The Adventures of Familia Bajaboy

 We are coming up on six months living full time here, and we couldn't be happier.  We're now all comfortably settling into a routine.   The kids are back to school.  Gabriel is in 8th grade full time, however still online.  This is not due to COVID as I first thought, however the sewer system at his school is in need of serious, costly repairs.  As such, all of his classes are online.  He has classes each hour from 8 am to 1:00, with a 5- 10 minute break in between.  Both Zac and I are really impressed with the curriculum, the class materials, and they way in which his classes are being delivered online.  As for Mika, she's back on campus in 6th grade.  She attends daily from 8 am to 10 am.  Zac and I find such joy walking her to school and picking her up.  As we hug Mika goodbye, we start most days with a chat with the school's director.  Often times he makes sure we are informed of school events, tells us how well ...

Most mornings, I walk through the garden and inevitably find myself pulling weeds or doing some other task.  I figured it's been awhile since I've shared any progress so here we go. Our garden seems to be happy and thriving.  We had a good summer crop of tomatoes, peppers, and squash but the dirt still needs a lot of work.  I keep adding spent grains from our home brews, torn up cardboard, compostable food, and yard waste, too.  Slowly but surely, the dirt is getting better.  We also break up peanut shells and thrown them around, too. In this bed, we have orange butternut squash, tomatoes, two types of lettuce, assorted bell peppers, arugula, and beets. Here is our tomato invasion.  These are all volunteer tomatoes. We planted a second round of spaghetti squash because it does great here. Super excited to see so many flowers on our mango tree.  Our blood orange and sapote have a lot of flowers as well Here we have butternut squash, a few varieties of t...

  A week ago, most of my family went on a trip to Sierra de San Francisco to celebrate a friend's birthday.  We stayed for two nights and three days, which were packed with exciting adventures, and a lot of good memories.  On Monday, I rose at 4:10am to the sound of my alarm. Shortly after, everyone else woke up and the last minute preparations began. We left at 5:30 tired, but ready for the trip up ahead. As  we rose up the mountains, the sun rose with us. The views were stunning. I had never been so inspired as when I could see the gorgeous orange rays of light illuminating the goat filled mountain tops. The village slowly came into view, showing the trip getting ever closer. After checking in, we hopped back in the truck and went down dirt roads to our starting point, Rancho Guadalupe. We got there and immediately saw who one of our guides was going to be. At first, we thought he was a strict and cold old man. But as the trip went on he started warming up to u...

 Trash is a big problem in Mexico.  Fortunately, there is a growing population that is addressing pollution and taking steps to mitigate it.  Today, our village encouraged people to come out and clean up trash around their houses.  We took advantage of the opportunity to get out and do our part.  Here are some pictures from this morning.  Mika helped out as well but didn't get into any pictures. We decided to focus on an empty lot just to the east of our place.  Most of our neighbors do a great job of keeping their properties clean.  But this lot has been a dumping ground for many years. Our town is collecting the plastic lids from bottles.  There is a program that gives out money for the lids.  So we removed any lid we found before putting the plastic bottles in trash bags. Gabriel found an old carpet halfway buried in the dirt.  He finally managed to extract it. The city garbage truck will come by and pick up our haul.  We pi...

  As a dog, I think I have it very good. I have owners who love me, friends who play with me, and a bountiful amount of bunnies. My name is Zeus and I live in Bahia Asuncion. Almost every day my family takes me running. It is a good time to exercise, and it lets me continue my ever going hunt for the rabbits. So as always, when I hear my momma say, “Zeus, are you ready?!” I know it is time to go.           As we get on the trail, I see my friends Pedro, Alexander, Nick all sitting all alone. If only they had owners as good as mine, I thought. Oh well. The early dog catches the bunnies. I did not have time to worry. As I went up to the water tower, a lizard thought it would be funny to walk in front of me, taunting me by standing just out of my reach.  But when I tried to show that lizard who's boss, Mummy chokes me. Rude, I thought.            Then I got lectured about how I can’t pull that junk, just get to ...

  Hello, it’s Mika here, and I want to talk about how my school has been and life in general. For school, my electives are art, soccer and cooking. First of all, for art, I have done some cool projects. For example, just this week I painted a picture for my neighbor of a fish for his birthday. Also, I made I couple of other drawings. Next, for soccer, my dad made a goal on one of our walls with chalk. Every Tuesday and Thursday I go and practice soccer. I learned a cool trick this week. Now for cooking, I have made a lot of different things from: eggs, brownies, fudge with my brother, and much more. Just this week me and Gabriel make our neighbors a birthday cake. I would say we did pretty good for our first cake! Now, I want to talk about my math, reading, writing and science. For math I do a program called Khan Academy. So far, in just a couple weeks, I have got 39% mastery in 6th grade math. I do Khan Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now let’s talk about reading. Before school ...