Final days and homeward bound!

Wednesday, January 3rd

Two days left on our trip!

Wednesday was another pretty chill day, which worked out well since on Tuesday we did the volcano hike + spent the whole evening out at Ivan’s sister’s house.

Ironically, not even 12 hours after we left her house, she went into labor! So by 8 a.m. they dropped the girls off at my in-laws’ house while they headed to the hospital.

Ivan had plans to accompany his dad to an appointment and later was going to see his cousin again, so I/we (the boys and I) had the day open. The girl cousins were there, but the kids mostly did a lot of just hanging out, etc.

I spent a loooong time basking in the sun on the roof!

The boys came up for a while too and read with me for part of the time.

I read 100 pages straight out of my new book (a historical fiction I got for Christmas I think last year but never got around to reading). I love it so far! And I can’t remember the last time I sat and read 100 pages straight out of a book. I tend to read in like, 10-20 minute snippets. Sitting to read for an hour or more feels like an extreme luxury.

Meanwhile my sister-in-law sent her daily photos of Charlie…. ❤️ We have video called a bunch too.

We had molletes (bread + refried beans + melted cheese + pico de gallo) for lunch (to use up a bunch of French bread leftover from New Years.)

Later in the evening we basically did more relaxing… the boys and I put on Murder Mystery I on Netflix. (They saw the 2nd but never the first one.)

A very nice day, despite the fact that I probably took like 1,000 steps in the whole day! 😅

Thursday, January 4

Thursday- our last full day. Hard to believe! Time went simultaneously slow and fast. I feel about ready to head home. Unlike a normal “vacation”, this had a different feel with all the family time, obviously. I think everything went really well though! We still fit in a lot of cool touristy activities/new sites, tons of quality family time, and a lot of relaxing too.

To be honest, this was sort of the total break from reality that I needed! Since I was not “in charge” of anything, I did very little planning of any kind (besides lightly researching our tourist activities, but I didn’t have to figure out transportation or parking or anything, unlike other trips).

My mother-in-law also did essentially all the cooking, and although I always tried to do dishes, she never really lets me. In other words, I was completely removed from all of my normal grown-up activities and didn’t even have to be the tour guide like I typically am on our family trips. It’s like I was 10 again. The extent of housework I did was making my bed and clearing my plate to the sink. Hahahaha. Pretty nice!!!

Anyway, Thursday by noon or so we all headed to the hospital to see our new niece!! So tiny and cute!

After a while at the hospital, we, along with the older girls, all went to downtown Toluca for a late lunch. We got chilaquiles from a nice place that my in-laws knew of.

I got the arrachera chilaquiles- so it’s tortilla strips that were topped with beans, Gouda cheese, pico de gallo, and simmered in a spicy salsa. Super good!!

From there, we decided to go walk around downtown since we were all stuffed. We needed to work our food off, lol.

It was a gorgeous afternoon- warm and pleasant. We wandered into several shops and it was quite busy in downtown Toluca.

The Cathedral is down there too- very cool building.

Not sure who all these statues are of, but I think they look neat. Very impressive building.

We spent a good while just sort of hanging around in the main plaza. Similar to the one in Mexico City, but smaller and way less crowded.

This is our god-daughter!! She’s Asher’s age, 14, and super tall, especially for a Mexican girl. She said most of her friends don’t even reach her shoulder. Haha.

Nice photo with Ivan’s parents:

From there we walked to a frappé place that they like a lot. It’s very small but apparently really good!

I went with a hot chocolate since I don’t drink coffee, though I didn’t know that I guess not all of the frappe flavors don’t have coffee.

By that time, it was almost 7 pm. We got a call that his sister was already home from the hospital! Not even 24 hours after she delivered. Wow! Guess things all looked good and she was ready to go! So, we drove over there to drop the girls off at home. (We ended up going in for almost another hour but mostly just to be around in case she needed anything while her husband ran to the pharmacy. She was in her room with the baby most of the time settling in.)

Got home after 8 pm, spent a while packing up our suitcases (turned into a minor production as his mom had some stuff she wanted to send for Ivan’s other sister in the States and our bags were pretty full….), and then we had our nightly tea/coffee at the breakfast bar before bed. It’s such a nice, relaxing tradition. No TV, no shows on, just sitting and chatting for 10-20 minutes before bed with his parents. 🙂

Friday, January 5

Time to go! We showered and then headed out by 9 am.

Traffic was pretty bad on the way into Mexico City- some road construction had things balled up.

Finally made it to a torta place Ivan wanted to hit up before going to the airport.

Some final grandparent pics:

I had a milanesa torta and I think Asher had pierna and Ethan also milanesa de res.

I wish I could bring the warm sunny weather come with me!!! I am VERY excited to not have the freezing cold nights anymore (well, we will, but will be cozy at home with our gas fireplace and central heat…), but the warm sunshine is still several months away for us.

After lunch, to the airport!

Got all checked in and said out (always a bit sad…) goodbyes. 😢

Not sure when we’ll be back yet! Ivan I’m sure will fly home again this year at some point. He does solo trips home pretty often, which I think is great. But as for all of us… not sure! We said maybe next time we will have my in-laws meet us in Cancun or something to mix it up. 😉

It’s hard though, because Ivan has such a large extended family, and he has close knit relationships with so many of them. So while the idea of just meeting his parents at a beach always sounds good, that would mean missing out on seeing a lot of other family, too. It’s really pretty special and I’m happy to get to be part of this whole other family and culture. It dawned on me that he, living in another country, sees his aunts and uncles more than I see mine, who all live within a several hour drive radius from my house. 😳

With that, I’ll wrap up these trip recaps! Might as well end on a positive note, because as I sit here at the gate in Mexico City, they just announced that our first leg (to Guadalajara, Mexico) has been “indefinitely delayed”. Um. Great. We only had a two hour layover before our final leg to Chicago… 😩😩 At this point I just want to get home!! A bit worried that we will now miss that connecting flight, which wasn’t supposed to get in until 10 pm…. Ugh. Fingers crossed we can still make it tonight!