Well, of course, it is baby Consuelo!  My son has been wonderful, sending lots of pictures and video, but I just HAVE to go visit her…so I am off to Mexico City for a long weekend Friday.  YAY!  In the picture above, do you notice the blanket  that’s keeping her warm?  Yep, that’s the blanket I knit for her.

I finished a bit of knitting recently.  This shawl is about all I need at night  in Mazatlán, and I just love it.  This is the washable cashmere that came from Crochet last month.  (Why is it every time we take my picture I have just yanked my hair out of a ponytail and have a weird expression on my face?)

It has been getting cooler here.  A couple of mornings this week it was around 65 to 69 degrees.  Yes, that does seem cold to us!  And one thing that happens in the winter is the beach at Olas Altas moves around.  The sand was carved away from the North end of the beach – I mean a shelf was created with a drop off of about 8-10 feet – and the sand moved South.

We were on a mission this morning – we headed to Bancomer to apply for a credit card.  We have a checking account with them which has a debit card, but you can’t use it online.  This has been frustrating because we could pay all our bills on line if we had a credit card.  There’s also this black hole you fall into sometimes if you want to buy something for delivery here in Mexico but your credit card is from the US.  We were looking at Apple recently…you can specify the operating language and keyboard you want, but if you want it delivered in Mexico you have to pay for it here and the address needs to match the credit card.  We even called their help line twice.  So we spent about 10 minutes waiting for a customer service rep and about 15 minutes at her desk in order to get a credit card.  The banker spoke clearly but it was all in Spanish and we did fine.  We go back in 5 days to pick up the card.  The interest rate is ridiculous (like 35%) but we plan on using it for convenience and paying it off after each use.

We are getting ready for a wild and crazy new year’s eve.  How?  By cleaning out all the kitchen cupboards and rearranging everything.  Now that our cupboards are clean maybe we can actually keep our resolution to not overbuy groceries!  We have had a bit of a time adjusting to the trio of  humidity-bugs-limited availability. Continuing the wild and crazy new year’s eve, Paul bowled a bit on his Wii, and I spent some time on the internet looking for my next knitting project.  Aren’t we just a couple of crazy kids?

I hope all of you have a wonderful time this evening marking the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.  I am filled with optimism for the coming year, and I hope that you are, too.

I am a sentimental fool, totally in love with a granddaughter I haven’t even met in person.  She is so beautiful, and in her I feel such hope for the future.  We all sense the potential that she is about to explore, and I feel the optimism of her entire family for a world that she is a part of.

That she will be loved -  is loved – is without question.  She will be encouraged but not coddled.  She’ll be protected but not cocooned.  She’ll be her own person, and if I know her parents she’ll be assertive and will know her own mind.

She’ll be smart, I’m sure of that.  She’ll be funny – I mean how could she not have a sense of humor?  She’ll be empathetic and social, and will be one of the lucky kids in this world who knows she is loved and can develop herself without bracing for disappointment.

I am shocked at how raw my emotions are when I think about how much I love little Consuelo already, on this special day, the day of her birth.

Congratulations, Adam and Martha.  Your new adventure starts now.

It’s Christmas morning here in Mazatlán.  I was woken by the Cathedral bells tolling at 6 am, like they have every morning for the last couple of weeks.  They also ring them at 6 pm, and Ave Maria is played every day at noon.

Paul and the dogs are still asleep, but I hear the birds waking up downstairs.  It’s going to be another beautiful day.

Last night we went over to Serdan, the main commercial street in Centro.  The paper said they were closing the street around 5, but at around 5:30 the cars were still passing.  Along the curbs were kids with boxes saving places for their parents to put their “shop.” They closed the street to cars at 6 pm and it turned into a combination of street fair and tianguis.  It was quite crazy.

Paul and I had fun watching it all.  We didn’t buy gifts for each other this year so we only bought a few little things (gomitas, a blanket for the couch) and people watched.  The smell of roasting corn was amazing.

We’re cooking our own feast today and will spend the day cooking, reading, listening to music, and walking along the water.  We hope you will have a wonderful day, too.