August 2017 - Field Trip, Cute Kids and Picture Purrfect Cats

To really finish out August, we took a tour of our friend's flower farm. It was really cool. They export to a lot of different countries and their place was huge. It was so nice of them to give all of our homeschool friends a field trip! 

 This is Jenny, the owner. She's telling us about this fern. The kids did a good job of listening...for the most part!

 They also go to pick fresh strawberries at the end of the tour. That was really a highlight as everyone was excited to get to do it themselves.

 It was a fun time with our other homeschooling friends!

 We bought some appliances for our new house and they gave us some entry forms to win a shopping spree in the store. D was really into and super excited that we were going to win. He really wanted Daddy to get him a Nintendo Switch if he won the shopping spree. So he sat down and filled out all the forms and then we turned them in...and then he asked a million times if we won. Sadly, we did not.

 To finish out our paperwork to get our license plate registered, we had to go to the DIJ in David. Can you tell this was an exciting time for the kids? Yes, it was hot and we had to wait around for a long time. They only give out 10 spots and you have to arrive at 5 am to get a spot, but no one told us. When we arrived at 7, I pleaded our case, and they gave us #11! This was one of the many steps to get the license plate transferred, but at this point, we were hopeful to almost be done. Let's just say the ladies at the other office were hopeful we were almost done too. We had to go visit them multiple times...sometimes even multiple times a week (and it was a one hour drive to get to them).

 This kid was determined to get his bike on the porch and he was so close before he gave up. But I still think he's cute.

...and he knows it.

 I had to poke them in the belly to get this pic, but it's the best one I've ever taken of them.

 Our two pretty, but relatively bad, kitties had to make the post. They were picture purrfect this day!

I'm trying to catch up on the blog. Quick updates with pictures thrown in. Only 2 months behind! :)

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.