I have been neglecting my blog lately so I thought I would give a brief update on what has happened in the last month or so. 

The Ornamental Pineapple FINALLY ripened!  It ripened the weekend before we left on vacation.  We celebrated by grilling it up on the BBQ and serving it with vanilla ice cream for dessert.  It was super tasty but I think I am going to hang up my pineapple farming hat.  It’s just way too easy to go to the grocery store or the market and pick up a fresh pineapple whenever I want one.

We bought nice new patio furniture.  I can’t seem to find the pictures that I took of it, but it’s a really nice wood set with a market umbrella and wood/fabric deck chairs.  The best part was, it was on sale for more that half off!  We stuffed it into Paco (just barely) and took it home. We also got a desk so that Don can work from home and night stands (no more Labatt crown boxes!!)

We returned to Canada for a whirlwind tour the first two weeks of August.  We drove back (in 3 days) and hit two of our favourite BBQ stops along the way.  Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ has yummy brisket, pulled pork and baked beans as well as super cool T-Shirts  and there are lots of locations just off I-35.  We also discovered a place called Smokey Joe’s just off I-35 the first time we drove back from Mexico.  We were originally going to stop to get gas and grab whatever food we could find.  We saw this place beside Arby’s and Don figured that if it could survive being in the middle of nowhere Texas, it was probably the locals that were eating there.  They have tasty pulled pork sandwiches, beans and slaw and we hit that on our second day of driving.  

We landed in Canada on the August long weekend and spent the next two weeks trying to visit as many friends and family as we could, doing some shopping as well as getting lots of things out of our storage unit to bring back down to SLP with us.  It was a whirlwind tour there really wasn’t enough time to see everyone.  We plan to come back at Christmas so hopefully it won’t be as crazy and we’ll get more visiting time in. 

During our visit back to Canada, we also sold Paco and bought an older 4Runner.  I was really sad to leave Paco behind because he was our Mexican car and he was so great on gas and you could fit almost anything into him!  However, we wanted an older vehicle (10 years old) so that we can try to Nationalize it here.  The Mexican laws state that you can only put Mexican plates on foreign purchased vehicles that are 10 years old, so we have a 9 year old 4Runner and will try to nationalize it in 2009 (hopefully the law doesn’t change too much by then!).  The good news is that we sold Paco to my sister-in-law so we’ll still get to see him when we’re back in Canada and my sister-in-law spent a year in Mexico, so he will still remember his roots.  The 4Runner also allowed us to bring our mountain bikes and kayaks with us so we are looking forward to using them soon.

We’ve been back a little over a week and I have discovered that I have special powers!  I personally control the weather!  I can predict when it is going to rain and I can make it rain within about 1 hour!  What’s my secret?  Well, I just have to put my clothes in the washing machine and voila!  Some time between the spin cycle and 10 minutes after I get my clothes on the line, a monsoon will come up out of nowhere!  My skills have become SO refined that I just have to think about doing laundry and it will start to cloud over.  Many people in San Luis continue to tell me that it doesn’t rain a lot here.  I find this hard to believe seeing as it has been cold and rainy since July.  However I have been told that this is the rainiest rainy season people have seen in 30 years so what they don’t realize is that I am the one controlling the rains with my laundry!  I’m considering going out into the countryside and selling my rain services to the farmers.  Of course, I’m not sure how I’ll get the washing machine out there, but those are just details!! :)

It was so great to visit everyone in Canada, but it was nice to be able to come back to Mexico and get some sleep!  It was such a busy time filled with late nights, early mornings and rushing around that there was barely time to sleep, but the trip was definitely worth it!