Say what you mean and mean what you say

Seriously trying to not complain here but dealing with the US embassy can sometimes be frustrating!  Expecting problems and trying to be as time efficient as possible I always try to send all the needed info as well as answer any questions I think will be asked ahead of time.  Of course that would have to assume that someone would actually read the emails and that the person reading the emails would just not just assume that the sender is not following directions!

In anticipation for the 7th Stompernet Live conference, we need to get the passport for our new baby Ashley.  We were able to get her certificate of birth abroad a few weeks ago in Nuevo Laredo on our car trip to the states.  We did not have time to process the passport however as they don’t send it in the mail but rather require you to come back to pick it up later.  Now back in Puebla, it is time to try to hurry to get the passport from the embassy in Mexico City.  (New laws state we can enter into the US with a brith certificate only if by car but need a passport to enter by plane.)  Unlike all of the consulates, to make an appointment, you must first fill out the application online and then EMAIL it to the embassy.  After a real live person reviews it and approves you, only then are you allowed access to the online appointment setting system.  Therein lies the problem.

Email 1

We have the certificate of birth abroad.  It was given to us in Nuevo Laredo a few weeks ago.  Here is the attached application.

Response 1

You need to get a certificate of birth abroad.  Go fill out the application and then send another email.

Email 2

We already have the certificate of birth abroad.

Response 2

Go fill out the application and then attach it to this email.

Email 3

Here is the attached file. (Strongly resisted the urge to say something sarcastic like…. AGAIN!)

Response 3

Access to online appointment setting system.

The whole process was faster than expected and happily we were able to schedule in just three days.  Could have been taken care of in ONE email if the person had actually read the first email though!

Healthcare in Mexico

One of the main reasons people give about not wanting to move to a foreign country is “What if I get sick?” Most Americans will definitely want to keep their US health insurance plan for major medical emergencies of course. However, when you are living in a large city in Mexico, it hardly becomes necessary. It about one month our 6th child will be born here in Puebla, Mexico.  Of our children, only the oldest was born in the states.  When we were expecting our second child, we came to realize that the doctor was the most important factor for healthcare in Mexico. The hospital facilities are not as backwards as some would automatically think. We are blessed to live in a major city with good hospitals.  In fact, our city is home of the Puebla’s Children Hospital.  Puebla’s Children’s Hospital is THE major hospital for public healthcare for most of southern Mexico.  If people are sick from as far as Chiapas, they might be flown in to the hospital here.  But back to my story.  As we are getting ready for baby #6 we went to the hospital - La Beneficencia Espanola - to register.  Since we don’t have insurance, we pay privately.  We went to fill out the paperwork so that when the day arrives we would be all ready.  I know this will be hard to believe, but the rates for the hospital part of the bill are incredibly low!  The package includes 2 nights and 3 days in the hospital and is only about $350 USD! Now from experience we will tell you that by the time we get out the bill is going to be closer to $900 but that is going to include all of the medicine, treatment, and so on. That does NOT include what we pay our doctor or her medical team.  When we were in the states a few months ago, we had to take little Hannah to the emergency room for stitches.  She had 4 stitches on her eyebrow.  FOUR.  The bill came to $1000 more or less including the hospital and the doctor… which we found out later are two separate charges! So basically, the cost of 4 stitches in the states and the cost of having a baby in a nice hospital in Mexico are about the same!  I could go on and talk about how ultrasounds here cost $25 and the ultrasound I had done in the states a few months ago was $250 but I won’t.  

Driving Cross Country

July 10th - Visiting with Friends in Arizona and San Antonio, Texas

July 1st - Pictures of architectual designs

May 11th - Visiting Ridgecrest, California and Barnes and Noble

David and Hannah saying HI from Ridgecrest, California.

We visited a church called China Lake Baptist Church while in Ridgecrest.  They are located in this small storefront area.

David and Hannah enjoy a quick trip to the grocery store.  Don’t have this in Puebla, Mexico!

Sarah and Japheth can’t wait to get to the car to read the books they just bought in Barnes and Nobles.  We visited about 10 Barnes and Nobles bookstores on our trip.  The kids loved picking out new books and mom and dad loved the quiet in the car while they were reading!

June 16th, Darren Lambert, North Carolina

We enjoyed a few days in North Carolina with our friends Darren and Annette Lambert.

June 30th, Family Pictures, Encinitas, CA

Family picture with my BIL, sister, mom, dad and of course our family!

What a happy boy!

June 26th, Wedding Anniversary, Old Town San Diego, CA

We enjoyed a nice night out… without the kids for a change!  Old Town San Diego has always been a favorite spot of ours.  We used to enjoy going to Casa de Bandinis’s before it was relocated.  We found a place to park and wandered into a Mexican restaurant where there was actually a line of people waiting to get in!  Why in the world would we eat Mexican when we live in Mexico?  Simple.  The Mexican food in the states is 100% different than the Mexican food in Mexico.  I can’t find cheese enchiladas in Mexico!  Use yellow cheese… you can hardly find yellow (or cheddar) cheese in Mexico.  Olives or sour cream? Forget it.  Those are all American style ways of making Mexican food.  After dinner we wandered around the shops and little botiques before heading home to rescue grandpa from 5 tired kids!

June 18th - Cracker Barrel and Taking a Break at the Park

There is only so much fast food a family can take!  After spending almost two months on the road, our whole family was ready for as close to a home cooked meal as we could get.  Our kids ordered vegetables!  They enjoyed the corn, green beans, and carrots the most.  We actually stopped at Cracker Barrel several times on our trip after this stop.  Cracker Barrel was having a contest to collect stickers to win an RV and they gave you one sticker for each person in your party… with us that was 7 each time we ate!  We did not win, but it was fun trying to collect the stickers!

June 11th, Visiting Wonder Works in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

This was a fun day!  We had to decide between driving through the Smoky Mountains or letting our kids get out and explore Wonder Works.  Even though we really would have enjoyed seeing the Smoky Mountains National Park, the kids, and mom and dad, needed a break from the car!  The kids enjoyed exploring Wonder Works and Japheth and daddy got to climb a rock climbing wall.

June 2nd - Beautiful Sunset in front of a mall

We decided to stop for dinner at the food court of this mall and took the picture of the sunset before going in.

May 21th - Petrified Forest in Arizona

The highlight of the petrified forest was seeing the actual Indian drawings on some of the walls.  I would not, however, call it a forest.  All of the “trees” were of course laying flat on the ground, but even then, they were few and far between and in the beginning we did not realize that that was ALL we were going to see during the driveing part of the tour. 

May 10th Visiting Friends in Ridgecrest

Our kids

We had pizza and pasta at Round Table Pizza before heading over to the park to let the kids run around before heading out again for the day!

Our kids enjoyed seeing the airplanes at the China Lake AFB.

Every day the sprinklers in front of the house / hotel we were staying in came on at about 5pm.  We let the kids run through the sprinklers for some old fashioned fun.  Hannah enjoyed it a few times but David wanted nothing to do with it!

May 4th, Warehouse

We have a few things to sell!  Anyone need a party grill for tailgating season?

May 29th - Solvang and Santa Barbara, California

Enjoying a park by the beach in Santa Barbara.

This was really fun!  With this 10 person bike, our family and the Sobrevilla family enjoyed an hour riding around Solvang, California.  Solvang is a little city with Dutch roots.  Most of the houses and stores in the downtown have Dutch architecture.  If you like wandering around shops and quaint towns, then this might be a destination for you!

We enjoyed some double hand scooped ice cream while in Solvang.

After Solvang, we headed down the coast to Santa Barbara where we spent an hour at the Santa Barbara Pier.

Japheth really liked the toy selection!

After the pier, we headed downtown and found a Farmer’s Market.  We decided to walk around and ended up in an open air mall area. 

More pictures of the Farmer’s Market.

May 28th - Solvang with our Friends the Sobrevilla Family

We choose Monday to visit Solvang with our friends the Sobrevilla family. Unbeknowest to us, about 95% of the restaurants are CLOSED on Monday night in this small tourist town!  We found this restaurant that was completely packed out with people so we accepted a table on the balcony even though it was coooold.  Being outside was probably nicer for us as we were the only one’s with so many kids at the restaurant… most of the other diners were couples out for a romantic weekend!

Check out the Dutch architecture behind this group photo shot!

It is fun that our kids can make friends wherever we go.  As we visited other cities later, our kids saw pictures of the Sobrevilla kids at various places and say “Oh wow!  There is a picture of our friends!”

Our kids enjoyed eating the green beans more than the chicken!

Me wearing my “mom hat” and feeding Hannah and David.

May 20th - Visiting Great Grandpa’s House

The five kids with their Great Grandparents!

David was asleep during this photo shoot.

May 8th - Visiting a Children’s Museum somewhere in the US

Here is a picture of “daddy” riding a bike on a thin wire at least one story off of the ground!  Fun for him and the kids, scary for mom!

April 29th Visiting Target somewhere in the US.

Our kids enjoy shopping almost as much as mommy does!

June 6th - U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama

There is a funny story here.  As we were traveling, every time we would approach a huge industrial site or power plant, from far away our kids would say “what is that daddy?” We told them (joking of course), that it was a space ship.  They would say, “Really! Wooooowwwww!”  As we got closer we would clear up the “misunderstanding” and explain what it was.  As we were driving through Alabama, our kids saw the peak of the rocket ship and asked “what is that daddy?”  This time it really was a “space ship”! The US Space and Rocket Center is the official home of “Space Camp”.  We had a fun and educational time as we got to explore the museum and the interactive children’s area.  There were even some rides outside that took you from 0 to I don’t know how fast in just a few seconds!  It was very, very hot so we stayed in the air conditioned buildings most of the day.  At the visitor’s center, we checked out a backpack that the kids got to carry around with them all day.  Inside the backpack it had experiments the kid’s could do and an easy to follow guidebook just for kids that got them to look for answers to questions. We did not have time to stay as long as we wanted, but the few hours we were there, were a lot of fun!  If you want an educational experience for your kids, be sure to put this one on the map of places to visit. 

Check out the official site here: Space Camp

Japheth rock climbing at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Even daddy decided to join the rock climbing fun!

May 31th, Playing football at a rest area somewhere in Texas

Rest area in Texas where we stopped to play catch with our kids.  Japheth is getting good at throwing the football!

Welcome to Texas!  We did NOT stop at this park.  Well, we stopped, told the kids we were going to get out and play… just until we saw the signs posted everywhere that said “Watch Out for Snakes”!  Reverse culture shock.  We had just crossed the border from Mexico and into the states and our kids really wanted to get out and play…. they settled for a snake free rest stop instead!

4th of July in San Marcos, California

This was our kids FIRST real 4th of July.  Living in Mexico, we always have a 4th of July get together where we invite other Americans or close friends to our house for an American style barbecue.  Our kids had a vague concept of the 4th of July but I think they get what Patriotism is about now!  We went to a local park and saw probably the best fireworks display I have ever seen.  It was incredible!  The kids enjoyed a day of just hanging out at the park with mom, dad, grandpa and grandma.  One of the highlights was that we were sitting next to a Mexican family that was grilling some carnes asadas… we made friends with them and they offered some of their delicious tacos, home made salsa, home made beans and rice, and of course some chiles to us!

Grandma reading to kids!

July 2nd, Park in Oceanside

July 1st, USS Midway Museum

May 16th, Disneyland Park (Anaheim)

July 3th San Diego County Fair

April 17th, Sea World San Diego

Sea World

Google Headquarters

Today, Sunday, we went for a little Sunday drive and ended up at the Google headquarters, close to Silicon valley her in San Jose. We were able to take some pictures and there is one of me standing in front of one of the Google signs. If you have never been to Google headquarters it is huge- they have probably 3-4 blocks of buildings.

Visiting Monterey Bay, California

On Thursday we drove from Oceanside up to Monterey Bay, Ca. If you have never visit Monterey Bay it is one of the places that should be on your top 10 list of places to go and see. Especially if you are going to take a trip with your husband for your anniversary or honeymoon. It is a very cute, romantic spot with lots of different things to do.

We arrived there Thursday night and we checked into the Holiday Inn Express right there on the beach. Its 5 minutes to the beach, we could walk over there if we wanted. The next morning, we went over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium where we got tickets. They have a special there- it was going to cost us about $95 for our whole family but we could get a membership package for only $120 that includes 2 adults and all your children. And we can go back as much as we want for the next year. So we became members and are planning to go back there a few more times while we are in the area.

It is a very beautiful aquarium. It is very modern, very well designed. You can see all different kinds of things. It’s really interesting for the kids.
They got to see all the jellyfish, sharks and sea otters. They also have a new area called the Splash Zone, where the kids can actually touch some starfish and other animals, kelp and different things. They really enjoyed that- it was a fun day.

They even have a really nice restaurant, with some good food- a little expensive, $9.95 for a plate of food. But the food was very good. I highly recommend if you have a chance to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it is very nice.

After that we headed over to Cannery Row. We looked at the different shops there. They are currently remodeling to make it more beautiful. After that we headed over to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory right there on Cannery Row and the kids got some chocolate covered Oreo cookies. They really enjoyed those and I got some English Toffee. Really good. We had a really fun day. Then we went down to the beach and the kids got to go stick their feet in the water. Clear views of the ocean, very nice. I highly recommend a day trip to Monterey Bay if you get the chance.

Aisle to Aisle in Barnes & Noble

A little while ago I was walking through Barnes & noble with my kids as part of my overall parenting strategy; to acquire a life long love of reading for my kids. Occasionally, I take them to Barnes & Noble and let them all pick out their own books. After they got done picking out their books they started to walk through Barnes & Noble and I began to think, wow, how much my life has changed over the years.

I remember when I was a teenager; I liked to visit the teenage section. As I got a little older I liked to visit the religion section. After I got married I remember my stop would always bee to the cooking section or how-to-decorate your home section. Then when the babies started coming I started to go to the baby section and parenting section. A little bit later after that, when I started to have more time on my hands, I liked to enjoy the fiction section of the book store and read alot of fiction books.

Now my favorite section would be the e-commerce, management and sales section and of course to go full circle, as I take my kids to the kid section all over again. Its amazing how a simple thing like a bookstore can remind you of little things in life that we should appreciate.

Traveling, work, kids, and fun!

For the next three months our family will be travelling the lower 48 states and visiting friends and family as well as a couple side trips to amusment parks. Our journey begins from Puebla, Mexico where we are live. On Wednesday March 26, 2008 we loaded up our minivan with 5 kids, a few suitcases, and of course our laptop and digital camera. Our kids are: Japheth - 7 years old, Rachel - 5, Sarah - 4, David and Hannah - Twin 1 year olds. Wednesday we drove to Tampico. On the way we stopped for some paletas in a zocolo of a little pueblito. (Frozen juice bars in a park of a little village.) Our second stop was a seaside little town that served up some excellent tasting shrimp and carne asadas. Thursday we made it to the border and without any complications we crosssed into Brownsville, Texas where a friend of my husband’s met us and took us to eat and to a hotel to rest.