New Years Eve surprise

Didn't do much for New Year's Eve as we had just gotten back from our travels and were tuckered out. However, we did have a surprise during supper. Zach was munching away on some enchiladas (fried tortillas with refried beans, cheese, shredded cabbage and tomatoes), spit something out on his plate, and continued to eat.

"What is that?" Steve asked me. I figured it was a piece of food that Zach didn't want, for whatever reason. As I picked it up to throw it out, I realized...it was Zach's tooth!!! And Zach didn't even realize it. When I showed him his tooth, he had a look of bewilderment on his face and then searched his mouth for where it might have come from. When he found the gap, he gave me a wide smile. He's been asking when he was going to start losing his teeth, like his friends, so he was pretty psyched about it.

Travels with Jenny and Simon

Some pictures from our travels with Steve's cousin and hubby

View from the top of the volcano Masaya





At a craft area we bought Zach a REAL slingshot...he absolutely loves it! but watch out little brothers Than and Seb...



This is where the women bake the crafts and then paint them. They sell the items from their house.



The Merced church, main street and main cathedral (in background) in Granada


View from the hotel where we stayed, right on the beach. It was beautiful! You can see a natural "pool" and volcanic rocks. There were concrete steps made to get into the pool, which is regenerated every time the tide comes in.

the Best Christmas present ever

This year, I received the best Christmas gift ever – from my husband and myself – the gift of freedom.

Freedom from the stress and frantic rush of cards and gifts.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE to give gifts. I appreciate receiving them but I particularly enjoy giving them, knowing that I made someone’s day. Especially when I’m walking around and I see THE perfect gift for somebody I know. I also love to make photo books and albums for my family.

But this year, instead of enjoying writing Christmas cards and making the photo books, it felt…stressful and hectic. Buying, writing and sending cards is a lot of work in the US…but here, it’s twice as hard. You have to realize how different things are here in Nicaragua. They don’t sell boxes of cards here. They sell them 2 or 3 at a time. So I have to stop by the store every day for weeks in order to get enough cards for everybody on my list. Then the writing. And then I have to make sure I stop by the post office during its few morning hours (there are no such thing as mail boxes and remember, I have to walk all this, since Steve is working and I can’t drive the Jeep (try double parking with no power steering in the city…it’s pretty tough!)). The post office is a good 14 blocks away. All of this was taking a lot of time away from my family…and one of the great themes of Christmas time is spending time with family…how ironic!

If this was the season of love and joy, why was I feeling so harried? Something just didn’t seem right. Instead of enjoying time with my family, I was killing myself trying to buy and send cards, and trying to find time on the internet to make photo books.

It was then that I realized that I had lost touch with what was important, and after talking with Steve, decided to nix the gifts and send out only a few cards to our families. Suddenly, I had all this extra time!

And do you know what I did with it?

I played tag, had dashing sword fights, screaming tickle fights, made gigantic tents and delicious cookies. I had so much fun and I think my boys enjoyed my “presence” as a wonderful present for them as well. So if you’re wondering why you didn’t receive a Christmas card from us…now you know.

We thought of all of you this season, and hope that you, too, were able to enjoy time with your family and friends. Hard to believe that next Christmas we will be celebrating with some of you, drinking hot chocolate and trying to stay warm.

Christmas Eve

Traditionally, some families here in Nicaragua celebrate by having a midnight Christmas Eve dinner. Since midnight is a bit late for us, Candida agreed to have dinner ready around 10 or 10:30 (although we still didn’t get to bed until 2:30 am!). She made the traditional Christmas relleno (literally, the filling). It’s made with pork, chicken, tomatoes, potatoes, raisins, olives, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and other things. It sounds gross, but is actually one of the most delicious foods we have ever eaten. I hope to make it back in the US for our next Christmas. It is served with bread rolls, rice and salad.

My day started bright and early. I planned to make several desserts and a turkey for Roberto’s family. The menu included apple pie, lemon sponge pie, fannie hoover cookies, 7 layer salad, and turkey with stuffing (this year, I made it out of a box…I didn’t have time to make it from scratch like last year). This was the second time in their lives they had ever eaten turkey or apple pie…can you imagine?

Getting the gizzard out of the turkey


Jenny (Steve’s cousin) and Abby came over and spent the day at my house, helping to prepare the goodies. After a full day of chopping, rolling and baking, we headed over to Roberto’s house to await the arrival of Candida from work. While waiting for people to arrive, we all napped in turn…I don’t think I EVER took a nap at 8 pm before!

From left to right: Roberto, Simon and Hector share a joke.


As the family members slowly filtered in, everybody munched on the cookies and put the final touches on the relleno.



Around 10:30 we ate our fill, lit up some fireworks (a small incident occurred in which a spark landed on Nathaniel’s tongue, giving him a nice little white spot on the tip…he is fine now), ate some dessert and opened presents.
We finally headed home around 1:30. After all that excitement, I couldn’t go to sleep quite yet, so I stayed up and read a book until 2:30 and finally went to sleep.