Ixtlahuacan Ceramic Factory

A group of us expats got together and did a car caravan to a ceramics factory in the nearby town of Ixtlahuacan. After spending our money on our treasures, we headed over to the department store in town, where I found a very nice tee shirt. I also dropped my sunglasses there, and didn't realize it until we were eating at the restaurant a few streets away. When I was done eating and went back to the store, they were closed, as everything here closes from 2-4 !!! My friend Julie was going  back to that store on Friday so she offered to pick them up for me if they were still there. Well I didn't really think they would be, but lo and behold they were,  right behind the counter waiting for their owner!!! What a  nice surprise that was. The sunglasses weren't expensive, but I have a hard time finding a pair that I like as they are usually all too big for my face. So this story had a happy ending.

Here are some pictures of our trip to the ceramic factory.

My friend Jeanne, with the mom and dad of the puppy. I don't think they were good guard dogs, unless
they lick you to death. :) Just realized that I don't have a picture of the puppy, just picture them smaller!

       Ceramic suns soaking up the sun?                                            

                       Jeanne taking a break.

Here a chick there a chick everywhere a chick, chick!

Plenty to choose from, the guy's who ran the place where very happy!

A fish out of water?

My girlfriend Sherry liked this guy so much she bought him and brought him home, I guess she likes the strong silent types?

Very colorful you can use them as planters or a fireplace.

This is what the mountains looked like in the morning last week .

It looks like the mountains are smoking.

Opps I didn' realize that the pictures didn't load all together.

Big mouth Bass?

Singing frogs?

These are really cute.

Oh I do have a picture of the puppy!

Ok bear with me here, today when I went to do my post I noticed that they have a different way to load your pictures, which was really cool and fast, however they also changed a few other things so now I have to get used to the new style. Take for instance this last picture, it wouldn't let me write under it, and  no I don't know why! it did say you could add a caption to the picture which I did and it even centered it for me, but then when I wanted to add more writing to this it is centering everything, oh well I guess I will figure it out sooner or later. I think I will do a practice post and see if I can get the hang of the new changes. See you all think this posting is so easy!!! Not!

Does it Matter?

4Th of July: As you can imagine if you want to celebrate this holiday you have to find a bunch of Americans to party with, that's not hard to do around here. This place is crawling with us gringos. We had our own party with our friends, even had decorations that Billy's brother brought down from the states. Like usual we had plenty of food and lot's of fun. The only thing missing was fireworks but that's ok.



Flying high in our parking lot !


Billy & his brother Richard


Billy & Wayne playing horseshoes. Notice the bunch of bananas on the tree.


Watching the games.





Walter getting into the spirit!


Summer time???
I usually write on my face book page about how wonderful the weather is here, well for the last 2 weeks I haven't been able to say that, our summer has been rainy and cool, being from Florida I like my summers hot and sunny. Now Billy on the other hand thinks this weather is just great, of course he doesn't go in the pool like I do so the sun not shining is no big deal to him. I guess I got spoiled with the winter season, when the sun was out everyday and not a cloud in sight. Oh well I guess I will just have to wait it out.

Does it matter????
Some days I find it hard to live here, things are just so different, things work differently if they work at all. Take for instance our internet service, all winter it worked great, now that the rains are here it is off and on. I used to go around saying why do they do this, why do they do that, don't they know you can do it this way and it will work better. etc. etc. Then I read a gentleman's blog about Ecuador, he said if you go around saying that all the time you will drive yourself crazy so instead of asking why, instead say "Does it matter"??? I find myself saying that plenty :) It is now my new catch phrase! So you might be saying now Cheryl what are you doing looking at blogs from Ecuador, isn't that how you ended up in Mexico, by reading a blog about Ajijic? Maybe you should stop reading about other countries? Well what fun would that be isn't the grass always greener on the other side of the fence, or should that be country? Well the real reason I was on there is my brother in law and partner are going there for 3 months this winter and I wanted to educate myself on where they were going. If they like it they plan on moving there, so I may get a chance to visit that country. There are many Americans that are going there for retirement.

Do you own or do you rent??
I get asked this question all the time, I don't know why people are so interested in our living arrangements but they are. When we answer that we rent the next question is, do you plan on buying? Well no we don't, we like the freedom of renting, if we see a place somewhere else it is just a matter of packing up and moving. Houses here in the village are way over priced and they usually take a long time to sell. Plus we don't want to tie up all our money into real estate. So no we are not buying, and don't plan on buying thank you very much.

Not having enough to do.
Some days I have lot's of things to do and then others I wake up and say ok what am I going to do with myself today? It is interesting to live here and not work, also not having any yard work to do, we went from 3 acres and horses to no land no horses , so I don't have any outside chores to do either. I have to get myself a hobby!

Are you ready to come home?
This morning I talked to my friend Pam, who lives in Florida her question was, are you tired of Mexico yet and are you ready to come home? No I'm not tired of it so I guess that would be no I won't be coming back, just to visit. I guess she still misses me which is nice, I miss her too.

Not having anything to say?
Well this was a post that I said ok what do I want to talk about, and like usual I found plenty of things to say. Things here are going well, today we took a day trip to Mazamitla it is a 90 minute drive from here on really nice roads. I will blog about it on my next post. Now that we know our way around here I would like to start exploring other areas. Till next time adios

A Day of shopping in Tonala

Tonala is a really nice town to go shopping in, plenty of stores to spend your money . We took our friends Joanne and Bill with us. They have just moved here from Florida, and knowing what it's like to be a newbie here we try to be helpful to others that have made the move. So last Saturday morning we headed out, the two Bill's were up front, my Bill drove, and Joanne's Bill's took note on how to get there. We found the parking lot that we like to use and pulled in. Now this is not your average parking lot, up top there are stalls, looks like it used to be a big stable years ago and on this day there were horses in the the stalls. Cheryl was happy!!! Right after we left the parking lot and hit the street we found a store that sold mirrors, that was one of the things I wanted to buy. The store had a really nice selection of them and I narrowed it down to three. We told them we would be back later to pick one out, which is what we did, we saw other mirrors that day but none as nice as theirs. We had a really nice day going through the stores, buying a few things and we had a great lunch that Joanne and Bill bought us. The lunch was so good that the next time we go back we plan on going there again. We really made a day of it, everyone's feet were tired by the time we decided to head home. Having been to Tonala before I wasn't sure how many pictures I would be taking on this trip but as you can see I found plenty of things to shoot, hope you enjoy them. As always if you click on them they will enlarge.


This is a picture of a plaque that has the old spelling of Tonala.

Thought this was really awesome, I would love to have one.
I love these lights I have two on my porch, but not as big as this one.


Interesting sun.


Didn't stop here but would like to on our next visit.


Really cute things for sale in this store.


Love the street lamp and the bench.


Joanne and my Bill in the background.

Loved this gate and the lamp above it.


These ladies were standing outside a furniture store.


This gentleman was in the furniture store, where they sell beautiful painted furniture, very expensive!


If you sit on this chair would you feel A ok?


This is where we had our delicious lunch!




Red Snapper for Bill


Joanne's shrimp taco's


Chilling out, waiting for the food to arrive.


This kitty was just hanging out.


Horses in their stalls.


The horse in the middle has his tongue sticking out, maybe he didn't want his picture taken?


All tacked up and ready to go. I have no idea where they ride the horses it is a pretty busy town, maybe there is a park nearby?



Well that's all for this post, hope all my readers have a fun and safe 4th of July.

Eye Candy

I realize that everyone has their own idea of what Eye Candy is and this is just my idea of what it was for me last week. Now that my homesickness has left me life is really good. The rains have started here, which we really needed. The dust was getting really bad, it just creeps into the house, so now with the rains it is easing up. Along with the rains comes really nice cool evenings, so wonderful for sleeping. The down side of the rain is we sometimes lose our internet server, but it does come back on eventually! We usually get our rainfall at night here, which is awesome as the rain doesn't interfere with my swimming in the pool. I have noticed that around 3 in the afternoon the clouds start building up, and at 8 the winds pick up. Then sometime during the evening the rains come, not every night yet and not big storms, but they will be arriving very soon. That is when the mountains will get so green.
This week we tried a new Italian restaurant that is only one block from us, so close we walked to it, the food was really good and reasonably priced so we will go back again.






I guess I'm not the only one in the house who likes to ride.

The trick riding kitty


I took a lesson on this horse last week, the trainer doesn't like to name the horses as he trains them then sells them, so he told me I could name them, so I call this guy Buddy


This one I am going to call Casanova, as he is a stud.
I call this one Pintura which means Paint

Okay I give, next time you can eat first!


Am I just to cute for words ??????


This is where Cali sleeps when she wants to be alone, it took us awhile for us to find her, we thought she got out of the house, gave us a good scare!


Mexican ingenuity at work here, this is why I like to have my camera with me!


Ok so why do I have a picture of this guy with his shirt off, well why not????
Well the story is: The local band called Bryan James, was playing at our friend Walters 50th birthday party, now it hadn't rained in months but Mother Nature decided to rain that night while the band was playing, so he got soaked thus the shirt came off. Maybe I should have made up a better story like he was a stripper for us girls yea that sounds better! LOL
Ok you decide shirt on or off???


The rest of the group.

The following pictures were taken on the grounds of LCS lot's of beautiful flowers there.

Don't forget you can click on the pictures to make them larger.






Cat's at LCS

Sunset taken from our patio.

Well that's all for this post hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you to my readers that send me comments, nice to hear from you, it keeps me posting!