Update on us

Oh my gosh, where to start?
We bought some land in New Mexico, which I think I already told you about. It's near Mora, NM and about 4 major ski resorts. It's beautiful.

Well, all of us, David, the boys, and I went up there in March for a few days. On March 21st, on our way home, we were involved in a fatal vehicle rollover accident. We were the rollover vehicle, thank GOD not the fatality vehicle. We were eastbound on I-40 just west of Amarillo (mile marker 60, to be exact) minding our own business, fat, dumb and happy. Zac was playing gameboy, I was reading email on the laptop and Zane was reading a book. David said an "expletive" and we all looked up. I saw a red car and the next thing I knew we were rolling. I was never scared. Didn't have time.
Too long a story to get into here. The driver of other car was westbound and trying to pass an RV. The RV moved into the left lane forcing the Honda (which we hit) into the median where he lost control and ended up in eastbound traffic. The median was MAYBE 50 feet wide. So if he was going 70 mph and we were going 70 mph, we're talking about a 140 mph rate of closure. Absolutely nothing we could do. We hit him, he launched us, we rolled and spun and fortunately landed right side up. We all got out with miscellaneous injuries. The occupants of the Honda, not so lucky. Fortunately, if you can say that, just the driver died. The passenger is still in the hospital.
Do you see where I was sitting? The front passenger seat. The roof came in on my head. Unfortunately, I am still suffering repercussions from that. Post concussion syndrome, and other medical terms I don't understand. Hopefully they will go away in time. David and the boys seem to be recovering ok. At least nothing serious has yet manifested for them. We all had whiplash, bruises, cuts etc... David's truck was totalled.
That's probably obvious.


Anyway, we haven't been doing anymore world travelling since last January.

The boys and I might do a road trip (if everyone promises to stay on their proper sides of the freeway!).
David is busy working in San Antonio lately. He comes home on the weekends when he can.

We hope you are all well and that life is going well for you.

The search continues...

Time flies, doesn't it? Good grief! In early December we ventured up to Northern New Mexico and discovered absolutely breathtaking land. We made an offer on some land, but here it is 6 weeks or so later and we aren't sure if it'll happen or not... Whatever. Here's a picture from 1/2 way up the ridge. It's about 24 acres just north of Las Vegas, NM. This is a view of the Mora Valley. This land is about an hour to 3 different popular ski resorts, so it'd be a pretty cool place to have a vacation home...

This last weekend, David and I went down to explore Merida, Mexico in the Yucatan. I have wanted to check it out for some time now because that is the town the publisher of International Living Magazine chose to move to... Gotta say, it just didn't toot our horn. Now looking at the pictures I took, it looks like a pretty city, but we were unimpressed. Too many people. Crowded streets...


We did like the seaside town of Progresso, about 30 minutes north of Merida on the gulf of Mexico. It's a fishing village and the cruise ships come in a few times a week. The day we were there it was quiet and peaceful... We stopped at a pyramid city called Dzibilchaltun on the way to progresso. It was pretty cool. It had ruins of course, and it had a nice cenote, but we forgot to bring bathing suits. David hadn't seen a cenote before, so he was impressed.




So, we don't know what we're going to do when we grow up. We'll keep looking until we figure it out.

Firewalking

Okay, so it's been a month, almost, without an update... That's because we've been sucked back down the rabbit hole of everyday life... sigh. That's no fun. David has been working his patooty off as a result of Hurricane Ike and has taken up residence in Houston. Good that he has work, not so good because we don't see each other much...
I have been flying to Las Vegas and back for the last month and do it again for the next month. Vegas has no attraction to me at all, but I like being able to be home every day.
Zac and I did something interesting last Sunday... We went to a "Be Unstoppable" seminar. We broke boards with our bare hands, broke arrows with our throats (Zac had an issue with this one, but did it anyway), walked across broken glass (barefooted) and across hot coals (barefooted). I did the coals 4 times, Zac did it 3. Neither of us were hurt in any way. No cuts, no burns, no bruises. It was a pretty powerful experience.

Both David and I have tried contacting the realtor in Uruguay. I never received an answer at all. David got a reply to his email and the guy told him the house was twice as much as we know the asking price is... sigh. I guess he doesn't want to deal with women or gringos up in the states... Guess I just need to go back to Uruguay and make the deal in person... sigh... the sacrifices I must endure... ;-)

What? A week has gone by already!?

Good Grief! Time sure does fly when you're not paying attention. And what have I done all week? Beats me.
The boys are back in school. I've had to fly a few times. David has been back to San Antonio... at least he can come home on weekends now. It's back to the hampster wheels for us... sigh.
I'm experimenting on downloading a video to this blog. This is just a quick shot at the delicious BBQ place, (par-ee-szha) in Montevideo. We have a lot more videos, but we're thinking it'll be better to splice them and put a youtube link on the page... That's more work than I feel like doing right now. I sure do think about all the delicious food we ate down there a lot... Mmm mmm. These photos are at the place from the video.

Finally Home...

Wow. What a great trip! We had a blast! We met some really great, interesting people. We're home now, but getting all that we experienced into a decent blog is going to be a challenge. Especially since we haven't slept yet and are a little bit punchy... We do still have teenagers to deal with... This internet thing, what an invention...

My pictures somehow seem all out of order and I'm too tired to do this right, but I'm so excited about Uruguay I want to share some of it with you.

So, this is our (late) lunch last Wednesday... I have a better picture of David's steak, but I'm too lazy to download it because I wanted you to see both of these DELICIOUS lunches... Total bill was maybe $25 US. That included a bottle of wine, 2 bottles of "agua con gas" and ice cream. I think that steak weighed about a pound and was PERFECTLY cooked. It's what I would refer to as a "hunk o meat". Seriously enough for both of us. Mine was "po-zhou" (pollo for you spanish speakers, chicken for you gringos... delicious in any language) Portion sizes here are unbelievable. You gotta just order one entree and split it. We're kinda slow, it took us about 2 days to figure this out... Wally told us that "doggy bags" are kinda frowned upon here, so "you've just gotta gut it out and eat it all"... ouch. It's hard to do that!

We've already told you about Wally and Denise, they're great. We imposed ourselves upon them again on Saturday, because our flight didn't leave until 9pm and we really like them. We tried calling first, but they were outside and didn't hear the call. So we dropped by anyway. (Sorry guys, we wanted to see you again!) While there, we met a neighbor of theirs, Tony, a brit married to an uruguayan lady. He was a hoot. These people are so nice and friendly and willing to help you out. Tony was a wealth of information, and entertaining in the process.David, of course, somehow discovered the chilean guy that has a house next door to Denise and Wally that just so happened to have a couple of guitars that needed some playing... Denise, Tony and I were all standing around chatting for quite a while when I started wondering where David was... I figured maybe Wally had come home from his errands and the boys had run off... but, no, Wally was still off on his errands and David was off playing... I started realizing I was hearing music, so the paparazzi in me had to go investigate... well, I caught him in the act.

After standing around for a while, I decided I was hungry and wanted to go try out some "real" empanadas. There's a place just down the road and around the corner that handmakes 36 different types. So David and I went off to get some and bring them back to snack on.
-- (sidebar-- Wally's blog already covers the empanada adventure better that I could so you really ought to read his blogs too... they are quite entertaining-- wallyinuruguay.blogspot.com) He also wrote up the adventure to the supermercado that he and Denise took us to. I left my camera in the car so he took pictures of the deli case for me... "interesting stuff" for sale to eat there...
As we drove down the road, enroute to get empanadas, about 1/2 a mile from Wally and Denise's, we saw these 2 houses next door to each other, FOR SALE, right across the road from the beach... one of them I recognized as a house that had been advertised in International Living magazine for sale for $45k US.
This is the house for $45k above. This other house, right next door was also rather cute, we don't know what it's price was, the realty office was closed both times we went by it that day... We REALLY wanted to check them out inside while we were there, but late on a Saturday afternoon, chances weren't looking too good of that happening, especially since we had a flight to catch...
We are actually interested in both/either of them...

Here's the views of the beach from these houses, one looking left (north-ish), one looking right (south-ish)...














Obviously, we had a great trip. We'll try to put together a more cohesive and informative blog after we get some sleep... Til then...

Colonia del Sacramento

Is this a great picture, or what? We are outside our hotel room in Colonia del Sacramento at sunset. What an amazingly cute little town. Very touristy, but I could definitely see living there during the off season. It's very old, cobble stone streets etc. I think our hotel was built in 1748. There wasn't a blow dryer in the room, of all the nerve!
We finally found a parilla for dinner. Had to wait until 8:30 pm to leave the hotel though. When we went out the 1st time (when we took this picture) nothing was open yet. So we ventured out later and found a place. David videotaped the guy cooking on the parilla and we're hoping to figure a way to link the video to this blog...
We leave at 9pm tonight. We're going to try a different "feria" this morning in Montevideo, since the one the other day was undoable due to the rain. So we're off. More later...

What to do today...

Well, kinda cold and drizzly today... We're trying to hammer out our plans for today. I still want to check if the farmers market is happening... We'll probably head on over to Colonia del Sacramento which is about a 3 hour drive from where we are, but what else have we got to do?

We STILL haven't experienced a "parilla" (par -ee -sha), that's where they have meats meat meats galore on a huge wood fire... We will go the the "bigee" one in Montevideo on Friday, but we had surely hoped to find one by now... They eat so late out here, so far it' s been unavailable when we've gone out looking. We're obviously off on our timing and luck in finding a place. I know they are all over the place, just not open when we show up... Oh well. We're off...