Hola amigos. Well, all is going well here in Puebla, and we are now in every day life as we know it here. So far, every day life consists of, from my point of few. Wake up at 6:45ish…depending on the evening. Then we head out of the apartment at around 8ish…sometimes 8:15 it depends on how fast everyone is moving. You all know the routine. Then Aaron drops me off at school around 8:20ish, and takes off to drop of Judah at his preschool. He works on EMP for a while and Alyx plays, and he picks up Judah at 12:30pm meanwhile I am hard at work learning Spanish, and I get my “siesta” at 1:00-2:30. Then it is off to the main square where I meet with my guide, and we walk about Puebla for about 2 hours where we talk in Spanish most of the time. Well she talks in Spanish most of the time, and I listen and try. It is totally amazing she knows English pretty well, and she learned all from American, English speaking music. Crazy!!!!! I know. Popping into stores, museums, historical places, churches…etc. It is pretty amazing, and Mom, Elaine was right it is very beautiful here…the architecture is amazing. I am done with school at 4:30 and still exhausted from all the walking, my lazy body isn’t used to it, but it is really good for me, and hopefully my waist line. After school is always different, but today it was back to the streets for a walk with the family. We went down the street from us where there is park about 7 or 8 blocks from our apartment. The park has lots of different ramps, and stairs emulating pyramids that the kids can climb up and slide down. Also there is some playground equipment that they can have fun with. Today was our first visit to the park, and it was really funny. Alyx was like fly paper. Three little Mexican girls couldn’t get enough of her. It was really great for them to stick around though because then I got practice my Spanish with them. So I was much obliged to share my little niña (girl) with them. It was actually really fun. We headed back to the apartment and stopped for dinner. Ok Nate and Brittany are you ready for this. We had the tortilla soup that I love (a normal bowl at your house size), the kids had rice and eggs, and Aaron had Carne Asada….yummy it was so good, and it all came to a total of 13.50 US dollars and that is with drinks, too. You could have added a drink that we don’t drink for only $1.50. We totally thought of you at dinner tonight. Carne Asada for $5.50 cents…muy bueno…si. Ok so that was today.

My Spanish…um how is that coming I am sure that is one of the questions you all want to know. Well so far I have learned three verbs, and tons of words, and I am now able to put a lot of sentences together by my self. I am getting to a place where I can have a consistent conversation with a 3 year old. Not bad for four days…at least I think so. For those of you who know Spanish I have learned the verb ser, estar, and habar. That might help you with how far I am progressing, for the rest…the 3 year old conversation will have to suffice.

Yesterday I went on and excursion to a place about 40 min outside of Puebla. Oh…I hope I spell this right…it is called Tlxacala. It is an older city with more Indians then Hispanics. It has really amazing architecture as well, and the church there is pretty, how should I say this….um….gaudy. Um….too much decoration, lots of gold, and lots of manikins of Jesus in pain, and dead and other Biblical characters as well. In Spanish, no me gusta. The pictures you see are from this city. I don’t have any of Puebla yet, but patients my friends. Also the pictures I promised you of Mexico City, and of our apartment will be up today as well. So you can check those out. Oh yeah and mom I will try to remember to take a picture of the van. Sorry I am slacking.

Judah loves his school and if you ask him some words he can tell you the meaning, however he isn’t speaking it on his own yet….but I will say he is an amazing mimic. We are not sure what we are doing this weekend, but I am sure it will be fun. I will let you know how it goes. I do know for sure that the school has allowed the whole family to go on this weekend’s excursion to another city in which I am not sure of the name. But the trip lasts from 7am until 9pm a very long day, but it should be fun, and it is on Sunday. I will write again early next week.

Aaron is coming along with EMP he finished his logo, which I think is fantastic, and is currently working on the website. He will hopefully be done with that part soon, so he can focus on clients, and building the business.

Alyx, is a Mexican magnet, every one wants to touch her hair, and talk to her, and stare. It is really amusing. She is dong well, and picking up Spanish fast, she is a walking spanglish toddler now. She is having fun with Daddy, and is now a daddy’s girl more then ever.

Well that is it for now. Hope all is going well where ever you are at. Love you all and talk to you soon.

Hello all, sorry I haven’t been on for a while with an update. We are now in our apartment. We spent yesterday unpacking and getting everything functional. We went grocery shopping, and to Costco. Costco was fun; it was a little like home, familiar in sight, but not in sound. One of our favorite things was that in the little food area where you can get hot dogs and pizza you can get a Pina Colada smoothie. YUMMY!!! And it is cheap. We went there to get a couple of things for the apartment, and by the time we got home we were already exhausted from shopping even though we had a great night sleep the night before. Crazy how that works…but we pressed on to get the apartment clean and running for the next week. We had our first meal in our apartment too. It consisted of a fruit salad, crackers, and rotisserie chicken. It was good to eat together to eat as a family, and kina strange too, but we had fun. Here are some pictures of the house. It is about 800 square feet or maybe a little less. We are used to small places and our goal is to be here as little as possible so we can learn the language. It is clean and cute. So here are the pictures of where we live.

Judah is doing so great he went 10 days with being dry in the morning. Needless to say he got the game we promised him if he could go at least three. We bought him the Cars game for his leapster…it is all in Spanish. We are so proud of him. Alyx just might have a bunch of pull-ups for the future if he is going to keep this up. We more then likely found a pre school for him, and it is way less expensive then we thought…but a drive away. But only about 10 minutes from the church offices where Aaron will be at. It starts and nine and goes to 12:30 and is Monday through Friday. There are some other options, but in Mexico you are required by law to start school when you are three, and have three years of preschool before they will allow you to start the first grade. Three year olds already know how to read and write…it’s totally crazy. Also if he were to attend a preschool that is public he must have signed medical documents. While I am school tomorrow, Aaron is going to check out the school for him. He is really excited to start. Oh and guess what Mom, Judah drank a whole glass of milk the other day. We got it on camera for you, tried to get his milk mustache, but it didn’t really work out. The whole time he was drinking it we kept telling him how Nanna would be so proud. Just wanted to let you know.

Alyx is doing well too. She was sick for a bit…high fever for a couple of days, and then she threw up a few times and she was all better. It seems it is going around here. She is going to be spending days with daddy and that will be fun for her, as she is a daddy’s little girl.

Aaron is going to start work on Eikon Media Productions this next week. It’s great the people at the church have offered him a place to work and child care for Alyx…right there on site. They have someone on staff who watches the kids a couple hours a day so that the wives of the pastors can come in and work on some things for the church as well. They have invited Aaron to use this while he works on EMP. Not only will this help Aaron get EMP off the ground, but it will help him learn the language much better then he already knows…and Alyx will get to play with little ones her own language to learn at her level as well. God is so good, and is so good to us as well. This is such a blessing.

We went to church today, and it was amazing from what I saw. Worship was great, and Judah loved kid’s church. He is ready to go and play. We talked to Randy and Luicina Mischler today and it was tons of fun. I spent most of the time up in the nursery with Alyx she isn’t too sure of anywhere she doesn’t know yet, and the darker skin kind of scares her a little I think. It will be great culturally for her. It was interesting trying to communicate with the people who were working. One little boy tried to talk to me, most of the time we just looked at each other and laughed. We went out to lunch with our friend Mark’s Brother Eric and his wife and his family. We had a great time!! We are looking forward to the rest of our time here in Mexico, and so far so good. Oh yeah, we thought that we might let you know that we don’t have internet at our apartment, we are debating on weather or not it is worth the money to have hit hooked up. So if you don’t hear from us for a while that is why. I can get it at the school, and Aaron at the church, but that pretty much limits us to email only, and no skype, so let us know if you think you will be using skype enough for us to get it installed. It is not that much, but enough to wonder if we really need it here. It is kind of nice being media free. No TV…no internet…it forces us to really communicate with each other, but on the other hand it’s hard too. If you are going to use skype, don’t feel bad to let us know. For all you MySpacers out there…that means no IMing either. So let us know what you think. We will be checking our e-mail and MySpace this week.

I am starting school tomorrow, and that is about it. I am loving the food, and all the fun we are having so far. Tomorrow is when our schedule is really going to start. We are still on hunt for a gym with safe childcare, but some people have so kindly offered to call to see what is available. Well that’s all for now. Sorry they are so long again. I hope you are enjoying them. Love you all!!!

Ok folks we have finally made it Puebla, Mexico...no Spanish yet... that will come in time. I start classes on Monday and I am a little nervous, but I know I will be fine. Thanks for the encouragement Michelle C. Anyways, I wanted to share a little bit about our drive here it's worth the talk. We crossed the border Wednesday, which went pretty smooth. It just took a while to get the payment correct. We drove the not so attractive ride, which is filled with what I call the "harry palm tree." They were like palm trees, but they had many diffrent branches, and then a big white flower on top. And the tops of the trees trickled down like the tree was shedding. I think that is the best that I am going to be able to explain it. The drive from the border was filled with all of those harry palm trees....tons of cactus, and dirt. That was about it. It was rather exciting though. All of the different signs and little towns we went through gave, me enough reason to stay awake and if that didn't interest me the traffic did. I am so glad Aaron was driving other wise we would all be dead!! He was a rock star in such crazy traffic. We entered San Luis Potosi. It was dark and very interesting driving in a crazy big city with no knowledge of anything, trying to find a hotel that looked less then scary. For all you GUers we ended up staying in the Country Inn and Suites. Pretty great we would recommend it if you ever find yourselves traveling that direction. The drive from here to Puebla was very exciting...mostly because we were going to finally reach our destination. We got to drive through Mexico city, and if my mom was there she would have broke through the passenger floor with her fake break. It took us at least and hour to get through the super crazy traffic. The pictures are mostly of traffic and the the 7-10 lanes...we're not really sure...people just drove where there was space. The other pictures are of out side of Mexico city. Crazy huh. I defiantly, at this moment, don't look forward to going through there on the way back. However the drive to Puebla was amazingly gorgeous!! It was mountains and lushness...I had been missing sense we hit New Mexico. We made it through...and Mark Jaquith was so kind to meet up with us and they let us stay with them until we got all in order. We had a hot home made dinner waiting for us when we arrive prepared by Aimee...and boy did it taste good... all that travel food it was great to have a home cooked meal.
We got to see our apartment and it's cute. A little smaller then our house in Bend, and a little less furniture...but that is about it. It even has a garage...however our version of garage is a little different then in Mexico. I will explain more about where we are living in another blog. Pictures will follow once we have unpacked along with many other exciting moments. The crime in Puebla is not very high, but parts theft seems to be a big thing. If you don't get your wheels locked and your mirrors fixed they usually get stolen in the first week you are here. However you can go down to a certain street to buy back the mirrors and wheels that were stolen from you. They will even be so kind to install and secure them so they can't get stolen again. :) ummm. Besides that crime is very little. So today we got our car theft free, picked up some things for our apartment, and I visited the school to find out more about what I needed to do to be ready for Monday. So that is that. I am sure I am leaving out some, but these blogs are so long. So hasta luego for now.

Ok so we are finally out of that town. We can't tell you how we never want to visit Carlsbad, NM again. We are now in Laredo, TX a couple of minutes from the Mexican border, and will be crossing tomorrow morning. Pray that all goes ok. I do have a funny story...many have said that our luck with vehicles is less then fortunate...almost comparably with our friend and tickets. Um...we love you. Well after we finally left Carlsbad, and finally made it to Pacos, TX which was our destination to begin with, 83 miles from Carlsbad. We pulled over to get directions on the laptop, what do you know the hood started smoking...That's right folks our new car and there is smoke coming from the hood. I couldn't believe it. Aaron, as the man, which I am so glad went out to inspect the car and pulled a red work rag from the engine...yes that's right a red work rag. Then some nice "folks" from TX pulled over to help us out and they discoverd another red work rag... this one however caught flame while trying to remove it. We had to pull over to another dealership to make sure that our car was A-OK. It was, and we were again off.
Here in Laredo we went down to burn some energy in the pool, as everyone looked at us like crazy people. I was like why not, it's 75 degrees here. Um...little did we know the out door pool was not at all heated, and the water was a little above FREEZING. Needless to say we did not take a dip. Alyx sat on the side with her feet in for a little while. We pulled her out before they turned completely blue. They are now taking a dip in the bath for entertainment. They seem to have a good time in there. Well I think that's it for now....we got our track phone today and are waiting for it to activate so when that happens we will let ya know our new number. We would appreciate it though if you signed up with skype...which is totally free by the way...and got a microphone for your computer, and if you really want a web cam. Let us know your log on name and we will do the rest. Hope your enjoying this and pictures will be up soon. Sorry about the delay...that is Aaron's territory. Love you all and miss you, but excited to be on this adventure.

Ok so I have much to write about so maybe I will put it in the form of an out line. Let's start where I left off.
1. The VAN....um.....what was purple is now white.
You see.....our van ran into some kind of debree for those of you who don't remember. We found out on Wednesday that our fan had a cracked gas tank. Should I say that our van is really not worth that much.....through a lot of prayer, research, and thought we are now the proud owners of a used Chevy uplander. We will have pictures of our new van that has much style we think....at a later date. But we wanted you all to know that the purple van is gone and we have stepped into the world of electronic buttons and DVD players in an automobile....it has pretty much everything we wanted in a van. For those of you who aren't van lovers I would like to let you know I love my van!!!! Through interesting circumstances we are here in Carlsbad, NM until Monday afternoon. The details will follow.
2. School....didn't classes start on Monday.
Yeah....I know that is what you guys were thinking....but didn't I say in my last blog that it always turns out into something better. Well this is defiantly one of those times. At the institute they have group classes and private classes....and you can take private classes but for a considerable amount more. So because the car got wrecked, and we couldn't make it down there in time....I am going to have a private teacher for the first three weeks of class and then I will join the group class at the end of the three weeks for the next 8 weeks of classes. For the same price as what I would have paid for the group rate....that is right....I am so excited. I get to learn one on one for the first three weeks.....I am so excited, the school is being so great to us, and we are so grateful to God for all of this.
3. Now for what are we doing in Carlsbad, NM....this is going to take time and an extra outline
a. If you ever breakdown in Carlsbad, NM and you have to find a hotel to stay in we would not like to recommend the MOTEL 6.....take that down and store that in your long term memory. However we are on our third Hotel sense we got here, and we like the Days Inn, but we are really impressed with the Continental Inn, large spacious rooms, and cheap I might add with donuts. So if you are ever going to stay in Carlsbad....you might want to check it out.
b. I would like to paint you a picture of the town we are stranded in until Monday afternoon. The blog is called a day in the life of the McAdam's....this portion is going to include.....in Carlsbad , NM. Ok so all of you who feel like you are deprived of trends and things that take so long to get where you are at....please visit here. This is town of 30,000 people and we made the mistake at staying in a hotel that doesn't serve a continental breakfast.....we drove the entire length of town find a place to eat breakfast, and there was only one that we could find. Yes, Denny's is the only place we could find to eat breakfast this morning.....as we drove through the L shaped parking lot there was not a parking space to be found. We had to park across the street in another parking lot just to eat at the Denny's. When we walked into the Denny's we were asked our names, and told to wait till they called our names......that is right people....you heard it. There was a WAIT at Denny's. We could barely contain ourselves....however we must say it was the best service we have ever had at Denny's. Our assumption was that it must have been new, just opened, we were wrong it's been there forever. What do you think of that? What would you do if Denny's was the best breakfast in town? We left Denny's went to a laundry mat did some laundry and then drove around town to see what we could do. We found the local theater....which was playing three movies....that's right three movies. There is only one theater in town and you get to pick from three movies. That is next....what was fun in Carlsbad.
4. What we did that was fun in Carlsbad so far.
a. We ate at a scary restaurant called Happy's and if you drove by you would have thought it was closed, except it was the only restaurant in walking distance from our hotel and we had no car at the time. We chalked it up as a fun adventure.
b. We were on the waiting list at Denny's
c. We went to the Carlsbad Cavern's which actually was really amazing. We walked 800 ft. underground in a cave, and the kids loved it until they were so tired from walking. We told Judah that it was kinda like where Batman lives. He was really excited. It was about an one mile and a quarter walk which took us 2 hours with the kids. Fun and great......pictures....as you can see. Our first really cool out and about family experience.
d. Next we did see a movie at the local theater....however we have discovered that there is no liquor stores....nor bars in town that we could find. Which I think is amazing and great!!! A local told us there were three....and that was all. Needless to say the local movie theater is all there is to do on the weekend. We haven't even seen a put put, or a bowling alley....nothing like that. Crazy. I say all this to let you know why there were so many people at the theater. They scheduled all three movies at the same time, and what else is there to do in town but watch a movie. It is a choice between that and renting....there was a drive in, but no kids movies were playing. So we stood in line for about 15 min to get our tickets, and headed in. Once you entered the theater it was amazingly hilarious....it is everything you have seen in a theater about 10 years ago, and they also have adapted the unmade bed theory....why clean it if it's just going to get messy again. We were walking over tubs of half eaten popcorn, and wrappers cups.....interestingly hilarious.We really liked the movie, and the kids did too. It was very imaginative.
Well that's it for now. Thanks for reading I hope all is going well for all of you we will keep posting blogs as we go. I hope to hear from you all very soon.
The McAdams

I have a little extra time today.....we had a little bit of car trouble so we are in the waiting period to see what it is and how long it is going to take to fix. Unfortunately by the time we hear and it's fixed we will probably be in such a hurry to pick up some lost time that I won't be able to write back right a way to let you know. So just pray that all goes well. We were driving down the road last night and we hit some kind of debree in the road and we sprung a gas leek....it's hopefully getting looked at as we speak. Aaron and I have decided that either we totally can't hear from God and he really doesn't want us to go to Mexico or it is something that is going to result big things and satan is doing everything he can to try and get us to turn around. Obviously we are going with the later. We are sure that this is what God wants us to do, and although a lot of things have been thrown at us God has always made it work out even better then we thought possible. So we push on, we may just have to push on a little harder and faster to make it there by Saturday.....we will have to see. Anyways we made it almost to our destination yesterday....we are in Carlsbad NM a town about 30,000 and 83 miles short of our goal. Not bad, it could have been worse....so we found out that NM isn't all that great to look at.....I slept through some of it yesterday and Aaron said I didn't miss a thing. So that is what's going on with us....I think the kids are getting a little less excited to get in the car to go, so maybe this break will prove beneficial. Besides that, nothing else to report. Hope all is going well with all of you.
The McAdams