Overlooking the rooftops and of course the volcano, wearing the Guatemalan soccer team's jerseys.  They wore these home the day we traveled home and got lots of oohs and aahs!  :-)

Otto's 1st day of kindergarten!  I can't believe it! 

We're Home!

We're Home! We finished school on Friday and had another week and a half before we were scheduled to leave. We were all SO ready so we decided to come home early! We flew home Sunday and got home about 11:30pm. The boys fell asleep in the car and when we arrived home, they woke up and it was hysterical! It was like Christmas for them! All the toys they had forgotten about, missed! We were all up til 2am!!! Kept hearing things like, "oh mom, my truck!" "oh mom, my red cup!" "oh mom, my blanket!" "oh mom, my train!" They were so busy, so cute and so funny, and they played well while we settled in a bit and scoped everything out. Owen threw a fit when we finally said they had to go to bed. There were several toys he wanted to take to bed with him!
Took Otto and registered him for school, he starts afternoon kindergarten today! Oh my goodness! And get this, the principal wants to start him out in a "normal" kindergarten class, not a special needs class! She wants to give it a couple weeks and see how it goes, then we can always switch to the other class. I am thrilled!!!!! While I am not thrilled about possibly switching him in a couple weeks, I am thrilled about seeing how he does with several "typically" functioning children. Praying Otto is wherever is the best spot for him to learn and thrive and love school!

Tremor!

Oh! Two days ago, we had a big tremor here which is normal b/c of the volcanoes but actually Aaron turned the news on right after and the news said, “this just in” that there was a big earthquake in the Pacific Ocean right off the coast of Guatemala and that Guat. even felt the effects! We sure did! It was so weird! It was bigger and lasted longer than any of the tremors I felt when I was here 4 years ago.

Food

I wrote before about how we receive our lunch and dinner cooked for us by Marie who cooks for the students in the guesthouse. As of a week ago, we decided not to receive that service anymore. I felt the food was good and Aaron did also…most of the time! We didn’t feel it was enough food and it mostly consisted of vegetables which we didn’t feel warranted what we were being charged. Aaron doesn’t care for many vegetables, he likes some but there were a couple of nights he couldn’t even eat. For example, one repeated dinner was cauliflower fried in eggs with a red sauce and rice. It was good! But Aaron doesn’t care for cauliflower. I liked it but cauliflower does a terrible number on my Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Actually that’s the other reason, we both had been so bloated from the food!!!! For me, I think it was all the veggies, some just don’t agree with me (two of them I had never even heard of before!!! LOL), and all the corn tortillas (which I would eat several b/c the portions never quite filled us up) and corn is another big aggravator of my IBS. So we decided to start cooking for ourselves again! ☺
Cooking the food: I just have to share my cooking conditions b/c it’s comical and quite a puzzle to coordinate! Here is a picture of what I have to cook with. There is no stove, but there is a microwave, toaster, and an electric “hot plate” I guess you could call it?! (Another reason it feels like we’re camping!!!! LOL) It’s like one burner from a stovetop. Which is great, 

however, I usually use 2 or 3 while cooking. So I’ve been trying to think of some “one pot” meals since I only have 1 burner! LOL So far we’ve had fried chicken with noodles (in the microwave) and cucumber (no need to cook), chicken and onions with rice (in the microwave) and broccoli (in the microwave). That one was tricky b/c the rice took forever (the microwave isn’t that powerful, maybe b/c of the altitude) and 2 things had to be cooked in the micro. Last night we had ground beef fried up with salsa and some other seasonings and crumpled u

p tostada chips mixed in and cut up guacamole. This weekend I am hop

ing to get some pork chops. You can only get what the small little supermarket has and so you have to get what’s in!

Shopping for the food: Here is a picture of what I take on my 10-block walk to La Bodegona (the grocery store here). The stroller is b/c the bags are very heavy after a 10-block walk (I       used to do it repeatedly untilI got the bright id

ea of taking the stroller to ease the strain) and the bags are so that I don’t have to pay for bags and they are just sturdier to make the trek home. Our first month, we lived about 15 blocks away and we had to buy water too. So I have to l

ug 4-gallon size waters home too! I would take a Tuk-Tuk (little 2-seater "taxi") on those days (which I’ve attached a pic of also, they only cost $2 to take home) until I had the idea about the stroller. Now, though, our water is delivered! How nice! We shop twice a week b/c we can only buy at one time

enough to put is those 2 bags. I go on Wed morning and we all go on Sat morning. McDonald’s is 2 doors down from La Bodegona so the kids can play for a little bit! I can’t tell you how much I miss Wal-Mart!!!!!!! Driving my car there, having a nice big shopping cart, walking down nice big aisles (I can barley fit the stroller down an aisle at La Bodegona!), having many choices of everything, the cashier packing my bags for me and driving back home.

Cumpleano Fotos!

Figured we'd take advantage of the beautiful potential backgrounds here and take the boys' bday pix!  They don't turn 3 and 6 for another month and a half but they'll look the same!  :-)

Oh, Koalas.....?!

Is this a Eucalyptus tree?! How crazy!!!! I love eucalyptus! I got a whiff of it too one day when I was walking by. My favorite animal when I was a kid was the Koala. They love to eat eucalyptus. I assumed these would only be in Australia. How weird!!!!

Cerro de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross)

Just a little ways down from our street is the entrance to a trail up the mountain to the famous statue of a cross where you can see the entire town of Antigua! You can see the cross up on the hill from almost anywhere in Antigua. We’ve never done it before b/c you’re always warned that robbers hide up there and rob the tourists. We found out that everyday at 3pm, the tourist police escort hikers up there so we went! It was awesome! The kids loved it! The clouds are covering the top of the volcano. It would be neat to have a pic of it from the cross on a clear day. (I took this pic from the end of our street and just at the top of that hill where it looks like the road turns to the right, is where the entrance to the trail is, so very close!)