Birthday Party at Bungalow!!

Dempsey celebrated his seventh birthday with seven friends last Saturday at Bungalow, a miniature golf course not too far from our house.  He made the invitations himself (a completely foreign idea here, most invitations are professionally made) and chose the kids he wanted to invite.  It was a great party.  The kids played golf, put together Legos, ate hamburgers and had cake.  The friends that he invited were so sweet, as the pictures show.

           Birthday Dude     

                                                       The golfers scope out the course

                                         

Getting the girls started on the course

Future PGA player - (this picture is for Nana)

Lego time - here is Diego, Gabriel and D -

these are some of his best friends

Cake Time!

Just a sweet picture

Friday Haiku

two arms akimbo

an ambiguous teapot

from which side to pour?

Happy Birthday Big D!

When D was a little guy, we called him lil' D.  Now he's big D.

Here are a couple of pictures from his birthday at school.  We brought cupcakes to his first grade class and everyone sang Happy Birthday and Queremos Pastel, it was great! Tomorrow we are having his birthday party at Bungalow, a miniature golf place... more photos to come!

Life is Normal - We have house projects now!

We haven't posted anything in a while... that's a good sign, right?  Well, life has been busy.  There are a lot of good things going on.

Bottom line, life is good.

We're moving with the days.

Exciting things on the horizon... Dempsey's birthday is tomorrow, so you know we'll have some pictures to post and a story to tell.

We worked on  a house project last week... we bought some nicely hand made wooden bookshelves from a trashy, grassy lot down the hill from our house last weekend.  Total cost for both bookshelves... 950 lempiras, about $43.  We brought them home, sanded and stained them and voila! we have places to put our books and tchotchkes!  The small bookshelf went in the kid's play bedroom and now houses their Playmobiles and Legos.

The Finished Product

Ready to look at a Sunset

People often ask us what we miss about "home".  The things that come to mind immediately are the typical responses... family, friends, dog, community, Farmer's Market, our VW, blahblahblah.

But we have really been missing light reading.  We miss having our favorite magazines on the coffee table.  We miss plopping down on the couch and reading a little something for 10 minutes.  Sure, there are magazines in English here, but not really the ones we prefer.  One day, there was a Time magazine in my box in the office.  I have no idea who put it there, and it was about 2 months old, but I brought it home and put it on the coffee table and it was our reading candy for a couple of weeks.  In a dive shop on Roatan, I found a People magazine and read about Jen and Brad and how they have been spending time together and texting.  Whoooo!

So before my parents came here, I asked my mom to bring any magazines that she was done with, specifically, Sunset.  I love Sunset magazine  I love the gardening ideas and the yummy recipes.  I love the house remodels and garden make-overs.  I love the western states weekend travel spots and even the ads are fun to look at.  I love that there is a magazine that highlights all the great things about living where we used to live.  I was ready to read Sunset again.

I don't think I could have handled reading Sunset a few months ago.  To read about a Northern California fall with recipes for chili-roasted acorn squash, baked apples with cranberry molasses bread pudding and arugula, fennel and lemon salad would have been tough.   Even seeing an advertisement for a Subaru would have been painful.  The articles and images from "home" stirred up a lot of feelings about missing where we came from and the people there.  A few months ago, we were still adjusting to life here, at times asking ourselves "Why did we move here!?", thinking about Milo,  our fig and persimmon trees, our kid's sweet schools and our community.

But now time has passed.  Although this city and country still feel foreign to us, it is our home.  We have paid some culture shock and home sickness dues and we've come through to the other side.  Having our parents visit last month was a big pick-me-up.  They brought treasures like Trader Joe's hot cereal, Traditional Medicinal teas, a case of beer from Bear Republic Brewery (yes! a whole CASE!), Dr. Bronner's soap,  local honey, The Bohemian, a Sonoma West newspaper, good sunscreen, Sumbody sugar scrub and soap, and yes, Sunset magazine.

Back to Normal Life...

Finding it hard to muster up the creative juices to write.  OK, here I go.

We had a fabulous time with our parents visiting.  They got to see some of the best of Honduras... Roatan, Copan Ruinas, Pico Bonito, and of course, Tegucigalpa... Well, the parts of Tegucigalpa that are worth seeing.  And believe it or not, there are a lot!

Here are some of the highlights of the trip that may not seem like highlights in the BAM!  sense (spotting an octopus, swimming with dolphins, roaming around 2000 year old Mayan ruins, you know, that kind of stuff), but these are just some of the normal every day things that we got to do with our parents while they were here.

When Bruce arrived on the 18th of December, we had a half day of school so we went down the hill to the Honduras Maya to go to the pool.  It was a beautiful, hot day and Bruce got to see one of our favorite places to lounge away the day.

Last Friday night, I invited my assistant, Carolina and her two adult daughters over for dinner to meet my parents.  We had a great time together and my parents got to meet the woman that I spend the majority of my time with here.  Carolina is a hoot and has great stories to tell.  What I didn't know was that when a little wine is added into the equation, her stories turn into rollicking adventures about the good ol' days in Tegucigalpa.  Her daughters are quintessential sidekicks and the three of them work well together as an entertainment package.

A pretty butterfly called "Reina" that we saw at the butterfly garden in Copan Ruinas.

Cupcakes and coffee in Valle De Angeles to pre-celebrate Dempsey's birthday

(coming up on January 28).

Door in Valle de Angeles

Calle in Valle de Angeles

We went hiking in La Tirga National Park the day before my parents left.  About 20 km out of the dry and wind-swept Tegucigalpa, we entered the cloud forest.  At the top of the mountain, we were in a passing cloud and we all stopped in amazement.  My parents had other things on their minds... we saw them doing this a lot while they were here.

Splendid little flowers.

So now were back to normal life, just the 4 of us.  Linnea's Spanish is growing every day and she babbles and sings constantly in a mix of intelligible and incomprehensible Spanish that cracks us up.  Dempsey is signed up for Eagle League basketball, which starts on Monday.  Eric enrolled in an on-line course through UCLA to get his certification to be a H.S. guidance counselor for future use.  My weekly Spanish lessons are helping my skills improve poco a poco.

Me and Pepe

Today I was waiting to pick up our neighbor Elisa and her mom at the airport and I ran into Pepe Lobo.  I took the opportunity to introduce myself and shake his hand.  I wished him good luck, he thanked me and then he left.  You might be wondering who Pepe Lobo is...


Porfirio Lobo Sosa also known as Pepe Lobo is the president elect of Honduras.  Yes, that's right this man is going to inherit the biggest political problem in all of Central America, but here he is at the airport posing for pictures with this gringo smiling.  Pepe will take office on the 27th of January.  I hope he has a better time being president than the last guy...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Followers and Friends,

We have been on the road, on the sea, and in the air for the past two weeks, so we have not been able to keep up with our blog... So here is a bit of a catch up.  My dad and I flew to Roatan and spent three days diving as much as we could.  The diving was great but the weather was cold and rainy with very rough seas.  Here are a few pictures I took on our dive.

You can see sponge coral, a picture of my dad, an octopus that we saw hunting fish on a night dive, a crab, turtle and lobster.  Roatan is truly on of the best places to scuba dive.

(I didn't take the below picture of my dad and I diving through the wreck of the Aguila at 100 feet. I'm the one with the camera.)

Meanwhile, Jim and Nancy tried to land in Tegucigalpa, but due to the bad weather they had to land in San Pedro Sula.  This was not exactly what we had planned but in Central America it is best to be flexible with your travel plans (or any other plans for that matter).  Jennie and the kids hopped into the trusty Hyundai and drove the five or so hours to meet them and they all spent the night in Tela.  By this time the weather had started to improve and by the time they arrived on Roatan, sunny island life was returning to normal.  By luck, the shuttle they were all on was also the one that had picked up Sally at the airport and soon we were all drinking Pina Coladas at Gloria's.  We all spent some valuable time in the sun, played games on the beach and then went to a marine research and educational center where we got to swim with a dolphin named Bailey.

Here we are with Bailey.  The dolphins have it pretty good here.  No that is not a pool, we are in the ocean!











We found a sirena (mermaid)!

D and Grandfather swimming in the Caribbean.

Dad and Sally in the sun.

Notice the bottle of Racer 5.

Kids playing in the sunset.

The whole group.

Final Sunset on Roatan.












After Roatan it was time to travel to see the Mayan ruins in Las Ruinas de Copan.  We had a guide who taught us all about the Mayan civilization and got to meander through the two thousand year old city.

Resting.

Our guide was named Tony.  He is in the Guiness Book of World Records... he told us this several times, but he never told us why he was in it...

Copan was called the "City of Bats".   Here is a very old bat statue.  Each Mayan city had its own animal or symbol.

Of course the long tour ended with ICE CREAM!














We also had a chance to visit a place called Macaw Mountain.  It is a refuge for birds who have been taken from the wild and are not able to live on their own.  As you can see they are very beautiful (except for the mean Tucan that chased us down).

Well there you have it, the past couple of weeks have been full of fun and adventure, just the sort of thing that we moved down here to experience.  Now we prepare to return to "normal" life.  School starts in three days.  We hope you have enjoy our pictures, we certainly enjoyed taking them!

Happy New Year!  May this year be a sweet year, a year full of love and peace!