crooked and steep

We've been here 7 weeks now and still feel like we are settling in in some ways.  Days have rhythm, mostly dictated by the rising and setting sun, but when your house has no fixtures, activity ebbs and flows according to any natural sources of light including full moon or clear starshine, too. We've had excitement in different forms lately, but also enjoyed a string of days that were rather more quiet, mellow, + slow.   Max and I decided to practice different cement finishes in preparation for completing the shower upstairs in the house.  We're still not committed to one particular path forward for the house/land/Baja, but I mean we have youtube and our Mexican Home Depot bucket encouraging us to * ¡ HAZ M Á S!* so why not? We practiced on the wall of the old semi-outdoor shower and had some fun playing with color. The dates we carved into different phases of construction - above being for the outdoor shower and below being under the stairs to the 2nd story we added ...

A wise man once said the time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining, and we certainly have an abundance of that right now.  Max is already musing that we should have let just one more hurricane season pass before we took on a new palapa roof, but we're all pretty ecstatic to have the job 99.8% done to enjoy in the spring.  The crew did an amazing job + used beautiful materials, which we sincerely appreciate.  Bear with me as I post an even bigger abundance of photos than usual - I'm really fascinated by this process.    The first bundles of fronds delivered! Okay, I did not take photos of every single load to be delivered over the course of the job, but it was pretty exciting - and they really were beautiful.   Max checking the top viga before the final palo de arco went on and the new fronds started going on. Here is some of the gorgeous rope Conrado found for us.  It is hand twisted from palm fronds and as strong as it is beautiful.  ...

We've been here a few weeks, established some habits + routines, and are starting to slip back into the mindset of - quick, let's get stuff done so that we can return to the moments of enjoying.  Thankfully, I am continually reminded to slow down and notice what's going on.  Like how excited the bees are to have a new free source of water in town, and how at least 3 of them will need careful rescue after getting a little overeager in their landing sequences every time I fill the washer. Some days are more challenging than others.  Here, we witness the epic saga of a boy wanting to read outside, but not being able to see a bloody thing with 127,000 lumens entering his eyeballs at once.  I'm not sure what size my perpetually barefoot boy's feet are, but that is an impressive bird print regardless. I know Toby's sweet, pitiful face convinced the lot of you that I was meting out cruel + unusual punishment by withholding treats (or at least chastising the cat while s...