White Elephants and more. . .

Yesterday was the peak of Christmas celebrations at Binimea.
In the afternoon we had the first showing of the Christmas Extravaganza (also known as the kids' Christmas program). There will be another one next Friday, but since Jay and I will be winging our way to Nebraska next Friday (Yeah!), we dutifully made an appearance and were very entertained for an hour of our afternoon.

In the evening, it was time for the Jr. High Christmas party. Jay and I are Jr. High party sponsors, so we, along with another couple (the Murrays), were running the show.

We ate donuts and sang carols.
We played some Ghost in the Graveyard (a hide-and-seek in the dark game) and ate Pizza.
(for those of you who are aware of my aversion to seek and find games, no, I did not actually play the game. . . I was in charge of "base".)
And we finished the night off with a good old-fashioned White Elephant gift exchange.
Here is the gift selection and here is the fantastic "Canada" T-shirt I walked away with.

Welcome to our (new) home!

Okay, I know 4 different homes in 14 months of marriage is not normal, but I actually think we will be in this one at least 6 months.

We moved into this new house just this past week. The old one just did not feel safe to me anymore. It was isolated, hard to get to, and surrounded by vicious dogs. Jay absorbed by feelings and found us a new house that is two blocks from the school and that has neighbors (friends of ours actually).

It is much smaller and we are still moving things from our old house into storage, but here are a few shots from our new place.

Here is Jay warming himself by our wood stove (the only source of heat).

Our living room:

Jay and Torre (our neighbor) tossing the newly bought firewood:
And here's a treat for all the Spanish speakers in our lives - a glimpse at our bilingual Christmas celebrations:

The Great Orange Adventure!

It is strange, in Mexico even the most mundane things seem to be an adventure.
The most recent one was Jay and I attempting to get the (seemingly) ripe oranges off our tree.

The orange tree, unfortunately, is located between a thorn bush and a fence, so it was an adventure to trek back and retrieve the fruit.

Here I am surveying the course:The most formidable obstacle:Making it through:Reaching the Fruit:The Crop:Finding out it was bad and (literally) throwing it away: