Little Lees Diary: March 2012

We just returned last night from Mexico City where we spent Friday-Monday to attend the wedding of Dae's friend Sergio & his wife Tamar. (Did you hear they had a 7.4 magnitute Earthquake there today? Crazy that we just missed that!) Anyway, the weekend was so much fun. Mexico City was much nicer than I imagined, much cleaner, and much more beautiful. I have to admit I was kind of expecting pollution everywhere, smog everywhere, and shack-like houses, but the architecture was beautiful. This is what we did:

Friday: Arrive in Mexico City and 75 degrees. Heaven! We get taken at the taxi counter because they quote us for an 'ejecutivo' car when we told them we do not want 'ejecutivo'. The rate quickly drops from 285 pesos to 225 pesos. We already feel like we have got to be on our toes here in this foreign land! The taxi driver seems honest enough, but quickly loses his tip when he tells us there is a 'demonstracion' going on and deposits us a good 1.5 miles from our hotel, with some mumblings about taking a left up the street at this huge yellow statue. He tells us it is 300 meters, which it is certainly not. So we high tail it over to the Hilton with our luggage in tow, looking like we are literally fresh off the boat.

The written language barrier at the airport ATM was apparently too much for me and I walked away with 250 pesos (the equivalent of $20 USD), totally confused with my transaction. So we walked next door to the Hilton where there was an ATM and a bank. I made a successful transaction of 3000 pesos and had walked away to join up with Dae at a food counter when a woman behind me started talking to me in Spanish and telling me I had left my card in the machine. Aye!! We stood in the bank line for about 15 minutes, sweating, and finally a bank teller told me, in Spanish body language I guess, that my card was automatically destroyed in the ATM. At least that's what I think she said, but either way we went back home to the Hilton and immediately called the US (for the bargain price of $36 per one call) to put a stop on my card.

So we had a pretty exciting start to the day, and were actually pretty tired at this point, but had told Sergio and Tamar that we would meet up with them for dinner, thinking it would be a standard American 6pm dinner. Nope. 8:45 rolled around before we made it out the door (Sergio said the traffic was terrible due to the demonstration, so I guess the taxi driver was credible after all) and to a restaurant called Villa Maria. Prior to this, Dae and I had partaken in the complimentary happy hour on the 26th floor consisting of eats and a dangerous combination of tequila, tomato juice, and lemon juice, also known as a "banderita" beverage. Well, Dae can't handle his adult beverages anymore and after a few banderitas was feeling queasy to put it lightly. When we arrived at Villa Maria restaurant Dae promptly ran to el bano for the first of many, many trips. Poor guy. Meanwhile, Sergio, Tamar and I stuffed ourselves silly with tacos and tres leches cake.

Eek...

We got home around 11pm and I don't think Dae has ever felt as excited about lying down as he did that night! Fast forward to Saturday morning...

Saturday: I get up around 6:30 (why can't I sleep in?!) and go for a jog. It is beautiful outside!!! I jogged to the Zocalo (big square plaza) and back and by the time I get back Dae has bounced back and made a pretty nice recovery. Saturday was pretty much filled with naps, broken up by a trip on the Turibus (hop on/hop off double decker tour bus, where the ticket taker tries to rip us off and would have succeeded had Dae not said "hey, this isn't 100 pesos change, this is 20 pesos!). I tanned and snoozed on the Turibus and Dae took some mediocre photos. haha! He even was laughing at how bad some of his photos were - basically photos of nothing. Saturday night we refrained from the evil Banderitas at happy hour and woke up refreshed on Sunday...

View from our room

Sunday: 8am departure to the city of Cuernavaca, where the wedding will be held! Sergio's brother is starting a taxi company and has hooked us up with a driver to take us in his car, a little beat-up VW Golf type of car (at least I am relieved we don't have to worry about being jumped or kidnapped because of our fancy car!) for the bargain price of 1500 pesos round trip. This price is excellent, as the concierge at the Hilton had quoted us 3000 pesos one-way! Sheesh! One funny little tidbit: as we were waiting in the lobby for our driver, another driver comes up to us and asks "Orlando Pinto?". We were laughing so hard. I mean do we look like people who would be named Orlando Pinto? And what a funny name :)

So...the wedding! The invitation had read 12:30pm and Sergio had warned us, saying "12:30 really means 1:00pm since Mexicans are always late". Well I was all worried and told Dae we had to get there close to 12:30 because I didn't want to be rude, even if Mexicans really were late. Well, they really are late...really late. We arrived at 12:35 and I kid you not we were probably one of the first 5 people to arrive. I have a picture to prove it. The wedding did not start until 1:45pm! And no one seemed phased at all. It just kind of casually started, with lots of guests not even sitting yet. This was actually a Mexican-Jewish wedding since Tamar's family is Jewish, so we didn't really know which parts were normally part of a Mexican wedding and which parts were normally part of a Jewish wedding. It's probably safe to say this will be one of the few Mexican-Jewish weddings we will ever attend! Anyway, the ceremony lasted about 1 hour, with some definitely obvious Jewish parts (breaking the glass, lots of men in yarmulkas) and then Cocktail Hour followed, where we sat on these little brown lounge chairs and drank Coronas, Mango margaritas, horchatas (delicious milky iced Mexican drink) and ate all sorts of Mexican treats with guacamole. I was in heaven. Speaking of heaven, this venue was absolutely gorgeous. It was called Jardin Ramayan and was probably one of the prettiest wedding venues I have ever been to. So after Cocktail Hour we were ushered into the adjacent tent where plated lunch was being served. They served it "sweetheart style" (I heard someone say that) where the man and woman get a different appetizer, entree, dessert and it is all meant to be shared. It was all quite yummy. Ceviche and tortillas for apps, some sort of fish and trout for main dish, and gelato and something else for dessert. Then the dancing began...and it went on, and on, and on, and on until midnight. Midnight! We left at 10pm but I can see now why people are able to keep dancing. The servers and deejays keep things lively by handing out trinkets and treats the entire evening. While dancing, they handed out, pretty much every hour, necklaces, glow bands, light-up Mickey mouse ears, french-fry foam hats, long balloons, pom poms, and fake ties for the men. Meanwhile, a few hours after our main lunch, corn on the cob and corn soup magically appeared at our table while we were out dancing, then a snack bar (kind of like a mini candy store) opened up down by the real bar, then they topped off the night with tortillas and beans and sour cream that Dae is still dreaming about. Beverage-wise, after the cocktail hour, white wine was poured & poured (our glasses were never empty), then these test-tube looking shots of Jagermeister and red bull (yowsers!) were presented on the dance floor, then a round of tequila shots. I paced myself, and luckily this was spread over 10 hours. I really can't imagine how much a Mexican wedding costs, but it was very fun and very memorable.

"I thought the invitation said 12:30"... I look mad but I'm not :) Also my dress looks really short in every photo that I'm sitting but in real life it wasn't that short. hehe.

First to arrive...plenty of time to take tons of photos

It definitely filled up during cocktail hour!

Mother and cousin of the bride.

The end of the night...can you tell?

The wedding invite said "Guayabera Formal" and here Dae is wearing a Guayabera shirt (aka Mexican wedding shirt - we had to google it). I got his off Macys.com and the brand was "Cubavera" so we kept joking that he wasn't wearing a real guayabera. At the wedding, we were seated next to the American cousins who said they knew we were American because his shirt was Cubavera! haha! He said his parents actually know the owners of Cubavera in Miami and it was a legitimate guayabera shirt. So Dae was off the hook.

I found a few things funny:

* They provide flip flops for the girls and all the girls changed into them after just a couple of hours

* There was a "Picture Man" who went around taking pictures, then goes to each table and gives you your pictures to look at. They then charge 50 pesos per picture you want, almost like a theme park! We thought it was so hilarious that this was apparently normal at a wedding? Anyway, most everyone bought a picture since most of them were really cute. We bought two, and above are my non-scanned version of them (I took photos of photos - Ev you can just cringe now!).

*Just after lunch, every couple got a little card with their name on it, and it turned out to be handwritten thank you cards for each of us! Talk about being on top of things.

It was definitely a weekend to remember, and so much fun.

So, a few thousand miles north, my mom was sooooo nice to come and watch the two little guys for the entire 4 days. Thank you so much! We are so appreciative! She sent periodic picture updates and Dae and I got in quite a few chuckles over our favorites:

"Sleeping arrangements"

Apparently the boys love her!

A breakthrough? No longer afraid of sand?

"soccer solo"

"too small"

"undies"

OMSI

Night before we left. Ugh - I think I'm done with bangs. They look just terrible!

Olin's hilarious face!

Olin turned 6 months on March 3, 2012. I compiled a mini-list of things we think are very cute and hilarious about him:

* Extra loud sneezes. Especially the "ahh" part of the ahhh-choo!

* One extra long eyelash on the right eye

* Straight eyelashes - directly from dad

* So smiley!

* Stick Straight hair - again directly from dad

* Very puckered lips when concentrating on something

* The ability to squirm your way out of the Bumbo already! Much more mobile than your older brother was!

* Love TV

* Extremely sharp nails and your love of clawing people's faces (lovingly, of course)

* Grabbing onto everything in front of you

* Smacking your little lips all the time and making sucking motions when anybody else is eating

* How you love to eat, and eat a lot.

Last night I put Olin to bed in our bedroom and Leelee asked if he could come along. He brought along a pacifier (he now likes to use one, just to be like the baby) and laid down quietly next to us in the bed. Once Olin was done feeding, I left Leelee and Olin in the bed together and tiptoed out, only to hear Olin start crying the second I left. After about 30 seconds, he stopped crying and I tiptoed back to see Leelee hovering next to Olin, putting the pacifier in his mouth and saying "don't worry baby...it's ok" and trying to soothe him. It was seriously cute.

Another aside: Whenever we hear some serious heavy breathing coming from leelee's direction we know he is deep in concentration trying to figure something out or piece something together. The minute he starts concentrating hard, he breathes very deeply and very loudly!