Ayla's first haircut

Amy Hemeyer, who does my hair (and Amber's as well, sometimes) took a whack at taming Ayla's mullet at the end of January. Good times; now it's business up front and business in back.

A (few) month(s) in review

December, and truth be told, January and February have been a bit of a blur in the Rowson household. What with all the Mexicanish-speaking and all. It has been an eventful quarter. The jolly fat guy made an appearance - several, in fact, on account of geographically dispersed family members. The whole family, along with the Hensley side, took a weeklong trip to Playa del Carmen and returned, amazingly, on good terms. Some chalk it up to good genes or patience, I say Senor Tequila was mighty helpful.

Then we returned to jobs and preschool and things were not quite as fun as before, though just as cold. To liven things up, everyone except me got seriously sick. Hooray for winter.

The posts below chronicle, in date-stamped order, the previous month's shenanigans.

Playa in the daytime

On New Year's Day we ventured into Playa del Carmen, which is an actual town populated by tourists and, you know, actual Mexicans. Missing from this picture is the terror that had gripped the family following the realization that I did not know where I was going (I did, and was not lost at all, but the kids did get a little simian there for a while. Eventually we found the place that had been both recommended and written up in the guidebooks.

With stiff margaritas and a circus-friendly environment, the place was a godsend.


After dinner we walked and shopped for quite a while. Frankly, I look homeless here. However, I completely staged the shot. But.

Almuerzo en Tulum

Like I said, the visitors center was a tourist trap; I wanted at least one truly authentic experience on the trip and I wasn't about to let anything (language barriers, crime, the potential for serious GI distress) stand in my way. No, we would get some tacos.

I explained - in what Spanish I could muster - to our driver that we wanted to go into Tulum proper (five minutes from the ruins) for lunch. The driver wanted to stay and eat at "one of the two" restaurants at the visitors center. My ass. What followed was a brief, likely comic, argument whereby I informed him that we had the van for three more hours and would be going into Tulum for lunch. The argument ended either when I ran out of vocabulary to mangle or with the offer to buy him lunch, I forget. Anyway, we headed into town and had an excellent lunch at Taqueria El Mariachi, which I had read about in a guidebook.

These were arracheras, sort of a precursor to the fajita, usually with just onions instead of onions and bell peppers. Very nice. Beckett and Brenden had two orange drinks eats. The non-driving men had a few Sols and felt life was quite nice, you know?

Every few miles on the highway there'd be these pointless checkpoints. Basically just Mexican dudes with AR-15s waving all the traffic over some speedbumps.

Beckett and I had to go (Sols and orange drinks, you know), so we stopped the van - strangely enough within a hundred yards of the checkpoint - and did our business. Beckett has not learned the lessons of discrete public indecency. I blame all the time he spent around our good friend Tom during his formative years.


Brenden is clearly not sure what to think of his cousin. A little weird for sure.

Tulum

After four or five days having every every whim catered to on the resort I was eager to get out into the countryside a little bit - and embarrass myself through the use of my mediocre Spanish. So the boys chartered a van to take them to Tulum, notable primarily for its scenic location. The Mayan settlement was constructed shortly before the arrival of the outside world, but was for a time a critical commercial outpost on the Yucatan.

Above is the Temple of the Descending God. The Mayans believed in three states of existence: earth, sky and underworld. I swear, I've never heard anything like that before - those wacky Mayans!

Our tour guide was of limited utility and set us back a few hundred pesos but hey, at least we weren't going to get lost.

Truth be told, Beckett was more into the train that took us from the visitors center to the actual archaeological site, but hey, he was expecting warriors and stuff. Oops.

The visitors center was pretty touristy. Lots of overpriced magnets, tacky pyramid-shaped paper weights, that kind of thing. These dudes on the pole swing thingy were pretty cool (I looked it up. They're called los voladores and it's a traditional dance representing the four seasons. They have four seasons too, who knew? Core crazy cooincidences! Next you'll tell me the Spanish word for "email" is email.)

New Year's Eve

We played a game at dinner on New Year's Eve, when neither of the girls were on good behavior and the whole scene was just utter chaos, nobody able to enjoy their dinner, plonk being served to Don as "Chivas Regal 18 Year Old," and so forth.

The game was called "Describe this, the Sixth Circle of Hell, in One Word." Since I'd invented the game seconds before I went first with "circus." Danielle paused for a few moments and offered the clear winner, thus ending the game.

"Aneurysm."

Then Ayla threw a plate on the ground (again) and Beckett began suggestively licking an ice sculpture (also again).


During the few moments of relative calm, Beckett ate something like two whole lobsters and some ham and rice. Danika, it would appear, just ate cake.


After dinner the little girls went back to the room and Danielle and Joel; the rest of us retired to the plaza for seven hours of New Year's Even pre-partying.

Beckett made a friend, a Brit named Foppin or Loxley or somesuch. Nice kid, but prone to announcing, unprompted and to complete strangers, that "the Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 is a mid-engine supercar produced by Bugatti Automobiles and introduced in 2005 as the fastest production car in the world. It is currently one of the fastest accelerating and decelerating production cars in the world, with a 0 -100- 0 time of 8.6 seconds and, at 1.1 million Euro (1.5 million USD) , it is also one of the most expensive cars in the world." He would not take a breath while saying this.


Beckett was very excited to stay up late and party with Mama, Mema and Papa, though frankly the adults could have gone to bed around ten. But they did not, the end.