October 29, 2011 – Mexico Bound!

Getting ready to head south for 3 months has been challenging enough these past years, this year we are off for 6 months.  That takes just a bit more organizing…  Its a good thing my to do and to bring list gets more refined every year.  We are staying longer in Baja because we are planning on building a house.  I say planning  because that’s where we are still at.  Planning.  We have the architectural plans, the engineered drawings and next we have to decide on a builder.  

So to begin….

I took on a contract for the government in the late spring so have been madly getting the report done prior to departure; these things always take more time than anticipated.  I was pleased with the whole thing other than it was a huge file to review.  9 boxes of file….  Lots of reading.  However, it was a very interesting case and I enjoyed the writing. 

We zipped south this year, zipping for us anyway!  We packed up and managed to get to Mike and Kates Thursday October 29^th as planned, arriving about 11:00 pm as I anticipated.  (We live in Metchosin, they live in Gordon Head, about a 35 minute drive from us) I walked the kids to school in the morning and we caught the 10:00 am ferry.  On our way!!  We stopped in Sacramento for dinner with some new friends.  We’ve never stopped in Sacramento before and we found it to be quite a pretty city.  I stocked up on wine at one of their big wine stores, purchasing some remarkable Pinot’s.  Our son Mike will be glad to know that I also bought a nice bottle of single malt Scotch.  He sees Scotch as much more value for the dollar than wine compared to prices in Canada.  I will think of him while I sip it and share it. 

We camped at our mechanic Miguel’s shop in Uplands (LA).  He found a few things to do on the coach, he always does, fortunately we made it to his place with no breakdown.

We arrived at my God daughter Megan’s on Sunday and had a great visit with her, her husband Reginald and their sons Ethan (2 1/2 ) and Aedan (4 months).  We will miss having Christmas with them this year.  Aedan is the sweetest baby, I didn’t hear him cry at all although I understand he hates the carseat and cried all the way to dinner at Sizzlers and back.  We had to take two vehicles as there were four adults and two kids.  Ethan is still very musical, he now wants to play the drums.  He absolutely loved Garage Band on my iPad - he could play various kinds of drums with his fingers.  He remembered my banjo and wanted to play it a bit, however, the drums on the iPad were what enchanted him.  

It was sad to leave them after such a quick visit, these little ones grow and change so quickly, its fun to spend time with them.  Well, hopefully we can visit again on our way north in April.  

Monday morning we are off to Whole Foods in La Jolla and to Tecate to get our tourist visas so we can cross over easily on Tuesday morning.