out, I heard screaming . Apparently, while we were gone over the weekend, some ants (James insists they were fire ants) moved in. Specifically, they set up house in one of the bath towels in the boys' bathroom and when James went to dry off, they bit him on the shoulders, back, legs, and neck. Here's a sampling: After the tears stopped, we greased him up with Calamine lotion and put him to bed. He'll be ok. The towels will run through the washer and dryer and be ok, too.  

Last night was New Years Eve. We went to bed early and missed it, except for the sounds of firecrackers at nightlight. A lot of Mexican towns are dedicated to saints. Tizimín is dedicated to los tres reyes magos (the Three Kings) so January 6th (Three Kings Day) is a big deal here. They build a big bull ring out of sticks, palm leaves, vines, and 2x4s and prop a ceiba tree up in the middle of it (symbolizes something, but nobody near me seemed to know what). Saturday night, they run the bulls through the streets like a tiny Pamplona to the plaza and corral them for the next day. Sunday morning, a procession carries a glass and gold case with statues of Melchior, Caspar, and Bathazar to the plaza and they hold a huge Mass. Sunday afternoon, it's bull fight time! If you have Facebook, these reels are worth viewing: Raising the bull ring Setting up the ceiba tree in the plaza de toros The vibe and a shot of the construction (note the ladder/stairs) James did NOT want to go to the bull...