Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Friday morning we went down and got some breakfast at a nice little place in town here. I didn't want any eggs or breakfast stuff so I got lunch (a torta) at 9AM. I'm silly like that. We then went down to the beach and threw the football and played sand volleyball with a few of Scott & Hillary's gringo friends down here. They said it was nice to finally have a full game of volleyball. We also went down into the ocean afterward, and don't worry, I didn't go out too far seeing as I'm back and writing this email. But the waves were huge, very fun.

We then headed back, got showered up and went to lunch in a town called Sayulita. We had fish tacos from a place that Scott said was his favorite fish tacos and I gotta say, they were AMAZING. They are basically strips of fried fish, like maybe tilapia, with cabbage, onions, and some chipotle mayonnaise type sauce. I told Scott I want to have it again before we leave.

The plan for the afternoon was to go to the big mall in Puerto Vallarta to see Avatar in 3D but when we got there, we found out that we had read the times wrong on their website and just didn't have time to wait around for a 6PM movie. It's funny going from a town where it's dirt roads, stray dogs, and chickens running all over, to a big massive mall with marble floors and nice stadium seated theaters. The saying here is that Sayulita and towns like that are the real Mexico, Puerto Vallarta is not. So instead we drove down to the touristy areas of the city and walked on the boardwalk and walked through the shops and stuff. We got a magnet for the fridge as we always do on our big trips and Liz got a ceramic bowl for salsa.

The reason we couldn't wait around for the 6PM movie was because we had to pick up a dog named Alondra at the Vet in Puerto Vallarta. The long story is, when they moved here back in July, they had 3 dogs attach immediately to their family. One was named Petunia that they were able to adopt to a man who lives out in the country with a lot of land and he loves Petunia. The other is named Bubbles and they still have Bubbles here. She is basically like a 35 pound, brown dog that to me looks like a miniature Great Dane. Very very sweet and very tempting to take home with us. If Scott and Hillary offered, I would probably take them up on it! She is maybe 8 months old and full grown and just full of fun and energy and plays with their dog Libby just like Daisy & Gryffin play with each other. There is this Canadian non-profit group that finds relatively smaller dogs in Mexico, gets them healthy and then sends them to families in Canada that want a dog. Apprently the dogs in Canada are huge and small dogs are a rarity. So for families that would like a small dog and also save a dog from a life of hardship, they get dogs from Mexico and send them to Canada. The organization is called Mexi Mutt and I included a link here. Bubbles is heading on a flight at the beginning of March to go to a Canadian family in British Columbia. There's a lot of regulation too as far as finding the right family, so Bubbles would be well taken care of. A happy ending indeed!

The third dog Alondra doesn't have a happy ending. Alondra was just like Bubbles when they got here. Very energetic and happy. She is owned by a family across the street who should NEVER EVER own dogs. They don't care about their dogs at all. And around August-ish Alondra was hit by a car in the street here and broke her leg. Hillary saw Alondra just laying on the sidewalk and when she said "Hi", Alondra didn't move and that's when she found the broken leg. Hillary tried to tell the family that Alondra was hurt, but they didn't care. Hillary then took her to the Vet. Alondra got a rod put in her leg and tried to get it healed. Fortunately surgeries for that type of thing are super cheap, maybe $20? Crazy cheap! Sometime in November or so, the rod slipped out of place and was just poking through Alondra's leg like a tent. Hillary took her back and got it fixed again. And the same thing happened only this time the rod was pulled out of place by the owning family in January, and only a couple days before it would have been removed anyway. She asked the vet if they should just take the leg off, because by now it had atrophied and was useless, and the Vet said that would be best. So yesterday we were scheduled to go pick up the 3 legged Alondra at 6:30 after our movie. When we got there the Vet started telling Hillary how the surgery went and drew the situation on a piece of paper. It turns out Alondra had a massive tumor on her hip as well as all up and down her leg, which might be why the rod wasn't being taken well. The cancer had spread to Alondra's lungs and when Alondra tried to get up from after the surgery, she couldn't breathe and died yesterday. It was extremely tough to hear and very difficult on Hillary who started to connect the dots as to why Alondra was always so drowsy and inactive the last few months. Alondra wouldn't even eat the last few weeks and had gotten super skinny. It's somewhat of a consolation to know that it wasn't her leg that caused her death. Hillary is going to have the Vet send her an email with the explanation of what happened to Alondra and then give that printed email to the family to explain what happened. We all are guessing the family won't care.

I don't know if I told you this before or not, that same family had a dog a couple weeks ago that the kids would abuse and throw in the air (without then catching it). It was a small dachshund type dog that Hillary said looked like a brown Gryffin and was just as sweet and kind as Daisy. The Dad in the family had even asked Brynn at one point if they wanted the dog. A couple weeks ago Hillary had noticed the dog wasn't around and the kids said the dog died. Turns out the dog had eaten rat poison and died from that. There's no way of knowing whether the dog was fed poison or had eaten it on his own, but it was gone nonetheless. You can imagine how the family would have reacted to a 3 legged dog so maybe Alondra's situation was a blessing in disguise.

Anyway, the whole day, Hillary's dad and Gilly had been taking care of the girls so we came back and hung out with them a little. Scott, Liz and I walked up the street to a local taco shop that had some delicious tacos. They were so good that I ate 6. That was probably too many, but hey, it's vacation. We then came back and went to bed a little early just from the all day exercising we had done.

Today's plan is we're going back to Sayulita for breakfast and hanging out there a bit, and then coming back here to make some brownies for a festival in the "plaza" of the town. Their school is putting on the festival and Scott and I working the ring toss and Liz and Hillary are working another booth (I can't remember which one). Even though there are kids there, the festival goes until the wee hours of the morning (it starts at 5PM). Scott told me that and I said "you let Brynn and Callie stay up that late?" and he said "oh, we don't stay, but all the locals and their kids do."

The only downside of our trip so far? Those stupid roosters. It feels to me like God's way of setting an alarm clock for us, but man I despise those roosters. I sleep until 4AM, listened to roosters until 5:30, and then sleep again until 7 or 8. I call it first and second sleep. This morning, I got no second sleep.