My Birthday

My birthday was full of surprises, both good and bad. I started off the morning with cream cheese stuffed french toast with an orange-guava sauce...yum! Then a frantic rush to get ready for work and Zachariah to school, all to end when my housekeeper called to say she couldn't come, her 3 teenage boys all have dengue!

Steve had planned to head out to the countryside to watch a well pumped dry and then cleaned but after talking with our boss, he was able to stay home and do some work from there.

We had planned for some friends to come over and watch our boys so we could have a nice quiet dinner together. The day before, I went out a bought a dress and some shoes to match. I think it's the first dress I've bought in over a year and a half. So before dinner I headed down the street to a salon run by a mother/daughter team in front of their house. As usual in Nicaragua, I waited about 45 minutes before starting...you pretty much have to wait for just about everything here, doctors, supermarkets, buses, etc. We had a fun time chatting...turns out the husband of the lady who did my nails (the daughter) is the nephew of the lady who lived across the hall from us when we lived in the 2nd floor apartment (did you follow all that?). He is American and she is Nicaraguan, so we had some good conversations. In the end she asked if I might be interested in teaching English to her 3 daughters during summer vacation, which starts in a month. Sounds interesting, so I might go for it.

I also had my hair "ironed" for the first time in my life. I didn't think it would change my look that much, since my hair isn't extremely curly, but I seriously did not recognize the lady in the mirror when the woman finished! My husband didn't recognize me either, and he prefers it more "au natural", but it was fun to try it out. I always enjoy trying out new things with my hair...I figure, if I don't like it, it will grow out or eventually come back to normalcy. In this case, all I had to do was wash my hair and bang! Back to me again.

You can tell I don't wear dresses much. When I was all ready to go and came out of the bedroom, Nathaniel looked at me and asked me, What was I wearing?? I told him, it is a dress. He stated that HE wanted to wear a dress too. Well, you can't, I said. Only girls wear dresses. Boys wear pants. No, he said, shaking his head. He pointed to me and said that I was a boy and HE was a girl (sounded more like "gorilla") and he wanted to wear my dress, haha!!

After a long discussion about the difference between girls and boys, Steve and I headed out to a nice restaurant in town and ate a nice quiet meal. Steve ordered the seafood soup, complete with whole crabs, fish, lobster and snails, while I ordered some lobster with cream sauce, yum! It was very relaxing and a nice end to a full day.