La Primera Semana Esta Completa

The first week is finished! Yesterday, we went to a coffee plantation and were amazed at the amount of work required to plant, harvest, dry, roast, etc the coffee beans. It seems like a cup of coffee should cost about $10/cup instead of $1. The highlight of the day for Audrey was riding in the bus (really a mini-van) to the 3 different stops on the tour (she and Avery sat in the backseat by themselves strapped into regular seatbelts and they thought they were hot stuff) and the highlight for Avery was seeing the dog who lives outside of the packaging facility. Pix are below. (The farm looks more like a jungle with the coffee plants interspersed between all kinds of fruit trees and other plants. It was beautiful! When we did our tasting at the packaging facility, we all had to wear hair nets. Just adding that in so you don't think we've adopted a new fashion since being here).

I'm also attaching a couple of pix of what you think might be Audrey and Avery sitting on dining room chairs. That's really Alyssa and Wyatt (the only names Audrey will let us call them these days, except when Audrey decides to be Julia instead of Alyssa) on purple ponies in a riding ring at Audrey's birthday party (immediately after eating our ice-cream cones, vanilla cake, opening a present which was a musical book, and asking Snow White to get off of a particular horse so that Wyatt could get on). =) If you feel lost, I welcome you to come spend a day with us and Audrey's imagination. It's awesome! You might notice Audrey's big smile ... while she normally runs from the camera, when I told her that I was taking a picture of Sleeping Beauty, she smiled just like a princess.

Also is a random picture we took yesterday of a van who pulled off the road (in town) in front of us. Check out his rear left tire!

More laundry stories

Today we took a drive on the outskirts of town while the girls took their naps. We drove down some rocky roads that probably weren't great for our little car, and we saw many families washing their clothes on rocks and rinsing them in the stream. We also saw some clothes hanging out to dry on barbed wire. Amazing.

Here are some pix of the girls at the little playground in town. Audrey & Avery rode their first see-saw (Audrey loved it, Avery not so much), and Audrey said "those are funny looking swings" because the seats were metal and straight.

A full day without meltdowns until the very end, when Iain said he was making eggs for breakfast in the morning (this is Avery's favorite food). She jumped off of our bed and ran to the dining room table. When I explained that the eggs would come in the morning and not NOW, all kinds of tears flowed down. But she was in bed, happily sleeping, about 10 minutes later, so the next thing she'll know will be cheesy eggs on her plate. =) (One random thing about the eggs in the grocery store here is that they're not in the refrigerated section. I find this odd.)

World Cup

Iain has become a World Cup fanatic since arriving in Panama (he even bought a Brazil flag to fly from our rental car ... no, he's not really a Brazil fan, he just couldn't resist having a flag). Here's some video of the girls playing soccer in the house yesterday (the rain outside prevented a full-on game, so we had to make a goal out of Audrey's frog boots).

Cats and Monkeys and Homework, Oh My

Our first 2 days of school have been good. The girls' teacher is Aralis and they seem to really like her. Yesterday, they did puzzles and colored ... today, they had their first homework assignment where they had to color their favorite fruit. Audrey chose pineapple and Avery chose strawberries. Some pix of them coloring are below.

Also included are some video shots of them chasing the local hotel cat around the gardens yesterday (they took strings to let the cat chase but then didn't really want the cat to touch them) and some video of a monkey at some local gardens today. In the car on the way home, though, they both told us that they didn't like the monkey on their shoulders. =)

Yesterday, Iain and the girls also did laundry (which consists of dropping our laundry off at a lavanderia, coming back the next day, and receiving our completely folded laundry for almost less than the cost of the soap). Today, the girls and I had rocky road ice-cream for a snack after lunch. If ice-cream shops were so cheap near our US house, I would weigh about 300 pounds. =)

I did my homework today in the hammock outside our door while the girls took their naps. Life is good!

Some things never change

The girls watching Olivia on the floor of our house and eating grapes (that came from Chile, just like the ones we bought in SD). =) It's still pouring outside and there's apparently a limit on how long it continues to be fun to stomp in the puddles.

Playing in the Rain

My video from yesterday must have been too long and it never uploaded. Trying again w/ a new one from today. Looks like it'll be pretty easy to get 'playing in the rain' footage here, since we're now 2 for 2 of rainy days.

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We're in Panama safe and sound

We are here, and Boquete is everything we hoped it would be. The little town is authentically rustic, and our cabin is awesome. Here is video of the normally-rain-phobic Audrey living it up in the puddles. We shopped for groceries at the little store (like a combination hardware store and grocery store) and made macaroni and cheese, hotdogs (which were locally made, and the girls wouldn't even eat them, but Iain thought they were fine), and fresh green beans. The only bad thing about today is that the US lost to Ghana.

[The video will be uploaded shortly.]