One of our favorite places to eat is Joe Jacks. The best Poke you will ever have, great Mojitos and Bob’s personal favorite is their red snapper. Try to get our children together for a fun dinner when we can. I also think we have beautiful kids!!
Courtney, Andrea & Ira
Group photo
Bob & I feeling pretty lucky!
One of the things we love about living in Puerto Vallarta is all the walking we get to do and the fun sites and places we discover on our walks. These photos are on the way to a fun pizza place for lunch. Don’t think you can get a lot of photos of a rooster on a leash attached to the steering wheel of a car! Was a very worthwhile trip for some photos. Also love the advertising outside Cafe Roma.
Only in Mexico!
The car was a photo moment too!
Iguanas to entertain us during our lunch.
It is hard to keep up with a blog when we are so busy having fun! A fun place that is now on our ‘must experience’ list for friends and family when they come to PV is the El Rio barbecue restaurant on the River Cuale. In a little town, the El Rio restaurant sits right on the Cuale river. Great barbecue, live music & a rope swing are just a bit of the fun for this outing. Took the kids to hang for an afternoon of family time and yes, a few beers and margaritas too!
Ira & Courtney enjoying a refreshing afternoon beer!
These guys have the right idea!
The rope swing.
Wine is a big thing in Seattle and something we enjoy. Getting wine from the US is expensive here in PV so we thought it might be fun to get a little wine club together to research wine options here in Mexico. We put together a brainstorming group and created our first event for our wine club. We started with a small number of selected people to get us started. While we are enjoying wines from Mexico, Chile and Spain here, we decided to begin our first tasting with Torrontes from Argentina. This is a light, dry white wine. Very refreshing and a perfect wine to taste during the warm month of June. It turned out to be a big success and we already have couples asking to host our next two events!
Doing it up in style!
Our winner complete with his gold medal! Zolo Torrontes
A long night for Bob. Is this too much wine or too much fun?!
When we drove our trailer down to PV from Seattle, we loaded it with our favorite things. Our home was completely furnished down here, but we wanted some of those dishes, linens and a few other items that remind us this is our home. Our trailer could only weigh 3500 lbs and after adjusting some items and leaving some things out, we weighed in at 3470 lbs! The reason for this story is Bob’s barbecue. It was either Bob’s barbecue or one of my favorite pieces of furniture. As you can tell from the photo, Bob’s grill won and I am glad it did! We use it almost every night and my Esposo can grill. He decided to do one of our favorites which is a rotisserie chicken. Cut some herbs from our little garden on our back deck, brined it and then Bob worked his magic!
So good!!!
I think this is the number one question from all of our friends and family! “What do you do all day?” We really don’t know how to answer it most of the time because every day we are busy and before we know it, it is late in the afternoon. We are doing all of those things you think about doing but never get the time to accomplish. We cook and entertain which requires walking a good portion of the morning to get all of the supplies. This is our built-in exercise plan. We have met fun friends down here who keep us busy. We go the gym and swim laps in the pool and are truly enjoying life! I have had a chance to tap into my creative side which I have not gotten to do in years. Saw something at my sister-in-law’s home and thought, I can do that! Maybe my new little side business…
I can keep this one alive!
Smaller version. So many options!!!
They say living in Mexico is like stepping back in time. In some ways that does not seem to be true when our phones, high-speed internet and cable all seem to be keeping up with what we had in the US. As a matter of fact, we watch King 5 news in Seattle from our home here in PV. We are also fortunate that our building was developed by a US developer who planned on living in the building so our water, plumbing & electrical are all to US standards. Most of the new construction we are seeing in our area is being built this way. Pretty amazing properties down here! BUT, when you look at some of the labor being done, you know you are in Mexico. It is evidently less expensive to hire several laborers to work all day then bring in some of the expensive equipment we use in the US to finish a job. A perfect example of this is our pool. We are without our beautiful pool for 5 weeks while they replace the sides of the pool with tile. The existing surface was not working well with the salt water. The old concrete had to come off before the tile could go on. We have a HUGE pool. The sides were all chipped off by hand. Pretty amazing to watch. I don’t know if it is true, but rumor has it the laborers chipping away for 8hrs every day for two weeks were being paid 80 pesos a day. That would be about $4.80 US a day. I hope that is not true but afraid it could be!
Working on the Palapa.
This is all day in the hot sun!
Working on removing the existing finish on one wall.
Very large area to cover!
One of the things I love most about Puerto Vallarta are the dining experiences you can have here. Ocean Grill is a new restaurant that sits in a small bay just past Boca which is a beach about 20 minutes south of PV. You should make reservations because it is a smaller place and you need to be able to climb stairs if you go there. You also want to have time to just hang out to enjoy the food and the view. We went with some of our favorite friends and enjoyed ourselves for over three hours with michelades, wine, fresh octopus and lobster! Another day in paradise!
Our 5 minute boat ride to Ocean Grill. No charge for this!
Ocean Grill!
Beautifully presented Lobster
Octopus!
Our friend Bob finishing our day with a high dive!
One of favorite things to do is play with plants. Although I enjoy looking at beautiful landscaping, I have discovered that I really don’t need or want a big yard I have to take care of. I love to create a little garden with pots on our decks. I like color, fragrance and some things I can use. I finally felt like I had things figured out in Seattle. Learned the hard way that it is not warm enough long enough to grow lemons on my Meyer’s lemon tree or gardenia plants that actually bloom the flower, but lots of beautiful plants to choose from in Seattle. Now I find myself needing to learn how to plant in a tropical environment with plenty of sun! I love the color options to choose from in PV and I now have 8 limes on our lime tree along with the wonderful fragrance from the citrus flower. Growing basil, oregano, and mint and am trying my hand at a gardenia plant again because they are suppose to bloom all year long down here. I’ve kept an orchid alive for almost two months and even bought a little fern to see if I can keep it alive! I love our little garden I have created! Too many plants to show them all to you, but will share a few.
Love this color!
My lime tree.
Limes for our margaritas! Don’t think one tree can keep up with us though!!
Back balcony. Going to be beautiful when everything blooms!
We attended a fun raiser last night put on by Timothy Real Estate Group and what a party it was! They were celebrating and sharing their recent episode of House Hunters International where one of their agents showed three homes in PV. All proceeds went to Toys for Tots. They created a red carpet, academy awards affair complete with Marilyn Monroe. My very own daughter was Marilyn with a wig purchased in LA, custom made dress and her makeup professionally done. What a Marilyn she makes! Just another fun night in PV…
My picture with Marilyn!
Eternal Happy Hour 