La Cruz is a sleepy town. After a couple of weeks I dare say a boring town. There’s nothing wrong with it, but wandering its streets doesn’t take long and chances are good that unless you go inside a store you won’t see anybody.

So today, New Year’s Eve, we hopped on a collectivo and zipped down the road to Bucerias where it felt as if all of Mexico had congregated. It felt that way, though in reality it was probably only a couple hundred people. Plenty to perk Ali and I up, and hey, with kids any new environment is cause for celebration. Time to explore.

We walked the streets and bought Lowe a wrestler mask/cape that Ouest promptly commandeered and strolled around town in, much to the delight of each and every person she walked past. After a while we settled down in a shrimp restaurant that was packed to the gills. I say settled down, but that’s an overstatement. Lowe doesn’t settle down so much these days—he’s a runner, always exploring, and not paying the least bit of attention to where the rest of the family is at or what we are doing. He’ll just wander off and never once look back. Ouest has also become less and less interested in eating, so her newest thing is to climb under the table and play with condiments for an hour or so.

We hung out in the plaza for quite a while. Ouest kept busy by picking as many flowers off the trees as she could reach and Lowe drove his cars around and around on the ground while the local kids looked on, coveting his police car which is missing the lights and whose tires barely turn as it has been beat on so badly for so long. I need to look up how to say, “Trust me man, it isn’t worth it.”

We rang in the New Year as a family at six o’clock, and had the kids asleep by seven. Somehow Ali and I were still up at 11:54 when she said, “Looks like we’re going to miss it by about three minutes.” I agreed with her, but before we drifted off for good we heard the fireworks begin—we made it to 2013.