2017 and Emily's Mom

 Emily enjoyed a trip with her Mom, Linda in February 2017, where they met in Seattle for a long weekend of genealogy research.  They made great progress finding out the details of a missing branch of Emily's grandma Florence's side of the family.  They rented a place in the University district and also met a distant cousin on Emily's father's side of the family.  We shopped at Trader Joe's and ate Linda's favorite, Chocolate Peanut Butter Haagen Daz ice cream.

In March, a few weeks after returning to Ajijic from Seattle, Linda suffered a brain aneurysm and had to undergo surgery.  During the surgery, she had a paralyzing stroke, and was in the ICU at hospital country 2000 in Guadalajara for a few weeks. Her 3 kids, as well as her sister, flew down for several weeks.  When she came out of her medically induced coma, she was paralyzed on her right side and couldn't speak. She had left side brain damage and swelling from the stroke. She was put in a Guadalajara nursing home for a month after 3 weeks in the hospital, and then we moved her to a nursing home in Ajijic about 1 mile from her and Victor's rental house.

She started physical and speech therapy, but it was clear that walking again was going to take great practice and motivation.  Everyone, including and especially her, was devastated by the stroke.  

Over the year, Emily had at least 4 trips to Ajijic to check in on Victor and Linda. Luke and N. came along on several of the trips as well. We spent a fair bit of time in Guadalajara, as my mom spent almost 2 months there. 

2016

In 2016, N. started preschool at Bunnell House.  Family visited us that summer and we did a few camper trips (Tangle Lakes, Valdez, Denali Park) and an early winter cabin trip to Coal Mine Lakes.  There was no snow yet so we could drive the cabin and then we pushed our daughter the final few yards to the cabin in the chariot stroller. We brought ice skates for the lake.

In December we met family back in Los Ayala, Mexico, the the beach house. Both sets of grandparents met us down there and it was to be the last trip and family get together for all of us before Emily's mom, Linda, had a stroke.  Linda enjoyed decorating the 2 foot tall fake Christmas tree with her 3 year old granddaughter.

Exploring 2015

 

In 2015, lots of fun exploring ice at the children's ice park.

We also took a trip to MN/WI in the summer and enjoyed seeing family.

In Dec 2015 we traveled to meet the all the Youcha's in San Pancho, Nayarit, where we rented 2 houses.  Emily's siblings, neice, parents, and Aunt met us.  The kids built forts on the beach, played on the beach trampoline, ate chiclet paletas, played at the entreamigos center in town.  Here the ocean is too rough for swimming so much of the time was spent in the pool. Later,  Luke's parents met us for a week and rented a house a few doors down.  San Pancho is one of our favorite towns on the Nayarit coast, it's a quiet town with numerous good restaurants, and a beautiful beach with huge surf.  In San Pancho, volunteers collect and protect turtle eggs and they have frequent  baby turtles releases back to the sea.

2014

In 2013, we met family in La Manzanilla for a month, when N. was 3 months old.  

In Dec. 2014, we traveled to Los Ayala for a month and rented a house 1 block off the beach with a pool.  Here N. learned about geckos ("gecko 'side"), looking for them outside under wall decor.  She found a scorpion and told us ohh bug.  We had a nice time visiting all the grandparents at the beach.

Baby arrives and blog revisited.

Last winter we vacationed in Panama and discovered I was pregnant!  So who would've thought we'd be having a baby (us included) but now we do and the 3 of us are vacationing in Mexico.  Our vacations are going to be a bit different now, so this year we rented a house in La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico and had the family come to us.  Alaska Airlines flies into Manzanillo so we booked 2 tix and brought the lap infant named Nina and hopped a $50 airport taxi with a TON of luggage (stollers, carseat, crib, baby toys, diapers, etc. .....) to the little town of La Manzanilla, 25 miles north of Manzanillo.  No more traveling light for us.... now its about traveling w/ a baby.

 On the flight from LAX to Mexico

 Hanging out on the rooftop palapa

 checking out the beach

 trying to get a siesta

 view from our place

 getting used to the water

 taking a stroll near our house

view above town

Summer 2011

Luke fishing on the Talkeetna this fall

Vegetation and wildflower growth on our front yard

Landscaping projects

more landscaping projects

Valdez in July

Jackson, WY family reunion

Hiking in the Tetons

Boating on the Snake

Our new wood shed

Well we enjoyed another Alaskan summer! Last spring in March, Luke's mom came up for a visit and we enjoyed cross country skiing, great weather, and northern lights. She was our first winter visitor and our first visitor in our new house.

Speaking of the new house, we have been very happy with the performance of the house over winter. There were a few quirks that were taken care of (a frozen pipe, which our builder repaired) and a heating outage because we turned off the water pump while on vacation, which apparently is a no-no for our boiler. Luckily our good friends, J. and H. headed over there in the middle of the night to check things out when our autodialer called us in Mexico to tell us the house temp had dropped below 45 degrees! Anyways, all was fine and we are happy to report that we haven't had to heat the house with anything but the sun (passive solar) between March and September! Starting in about mid February, we were able to just heat the house with a few fires (and no propane) and then starting in mid-March, we didn't need any fires or propane, just sunny days! Total propane use for 1 year (includes heating house, domestic hot water year round, and cooking w/ propane on stove/range/grill year round) totaled 225 gallons. We estimate we burned about 1 cord of wood between Sept 2010 and March 2011. It is now October 11 and we have had a very sunny fall so we only had 2 small fires so far. I anticipate we will start using our woodstove very soon because it is about to get colder and cloudy.

This summer we spent alot of time and money working on the yard; vegetating the lawn area and creating a perennial garden. We also built a wood and storage shed and stacked/split 2+ cords of wood in the new wood shed.

In early July, we headed down to Missoula, Montana for Julie's wedding and then rented a car and drove to Jackson WY for a little family reunion with Emily's family.

We also had Luke's family (all 7 of them) up from Wisconsin and they rented a 30 foot RV and we jumped into our camper to cruise down to Valdez. It was quite the adventure!

Now we are getting geared up for winter, and I just bought some new skis and so we now wait for the snow. This winter we are planning a vacation to La Paz and the East Cape of the Baja Sur (Mexico). The more we read about the place, the more I cannot believe we have not yet travelled there. It sounds very similar to Hawaii with tons of fishing (including flyfishing), kayaking, snorkeling, hiking, biking, etc. To top it off, we are going to get in a week of sailing in the Sea of Cortez as well.

I'll post some photos soon.