Paul and I had a great Christmas visit with our son and his family at their new place in Tepoztlán – our first time sharing the holiday with them in a long time.  We also planned our visit to allow us to be there for our granddaughter’s seventh birthday… and it was also a chance to reconnect with our daughter in law’s parents.

At the top of this post is a photo of our granddaughter reading in the living room.  It’s a beautiful girl in a beautiful room, a gorgeous property, and those mountains are just stunning, too!

They don’t look so big right here but the dogs are huge! Male and female Irish wolfhounds – about 200 and 140 pounds respectively. Such sweet animals, too. Don’t you love the rock construction they used for the house?

We really enjoyed the mercado in Tepoztlán. The area is famous for its cecina – a salted dried beef… but of course I focused on the fruit and vegetables. Above is a wheelbarrow full of jicama parked behind the vendor of cut up fruit. I went crazy for lots of goodies at the mercado but especially the roasted/slightly burnt peanuts in the shell. Mmmm. Do you see the stone floor in the picture above, too? You see a lot of this type of stone walls and floors in Tepoztlán – bigger pieces with smaller ones in the grouted areas. I love it.

We also bought the vegetables above – at the left of the tomatoes are a vegetable no one knew the name of but they described it as a cross between a radish and a potato. We were eating them raw and putting them in salads all week long! (UPDATE: I contacted Margret at Frutas y Verduras to see if she knew what this veg was as even the person selling it didn’t know – and I guess it has been recently introduced to Mexico and is called oca.  Here’s a link to more info.)

The weather was lovely – cool at night but in the 70’s during the day.  Can you tell Paul was enjoying himself?

Mmmmm. Here’s our granddaughter on Christmas afternoon with her chilaquiles. Martha’s mother made the salsas from scratch and I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t help a whole lot as it seems they had a well oiled system going. They were delicious, yum.

For our family, any get-together of four or more means there are going to be some games of dominoes as the night wears on. Usually with some tequila or mezcal and some plates of vegetables and meats too. Here’s a picture of the family probably at around 2 or 3 am. And I shouldn’t rub it in but hey, the girls won!

Paul and I walked in to town one day to prowl around a bit on our own. Here’s one view from our walk. Those mountains are magical, I swear.

This last one is our granddaughter with her very favorite birthday gift – red slippers like Dorothy wore in the Wizard of Oz! She’s clicking her heels together in this photo, can you tell?

We hope you all had a great holiday, too. Stay tuned, it won’t be so long between posts from now on, I promise.