Now There Are SIX!

We were going to do our last day of summer school on Monday. We would have completed 9 weeks. I have been so focused on school this summer and I've hardly done anything else.

I was scheduled for my c-section on August 12, so I was going to have about 2 weeks to get ready for the baby--clean the house, pack my hospital bag, go through clothes . . .

Saturday night my water broke. I called University Hospital in Salt Lake City because that was where I was supposed to deliver. The on-call Dr. strongly urged me to go to Elko to deliver. He said everything would be fine since I was exactly 36 weeks pregnant. He also said my beloved Dr. Draper was out of town for the weekend and wouldn't be able to deliver my baby even if I did risk going to Salt Lake.

So, we went to Elko and on August 1 at 11:56, our little miracle was born. We named him Ammon Alejandro. He weighed 6 lbs. 3 1/2 ounces and was 19 inches long.

The next day when our other kids got to come and visit, the first thing Ruben said was, "Now there are SIX Cobians!" He went around the room and counted us--just to verify. There really are six of us now and we are so grateful.

(It is rather humbling for me to include this picture of myself.)

Ammon is an absolute blessing. So far he only eats and sleeps (for at least 4 hours at a time!). While I was pregnant with him, I said he was my favorite because it was such an easy, nice pregnancy (despite recently being very hot this summer). So far, he's also been our easiest baby once he's come home. He definitely looks like one of us (rather he looks like Edgar--just like all of the little darlings).

We are all enjoying him so much:

So far, Marcos has been very tender and loving with Little Ammon.
Ruben is as exuberant about having a new baby in the house as he is about everything else--VERY.
Lili is a great big sister.
It's amazing how tiny these little ones start out.
So that's our big news. We are now six.

Easter

Don't die of shock: two posts in one day. I just wanted to include a few pictures of our Easter egg-decorating party. We had a lovely time. I think Marcos had at least as much fun as anyone. I gave him one egg and one cup of dye and he went with it. He ended up with blue dye all over his hands and hair and the floor (of course). The egg didn't fair so well--the yolk even was exposed and dyed blue:

Some more good-looking Easter bunnies:

Isaiah, Ruben, & Morgan

Liliana, Hyrum, Carolina

Liberty, Deseret, and Clarissa (Marianne's backside in the background)

LiliBirthday girls Grandma Corba and Clarissa (sporting her new make-up!)

Remember Me?

We are still here. It will probably take another trip out of the country for me to become a regular blogger. We are just doing our normal things--school (Edgar hasn't worked much overtime lately and I love when he does Spanish school with the kids), preschool (we had it at our house today), gaining weight (that's me, no one else), and craving things like cheesecake and chocolate. (That's also me--I finished off the cheesecake I made today. Nobody else wanted any--really. Those are the kind of people I live with.

Lili had a girl party last week. She feels a bit slighted that we are having another boy, but if you can't have sisters of your own, neighboring cousins like these are the next best thing:
Marianne's four girls dressed in their formal wear and came over for some girl time. Those Johnson girls are so dear. Even though they are quite grown up (thinking about things like getting ears pierced and stake dances and cell phones) they are still willing to twirl around and play on a swingset with their little first-grade cousin. Lili was in heaven. She showed off her bike tricks and they made her feel like a star.
Lili's not the only one with a few bike tricks up her sleeve. Marcos loves to go outside and the blessed thing about it is that Lili and Ruben are very responsible about watching out for him. I love having old-ish kids and a toddler at the same time. Ruben and Lili took turns pushing Marcos on the tricycle.
This is our nightly ritual: "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. Marcos insists on standing in the middle during the performance. He seems to think he's singing too. At the end, he enthusiastically claps.
We also have nightly rodeos with Edgar acting as the animal. Maybe Marcos will be a jockey or a bronc rider, as his grandpa says he will.
Speaking of Grandpa, he made Lili's day on Saturday by taking her on a little horse ride.
Lili got a haircut. It is really cute. Well, it was especially cute when Mindy (who cut it) did it, but it's easier for me to brush now. These are the little monkeys ready for church:Marcos insists on doing whatever his siblings do. That's why he's started putting the silverware away. He gets one or two utensils at a time, walks over to the silverware drawer, opens the drawer, throws the utensils in and then shuts the drawer. Then he goes back for more. So far it's working out (as long as I don't mind having a messy silverware drawer--I don't).

Guadalajara

Before I take you to Guadalajara (on the most miserable bus ride ever), here are some parting shots from El Grullo:

This is Dona Chayo. She was Edgar's first grade teacher at La Escuela Las Pilas (the same school Edgar's mom and Lili went to). Dona Chayo is retired, but she picks her grand kids up from school every day. She stopped me and asked Edgar's name. She taught for 30 years. When I told her I was surprised at how big the class sizes are in Mexico, she said, "Oh, this is nothing! I used to teach 50 or 60 at a time!" I wondered how she would remember Edgar out of all that. He says he caused a lot of trouble. (Lili's looking a little like her aunt Thelma. :))

On my journey up to the Capilla, I encountered the tile that Edgar's family donated when the Capilla was dedicated. They paid for that stair.
I love these flowers. They were all along my hike up to the Capilla.

My view from the top.

The first sunset I saw in El Grullo. I had to hike up to see it.

Our bus ride from El Grullo to Guadalajara was probably the hardest part of our whole trip. I found our bus driver before we even got on the bus to ask if we could watch an appropriate movie. Between puffs on his cigarette he told he had no control over what movies came on--that it was all controlled from Guadalajara. I don't know if I believe him or not, but there was nothing more I could do. The movie was a violent one, followed by one with sex scenes. Ay, Mexico! I kept covering Lili's eyes. We both felt queasy--and not just because of the movie. The road is so windy. The most difficult thing, though, was Marcos and his incessant crying. We had been so busy packing up and running here and there, that Marcos had missed his nap. I read in Parent's magazine years ago that before traveling, one should still have one's child nap, and not just assume said child will sleep on the trip. They were right. Marcos was so exhausted and he wouldn't sleep. I bet he cried for 2 hours. I know everyone on the bus hated us. I decided it was their punishment for wanting a trashy movie. That didn't make me feel much better though. At one point, a little old lady said, "Senor!" (Edgar was holding Marcos at the time.) "What is wrong with that child? GIVE HIM TO ME!" Edgar handled it well. I wouldn't have known what to say. Edgar said, "He's just tired." We kept passing Marcos back and forth. At one point Edgar looked pretty desperate and I suggested taking the little lady up on her offer. Edgar finally got Marcos to sleep by standing up with him and holding on tightly as the bus swayed him around the curves. Edgar was holding sleeping Marcos when Ruben started throwing up on Edgar. Again Edgar had the worst of it all.

Fortunately, there was a happy end in sight: The Hotel San Francisco Plaza. It's a "historic" hotel that gave us a good deal--the third night was free. It is very old, but I liked it. They didn't have an elevator, so we made the wise choice (considering all our luggage) to bunk on the bottom floor. We were usually the only people in the lobby, which was right outside our room:

The kids loved the birds in the lobby. I liked them too, but there was an old boiled egg in their cage that made me feel sick whenever we walked by.

Our room had a wonderful, HOT shower with a lot of water pressure and the shower head was taller than I am! I loved it so much I took a shower that night and the next morning. We all slept great that night too--even Marcos. The next morning, we met the Sorensens for breakfast. That afternoon we took our kids to their house. They had arranged babysitters for us so we could all go to the temple together.

(Yes, dear reader, I am pregnant. My figure is not just the result of too many taquitos.)

The Sorensens back yard.

Marian told us a lovely story about the temple. There are pigeons everywhere in Guadalajara. They are always making a mess on the statues downtown. The Angel Moroni on the temple, though, never gets dirty. There are night hawks that scare the other birds away. Recently they took the Angel Moroni down to re-gold him. There were no bird droppings on him. She said that even the animals respect the Lord's house. It was so great to be with the Sorensens.

The Mariachi Square in Guadalajara. We never did get to hear the mariachis there. We saw them, but you have to pay to get them to play. I was hoping someone else would pay and we could get a free concert. It didn't happen.

Saturday Edgar's Tia Lupe and cousin Gaby took us all around downtown Guadalajara. This is a theater.

The Cathedral

We bought some souvenirs that day and walked A LOT. We got back to our room at about 8:00. We packed everything up, set our alarm for 3 am and went to bed. Our poor children had a hard time getting up, but they were cheerful about it.

They weren't so cheerful at 4:00 when we got to the airport and found out our flight had been canceled and that we would be waiting FIVE HOURS until our flight.

Marcos was perky for awhile. We fed everybody and then took up residence in a dark corner of the airport Burger King. Liliana fell asleep on a booth, I got Marcos to sleep in the stroller, and Ruben fell asleep on Edgar. I put my head down on the table and fell asleep. Poor Edgar's the only one that didn't sleep. The good news was that we got a direct Mexicana flight. It was a nicer airline. They served breakfast and didn't charge us to check luggage. If only we'd known we were flying with them, we could have enjoyed 4 more hours of sleep at our hotel. We got to Las Vegas around 1:00. By the time we got our car, ate, and drove all the way home, it was 9:00. We were thrilled to be home. We unpacked that night. Marcos helped:

He carefully arranged the stuff from our bathroom bag into the toilet. (As if I haven't put enough about toilets and toilet paper in this travelogue!)

So now we are home. We are loving the reliable plumbing, having the kids in their own rooms again, having our queen size bed back (we are far too large for the double bed we were using in El Grullo), having more than one bathroom, hot water spontaneously coming out of the tap, and our washer and dryer!

Looking at these pictures, though, I already miss Mexico a little. As Lili said, "It's our country too!" The kids are now dual citizens.

Shhh. Don´t tell Edgar

Edgar is over at our house cleaning and packing and I´m sneaking in a little blog session. We are taking te bus (ugh) to Guadalajara this afternoon. Tomorrow we will spend time with the Sorensens (Traci, they are David Sorensen´s parents who serve in the Guadalajara Temple as President and Matron). They´re from our home ward. We will go to the temple tomorrow night and we get to do the work for Edgar´s great-great grandparents. We´ll get sealed for them and then seal their four boys who died as babies to them.

Yesterday we went back to El Limón trying to get birth certificates (Edgar´s Tía--the one who is a nun, actually she´s the Mother Superior at her convent) is gone now. She´s in the hospital with her mom, who isn´t doing well. I took this picture from the balcony of the City Building. It turns out they only have birth certificates from 1900 and later. We´d have to go to another town, and we´ve run out of time.

This morning Edgar´s dad and his Tía Malena were waiting for me at Ruben´s school. That´s a little awkward since they don´t talk to each other. Edgar´s dad wants us to eat with them. His aunt just wanted to say good-bye. I don´t think we have time to eat with Rafael before we go, but we´re doing it anyway (we might not have time to blog either). I´m giving Malena some leftover food. The other day when we ate at her house she had made this delicious corn bread that she doesn´t make very often because it uses 5 eggs. We had 4 eggs left over. She also charge some meat at the butcher´s to feed us. Edgar gave each of his aunts some money. I´m glad. They´ve all been so good to us.

We spent our last night like we did our first--entertaining visitors until very late. It was lovely of them to want to say good-bye. I feel melancholy this morning. I´ll miss this place. I have people I say hi to every morning on the way to Lili´s schoool. There´s the one-legged man who sweeps i the plaza and the ancient beggar lady who sets up at the mercado about the time we pass by. There are also two very nice shop keepers on our street who always greet me. They know Edgar´s family.

One of my goals here was to hike to the Capilla (a chapel dedicated to who else? The Virgin María). It´s only about a 20 minute hike up, but it is all uphill. I finally went up for the first time last night. I was going to go every morning, but it didn´t happen in our morning rush to get the kids off to school.

This just in. I´m having trouble posting pictures and I have to hurry back and help my husband get ready to go.

Burning the Castle?

Another new experience for me: celebrating "Las Fiestas" in Melaque. Every town, it seems, here in Mexico has a time when they celebrate. Four years ago when we came to El Grullo, we came during the Fiestas here. The first ten days are to celebrate the Catholic Church (mostly the Virgin María) and then the remaing ten (?) are to celebrate the town. This time we didn´t want to come during the Fiestas because we wanted the kids to go to school. There is no school held during the Fiestas.

When we were in Melaque (the town we stayed while at the beach) though, we caught some of their Fiestas. I don´t how I missed this when we were in El Grullo last time, but for the ten nights of the Church celebration, there is a "castillo"--castle that is burned at 10 pm in the town square. It is to honor María somehow. People who have experienced a great miracle or blessing, buy a castle (that doesn´t look like a castle--it looks more like a really tall stick full of fireworks) in honor of the Virgin and donate to the celebration. Each night the castle is more elaborate until the final night. I think we caught the 2nd night.

We forced our kids to stay up that late. (They were exhausted. It reminded me of when I woke everyone up from their nap our last day in Disneyland and insisted on going back and getting our money´s worth. The kids just wanted to sleep!)

The burning actually started late (what a surprise--here in Mexico!). The whole event was accompanied by a Mariachi band and another band.

Every few minutes fireworks from the castillo go off and sparks and actually sparklers fly into crowds of people. The people scream and laugh and run. Children run under the castillo, directly under the sparks, with cardboard slabs or boxes over their heads. Edgar did that as a child.

Edgar was talking amiably (I try to catch photos of him looking pleasant because his natural reaction to a camera is a frown) to a man from Ontario Canada. We encountered more English speakers than Spanish in that town. A lot of northerners winter there.

These aren´t friends of ours, or even acquaintances. They just were in the right place at the right time.

These are the kids running under the castillo as it burns.

I´m late to pick Ruben up from school. His teacher will have my hide!