A Trip to Panama City - August 2017

We had to take a trip to Panama City in August to get our cedulas done for the government. And to get our license plate transferred to our province. As you can see, the car was packed and everyone was pretty excited...especially the driver! Ha.

 One thing I LOVE about Panama City is all of the American places to eat. I had a list of a few fast food places I wanted to make sure to hit. One was Taco Bell which may sound crazy to most of you, but getting (sort of) real Tex-Mex here doesn't happen. They had a Double Decker Taco - my favorite!!

 We went to a huge mall called Allbrook Mall. It is supposedly the largest one in all of Central America. The kids all got to ride on the carousel and had a fun time playing around here and eating a yummy lunch (I think they had Dominos and Ben and I had a burrito like Chipotle).

 Then time to get our cedulas taken care of. We met the lawyer's helper at this cool building and started the process. It took a few hours, but we kept everyone busy and entertained.

 It was great to see they had a small kid area with books and magazines as well as some pages to color. It was nice because it was in the air conditioning. Panama City is pretty warm compared to what we are used to!

 We also found a random turnstile to play with for a little while to burn off some energy.

 Here we are with a big Panama flag.

 Then another trip to the mall. It had this huge Godzilla thing which the kids had fun playing around.

 Another mall had the Lego store, which was a big hit, although the prices were insanely expensive. I'm glad we brought a million pieces with us. Or maybe it just feels like a million pieces since I find them ALL OVER the house.

 We also got to hang out at Chuck E. Cheese's for a little while one afternoon. It also cost a little more than one in the States, but it was still a lot of fun for the kids.

 Of course we had to spend quite a while figuring out what prizes we needed.

 Then, another thing we had to accomplish was getting our license plate taken care of. We needed to transfer it from Panama City (where we bought it) to a province near our house. It involved a whole lot of Spanish, so I was pretty excited when we were able to accomplish this goal...well at least this step. Thankfully I checked with our friend before leaving. We almost left Panama City without picking up the new license plate. We were driving out of the city when I asked her if they would mail it or what and she said we should have picked it up. We had to turn around and go back. Thankfully they were open and the plate was waiting for me!!

 We stopped by the beach on the way back. This is a really nice beach outside of Panama City.

 The kids had fun playing with a crab that Daddy found. They love playing at the beach. It never is long enough!

 They could stay here all day long!

Panama City is a fun place to visit. There is a lot to do and a lot of places to eat. We like going there, but it is so nice when we can return home, too!

Pictures from Our Walk Today

The past two days it has been a rainy mess in the afternoons, so I decided to get the kids out this morning for a walk around the neighborhood and shot these pics while we were out. All of the tall trees are Rainbow Eucalyptus (I need to get closer to them to take pics of the bark sometime, but the weeds are too tall now) and the mountain is our volcano, Baru. 

Happy Reformation Day - 500th Anniversary

This afternoon, we had a lot of friends come over to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. It was a great time and I am so glad that we have a covered pavilion to host it in (although it did not rain)! I came up with some games for the kids to play, the older kids went to play some soccer, and the adults got to hang out and chat. It went off really well! (I'm skipping some posts, but I'll catch up on the end of August, September and October - Lol!)

These are the games I set up:

Nail the 95 Theses to the door - Just like Luther, they could nail a few of the 95 Theses to the door!

Coin in the Coffer - Toss some coins into the pails. This is one of the complaints Luther had, that church people were required to pay a fee in a coffer to get their family members out of "Purgatory."

Three Legged Race For Your Life - Luther was called a heretic by the church and his arrest was ordered, so he had to flee for his life.

Fishing for Solas - Find the animals in the water marked with the 5 Solas of the Reformation - Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria, Sola Fide, Sola Gracia, Sola Scriptura

Diet of Worms Cake Walk - Luther was called to a diet (meeting) in a town called Worms. It makes a funny name for a cake walk though! They had to do the cake walk to get dessert! 

Papal Bull Burning - The pope sent Luther a letter telling him to stop preaching and he got mad and ran into the street and threw the paper into a fire! The kids got to throw some scrolls into the fire as well...and they loved it! 

Parchment Scroll Writing - The kids could copy the 5 Solas or a Bible verse onto some paper I soaked in tea to make them look older.  

Sadly, this is as many Theses as we got nailed to the door. It was kind of off to the side, so I think most people didn't notice it! 

Here they are throwing their papal bull into the fire! 

 Putting coins in the coffer! Of course, the prize for each station was a small bag of candy corn. Yum! 

 For the meal, we had hot dogs, pretzels, lemonade, rootbeer, popcorn and some other goodies that people brought. We had cupcakes and cookies in the cake walk for dessert! It was a great time and everyone had a lot of fun! 

 I have no idea how she did this, but a friend made a pineapple jack-o-lantern. 

 The kids doing the cake walk. I mean, they really got into this. Everyone WANTED to win so desperately! 

 Three legged race - most of the kids just hopped instead of practicing before it started. It was pretty funny! 

These are the bugs they "fished" for to find the 5 Solas. Hopefully they can at least remember that there are 5 Solas after this evening! 

 Here is the example of the paper the kids wrote on for the parchment scroll. I got these from Notebook Fairy and the worked great! 

I'm so glad we got to host the first (that I know of) Reformation Celebration here in Volcan. It was so nice to have all the neighbors over and teach the kids a little bit about Luther and why the Reformation is important. It was great to see the kids all having fun and playing together. We are blessed to have the friends we do and live in an area where we can have people over to do fun stuff like this! Already looking forward to doing it again next year! 

I Found More August Pictures!

Okay, so the other day I was thinking that I was pretty much all caught up with the blog. I had used all the applicable pics on my computer, so it was time to upload the new ones from my phone and get started on newer updates. Then I looked at my phone and saw the hundreds that were left on there from August! Oops! So this is still an August post, catching up to mid-August before we went to Panama City. 

A super foggy day! 

 I also found more pics of the house before. Better pics. This is after the wall came down. You can see the two different tiles on the floor. Where the bike is will be E's room. It has a pizza oven in it since this house used to be a restaurant. They split the kitchen in half with the wall there you can see.

 Here is a view from the end of the hallway to show the two doors with two sets of stairs. The second doorway is now closed in and stairs gone. I will eventually do one post that shows the before and after pics together instead of this jumbled mess! Oops!

 This is the column in the kitchen. The wall is missing. The column now has stone on it to match the other one in the background.

 This was the ceiling and the main reason that we wanted this work done. All kinds of bats and insects were getting in here. Not cool. So this has all been covered with sheetrock with a few other little surprises that I'll share soon! Okay, the end of house pics for now.

 Trips into David are always fun! We get to eat Dominos or McDonald's sometimes. There is always something we need to buy for the house or just groceries. This time we were buying new lights. They test the lights before you take them out of the store. So handy! David has a lot of fun stuff to do, but it's hot and humid.

One last image to leave you with. White Kitty practicing contortions in a box she likes to sleep in!
For the next post, I plan to finish up August with our trip to Panama City! Stay tuned.

What We Did In August

 Okay, so I found this pic of the wall before it came down. I still need to take an after one. This is our next door neighbor who was visiting who helped Ben tear down some of the wall. Here is the original post if you missed it.

 This goober was too cute wearing doll glasses and pushing around his sister's doll stroller. Couldn't pass up that pic!

 One of these kids is still working at learning to smile on cue. He's...almost there. Or not!

 But he took a great selfie of himself, deep in thought!

 Daddy went to PriceSmart one day and came back with these fun new toys that everyone wanted to use first. Sadly, it only lasted one time before the newness wore off. Maybe we can pull them out and try again soon.

 I know one day they are going to appreciate that I dressed them all in matching outfits.

 So, we are deep in the heart of rainy season and it likes to pour buckets at times. The kids wanted to play in the rain so bad this day that I let them. It turned into a cold muddy mess, but they had a blast. At one point, they were riding their bicycle and it got stuck so it started spraying dirty water into the air. That was just the coolest thing ever! M thought it was way too cold!

We found this cool gate leading to who knows where on the way to a playdate with friends. I thought it would make a cool start to a story.

The kids loved playing in our friends' yard. They had a super cool rock garden that everyone could climb around on.
That about does it for August, other than every day life.

Knocking Down The Wall at the House on the Hill

We have always had this plan to move into the house on the hill. We were hoping to be in there about 6 months after arriving in Panama, but more about that later. There were a few construction needs in the house and Ben had a few changes that we wanted to make. One major change was moving the kitchen from the lower level up to the glassed in room. It would be a lovely view while cooking, that's for sure! One major improvement he wanted to do was tear out a wall that was pretty unnecessary. I figured it wouldn't be that bad. I mean, how hard could it be to tear out a concrete wall? Yikes!! It was a lot of work - those things are pretty sturdy!! So, that's exactly what he did (with some help from others). We all got in on the action and took down that wall! It really opened things up in the house (more about that later).

 This is what the wall looked like before. Sadly, it's the only picture I have of it. On the other side of the wall is another set of stairs leading up into the glassed in room. D is at a door that leads into the kitchen.

 I didn't get a good picture of the first bit of the wall coming down either! I wasn't super involved at the beginning!

 Lots of concrete to shovel out. Everyone got involved! You can see M in the background putting on a hard hat. The two sets of stairs are visible here. We now only have one doorway and one set of stairs. You're going to be amazed at how this looks now!!

 Bye bye blue second set of stairs!! This is after the paid crew moved in to help move things along!

 Seriously, it was a total mess. Concrete dust was ALL OVER everything!! Everything!!

 There goes the second doorway. This is where the refrigerator will eventually go in the glassed in room where I am standing to take the picture.

Wow! Don't the new stairs look so nice?? I did not take a pic of the completed wall, so I'll have to save that for next time. 

I am so sorry I have been so behind on posting on the blog lately. Things have been crazy around here lately for the last few months, but maybe they'll be slowing down soon...yeah right!