After a huge absence, it's time to play catch-up...

I have so many pictures to share and so many things have been going on - great big things and small, everyday things that amaze. To begin, the first three photos were taken in late Dec, early Jan and just a few days ago in Feb. You will notice the greenery floating in the water. These are Lirios (water hyacinth). Notice in the third photo that they are threatening to take over? That's what they do. The local powers that be have finally decided to invest some money in a program to deal with these. They'll clear them out of the lake and recycle them for agricultural uses as plant food.

Sometimes things are done here in a logical way, albeit usually that's a LONG time coming. Then on a daily basis some of the most comical, illogical things go on it is important to share them for the sake of "this is too funny to keep it to myself" moments. Examples: Before our upstairs neighbors came down for the winter at least 4 of the regular staff came in to clean up their 1 bdrm apartment. To put on the final touch, the all around maintenance guy came in with a tall ladder, a bottle of windex and some rags and cleaned up the outside windows. Mind you these windows are 20 ft high (for that unit only) and cover the whole front of the building... Then the other day they were moving furniture out of what we call "Casa Grande" which is the owner's house. They had a standard sized pick up backed in and proceeded to load it up, beginning with two large chests of drawers that they stacked "portrait" style rather than "landscape" (for a lower profile). Then the speculation around the happy hour table by the pool was "How much more are they going to try to load in that truck?" They proceeded to load 4 large chairs partially hanging over each side and then two more off the back. At one point they had two guys standing one on either side holding on to the top of the two chest of drawers. They opted to wrap all of it in padded stretch shrink wrap and ONE strap around from side to side - nothing over the top. Unless they were just going down the street a couple of blocks I don't hold out much hope ...
There is much more I could go on with here but I'll show some self-control and pick it up another time.

I'll just close with a promise to post photos of some of the great events like the Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday parade and others soon.

And a couple of Random Thoughts:

If you don't know how to use a car alarm don't install one on your car ... And below fell off a tree here - really!  I must have been a botanist in a former life, 'cause I think this is so cool!!

It's New Year's Eve as I write this. We've had a beautiful holiday season this year. The poinsettas are in bloom everywhere. Here they grow to 5 ft tall as a garden shrub. Many years ago, this is where this well-known Christmas "flower" originated, and was named after the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico who brought them back to propagate in his greenhouses in the U.S. South.  Flower is in parenthesis because what looks like the red petals of this flower are actually leaves, also - no petals.

On Christmas Eve here at the Ranch all of the Mexican families, and their extended family members, got together for the traditional late dinner and bonfire afterwards.  The bonfire, loud music and fireworks, etc are part of another tradition that is pre-Christian in origin and meant to keep away bad spirits for the coming year. My post from 1/22/2012 talks about our first Chirstmas Eve in Ajijic in 2011 when we stayed in the heart of town. This year I was excited to find Gingerbread Men (cookies) at a local shop near the plaza. This clearly is a nod to the Gringo population, and I found them to be just like the ones you can get up North. So I bought some for the kids and handed them out in the evening. They all lined up and their moms prompted most to say "gracias". In the middle of the line was our Gardener who grinned and tried to make himself small. I indicated he was too tall to qualify. One little girl ran after me as I left and shouted "Thank you!". I said "You're welcome!", and she laughed and tried to repeat it.

These last photos are of two of the kids taking on pinatas slung over a branch on one of our huge trees here.  This practice is done either on Christmas Day or on New Year's. The littlest ones usually get help as it's not easy to break these. The older ones (usually the boys) are blindfolded to make it more challenging.